The Bunker of Hollow Hills

Today is April 31st. At least we think it is. While the trees are budding and the flowers have broken the soil signaling spring; the frost that is ever present in the mornings and sometimes for days is telling us a different story. The frost is still saying it’s winter and not yet April but with the trees and flowers telling us it's spring and therefore April we are completely confused. It has been about two hundred years since anyone has known what the date actually is. In the mid 2020’s the world woke up to find that everything had changed. Unbeknownst to the average citizens a war had broken out. At the time war was more brutal than it had been in the past with all the advancements in warfare. The war left the lands in ruin and the people didn't fare much better. The death tolls wiped out most peoples in the world with only those lucky enough to not live in the heavily populated areas making it out relatively unscathed. With the loss of so many people most of the technology went with them as did the knowledge they held. With the passage of time mankind forgot just about everything they had once known. The calendars they once took for granted soon disappeared when there was no one to print them or keep track of the days. With the remaining people so far apart the populated continents came up with their own calendars. It has worked out for everyone since there is no longer travel or any real communication between the continents.

On every continent there are a few hidden bunkers that hold all of the information about the past. While the information in the bunkers is vital to the continuation of mankind it is not readily available to the average person. Between the distance and the decaying ruins of our old world the knowledge remains locked away and trapped in bedtime stories and legend. Like with all legends there are people who search for these bunkers. There are some legends passed down from generation to generation in the form of bedtime stories or ghost stories told by the campfire. One of the legends told was one about how the people of the past were hopelessly sucked into objects called smartphones.

Some years ago in the rubble of an old apartment building somewhere along the east coast of the Americas a man had found the object of one of the legends. It was small yet hard but still had a look of being somewhat fragile with its cracked screen. As he turned the object over and over in his hand a curious thing happened, he could see himself on the screen. Those with him begged him to leave it in the rubble but he took it with him as it intrigued him. Later that night, while the others slept, he disappeared into thin air leaving all of his belongings along with the “smartphone” behind. His travelling companions were so scared that the object was cursed somehow they packed up right away, set fire to the whole area to cleanse it then ran away as fast as they could. To this day no one knows what happened to the man nor has he been seen again.

Our parents told us legends, wrapped up in bedtime stories, about one of the bunkers close to our village. The bunker is known as the “Bunker of Hollow Hills”. No one knows if it had a name before the first expedition but they know that by the end of that expedition it did. They know about the horrors the group faced and that only shells of the people returned from it, never whole, never the same again.

A little over a hundred years ago the leader of the first of these groups was a man named Cosmo. He had dreamed of finding the bunker from the first moment he had understood its story and the miracles it held. However the going was hard and few survived the trip into the deepest part of our continent. Cosmo sadly was not one of the survivors nor did they ever make it to the bunker. One survivor, Carlos, talked about the horrors they all faced trying to find the bunker. They met so many different people along the way, some nice, some brutal. Before they decided to turn around the group lost a handful of its number to the later group either by outright murder or abduction. The ones abducted were the young women. The deaths were one thing but the abduction of the young women caused every group after that to ban women coming along. Without women there would be no furthering their villages so as sexist as it was it was a necessity. As a whole they could not risk the village dying out. Mankind could not be allowed to die out no matter the choices they had to make.

Cosmo had such great plans for the information he knew they would find in the bunker they searched for. The Bunker of Hollow Hills was rumored to hold the knowledge needed to return mankind to what it had been before the war had wiped almost everyone and everything off the face of the earth. The group was made up of eight men and four women. Of that group only four men had returned and they were bruised and battered in all manner of ways both physical and psychological.

With the return of only four and all of them men the village was left with only three women and only one of them at the time could bear children. Before the group had left there had still been more men than women but the difference had been smaller and most of the women could bear children. The loss of those four ensured that the village would die out in a manner decades if not sooner. By the end with most of the village dead and buried a few left to search for a new home and some found them but not all. We only know the stories of those that did after all. The loss of the entire village either by death or desertion was a hard thing to accept even for those of us that were hearing the story all snug in our beds one hundred years or so later. The very idea of the loss of a whole village, a whole way of life was and still is pretty damn scary even now.

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However, our story is similar in that we longed to find the Bunker of Hollow Hills; it also differs in two key ways. First they are women and second they have found the bunker. I am Olive and my sister is Willow. When we were teenagers we decided that we were going to find the bunker no matter what. Willow and I are both eighteen years old and identical twins. We grew up hearing the legends of the Bunker of Hollow Hills and became completely obsessed with finding it and saving mankind. With each expedition that was formed we tried to get a place so we could go along. We were never allowed to go for the sole reason being that we were women. None of the villagers, our parents included, wanted to risk us never coming back. So we waited until the perfect moment and left while everyone was sleeping or otherwise distracted. We grabbed the backpacks we had previously packed with necessities, and left.

The first day after we left was the hardest but not because it was a trying trip, which it was, but because we felt our first real pangs of guilt. We left without telling a soul. We knew our parents would worry but it was more than just that. We left behind our lives, lives that had been basically planned for us from the moment we took their first breaths. We left behind lives filled with marriage and babies and death. We had wanted more, longed for more for ourselves though, a life filled with happiness and adventure. We knew that we had to leave to find the Bunker of Hollow Hills, there was never a choice. The bunker was said to hold all manner of things that would better the world we now live in. Possibly making life easier, we hoped.

The further we traveled from home the more the guilt seemed to diminish. We traveled each day until we could no longer walk. Making sure to stay far from any villages we came across to avoid trouble with other people. We still ran into some trouble from the creatures that roamed the hidden parts of the land we all themselves traveled. One afternoon while walking along the foothills we came across a dog of some kind. It looked scared and hungry. As much as we knew we should leave the poor creature to its own devices, we approached it slowly. Instead of growling at us or trying to bite us it slowly closed the distance. After cautiously sniffing our hands it began wagging its tail. After giving the pup some of our water and a little food it became our best friend and insisted on following us whenever we tried to leave it behind. From that moment we decided to call the little dog Bunker in honor of our destination.

Bunker was a great help along the expedition. He made usaware of any other creatures roaming along the same path and made sure we stayed far enough away from the villages we came close to. With his help we reached the Bunker of Hollow Hills safely or relatively safely. We did suffer from the odd bumps and bruises from hidden rocks in our path as well as tree branches and thorns as we walked. The bunker was in the middle of a field surrounded by a chain link fence with a massive lock on it. The name of the bunker was a complete misnomer. It was nowhere near any hills, hollow or otherwise.

While the lock looked massive and impossible to get off the gate it came off pretty quickly when Willow used a rock against it. With a look around we entered the fenced area and made our way to the door. The door was not locked which surprised us but mostly we were just relieved. We had no clue what we would have done if the door had been locked. To come so far to only be blocked from our goal by a locked door would have been devastating. Luckily it wasn’t locked and we quickly made our way towards the stairs. As we reached the landing where the stairs started down a light clicked on scaring the crap out of us. Neither of us had ever seen this type of light before. We have only seen light from the sun or flames from a fire or candle. Making us petrified for the first time since we left our village.

When nothing happened after about ten minutes we gathered our courage and began the descent. The walls on either side of the stairway were stark white and the stairs themselves were made of metal. With the walls and light we were almost blind and had growing headaches the longer we stayed in the light. Thankly our trip ended before our eyes could explode from the headaches we have.

At the bottom we found another door but this one looked like every other door we’ve ever seen. With deep breaths Willow motions for me to go ahead and open the door. “Gee thanks sis.” I said then added, “Stand back and hold your breath just in case.” I waited until both my sister and Bunker were up a few steps then I sucked in some air before opening the door.

There is no woosh of stale air or dust but there is a very loud squeak as the hinges protest to being open after being closed for so long. Again, like with the stairs, a light clicks on as soon as the door is fully open. Before us is not stacks upon stacks of books and papers as we had expected but one lone table and chair with one lone machine of some kind on its surface. Curious we make our way to the table but neither of us have a clue as to what is sitting on it. It appears to be a machine of some kind but not one they are familiar with. It appears to be two pieces but the pieces are connected. The top vertical piece is blank and reflects us as we stand in front of it. The bottom horizontal piece has buttons with numbers, letters and words on them. It is completely foreign to us in every way. I decided to sit in the chair to face the machine to wait to see what might happen. I have no clue how the machine works so I have no way of knowing if it's on or if it isn’t how to turn it on. So we wait to see if it will somehow come on but nothing happens.

With no other options we left dejected. We had come all this way, braved all sorts of dangers in search of a way to make our lives as well as the others on the planet better but we found nothing. Apparently the people from before the war never thought to leave the information in a form that could actually be accessed by the people that existed after them.

Back outside the bunker we sit in the dead grass and say nothing. There is nothing we can say, nothing that will make this any better. We have failed. We left behind everything in hopes of changing the world. Now we didn’t know what to do next or where to go. We weren't even sure if we could go back home even if we could find our way back. We feared we were more than likely not welcome there any more. Our departure had been against the rules, against everything we had been taught.

After a night of wallowing in our own self pity we made the decision with the coming dawn that we would keep going, to try and find another bunker and hopefully the next one will have what we need in a way we can access it. Dusting off our jeans and shouldering our packs again we set off leaving the bunker behind with its worthless knowledge. Before leaving we had one last look at the lights waiting until they shut off before heading back outside again. With all the advancement inside that bunker it had been useless. It might as well have not been there at all for all the use it was to us.

THE END?