A Choice of Two

It suddenly felt as if I were floating. I couldn't see due to how terribly dizzy I was from rolling down the side of a mountain at 15 miles per hour. The floatiness feeling only lasted about 3 seconds before I landed on a rock surface with a Snap! Pain shot up through my left leg, but at least I had stopped spinning. I sat for a few seconds before looking to my left to see Zach unconscious on the ground.

At that point I reckoned we had about a minute until the avalanche overtook our current position. I looked around and what I saw me surprised me greatly. A massive metal door was embedded in the wall of the rocky overhang Zach and I had fallen off of. What was truly interesting was the fact that the door was slightly ajar. What could've opened it, and why?

I shook the thought out of my head and sprung into action.

I immediately regretted this. My left leg surged with pain as I fell back to the ground. I had forgotten about my injury, despite it happening only a few seconds ago. Heat of the moment I guess, or should I say, cold of the moment. We needed to move right then, otherwise we were going to get buried alive. I carefully moved myself so as not to hurt as much getting up, and I began to limp over to Zach's limp body.

I grabbed him under his arms and pulled as hard as I could, luckily, since we were both pretty fit people, he was not too difficult to move. I made the decision then that we were going to take cover inside this bunker. Where else would we have gone?

I dragged him inside and limped back out to retrieve his belongings, that had fallen off of him when he took the tumble off the overhang (luckily I had not lost my bag). As soon as I picked up his bag, snow began to fall over the edge of the overhang above me and onto my head. It was coming.

I hastened my movements to a half jog, for my leg was killing me. I hopped/jogged through the open blast door and fell inside. I attempted to close the heavy, metal door and lucky for me, it wasn't impossible to move. The door slowly creaked shut as I pushed will all the strength I was able to muster. It slammed closed with a loud Clang! I heard over the echoes of scraping steel, the thundering of the avalanche as it rolled over the bunkers entrance, sealing both Zach and I inside the deserted, decaying, fallout shelter.

I sat down, panting as my breath slowly returned to me. It was a huge effort to move quickly with a broken body part. After not moving for awhile, I decided to look at my injured leg. I slowly pulled up my snow pants and jeans underneath, then my triple layered socks. Thank God it was only a compound fracture, and hadn't broken skin. Otherwise I might have bled out right then and there.

After pulling my clothes back on, I decided to check on Zach, who was still lying on the floor where I had left him. I crawled over to him and began examining him.He wasn't dead, and he didn't appear to have any serious injuries, but then again neither did I. If mine was underneath, so could his. I needed to make sure. I began to lightly shake him.

"Zach, wake up."

Nothing.

"C'mon man, this is important."

No response.

"Zach, I swear to God, if you don't wake up..." I slapped him in the face. Hard.

"Huh? Wha- what happened? Am I dead? All I remember is falling and-"

"Dude calm down, you're fine. I think. I need you to tell me if you hurt anywhere, namely your lower body."

"Uuhhh... not... really. I mean, my back hurts a little but that's about it." Zach said nonchalantly.

"Well you're lucky, cause my left leg hurts like sonuvabitch." Which was no lie.

"Did you break it?"

"Yeah I think so, compound fracture."

"Well at least it didn't come out."

"Heh. That's what I said."

We stopped talking for bit to try and gain our bearings. Some time later Zach spoke up.

"So uh, where are we?" I had just realized I hadn't told him anything about what happened after we fell.

"When we fell down, we landed in front of that blast door over there." I pointed to it. "I dragged you inside and shut the door behind us as the avalanche blocked the entrance."

"So were stuck in here?" Zach asked with a disheartened look on his face.

"Seems as much." I responded. "Though I haven't looked beyond where we are now. There are lights on so who knows, there may be people in here."

"I heard these things can go for a long time without an external power source, they have a self-sustaining generator or something like that." He was probably right, if I listened carefully, I could hear a rhythmic whirring through the walls. As Zach said, probably a generator.

"Well, there's only one thing to do." I claimed.

"And what's that?" Leave to Zach to be a clueless idiot.

"What do think? We explore this place, that's what we have to do if we want even the slightest chance of getting out of here. Duh."

"Well alright then, let's go." Zach said confidently.

I slowly got up and braced myself against the wall of the tunnel. Even though there was lights in this place, they barely illuminated anything, so we could only see a few feet in front of us. It was almost as if there were no lights at all, just a very faint glow.

"What we need to look for are things like batteries, food, radios, and other equipment. Think of the obvious things we need to survive and get out of here." I authoritatively tell Zach. If anyone was going to take charge of our survival it was going to be me, Zach is just too... out there sometimes, not thinking of what should be done for the better. Zach was a laid back optimist with a great outlook on life, despite the fact that he never had a lot of money and many people avoided him as if they would catch his laziness. The song "Everything will be Alright" by Bob Marley comes to mind.

We searched through the cold, metal rooms of the bunker, finding very little survival wise. Charts, data, files, bios, and many other forms of information we extremely common inside. Food and usable equipment, not so much. It was beginning to look rather grim, and I thought if it would have been better to be carried by the avalanche.

We managed to find some flashlights and batteries and used them to help navigate around the mostly empty corridors and rooms.

"Since there really isn't anything in these rooms, we should try to find the generator and the more important parts of the building." Zach was getting better at this... sort of.

We began to skip rooms, much to our dismay, for we may have been passing up useful supplies, but we needed to find warmth near the generator, and maybe there would be food in the mess hall. The more we walked, the louder the hum in the walls became. We were definitely getting closer, thank God.

There was a caution sign on the door, "Danger. High Voltage Area. Wear Rubber Gloves At All Times." An arrow pointed to a little compartment in the wall filled with old rubber gloves. Unfortunately, when we grabbed them they simply disintegrated in our hands.

"Well then. Looks like we won't be using protection." I commented.

"That's what she said." Zach blurted out.

"Shut up Zach."

"Sorry, couldn't help myself." He snickered.

"Anyways, just don't touch anything."

We entered the room. The warmth from the generator felt so amazing I nearly went over and hugged it, then remembered that probably would have killed me. We stood standing a ways from it, basking in the heat radiating from it.

"Ooohhhh... that feels amazing." Both me and Zach said simultaneously. We then shared a good laugh.

"Ha! Nice one man!" Zach exclaimed as we high-fived.

We sat there for what seemed like an hour warming up, then I stood up.

"Alright, we need to move. We need to find food and water or we'll never make it out of here." I began to take control of the situation again. Irt felt good too.

"Agreed. Let's go." Zach replied.

We headed out the door into the hallway and began to amble down it once more, our energy renewed. That's when we saw it. A massive door, nearly as big as the exterior blast door, and even thicker.

"Would you look at that..." Zach commented on the 12 foot, hulking, solid steel blast door.

"Should we go inside?" I, for once, looked to Zach for guidance.

"I don't know... got anything better in mind?" I didn't.

We approached the massive door. There was a very strange noise emanating from beyond it. We entered.

"Oh my God..."