The Human Condition

the dark and cluttered command room. Following step-by-step instructions with the painful, awkward slowness of someone who had avoided as much contact with technology as possible over the last few years, he eventually managed to get the radio working. He cursed the fact that he was so hopelessly inept. Forty-five minutes of fiddling and messing with the controls and all he could get was static punctuated by brief moments of silence. What he'd have given to hear another voice.

    It felt like the morning would never come. The lack of natural light was strangely disorientating but, having slept intermittently for the last few hours, just after five o'clock Cox finally plucked up enough courage to get up from his seat and properly investigate his surroundings. He'd so far spent almost all of his time in the main command room but had also briefly visited the stores, the plant room (where the generators and air purification and conditioning equipment machinery was housed) and the bathroom. Moving slowly, and using the torch and dull emergency lighting to find his way around, he peered into two cramped and musty smelling dormitories and a hopelessly inadequate kitchen before returning to the heart of the bunker. Perhaps it was the lack of any proper lighting making things seem worse than they actually were, but the whole place seemed to have fallen into a state of terrible disrepair. He found himself cursing those (himself included) who had mocked the efforts of the EPC in those long and tedious council meetings. If only they'd been better prepared...

    It was only when he returned to the command room that he realised just how much the body on the ground was still playing on his mind. Even though it was covered up and was almost impossible to see clearly, he found it difficult to be in the same room as the corpse. What if he was stuck in there for weeks or a month? Imagine the smell and the decay and... and he knew he had to do something about it. It took him over an hour to finally decide what to do, and a further forty-five minutes before he was ready to actually do it. He then shifted the dead bulk into one of the dark dormitories. Shelly Bright's body was stiff, awkward and cumbersome. Its arms and legs were frozen by rigor mortis and Cox had to push, pull and shove it in order to get the corpse from where she'd died, round the corner, down the corridor and into the dorm. Terrified, shaking uncontrollably, panting and sweating profusely he slammed the door shut and sobbed his way back to the command room.

    If only there was a window in the main door or some other way that he could see what was happening outside. A part of him began to wonder whether the carnage he thought he'd seen above ground was really as bad as he'd thought. It all seemed so bizarre � had it really happened at all? Was this unbearable self-imposed incarceration necessary? Would he eventually emerge from the bunker to find everything back to normal above ground? He'd be a laughing stock (again). If he stayed down there long enough, someone would probably have moved into his office and taken over his desk...

    The urge to open the door and take a look outside was almost impossible to resist. Just a quick look, he thought, just long enough to see what, if anything, was happening out there. Just long enough to see if there really were still bodies lying around and whether there were other people like him who had remained apparently untouched by what had happened. He knew that he couldn't risk it. In frustration he leant against the door and wept. Cox wept for the family and friends that he was sure he'd lost. He wept for the easy, comfortable life which he was certain was gone forever. First and foremost, however, he wept for himself. His retirement from office had been looming on the horizon and an even easier and more comfortable future was in the offing. Now, through no fault of his own, he found himself buried underground with only a corpse for company. Even worse than that, if and when he eventually emerged from the shelter, as potentially the last surviving council member his life would inevitably become harder and more complicated unless he found a way of resigning his position. Maybe he should have stayed outside and let it get him too...

    Wait. What was that? He could feel cold air. A very slight breeze on the back of his hand. It was little more than the faintest of draughts coming from the side of the door just below its hinges. In sudden