Chapters That is what it all started with. We had a plan, and we were going to stick to it. And that plan was...
"RUN!"
I screamed after Zach, who was already on his feet. I had already been following my own advice and was moving my legs as fast as they could possibly go, which was quite a bit, if I do say so myself.
You see, me and my buddy Zach, are not the type of people who can find entertainment sitting around all day on a computer or some other "device-ee-thingies." As Zach calls them. We were hikers. We loved just getting out there and doing whatever we felt the need to do. It was a passion we had both shared as kids and as we went into our 20's.
On no day in particular I presented the idea to Zach to go hiking in the Siberian Mountains. He agreed, and after months of careful planning we were ready to go. Our confidence and excitement was at an all time high, considering it would be a huge challenge and neither of us had ever been there before.
When we left for the mountains after arriving in Siberia, things were going pretty well. No major storms, no animal problems, and a clear and obvious trail to follow. It was only 8 days after we had begun that things started getting a little hectic. A massive storm blew in while we were on the move, no time to set up a camp or shelter. We were blown off course and into the rugged part of the mountain range.
"M-man, this really blows." I said through trembling teeth.
"Tell m-me about it." I could tell Zach was just as cold as I was. I thought about pointing out the stupid pun I had just accidentally made, because y'know... we were on a snowy mountain, but decided against it. Now wasn't the time to be making dumb puns.
We had been off the trail for a good 3 days, but we still had enough rations to last us another... week? Maybe, if we conserved it well enough. What I was really worried about at that moment was hypothermia. The past few nights we were able to get a fire going using the supplies we had brought with us, but those were beginning to run low. Damn, if only I had spent the extra $40 for a bigger bag.
We trekked on through the snow, practically freezing our lower body to the point of numbness.
"We really n-need to get out of this snow s-somehow." Zach said, as if on queue.
"Do you th-think we could find some shelter out here?" I pointlessly inquired.
"Doubt it." Yeah, that's what I figured.
We trudged on in complete silence, other than the near deafening howls of the chilled winds. At one point I told Zach to stop and we rested under an overhang of rock and ice, which protected us from the wind.
"How are we going to get out of this mess?" I asked both to myself and to Zach.
"I don't know how, but we will. I'd bet my life on it."
"Well, at the moment that's not much of a bet." There I went again. Zach is the type of guy that tries to see the bright side of things, an optimist, so to speak. Myself on the other hand... not so much. A pessimist.
"We'll get out of this. Trust me." Zach tried reassuring me, to no avail.
"Yeah, well what do you think we should then? Huh? Cause' I don't hear you thinking of any ideas." I was nearly shouting at this point, I was so frustrated, not with Zach, but with our current situation.
"Look, I don't know what we're going to do but we will figure it out, now sit down and calm yourself, before you do something stupid." That knocked some sense into me. I sat down without saying anything else.
We had been sitting there under the overhang for probably 15 minutes before I heard something over the shrieks of the wind.
"Do you hear that?" I questioned Zach.
"Hear what..." He listened carefully.
I sort of sounded like thunder, a deep rumble that came from every direction at once. Suddenly, we heard an ear splitting Crack!
"Oh no..." I knew what was about to happen "Get up, now!" We stood up and took off.
"RUN!"
We sprinted down the mountain in the growing darkness, as the avalanche that had started at the peak picked up speed behind us. I don't think I ever sprinted as hard in my entire life the same probably goes for Zach. Then the worst possible thing happened.
I tripped. Since we were going at such high speeds my momentum still carried me down the mountain, just in a more... tumbly kind of way. I wasn't able to give Zach any sort of warning and I slammed into him as he let out a surprised yelp. Now we were both tumbling down a mountain with an avalanche not far behind.
I didn't think that day could've possibly gotten any worse.
I was wrong.
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..."
"What... is it?" I sincerely wanted to figure out what the wide world we were looking at.
"I don't know... I know the Russians back in the day were doing crazy experiments up in the bunkers but... what is this even supposed to be?"
We were both unmoving, continuously staring down this hulk of... something. A bright purple glow illuminated the entire room, all of it coming from a single source. An Oblivion Gate sized doorway of some sort of energy coursing back and forth quickly from two metal rods protruding from the floor. They electricity, for lack of a better word, coursed so quickly, it looked like a solid beam of pure purple energy that shifted around with the looks of a hurricane.
"Do you think it's... some sort of portal? I read and watch a lot of sci-fi, and this fits the bill." Zach pondered. Man, he was a massive geek.
"Probably not, we don't have that sort of technology yet."
"Maybe, but who knows what they were able to cook up up here in these labs."
We continued to sit, dumbfounded by the tall, bright-purple wall sitting in front of them. It didn't occur to either of us what we were going to do about this thing. We still needed to find food and water.
"Before we screw around with this thing, let's try to see if we can find a mess hall." This seemed like the logical course of action.
"Yeah, sounds good." Zach usually agreed with me on things since I was the more critical thinker.
We left the room and once again began to trudge down the corridor, we left the blast door open so we didn't forget where it was. After quickly glancing through every room we passed, we found what seemed to be where food was stored, most of the food there was completely and utterly botched, most of it was barely recognizable as food. Luckily, there happened to be a few boxes of non-perishable items, probably for situations exactly like this. All of the cans were unlabeled so we decided to crack one open.
Wide smiles spread on both our faces.
"Beef stew, now that's a score if I ever saw one." This was honestly the best luck we had had so far on this trip. I was actually glad for the first time.
We heated two cans of beef stew up in an old, yet still functioning, microwave. The smell was almost irresistible, not that I wanted to resist it. We dug in and had downed both cans in less than 2 minutes. Since there was around 10 boxes of these, we made 2 more cans, and downed those just as fast.
"Ok, from now on we preserve our supplies, no gorging like we just did, it's for the better." I told Zach.
"By the way, if that does turn out to be a portal, we may want to fill up a few bags with this stuff." Good job Zach, you thought ahead for once.
"Worst case scenario, it's a damn deathray and we're gonna walk straight into it." I laughed.
We found a few bags that had not been affected by any mold and didn't instantly turn to dust in our hands, and filled them to the brim with cans of beef stew. If it turned out that this wasn't a portal, they would at least have over a month to figure things out before they ran out of food to eat.
We happily walked back towards the room, stomachs full for the first time in days, but the happiness was slowly replaced with nervousness as we got closer to the purple room. We arrived and stepped inside. We remained yet again staring blankly at the purple lightning coursing back and forth.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" I asked Zach, just to make sure he was ok with this.
"What other choice do we have?" He had a point there.
"We could always just, wait for the end?" I implied that we sit here a over a month and starve to death.
"Leave it to you to..." He trailed off. "Honestly, I've never met anyone in my life that gives up as easy as you do, and this is coming from me, the one everyone thinks is the laziest person in the world. We have to try, try anything, something... if we don't then what's the point? We might as well just kill ourselves now."
"...Sorry... I guess you're right. Let's do this." I felt bad for suggesting we do what I said and just kill ourselves.
"Ready?" Zach inquired.
"As I'll ever be."
We both took a running start, sprinting at the wall with all our might. As it came up to meet us, I started having second thoughts. What if this thing really was designed to kill things? What if it killed us? I pushed these thoughts aside, if I didn't die here, I would die of starvation anyways. Too late to go back now.
We were falling.
What happened? We were running, then we were falling. How did that happen? Was Zach right, was it a teleporter or something? So many questions and no answers, but there were more pressing matters to deal with than how it happened. I was falling for the second time today.
"HOLY SHIIIIIIIT!" I know, screaming wasn't exactly a good way to get out of a situation like this, but it was just instinct. I could also hear Zach yelling over the wind. Hmm, cold, windy, white. Were we back on, or should I say over, the mountain? Perhaps these questions should would wait...
I landed with a Woosh! I felt myself sink low into a deep bank of snow, I had no idea if Zach had such luck. I tried to get up, but the combination of the deep, loose snow, and my injured leg made it almost impossible.
After a few good minutes of struggling, I finally made it to the top of the bank. Walking was going to be a struggle, at least I was retained some of the heat from when we warmed up by that generator.
I didn't see anyone or anything around me. The snow was blinding, I could barely see in front of me. I yelled out,
"ZACH! WHERE ARE YOU?" I turned and tried to listen over the howling winds... No response. I shouted out again, and again, and again, slowly making my way down the mountain, hoping he had the sense to do the same thing. The lower areas wouldn't have as furious of a storm blowing, hopefully.
As I descended the air became more clear, little by little. I went from being able to see 12 inches in front of my face to at least a couple feet, to put things in perspective. It still wasn't enough, I needed to keep moving down.
I walked (hobbled more like) down the mountain, occasionally slipping and falling into deep snow, which was a pain in the neck. After about 30 minutes I felt like I could breathe properly, so I once again began to shout for Zach.
I stopped to listen for a response... was that something? ...Yes, I definitely heard something over the wind.
"ZACH! Come towards my voice!" I was hoping I could guide him toward me.
"Cooper, is that you?" It was Zach, finally.
"YES, yes, it's me!" I hollered.
Zach came slowly trudging up through the snow, which had become a much easier obstacle now that we were out of the heart of the storm.
"Good to see you in one piece," he said once he was close.
"Ditto. Do you have any idea what happened?"
"No, one second I was running, the next I was falling, then rolling down the mountain."
"I didn't roll, that's probably why I couldn't find you at first."
"Well, how about we try to find our way out of this hellhole?"
"Sounds like a plan, let's g- hey, where's the food pack?" Zach stretched to look at his backside.
"Must have fallen off when I was tumbling down... ugh, I had all the food..."
"Listen, it's fine, I still have enough to last a little while, so let's stop wasting time and move out already. At least you still have your gear."
"Yeah, alright."
We set off down the slope at a hastened pace, the cold was beginning to get to us. As we made our way downward, the air began to go fuzzy again. The storm must be moving, this was very bad. Almost in sync we broke into a run, to try and stay ahead of the overwhelming frozen fury but to no avail. The eye engulfed us once more.
