Every day worse than the next, that's how things were going these days. We kept working, glancing up every so often through our heavily tinted lenses to watch the sunlight pound down harder than the last week. If the suits, masks, window coverings, and spray-sealants weren't distributed, we'd all be dead. Most of humanity was already. We here, left hiding in the husks of civilization, we're not really holding on tight so much as slipping down deep into a pit of hopelessness, clawing at the sides to slow our descent.
Funny, then, that today, the day our last seed of hope sprouts, we're marching down into a pit willingly. Literally. The entrance looks hastily cut into the landscape, out in the country so there's less of a chance the diggers would run into any old city plumbing or something. That and I expect they want to divorce the scene from the cities we all left. Coming out here to see all the plants in their various states is stunning in contrast, or comparison, with our group. Some of the plants are huge, larger than they should be. Sunflowers as thick as my arm, twice my height, which is average, even if people tend to call me short. Dried up moss and brittle yellow grass form the field that they spring up in. Unlucky and unable to adapt.
You can't tell by the people's eyes, what with how their faces are covered up, but posture is informative. The fat man at the head of the group is out of breath walking out here where the car's can't drive, but he's still holding his head up, expecting something. He has hope. The lady, can tell by the hips, who comes after him doesn't have that same pull upward. She slouches, dragging her feet a bit, and every so often looking up at the sun. It's a habit we all have,the sun-checking, but she does it with a rhythm, like a ritual for the end times.
Not like any of our glances up help, at least to solve the problem. Maybe we need to look our scourge in the face before we flee, get a good look at the thing that almost killed us off. May still kill us off. Groups like this, eight hundred, nine hundred people, lots of them are doing similar things. Digging holes and hiding. Up at the ridge, where the plant growth hasn't had a chance to spread, we can look down into the hole. It spirals down, like a staircase or what you would expect at an excavation, which this is, partially.
I have to step to the side to keep from being pushed down with the tide that walks forward, white suits covered in white cloaks, all walking down the spiral. A glance back and the group dwindles, trickling on down out of the field. Lots of postures, there. Hunched, timid, light-footed, heavy-hearted. Too many to find words for the small variations. Some of them are huddled in clumps, two or three, trying not to lose each other. A few lost looking people already have lost somebody. Not like we have to worry about getting split up too permanently though. Getting locked into a hole in the ground will do that.
Blue sky with a violet sun over a sea of sunflowers. Beautiful. I can still remember when it was more of an off-orange, back when it had just started. I was five, playing outside without a care. Even back then they knew something was wrong, but it was slow. The inevitability still made it frightening. First came the plans to stop it from changing, then the plans for adaptation, like the suits. Now we're left to run away from it all. The surface is lost. With that thought I can stop staring at it; I can turn and join the stream of people walking down.
Passing a few of the slower people in similar contemplation to mine, perhaps as they stare up at the sky while moving downwards. At the end of the spiral, down deep as a skyscraper, there's a door. Heavy and metallic, braced to keep the earth from bursting it open. It's not big, not even a double-door. Seemingly inconsequential but for the fact that it alone sits at the bottom of the hole. We all file in, one by one, walking into a faintly lit corridor that stretches out a long way ahead.
It's sloped downwards, somehow trying to say we're still not quite far enough away from the surface yet. I can hear a few conversations bouncing around and mixing with each other, but I have nothing to talk about, or nobody to talk to. Nothing to vocalize is the right way to say it, I guess. We reach a split in the path, men to the left, women to the right. The people in front, people who know where we're going to end up sat something about showers. I vaguely listen, but my mind keeps wandering back to the sunflowers.
Be lucky enough to survive wasn't the case. Cancer got to us and withered us like the grass up there. Adaptation is what we're doing now. It sounds better than saying we're fleeing. Better to adapt to the underground than to say we're fleeing from the surface.
There are showers here, spread out in a long hallway. The white suits are scattered on the floor, near the door, and I add mine to the pile before searching for a free space. People are talking more, now that the suits are off. Steam fills the room, pushing itself down either way as we collectively purge ourselves. There is some anti-radiation something or other in the water; don't drink it advises a sign. Even the clothes at the entrance are soaked through, the water carrying everything malignant out, they hope. If it were that easy, we would be on the surface, still. It works well enough as a placebo for some people.
At the end of the hall are airlocks, lined up side by side. Go in, get sprayed with decontaminents, then walk out the other side. Painless, and the reward is a towel and clothes. A nice, spring dress for me, even though it should be winter. Seasons aren't what they used to be, though, and I'm not even sure if seasons exist at all down here.
The passage merges again, always sloping downward. Walking takes hours, it feels like, and others complain about it on the way. My feet are sore by the time we enter into a giant chamber. It's spherical, roughly, with the bottom fourth filled in with patios and benches and all manor of things to make up a large common-room. I can barely make out the entrances and exits that appear on the far walls, and on the sides around me. People are gasping and complimenting the architecture, and I can't help but agree silently. As I look up the lights inside bounce off the slightly irregular grey and white speckled stone that makes up the whole chamber, creating a sparkling display that feels like the night sky risen above our heads. Cratered indents that create shadows draw in the eyes far up and away, some that must be cleverly concealing lights to illuminate the broad expanse of the dome.
"Welcome to the Moon Chamber," somebody announces through a megaphone from one of the raised platforms that dot the dipped floor or the area. Most of us don't register the speech, picking up bits and pieces through our wonder. In punctuation, when he finishes, a long drum-beat sounds out behind us, like the shutting of thousands of doors one after the other. Shutting us in as it collapses. The tunnel, the piles of old clothes, the showers, set up for that one time, all crushed. Our new home entrances us for now, lessening the panic of being locked in, making things okay, for now. We have a sky.
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