Invasion: the apocalypse

1.4

Led by two men and woman, all dressed in blue overalls and white helmets, Astra’s colleagues Tim and Khan walk behind with guns in their hands, pointing them at the three leading the way with fingers on the trigger, ready to fire at them if they make any wrong move.

Tim and Khan are not new to gun handling, neither is Astra, Rhoda, any of the students from Chrome city that is over the age of fifteen, including professor Jada of course.

Since the end of world war three, a hundred and fifty years ago. The Global human federation has mandated for every able person of fifteen years old and above to undergo special military training, which included survival training, gun handling and combat training.

Almost months ago, after the bizarre massage broadcast by the aliens when they arrived, guns were distributed throughout the world in an attempt to arm civilians should the worse case scenario come to be. Among such guns are the ones that Jada, Tim, Khan and Astra are holding right now. Jada was entrusted with six guns that she was asked to keep in her personal rover at all times.

As they approach a small entrance at the end of the large space, they found themselves in when they came past the large metallic door that separates the bunker from the outside, it suddenly hit Astra that the place they are in must be the vehicle parking space where rovers, planes and other tactical vehicles will be kept when the bunker is in use, but since Chrome City has been obliterated by the alien pillar that landed and killed the residents of the city, Jada and her team are the only ones that are currently in the Chrome shelter that was built to contain over eighty thousand people at a time.

As the team nears the small door more and more, they walked past a bit of concrete rubble on the floor, showing them the indication that some inner structures really did collapse while the door was open, which could be the reason that some rubble and dust will be at the door.

Upon reaching the door, Khan lowered his gun and slide it back into its hip case, he reached for the knob on the door, turned it and pushed the door open, revealing a structure that although it has a gigantic concrete pillar lying just a bit at the entrance, still manage to leave an astounding impression on anyone looking at it for the first time.

Astra walked in behind Tim and Khan, who are being led by the three in blue overalls. She looks to her right, then to her left and as far as her sight can see, they were inside the most insane looking structure. The entire space at first glance resembles a modern subway train station, only that this one is thirty times larger. The pillars supporting it are in themselves the largest that she has ever seen.

“There he is. When we heard the entire place shaking, we thought it was an earthquake at first, so naturally we stayed here, thinking it would be safer. But there was a crack in this pillar, and it fell, barely missing us, but a piece of it broke off and hit Edgar, burying half his body and killing him,” one of the men in blue overalls said pointing with his hands at a patch of red that the team now recognize at the side of a large boulder of concrete.

Astra stood by the side watching as Tim and Khan keep the people in the blue overalls in one place while Rhoda jumped into action and climbed her way through the rubble to the side of the bounder, she used her bare hands and dug out a single arm of a person trapped under the large boulder next to the patch.

“how are we to know if this is really Edgar or not? It is not like we can more the boulder and all we have here is an arm,” Rhoda asked with a facial expression that shows a serious lack of trust in what the persons in blue overalls said.

“I have a way to know and a hand is just the thing for it, all I need to do is scan his biometric thumb print and we will know if they are lying or not so monitor them” Jada answered and begin to climb down to where Rhoda is now standing, covered with dust.

When she reached the place where Rhoda was, she pressed a few things on her phone and her wrist watch started beeping, then she bent down and grabbed the arm of the dead body trapped under the boulder. She carefully held the index finger on the hand and placed it on the screen of her wristwatch, which immediately start to beep and blink red light. After a few seconds, she let go of the arm and stared at her phone’s screen; after a few more seconds, the wrist watch stopped beeping and show a green light.

Immediately, Jada’s facial expression changed to one that even Jamie recognized without reading between the lines. She was sad.

“it really is Edgar, having known him for so long I guess the thought of him dying in a situation like this has never crossed my mind, having lost so many people today I can’t say I am not sad to see a fine lad like him die like this” She said.

“This is like an actual underground city. It goes all the way down. There are different facilities in here, a meeting hall, living quarters and all kinds of things. This is my first time in an actual shelter. It never occurred to me that they were this massive,” the woman in blue overall said.

“that is because they are actual underground cities, there are two of them that are even connected by a railroad so that people and goods can be moved from one shelter to another, if you paid attention in class, you would have known this at least. by the way, what do we do now?” Rhoda asked.

Professor Jada quickly wiped the grim expression off of her face, she stood up from where she was sitting down, walked to where Rhoda was standing a few meters from the boulder and the fallen pillar, she waved her hands showing to all of her students who at the moment are walking around the shelter and admiring the structure and architecture, to gather around her. Immediately, all of them gathered in front of her.