The End

The Journey

The gates slammed shut behind me as I crossed the threshold and I was plunged into darkness. I hastily turned on my headlamp and a beam of light revealed a dark platform with rubble, rubbish and other detritus

Strewn across the ground.

The air was still and heavy and the darkness was pressing in from all sides, filling everything around me and the beam of light cutting through the constant black. I took a tentative step forward and was immediately startled by a loud crackling under my heavy boot.

I jumped back and looked down to find I had stepped on a small rat skeleton. My heart beat slightly slower and I relaxed a bit as I looked up, but I remained vigilant as I made my way quickly to the tracks.

The rails clanked as my boots fell and my gun stayed glued to my shoulder with the safety off. I always felt like I was being watched by unseen eyes and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

The darkness was consuming the beam of light as it cut through the dark hiding whatever may lay ahead, and ominous noises joined in and further fueled my imagination.

My mind was racing thinking of causes and explanations for the noises, Bandits?, cutthroats?, mutants?

I shivered At the last thought. Just then the space opened up, I had reached the collapsed station. The platform itself looked relatively untouched although the passage to the rest of the station was filled with rubble, with a half buried human skeleton protruding from it.

I shivered involuntarily think about how fast the cave-in would've been to bury a human mid run? I looked away from the tunnel and onto the platform itself. Many traces of inhabitation remained, a fireplace there, a broken tent here and also skeletons....

Some were huddled in couples or by themselves all broken, slashed by unmistakeable claw and bite marks.....

Yet the saddest display of all was the larges group on the platform. A some 25 skeletons all grouped in a pile and a ring of larger skeletons around the pile weapons still in hand, laying defeated.

I could picture the scene in my head, the women, children and elders all huddled frightened, panicking, as the men stood in a ring around the huddle valiantly trying to hold off the mutants falling one by one still fighting until the line would break and the mutants would pour into the now screaming huddle tearing everything apart.

I felt great sorrow for thus that died here. The innocent women and children and the valiant men who fought to the death for the people.

I picked through the sorry rags that were all that were left of their clothes and picked up some spare ammo a can of beans and a helmet.

I placed the standard army helmet on my head and strapped it on loosely. I then picked up my gun from the ground climbed down onto the tracks and continued on to the next station, into the darkness....