A Prison of Solitude Part 2

The knocking I described in the first part of my story came suddenly upon my senses. I have already described my emotional state at this moment, and as a result, the noise came as an absolute relief from this lonely silence.

"Hello?" came the voice behind the knocking. It was a man. "I don’t know if you’re awake yet, but I’m back. Are you awake?"

The voice was gruff and somewhat irritated, but the man sounded urgent. No doubt this was his shelter.

I rose to my feet with two areas of thought, part delight and yet part fear. I didn’t know this man, he could be anybody, he could be bluffing, or pretending to sound kind and bare horrible intentions that would make me regret ever opening that door. But the latter thought soon passed, content that I would have at the very least another human being with me to make this isolation tolerable. The door had a small handle about 2 feet from the top, about the size of an average human head. Wearily, I slid it open.

The figure standing there was bent down as if fiddling with the lock. It was indeed a man, aged about 40 from my judgment, with a clean shaven face, dirty blonde hair, and sharp piercing eyes like a cat in the dark. My opening of the small window had startled him, and he too now seemed content. He opened the door and came in.

"Ahh, you are awake" he began, "I didn’t know how long you were going to be out. Sorry about your car by the way, I should’ve been more careful. But there’s no use being carefree anymore, not with those things out there, stomping about like they own the damn place."

He was very swift with his words, one of those people who would go on for ages with what they had to say, so when a gap emerged for a response, I seized it.

"Excuse me, who are you?"

"Oh," he replied "Where are my manners? I’m Jonathan."

"Sarah" I replied. "So this is your place?"

"Yep. Took a lot of effort, patience and begging but it’s mine."

"Begging?" I responded, quite curious as to why somebody of his age would be begging for such an installation as a concrete bunker.

"Yeah, because as much as you might hate to hear it, the company I work for is, in a way responsible for this mess."

Jonathan sat down, and I did the same.

He explained that this company he worked for discovered an unknown and deadly creature living beneath the sea some years ago, about how they accidentally awoke one of them, how it had destroyed a Japanese city, before their army killed it, only to awaken another monster, that later destroyed New York City.

"They wouldn’t let their employees build shelters to escape the carnage, unlike the higher ups", he continued "considered us all expendable, collateral damage, unimportant. But I pushed and pushed, and I won them over."

"Why am I telling you all this?" he suddenly exclaimed. "My bad. I digress. All you need to know is that no one’s coming for us, we’re on our own here."

"Nobody?" I replied.

"Nobody. Is it that hard to work out? Those things own the Earth now"- He started to get up, and walk slowly toward the still untouched desk- "top of the food chain, lords of creation, demonic gods, whatever you wanna call them."

By now he had reached the desk, illuminated by a dim lamp standing upon its polished wooden surface. Spread across the desk were various provisions one would consider necessary for survival: A couple dozen food cans, water bottles, a first aid kit, can opener, a Leatherman multi tool and so forth.

But aside from all this, there was a flat black box, and Jonathan was now eyeing this suspiciously. He placed one hand on it with his back to me, but I could see that he appeared to make a gesture of mild happiness. His hand wandered over to the side of the box, and I heard two snapping noises, and the lid lifted up. He made a slight noise, like that kind of a laugh that comes out your nose, and he picked up whatever was in there. His other hand reached back down into the box, and gripped something. Then I heard a sliding noise and two unmistakable rattling clicks.

Then it dawned on me, that he was loading a gun. As if to intimidate me, Jonathan tucked the Beretta into a leather holster on his right hip, and he became very still, as if processing what he just did.

"Now I feel safe" he added. He breathed a sigh of relief and slammed the lid shut.