Finding a shelter to stay in for the night proves to be a more difficult task than they initially planned on. Most of the bunkers have doors that are above ground, heavy and made of bolted metal, all of them marked clear as day by a streak of yellow paint, and they are not hard to locate. Within minutes of entering the thick of the city, they find one. And another less than a kilometer away and another just down the street from that. They're everywhere, really. Finding them is not an issue in the least.
The problem is wide-swept paranoia.
Each door is sealed shut from the inside and it doesn't matter how long they bang and knock; no one is brave enough to open up for them. They try to explain themselves to each door. They try to tell of their journey from Frankfurt and of their exhaustion; try to appeal to anyone who will listen by telling them they have a child with them and a man too sick to walk anymore. America even offers to trade food for shelter, but his frustrated bargaining is met only by silence and gets lost in the drifting ash as Denmark yanks on the back of his collar and drags him to try the next one.
It isn't hard to understand why everyone is so scared to let them in. The streets are riddled with bullet ricochets and the greasy, black streaks left behind by squealing tires, many of them leading into the sides of broken buildings and back to the road again, the drivers having apparently caught whoever they had been chasing. The tracks in the dust are fresh too- still new enough that the ash has not yet had a chance to resettle completely, leaving them dark and obvious like a loud warning for all of them to see. And they do see it. They see it and understand it just fine. The people left above ground in Leipzig are being hunted. And the people lucky enough to have shelter aren't about to risk their safety to let in a group of strangers.
By the time they stop at their twelfth door, Peter is already preparing himself to spend another night in the woods.
"This isn't working," Canada sighs when Alfred parks the cart again. "What if the bunkers are empty? It's possible that these people could already be dead."
"Possible, but unlikely." Denmark sweeps his hand out over the city skyline. "This place is crawling with shelters. I can't imagine every single one is empty."
America looks nervously to the barren street behind them. "Well, we can't just keep knocking doors in all night. It's too creepy."
"I agree," Denmark says and bangs his fist against the door. "If they don't open up here, we'll head back the way we came and try again in the morning. It's too dangerous to stay in the open like this." He lets his hand drop and clears his throat. "Uh... hello? Kannst du... du mich hören?"
While Denmark stumbles his way through obviously rusty German, Peter takes a step back away from the bunker to stare into the city behind them. He can't quite put his finger on it, but something about the atmosphere here seems different than in the other cities they have stopped in. It's quieter, he thinks. There are signs of struggle and of a human presence, but for now, it feels like they are the only people in the entire city, small and alone and positioned just so that they may be swallowed up by the cracked pavement and broken windows at any moment. It's sinister, almost, how silent it is. He hasn't felt so uneasy in a big city since they first left and it makes him feel a bit like he waiting for the monster beneath his bed to appear. He kicks a small pebble into a gutter, just to break the smothering quiet, but the tiny clicks that echo off of the abandoned cars don't make him feel any less uncomfortable.
He swallows and turns back to Denmark, tugging on his jacket. "I don't think they're going to answer," he says. "I think we should go."
Denmark scowls. "Yeah, awesome. Walked all this way just to sleep in the dirt again." He turns around and kicks the door with his heel. "For the record, you're all dicks!" He yells into the door. He spins around, grumbling loudly in his own language, and Peter takes his hand and hurries after him.
