You had spent your entire life planning for this moment and you still weren’t ready for it.
The second you heard the blaring of the emergency broadcast system you leapt into action. You knew what that meant. All month the news stations had been following the war, giving details of battles won and forces routed. Every broadcast ended with the reassurance that it would end soon, in your favor, and the rationing and closed borders would end soon. Nuclear war would definitely not happen and anyone that said otherwise was a government spy. You knew better. Grabbing your backpack off the hook by the door you sprinted into your backyard, flinging open the metal door recessed into its concrete base.
Your neighbors called you insane when you had your bomb shelter installed. You wished you could have been more subtle about it, but there’s no way to have industrial equipment digging a giant hole in your backyard without the entire neighborhood seeing. Joke’s on them, though. You would be living the good life with your pre-packed rations while they were decimated by the blasts.
Alone.
The stairs disappeared into the darkness, narrow and sharp cornered. There was no way of knowing how long you would be in there, you started patting your pockets, looking for your phone. You might have enough time to call your girlfriend, convince her to come home from work early and ignore the orders given by government officials.
Something caught your attention and you looked up to see an angular aircraft flying overhead. You launched yourself down the stairs and began to fumble with the heavy metal door in the darkness. The last bolt slid away and you darted inside, slamming it shut behind you.
The ground shook as the most deafening roar echoed through your shelter. You struggled to re-bolt the door while hanging onto it for dear life. The door seemed to flex and bow as you tried to force the locks into place.
As the last bolt found its place you crumpled onto the floor, hands over your head. You had spent so long worrying about this. Following news sites and ordering supplies. The forums assured you that the contemporary news sites were lying, that the war escalated by the day and it was only a matter of time until it turned nuclear. You did drills and practice runs, setting random alarms days in advance so you could forget about them and get a proper test of your reaction speed. Your friends and family called you crazy. Your mother even suggested that you talk to a psychologist. Your girlfriend, though…
Your fingers dug into your scalp. Your girlfriend, Mariah, the love of your life. When she found out about all the prepping you did she asked why you did it. She listened to you explain about being nervous about the war, about how you would rather have and not need than need and not have.
And she said “Okay. It’s your life.”
You knew she didn’t believe any of this, but she trusted you. She came with you on hikes, tried your survival meals even when they sucked, patched your backpack when the zipper ripped, she even got you a giftcard to an outdoors store for your birthday last year.
And now she was dead, just like everyone else you loved.
A sob caught in your throat. You could possibly be the only person alive for miles. Maybe on the planet. You had no idea what kind of bomb was launched, but there would be a retaliation. And then a retaliation to that. And once there was clearly no hope for the planet to recover they would launch whatever they had left just to ensure that their enemies were for sure gone, and then-
A rustling caught your attention. You had no idea how long the shelter had been silent, or when you started crying. You wiped your cheek, standing slowly. You could process that later, right now there was something in the shelter with you.
The rustling continued as you made your way to the pantry. Made sense that vermin would be hiding there, a rat or something must have snuck in while you had the door open at some point. You grabbed your metal bat off its hook on the wall and slowly made your way towards the noise. You’d smash it quick and get it into the composting toilet where your blackwater system would convert it to methane to power your generator.
You heard the crinkle of a wrapper and tightened your fist around the bat. Great, it had gotten into something. You’d have to go through your stores to see what was damaged, you hoped that it would still be edible.
Rounding the corner, bat raised over your head, you saw a round form hunched over a chewed open pack of freeze dried ice cream. You gritted your teeth, tears forming once again. Mariah’s favorite of your emergency meals. You swung the bat at the vermin that dared to take her place.
It lifted its head, with your eyes now adjusted to the dim emergency lights in the shelter you could see a spiraled horn just above the creature’s panicked eyes.
You pulled the bat to the side at the last moment, slamming it loudly into the concrete floor and sending a painful vibration into your hands. You drop the bat as the terrified fluffy darted under the shelves. Cursing quietly to yourself you stumbled towards the lightswitch, turning on the bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling.
Your small shelter was bathed in yellowish light; a small table in the middle of the room with three folding chairs around it, a small curtain that hid the toilet and rudimentary shower, a wall with hooks that held your various weapons, the closed door to the small bedroom and the shelves of the pantry next it with a tiny kitchenette between them.
And the stink of fluffy shit.
You groaned, pinching the bridge of your nose. “Of course there had to be a fucking fluffy…”
Even in the apocalypse you couldn’t be free of the fucking creatures. You had no idea how it got in, or how long it had been in here. You grimaced at the idea of getting it out, it wouldn’t fit into the toilet like a rat would so you’d have to chop it up first which would be obnoxious.
Though… if you’d have to chop it up either way, you’d heard they taste like pork…
You sat down on the floor in the entrance to the pantry and called out to the creature. “I’m sorry, little guy, I didn’t meant to scare you!”
There was silence in reply. A fluffy who knew when to shut its fucking mouth was a rarity.
“I won’t hurt you! I promise! I thought you were a rat eating my food!!”
This time you saw a round yellow form peek around the shelf, a dark green mane cascading around its horn.
“Hi there! I’m Peter! Do you have a name?”
The fluffy took a single cautious step forward. “… Yuzu…”
“Yuzu! That’s very fitting!” You gave the fluffy a wide smile. “I won’t hurt you, I want to be your friend!”
It narrowed its eyes at you. “… Mistah pwomise?”
“Promise.”
The fluffy took another few steps towards you. “Wha’ am woud noise?”
“Uh…” you paused, unsure how to explain it. “Something… really bad happened up there. A weapon, and we have to stay down here or it will make us sick.”
Yuzu’s eyes widened. “Oh, nu wan’ babbehs tu get sick!”
“Oh! You have babies?”
She nodded. “Dey am wittow, Yuzu was gettin’ nummies wen woud noisie, aftah dat Yuzu twy gu quickies if it am munstah…” She glances over at the partially unwrapped icecream.
“There’s no monsters.” You slowly got to your feet. “The big door is gonna protect us from the sickness and the monsters.”
You weren’t fully lying about the monsters. If any of your neighbors survived, they might come knowing you had a shelter. They could try to take it from you, but short of a high power drill there was no way anyone was getting in. The door was even bulletproof, being a modified tank hatch.
“Den… Mistah nu wan’ Yuzu gu ‘way?” she asked.
“Nope, you and I are gonna hang out here until things are better.” You started pulling cans out of a shallow cardboard box. “Now, you’ll need somewhere to poop if we’re going to stay in here together.”
“Oh, Yuzu am use hooman wittow box, dat nu am guud?”
You paused. “… You used the toilet?”
Yuzu nodded.
You crossed the shelter, pulling back the curtain to find the toilet filled almost to the brim with fluffy shit.
“… How?? Why??” You’d never heard of a fluffy using the toilet.
“Yuzu owd mummah teach, say fwuffy wittow box am diwty an’ nu wike.”
“Huh.” Seemed like you had an oddly smart fluffy on your hands. You flushed the toilet a few times to clear the mass and returned to the pantry.
“Well, why don’t we get you a nice bed for your babies then. I have some extra blankets and pillows…” you trailed off, remembering who those were supposed to be for. Mariah wasn’t going to use them, you might as well keep your future meals comfortable until it was dinnertime.
“Dat sound guud, nice mistah!!” Yuzu squeezed under one of the shelves while you laid a pillowcase in the bottom of the cardboard box and set it next to the table. One by one she carried four foals out from the pantry and into the box. Red, orange, green, and teal. They were practically newborns, smaller than your fist with their eyes tightly closed.
You could eat them now, but then not only would their mother distrust you, but you would probably only get one meal out of the whole bunch. Plus the work required to clean such tiny creatures… not worth it. You’d hold off for when they were bigger.
Yuzu snuggled in among the foals, smiling up at you. “Tank’oo, Mista Petah! Dis am nice beddie!”
You forced another smile. “I’m glad to hear. Let me clean up the pantry a bit and then I’ll work on getting us some dinner.”
You scanned the shelves for damage as you made your way to the back, picking up the chewed open box of ice cream as you considered your plans for the biotoys.
Ideally you would slaughter them one at a time to avoid having to store fresh meat but in such a small space there was no way of doing that without alerting the rest of them. This wouldn’t be too much of an issue now, while the foals were incapable of running from you, but once they were big enough to be worth eating they’d be able to run. And scream. You’d have to figure out some way of restraining them, or maybe killing them quietly so the others don’t hear.
As you pulled another gnawed on box off the shelf a spool of wire tumbled off with it. You set the box aside and grabbed it just before it rolled under the shelves. Snare wire, thin spring-like stuff good for many things but especially for trapping game.
You smiled as you set the snare wire back on the shelf. You wouldn’t want any of the tiny babies getting accidentally tangled in it…
