Tim, a garbage handler in a post-apocalyptic bunker, loses the little he has. But then he finds Amy, the redhead with an attitude. Together, they will try to change the world they live in.
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Tim is one of those who shovel the shit and clean away th...
But the bunker brings stability and ends all change. It is humanity's final home.
The Manuals of the Bunker, Vol. 1, Verse 3
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Would the entrance to the temple be locked?
Still gripping the handle, I raised my eyebrows at Amy, hoping she'd understand my unspoken warning to keep her unfettered tongue in check.
She nodded.
I pulled, and the door moved. Its hinges groaned, and the noise made my muscles tense. I stopped and listened.
Nothing.
With clenched teeth, I pulled once more. The gap widened, leaking soft, yellow light onto the smooth stone tiles at my feet.
I peeked in. The electric lamps in the ceiling were unlit, but a stand of candles in an alcove to the right cast a soft light ripe with dark, restless shadows.
No one in sight.
"Come." I grabbed Amy's sleeve and dragged her along as I entered. Once inside, I closed the door behind us.
This had to be the most splendid room in the world, with more than a dozen rows of benches facing the altar on its dais. In my coming-of-age ceremony, the hall had vibrated with the tinged beams of light cast through the stained-glass windows, but now the somber, near-black tapestries behind the altar made me shiver. Brown, ornamental panels ran along both walls, tracking us from a host of carved, leaf-shaped openings.
"Stop yer praying." Amy pulled away from my grasp—I hadn't noticed that I was still holding on to her shirt. "Let's move. This shithole gives me the creeps."
"You should see it when the electric lamps are on. They're so bright." I walked up the aisle to the dais. One of the manuals was laid out on the altar's silvery surface, right beside a button. I pointed at the latter. "You push this to turn the lights on."
"So, ye've been here before?" She reached for the button.
I swatted her hand away from it. "Are you out of your mind? Don't! Everyone would see the light."
She grunted. "I'm good at buttons. I already told ye so. I know how to push them. But most of them don't work."
"This one does."
For a moment, we stared at it in silence.
"So ye've been here before?" She repeated her question.
"Yes." I nodded. "When I turned sixteen, my dad took me up here. We had a ceremony with a lot of people."
"Yer friends?"
"No." My reply tasted bitter on my tongue. "There was only my dad for me. And Marge. The rest of them came for two other kids. Kids from the upper cavern. Not for me."
