The Vault
He awoke on the cot. The kind they used in military barracks or FEMA camps. Canvas stretched tight over steel. Smelled faintly of dust and old sweat.
The room around him was clean. Bare concrete walls. No windows. Soft mechanical hum somewhere above him. Air circulation maybe. Or just a sound to keep him company.
He sat up. His back cracked. His mouth was dry.
There was a light overhead, low and constant. Fluorescent, he guessed. No switch. Just light. Always light.
He stood, legs shaky, and looked around. There was food. Cans stacked like a grocer’s dream. Beef stew. Beans. Water in jugs. Dehydrated pouches in vacuum-sealed plastic. Expiration dates decades away.
A toilet. A shower. A sink. A closet full of clothes, all his size. Gray. Brown. Practical. Lined boots. A shaving kit. Toothpaste. All brand-new.
There was no door.
He spent the first hour running his hands along every wall. Every seam. Tapped with his knuckles. Kicked once. Just once. Foot still hurt.
The second hour was spent inventorying supplies. Enough food to last a man a lifetime if he wasn’t greedy. Enough tools to rebuild a small farm. But no tools to break out. No crowbar. No hammer.
There was a screen. Mounted on the far wall. Not a television. No channels. Just a black rectangle with one word in the center:
WAIT.
He didn’t remember coming here.
He remembered coffee. CNN on the television. Some story about a hack or a war or a leak. Nuclear? Something about silos. DEFCON. He remembered rolling his eyes. Fear mongering. They’d said the world would end every year since he was a kid.
He remembered thinking the coffee was a little bitter. He remembered standing up to rinse the mug.
Then light. Bright. White-hot behind the eyes.
Then nothing.
Now this.
He waited. Slept. Ate.
The screen never changed.
WAIT.
On the seventeenth day, the screen changed.
EXIT UNLOCKED.
A hiss behind him. Seam in the wall splitting open like a mouth.
He stared for a long time before walking through.
The corridor was narrow. Metal floors. No sound but his footsteps and the breath in his throat.
It led to a chamber. Another door. Heavy. Vault-like.
A panel beside it. One green button.
He pressed it.
The door opened slow. Groaning. Releasing air like a tired exhale.
Beyond it, a staircase. Up. Concrete steps. He counted seventy-two.
Then a hatch.
He opened it.
The sun was pale. The sky was ash.
He stepped out and felt the weight of silence. Not quiet. Silence.
No wind. No birds. No engines. Just the hiss of his own breath in his ears.
The world was gray. The trees were dead. The ground cracked like old skin. Cars rusted in crooked lines. Buildings melted in on themselves.
He saw no people. Not one.
He walked.
There were signs of life. Once. Footprints in ash. Burned-out firepits. A stroller left on its side. Melted plastic. A child’s shoe.
But no people.
He walked to the city. It took three days. Ate cold beans. Slept under a collapsed overpass. Woke up shaking. No dreams. Just dread.
The city was worse.
Shells of buildings. Burnt cars stacked like someone had tried to block a road and failed. Ash everywhere. No animals. Not even rats.
He found a skeleton in a grocery store. Jaw open. Curled around a bottle of scotch. He took the scotch. Left the bones.
He found a dog once. Or what used to be a dog. Just hair and teeth and hunger. It didn’t follow him.
The sky rained black some days. Oil-thick. Smelled like metal. He built a hood from plastic and duct tape. Walked with his head down.
He kept walking.
Kept wondering.
What happened?
Was it war?
Plague?
Judgment?
He remembered the screen: WAIT.
Wait for what?
He walked back to the bunker once. Weeks later. Found it sealed again. No button this time.
Just the screen inside. Through the small viewing window.
Still on.
WAIT.
He screamed then. First time.
Didn’t help.
Years passed. Or maybe just months. Hard to tell.
He built a shack near a creek. Purified the water with tablets. Ate from cans. Shot a bird once. Regretted it.
He kept a journal. Just to remember he was real.
It said:
Day 1: Alone.
Day 16: Exit.
Day 20: Ash everywhere.
Day 31: Saw a plane in the sky. No contrail. Just passed over. Black. Silent.
Day 42: Heard a voice on a shortwave. Said: "Not safe. Not yet. Wait." Then static.
Day 58: I think I saw someone. Across the river.
Day 59: Gone.
Day 72: Dreamed of the vault. Screen said: "You were chosen."
Day 90: Still waiting.
One night, he saw lights on the horizon.
Not fire. Not lightning.
Lights.
Electric.
He packed his bag. Left the shack behind.
Started walking.
He didn’t look back.
Didn’t need to.
There was nothing left behind him worth returning to.
Just the sound of his boots in the ash, and the memory of that screen, still glowing in the dark.
WAIT.
He was tired of waiting.
He walked for two days toward the lights.
They flickered sometimes. Went dim. Then came back brighter. A pulse. Like breath. Or code.
There were no roads anymore. Just broken asphalt and vines. Some cracked wide open like a grin. Grass had tried to grow through the cracks but never made it. Just yellow shoots. Brittle things. Like bones pretending to be alive.
The lights stayed on the horizon. No matter how far he walked. Always just there. Almost there.
The third day, he found a sign half-buried in dirt and soot.
WELCOME TO HAVERFORD – Population 42,387
Someone had spray-painted over the number. In red.
Now it read ONE.
He didn’t smile. Didn’t frown. Didn’t feel anything at all.
Just kept walking.
He came to the edge of the town at sunset. Not that sunsets meant much anymore. Just the sky bleeding from gray to rust.
The lights were real.
Electric.
Windows glowing amber. A streetlamp humming low like an old lullaby. A billboard blinking the same message again and again.
WE SURVIVED. DID YOU?
The town looked… intact.
Not perfect. Not clean. But not dead.
He stepped carefully. Boots crunching gravel. Every step a question.
Storefronts boarded up but not burned. Gas station had one pump left standing. No price. No fuel. Just dust.
The church on the hill had light inside. Warm and flickering. Candlelight maybe. Or power.
He didn’t know which would scare him more.
He knocked on the first door.
No answer.
Second house. Same.
Third door opened before he touched it.
A woman stood there.
Mid-40s. Hair shaved close. Dirty parka. Eyes too clear.
She looked at him like she was seeing a ghost.
“Jesus,” she said. “You’re real.”
He didn’t answer. Just nodded.
She let him in.
They called the place The Safe.
Some old Cold War initiative. Government town. Population tested, screened, selected.
They had food. Water. Solar power. Filtration systems. Armed guards.
Fifteen people. Down from fifty. And that was down from… who knew.
She was the medic. The cook. The one who kept track of days. Said it was year six.
He asked her what happened.
She didn’t answer for a long time.
Finally, she said, “We weren’t supposed to know. Just that it came fast. Quiet. Like forgetting. Whole cities just… went still.”
He told her about the vault.
She nodded. Said there were others like him. Chosen ones. Insurance. Just in case.
“Problem is,” she said, “we don’t know what the hell we’re the insurance for.”
He stayed a while.
Got used to the silence.
People didn’t talk much. Not about the world before. Not about the things they’d seen when the sky burned. Not about the towns where nothing moved but wind and time.
They just worked. Ate. Slept.
Some prayed.
Some drank.
Some stared out the window waiting for something worse.
He helped where he could. Fixed a broken antenna. Hauled water. Dug a grave when one of the old ones didn’t wake up.
The ground was hard.
Took most of a day.
No one cried.
They just watched.
One night, the woman—her name was Maren—took him up to the roof.
There were stars. Or what passed for them.
She pointed to the east. “Used to be a signal out that way. Weekly. Just static now. Could’ve been a bunker. Could’ve been a lie.”
He nodded. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up back there. In the vault.”
She handed him a bottle. Moonshine. Tasted like fire and metal.
“You already did,” she said.
Weeks passed.
Then one morning, the radio cracked.
Just for a second.
One word.
Clear as glass.
“Nine.”
That was it.
No voice.
No static.
Just the number.
Then silence.
They played it back a dozen times.
Nine.
Nine.
Nine.
No one knew what it meant.
Maren looked scared for the first time.
The old man who ran the perimeter said the vaults were numbered. That maybe someone else got out. Or maybe someone else sent the message.
Or maybe it was a countdown.
He couldn’t sleep that night.
Dreamed of the screen.
The word changed.
Not WAIT.
Now it said:
RUN.
He woke up sweating.
Outside, the streetlamps were flickering.
Something was humming underground.
The humming didn’t stop.
It got worse.
Started in the floorboards. A low vibration. Like the town was breathing. But not alive. Not really.
He sat up in the cot. Maren was already standing at the window.
“Power grid’s spiking,” she said. “Panels are pulling juice we don’t have.”
The others were waking too. One by one. Bleary-eyed. Thin. Barely human in the morning light.
The town’s central generator—a relic from the Cold War tucked beneath the courthouse—roared awake on its own.
No one touched it.
No one gave it a command.
They gathered in the church. Seemed right. Might as well meet God in His house. Or whatever had taken His place.
The radio buzzed again.
Nine.
Then again.
Eight.
No voice. Just the countdown.
Seven.
People started to move.
Some packed.
Some prayed.
Some just sat there. Waiting for the number to hit zero like it meant something would end. But they all knew better.
Nothing ends clean.
Not anymore.
Maren found him outside. Staring up at the flickering sky.
“You think it’s real?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
They both knew it didn’t matter.
Six.
Five.
Four.
The stars blinked out.
One by one.
The sky looked like a dying eye.
Some of the younger ones headed for the hills. Thought maybe they could outrun it. The countdown. The thing behind the numbers.
They never came back.
Three.
The perimeter lights failed.
The ground shook. Not like an earthquake. Like something underneath had rolled over.
Like the earth was turning its face away.
Two.
They opened the vault.
His vault.
Took all of them to pry the damn thing loose.
Still cold. Still full.
The screen was on.
YOU WERE CHOSEN.
No one knew what that meant.
Not even him.
One.
Then silence.
Then dark.
The power cut out.
Not just in the town.
In everything.
No wind.
No breath.
No thought.
Time stopped pretending to pass.
And then the sky opened.
It wasn’t fire.
Or light.
It wasn’t a bomb.
It was them.
Machines maybe. Maybe not.
Black shapes. Like towers turned horizontal. Hung in the air. Silent. Watching.
One lowered.
Landed just outside town.
No door opened.
But it pulled. Like gravity had chosen a direction and it was that way.
People screamed without sound.
One man walked toward it. Eyes gone white. His feet not touching ground anymore.
He vanished.
No flash. No dust.
Just gone.
The screen inside the vault blinked once more.
Final message.
COLLECTION COMPLETE.
Then it went dark.
He ran.
Maren too.
Through the ash.
Back to the bunker.
Not his.
Another one.
Old. Sealed.
The door was already cracked.
Inside, it was warm.
Dusty.
Still had power.
Still had a screen.
It turned on when he entered.
One word.
WAIT.
They’ve been there ever since.
Waiting.
Again.
Maybe for the next countdown.
Maybe for a new set of names.
Maybe just because it’s all they know how to do anymore.
Sometimes Maren sleeps.
Sometimes he doesn’t.
The food’s still good. For now.
The silence is thicker than ever.
Outside, the world still turns. But nothing moves.
No birds. No storms. No machines.
Just the occasional flicker in the sky.
Like God forgot to close the door.
One night, the screen changed.
Not a countdown.
Not a word.
Just a face.
His own.
Younger. Smiling.
Looking right at him.
Mouth moving.
He leaned in.
Turned the volume up.
One sentence.
Just one.
“You were never supposed to leave.”
Then the screen shut off.
For good this time.
And the light in the room dimmed.
And the world, once again, held its breath.