H λ L F - L I F E: Bishop's War✔️

CHλPTER 03: Aftermath

The first thing that came to Eric as he was unceremoniously thrust back onto the shores of consciousness was that his head hurt.

It ached and throbbed, like someone had taken a baseball bat to him.

He tasted blood. Groaning, blinking his eyes a few times, he tried to move, realizing that he was lying on a very hard surface. What the hell had he done this time? Something big shifted somewhere nearby, and he heard the clacking of rock hitting rock, like it was bouncing down a trail or the side of a mountain.

And that...

Brought back his situation in a flash. Eric forced himself up into a sitting position and looked around, wincing at the flickering lights. He was in the tunnel, and it had caved in, but not completely. Just enough so that he couldn't get out the way he'd come in. He sat there, collecting his thoughts and staring at the cave-in for a few minutes, waiting for the pain to subside to something a bit more tolerable, and finally began the miserable process of getting to his feet. His whole body hurt, and his forehead burned from where he was sure he'd scraped it bad going down. Obviously, he surmised as he got shakily to his feet, a rock had hit him.

How long had he been out?

He didn't think terribly long, surely no more than an hour, but it was impossible to tell. As Eric stood there, staring at the pile of cracked, ruined concrete, he reached for his belt, where his radio would normally sit. It wasn't there, of course. Neither was his gun. And his helmet would have really helped him out. He reached up and tentatively probed the back of his head. He cried out as a bolt of pure pain shot across his head.

His hand came back sticky with blood, but it didn't feel like it was bleeding anymore...

At that thought he glanced down, and his frown deepened as he saw a small pool of slowly drying blood. No medical kit, either. He might need stitches. Damn. Eric knew that he wasn't going to be able to get out this way. That much was made clear. He looked back down the corridor, the way yet gone, and saw a lot of flickering lights. Some were outright dead. With a sigh, he began walking slowly. He felt a little unsteady and everything ached, but he'd had worse damage before. He'd been shot twice. This was a vacation compared to that.

What had happened?

Although he was still a little slow and fuzzy from the injury, Eric's mind quickly became abuzz with possibilities. Was it an earthquake? Did they have earthquakes in New Mexico? He couldn't be sure, but he didn't think so. Maybe it was something massive. He felt his stomach clench coldly as he thought about the possibilities. What if a comet had hit somewhere? Or what if Yellowstone had finally blown its top?

They'd said that when it did happen, it probably would be able to be felt hundreds, even thousands, of miles away. He was as scared of the end of the world as the next guy. "Please," he whispered as he reached the end of the hallway and took the only way available to him, a right turn, "please let it not be the goddamned apocalypse."

He had no idea who he was talking to, but he felt the need to say something out loud. It was way too quiet. Maybe it had been some kind of experiment gone wrong? Maybe they were building new bombs. The atom bomb had been developed in New Mexico. Was it something crazier? Something science fiction?

He doubted it, but being trapped down here was making him paranoid. Eric moved down the next stretch of concrete corridor, trying to ignore the flickering lights. He tried to clear his mind, to focus, because this is what he had trained for, this is what his job was really about: disaster response. And clearly this was a freaking disaster.

Man, was this ever a 'careful what you wish for' kind of scenario. If it was this bad down here, how bad was it everywhere else? Thinking about other people who might be trapped, injured, alone and afraid, made him focus more easily. He straightened up and pressed himself harder, trying to set a brisk pace. The faster he could get back to the antechamber, the better. From there, he could take the tram back to the Security HQ and then figure out what was going on. He did doubt that anyone knew what had happened yet.