This chapter has been proof-read by: AnthonyL

First published on my wordpress: Here

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I was at the same place as usual, doing the same things I always do. In a dark room lit only by multiple computer screens. Sitting on my favourite chair, absorbed by the 7th episode of one of my favourite survival TV-show.

It was about a man called “SurvivorDude”, who would go in the least hospitable areas of our planet and survive there for 1 week with nothing other than a knife. As an avid prepper, I was especially fond of this type of shows where we could learn survival skills.

(Preppers: a person who believes a catastrophic disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and makes active preparations for it, typically by stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies. ‘there’s no agreement among preppers about what disaster is most imminent’)

These possible disasters scenarios were also referred to as “SHTF” which mean “Shit Hit The Fan” scenarios. Among these possible SHTF scenarios are job loss, flood and fire (natural disasters), economic collapse, wars, zombie apocalypse (viruses like ebola), alien invasion, etc. Like we say among preppers, better safe than sorry.

Now a little about myself, my name is Nathan Gagnon, male, 30 years old, unemployed, living in a small town called “Cabano” in Quebec/Canada. I am 5”8 tall with brown hair, blue eyes and come from french ancestors who immigrated to Canada during the colonial period and have been living alongside the St-Laurent river for generations.

After the death of my parents 6 years ago, I became somewhat of a recluse, avoiding the outside world as much as possible. Not that I couldn’t go out, actually I can still remember spending entire summers in the forest with my father, fishing and hunting until dawn. So I didn’t have a problem with the outside world but had difficulty with other people and integrating into normal society in general.

If you asked about me and my personality, there was not much to talk about. I was a computer/internet addict, school dropout, brutally honest, awkward in public, used to be good with women but now that was only a thing of the past from my school years, since women don’t want to date neets.

(NEET: Another acronym from sociologists… NEET stands for ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training’. I’m not sure, yet, whether it has any global significance or derogatory overtones. However, it seems to be particularly applicable to a social under-class lacking drive, motivation or ambition. In part this is due to poverty and lack of opportunity)

I believe I have a decent sense of justice but I always succumb to cowardice instead of doing the right things. I am overly lazy and always looking for ways to avoid working or to make things easier for myself. Other than that, I am also introverted and self-centred. Actually, it was easier to find faults in my personality rather than qualities.

After my parents’ death, I inherited everything they had, a house, some vehicles and a comfortable sum of money. I wasn’t rich, far from it but I had enough to live modestly without the need to work for the rest of my life. After receiving the money, I renovated the familial home and transformed it into a fortress. Installed bullet proof windows, Kevlar in some key areas in the walls, a sophisticated surveillance camera system, but that wasn’t where most of the money went.

The biggest part of my money had been invested into a bunker, deep underground in the backyard. When you arrive to my home, you are first met by a forged iron gate that you need a code to open. Then, a long driveway leading to the top of the hill where my home is located.

Once at the house, you see a front door as well as a garage door. If you enter the garage door, then in the back of the garage is a stairway leading to the basement of the house. Once you enter the basement, you see a large room with a furnace at your left, ahead are stairs leading upstairs to the first floor, and to the right is a tools storage room.

All the hardware like tools and related stuff were stored there and god only knows how much stuff was in there. My father had a small contracting company, so he knew how to do plumbing, electricity, carpentry… Name it, he could do it. So over the years he had gathered a ridiculous amount of power-tools.

This room doesn’t seem to have anything special other than the crazy amount of tools but this is actually a special room. This room is the one hiding the secret entrance to my nuclear bunker which is buried deep underground. It was the classic trapdoor hidden under a carpet.

Opening the trapdoor lead to a long and steep staircase going 20 feet down underground. Once at the bottom of the stairs, you arrive at a narrow corridor with concrete walls and small red lights on the ceiling providing just enough light to see where you are going.

Then, 5 meters in front of you is a heavy duty steel door similar to those found in submarines. Next to that door is a small iron box locked with a padlock. You need to enter the correct 6 numbers combination to open it and expose a blue digital numpad. There again you need to enter a 10 numbers combination and undergo a fingerprint scan to unlock the massive iron door.

Once the door is unlocked, you need to turn a massive iron wheel to open it then enter a small room with another similar door on the other side. The second door has no lock but needs the first door to be sealed shut in order to be opened.

Upon closing the first door, the small airtight room will then begin to decontaminate the air of anything possibly harmful. A red light to your left will eventually turn green indicating that the buffer zone, which is this small room in between these two doors, had been decontaminated allowing you to finally enter the bunker.

The first thing you see as you enter the bunker is a large main room filled with commercial shelves loaded with all sort of stuff. Canned goods and non perishable food, medication for everything and mostly antibiotics, batteries, various containers filled with rice, beans, sugar, flour, etc…

There are tooth brushes, tooth paste, jerky, candles, propane burners, basically anything you can think off that could potentially be needed to survive an entire year in the case of a SHTF scenario. I have two large freezers, one refrigerator, a washing machine, a dryer… All the necessary appliances. Everything in here was purchased via the internet since i wasn’t really going out much.

At the back is a massive 1000 gallons water tank made out of 2cm thick plastic and next to it, a toilet isolated between some thin plastic walls. The water contained in the tank, is coming from rain water collected by the roof of the house, then filtered to its purest form by highly sophisticated filtering systems.

To the right of this big main area is a door leading to a smaller room with four, 30inch screens fixed on the wall, a desk in front of them, some dressers for my clothes and other stuff. This room is also where I keep my huge arsenal of weapons and ammunition.

This is also where I spend 98% of my time, in this small and dark room, surrounded by everything I need in this world. My days would generally be, waking up at random hours, drink a coffee and smoke a cigarette, do 100 push ups, 100 sit ups, 100 jumping jacks, then go on my computer for hours.

Later, eating the first meal of the day in front of my computer, washing the dishes, go back to my computer. Then the second meal of the day was also eaten in front of my computer then I would remain there for the rest of the day. A few hours before sleep I would drink some home-made alcohol, smoke more cigarettes then go to bed.

With all these cigarettes I was smoking, it was a good thing I had a good air filtration system in this, otherwise air-tight environment. Right now I was sitting at my desk as usual, watching my favourite show which I had previously downloaded from the internet a few days before.

As the “SurvivorDude” was about to drink his own piss for survival, I saw a white light blinking from the corner of my eye. This is the indication that someone had rung the bell at the gate of my propriety. I wasn’t surprised, these visits were scheduled once every month since years ago.

I looked at my surveillance cameras and confirmed that it was the same person as usual then opened the gate for him. Pausing my TV-show, I kept a close eye at the mini-van coming up the driveway then stop in front of the garage door.

The man got out and began to unload the content of its delivery next to the door then got back in and left as he usually does. I closed the gate and waited a few minutes, staring at all the cameras and at the giant pile of boxes left for me. This was my monthly grocery of perishable food which couldn’t be stored for too long like milk, bread, meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables, etc.

After observing for 5 to 10 minutes I leaned back in my chair and lit a cigarette. I hated having to come out of my bunker, this was a stressful moment for me even though I knew I wouldn’t meet anyone by doing so. Gathering my courage I then walked to the other room and opened the first metal door and closed it behind me.

I waited for the light to turn green then opened the second door leading to the red light corridor as I call it. I slowly walked up the stairs, opened the trapdoor and exited in the basement. There, I walked to the room straight ahead and looked through the basement window from where I could see the front yard.

The grass was overgrown and made my propriety look abandoned but I wasn’t going to go out every weeks to mow the lawn, too annoying. The biggest problem was that this window was now blocked by overgrown stuff making it useless.

Discouraged, I walked up to the door leading up to the garage. In the garage were various stuff and even more tools but what was taking most of the space was my father’s pride and joy, a fire red corvette stingray 1977 which had never seen winter or even rain. That beauty under a grey tarp was in perfect condition.

Going around it I quickly went to the garage windows and surveyed the surroundings. Nothing abnormal, no one around and since it was summer, the trees still had all their leaves. These trees offered perfect cover as my entire plot of land was covered with them as a natural intimacy barrier.

I opened the garage door and rapidly began to shuffle the boxes inside, wanting to close the garage door as soon as possible. Once everything was off the driveway and safely inside the garage, I closed the big electric door and finally managed to breathe calmly.

The next 30 minutes were spent transporting everything down my bunker before sealing it shut for another month. I placed everything on the shelves by alphabetical order, went to take a piss, then went back to my computer with a freshly lit cigarette and resumed watching my favourite TV-show where I had left it.

I spent the rest of the day downloading more TV-shows to watch later, then went to bed like usual. My routine continued without a hitch until 5 days later. I was browsing the internet when I felt a small tremor of the earth. Small earthquakes were frequent around here so I would usually brush it off but this time I lost my internet connection.

Now, this was something really annoying but since there had been a small earthquake, things had probably been damaged and would be fixed soon enough. Instead of getting angry this time, I decided to rely on my huge 50TB collection of hard-drives full of movies and TV-shows ready to be watched. “If they don’t fix that shit fast I’ll ask for a refund.” I said to myself.

Later that day I went to sleep, then when I woke up I immediately verified my internet connection. Annoyingly it was still down and since it had been quite a while now I decided to call customer services and share them my discontentment.

I picked up the phone and brought it to my ear only to be met by total silence. There was no dial tone, was the entire grid broken? Did something major happen yesterday? I would normally check up the news on the internet but with my connection malfunctioning I resorted to using the television.

I had a TV tuner card on my main computer and switched it to TV but there again, no signal. My phone, television and internet were down which worried me quite a bit. I was now convinced that the only reason I still had electricity was due to me producing it myself, the neighbours were most likely out of it.

Not only was I collecting my own water, I was also producing my own electricity with solar panels on the roof and windmills in the yard. Realizing everything else was off service, this was most likely the reason why i could still live comfortably.

Something major must have happened during the earthquake after all, but was it really a earthquake? Could it have been some type of explosion? Is my country under attack? Is it war outside? With my prepper’s mind going wild I began to check my CCTV cameras for any sigh of what was happening outside.

I brought the control panel closer to me and leaned forward to watch the footage carefully. I grabbed the joystick and turned the cameras in all directions, switching between all of them to see everything around in my yard. Honestly, nothing seemed changed and there was no sign of anything happening.

Maybe the central had a major accident and will need a week to fix everything? Since there was nothing I could do about it, I decided to be patient. What seriously worried me though was that even my radios and cellphone didn’t seem to work either.

Sure, my cellphone never had any reception down in my bunker but I had a connection to an external antenna, even this didn’t work. I had various radios, PPM, PCM, DSM, CB radio, everything that should still be working even during an apocalypse wasn’t working anymore which is what confused me the most.

The only thing left to try at this point would be to exit my bunker and try my cellphone out there, or even go to a neighbour and ask what was happening but I seriously dreaded this option. I was still comfortable in my bunker and had enough food and entertainment for months. With that in mind, I decided to stay here and closely monitor the CCTV cameras.

I tried not to let all these inconveniences bother me for the next days but after 1 week without change in the situation I began to seriously wonder what was going on. Maybe they cut me off the grid somehow thinking I was dead? But I was paying my bills diligently so this was unlikely… Maybe an error in their system?

One thing is for sure, if by the end of the month things aren’t fixed I will need to go out and check things out for myself. With that in mind, I spent the next week completing the “SurvivorDude” episodes and even went through half of all the Tiger Ball Z episodes.

It had been almost a month now and my food supply was already dwindling. It became apparent to me that if I didn’t go out and check things for myself, nothing in my situation would change. I also needed to consider going out to buy food but, whether or not I’m able to do that would depend on the situation outside.

With only a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, I nervously walked to the bunker door. After passing through the two metal doors and decontamination, I got up the stairs and exited in the tool storage room through the trapdoor. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary excepted a subtle foul smell that was most likely coming from outside.

This smell was a familiar one, it was the smell of death. For a hunter like me, it was obvious that someone, or something was dead not far away and was in an advanced stage of decomposition. Worried, I ran straight ahead to one of the basement windows but remembered that the overgrown vegetation was blocking the view, so I decided to go upstairs instead.

There, I first looked at the backyard, then the front-yard. My entire propriety was unchanged but there was definitely something wrong here. Not understanding what I was looking at, I quickly ran out through the front door to get a better look. What struck me first was the strong stench of death floating in the air but this wasn’t what was most shocking to me.

“W-what the f-…” I was staring at the sky, agape mouth, amazed by what I was seeing. The sky wasn’t the colour it used to be anymore, the sky I was currently looking at was, purple… Then from the corner of my eye I saw something even more troubling.

The sun in the sky wasn’t the sun I used to know anymore. The sun I was currently looking at was a lot bigger than it used to be. I then fell on my knees when I saw the second sun, this one smaller and red in colour and was standing right next to the bigger one.

“What the hell is going on here?” I muttered to myself. I was suddenly filled with a sense of fear and desperation. What had happened? Was I even still on earth? Suns don’t suddenly grow twice their original size and give birth to a mini sun in a few days, so my next best guess was that I had been transported somewhere else.

But if I had been transported somewhere else, why was my house still there, perfectly intact? My entire yard was filled with trees blocking the view and preventing me from seeing the neighbours’ houses. Wanting to confirm my suspicions, I ran down the 50 meters long driveway and reached the iron gate to my propriety.

Once there, I looked left toward the St-Laurent river which was the most obvious landmark in the area. What I saw once again made my jaw drop in incredulity. Where there should have been the familiar giant river was now a totally different landscape, filled with giant trees and vegetation.

A quick look at the neighbours’ property confirmed that the entire neighbourhood was still intact and left the same way it used to be, but what I could see far away in the horizon was totally different. I still had no idea what had happened but at least now, I knew that most of the town had apparently been “transported” somewhere else entirely.

The pungent smell of death floating over the neighbourhood also hinted at many causalities in my immediate surroundings. It could not have been more than a month since the incident yet, people were already dying all around me. This was highly worrying because I still had no idea what they had died from.

I had no real confirmation of them being dead other than this horrifying smell, but there were no cars in the streets, no one to be seen or any other signs of people still being around. As I was about to open the gate to investigate my surroundings more thoroughly, I suddenly stopped before doing so.

Blood froze in my veins and my legs began to shake as I was staring at the front neighbour’s house. What first appeared to be some branches moving in the winds gradually revealed a giant moving body to which these things were attached to.

Crawling out of one of the neighbours’ windows, was a big ass cockroach at least 2 meters long. These things I first confused as branches, were actually antennas and legs belonging to this monstrosity. More precisely, this thing looked more like an insectoid alien than a cockroach but at that instant, I had already decided to call it a giant cockroach.

My breathing became laborious and adrenaline began rushing through my entire body. This, was most likely the thing that was killing the people living around and if it sees me, my life will most likely be in danger as well. Panicking, I ran as fast as my legs allowed me, back toward my house.

I entered through the front door and locked it, going as far as piling up furniture in front of it. Then I ran back down to the basement, through the secret trapdoor and reached the bunker’s doors. My hands were shaking, making it harder than usual to enter all the codes to open it.

It was only after closing the first door behind me that I finally managed to calm down and begin to think clearly again. I proceeded to open the second door once the decontamination was over and ran to my bedroom where I was keeping all my firearms and ammunition.

I grabbed my semi-auto 12 gauge shotgun and crawled on my bed in the back corner of the room. There, I lit a cigarette whilst still shaking like a leaf, clenching my gun as tightly as possible with both arms, keeping it near my chest like a kid with his plushy. Pant* pant* pant* “T-this is a nightmare… I-I-I’m going to wake up soon… going to wake up… going to wake up… wake up…”

Sadly, my nightmare was only beginning.