You, the apocalypse and me! [YiZhan FF] Fantasy

Chapter 36 - The Bunker for the Rich and Beautiful

In the past three days of our journey to the next bunker, Yibo and I noticed something amazing that absolutely helped us. For the first time, we were able to observe the gray hairless creatures as they searched for food, human or animal, and noticed something very important that we didn't know before.

After spending our night, or rather day, in this old house, we moved on as darkness fell and after a meal that, like most meals, came from a can. We made good progress again and walked as long as our legs could carry us. At some point, it was already starting to get brighter on the horizon, we had to look for a new hiding place and ended up again in a run-down house.

In this street there were many houses that were closely lined up. Most of them were not older than maybe 20 years and surely still inhabited when the apocalypse hit the world. But unfortunately, all the doors and windows of these houses were firmly locked and Yibo was too tired to pick one of the locks with his special tool.

So we tried a very, very old house. Since the front door and all the windows were boarded up, we didn't have much hope of getting in. But that changed quickly when we came to the former garden of the house. The back door was open and so we entered the house without any problems.

It had probably been abandoned even longer than the house where we had previously turned day into night. The former kitchen was only recognizable as such because there were a few old pipes sticking out of one wall that were rusted. In pretty much all the rooms we went into, the paint on the walls had peeled off a long time ago.

In the former living room, there was still the remnant of a sofa. Nothing more than rotten wood and many springs. A table with only two legs was lying next to the former sofa. And what I felt as somehow ridiculous was that next to it was a still intact vase in which dried up flowers were stuck. That was somehow also strange that they had not long since crumbled into dust.

One room further we came to the former bathroom. The toilet and the sink had been smashed. Instead of a bathtub, there was a big old bowl made of plastic, which already had big cracks and holes in many places. There were no more water fixtures. Even there, only the rusted pipes could be seen sticking out of the wall.

Next, and practically last, we looked at the former bedroom. There was nothing there but dirt and the peeling paint on the floor, which was pure concrete. There was also a staircase leading up, but the wooden steps had long since rotted and at some point had simply fallen down. So we couldn't get upstairs and didn't want to.

We set up camp in the living room and ate something before going to sleep. But noises from outside kept us awake. We crept as quietly as we could to one of the boarded-up windows and peered out through a narrow crack. We saw these gray hairless creatures that seemed to be growing in number.

For a few minutes they just stood in the street, looking around and around, apparently waiting for everyone to get the connection and for them to be complete. And then they looked around curiously. A few immediately ran off to the houses and a few looked at our house but kept walking. And likewise again others. They ignored our house and looked in the others for something to eat.

At first we thought it was a coincidence and we even thought we were wrong, that they just ignored our house. And we didn't understand it either. They did not even come closer to the house.

But then, after we had spent the day, mostly asleep, in that house and had moved on during the night and ended up again in a crumbling house, observing the same thing as the morning before, we understood that the creatures seemed to be intentionally ignoring the run-down and destroyed houses.

It was just a guess, but according to this, Yibo and I assume that they don't suspect a living soul in such dilapidated houses. And usually that was true. Even Yibo and I would have preferred the more modern houses because we imagined that they offered us more protection. But now we know we were wrong.