There is an angel in the bunkers.
The distant rumbling and crunching of concrete, of the rapidly approaching death. The guns echo through the dark, damp corridors, burning away as they deplete their reserves of ammunition, uselessly, in futility, vainly trying to declare the human's triumphant last stand.
The sounds of gun blasts, bang, bang, bang. Getting closer all the time. More and more. The deafening blasts of the bullets leaving the barrel, the flashes. The light. The fire. The existential dread.
The truly brave and truly dead.
He cried as he ran, his hands wiping his now-stained glass on his sweater, the tears dropping, falling, falling, splashing against the ground.
One. His foot touched the ground, flying over the damp floor—the roar echoing in his ears.
Two. The child flew over the ground, tripping over a loose chunk of the floor. His hands outstretched, trying to break the fall.
Three–
A flash of golden light, bright as the sun, roared its way through the tunnel's wall, the fire of a thousand enraged stars. He covered his eyes, shielding them from the brilliancy of it, the holiness of it, oh, how he wishes not to be here. His knee was scraped on the ground, crimson tears weeping from the open cut. The guns have fallen silent; the bullets refuse to call out their signature bang. Dead.
He readjusted his glasses, sitting askew on the bridge of his nose, slippery with grime and tears and sweat and whatnot. He can not care. He must run. Must run. Keep running.
His feet once again flew over the ground, the screech, the screech, the screeching of the background! No! How can one turn back now? " Move forward!" He screams, trying to keep his balance in the winding path of the tunnel. The path continues forward, toward corridors unknown, towards exits unclear.
He was further than he was ever allowed in the past, into hallways lit up by fluorescent lights unknown, trodden by feet other than his. Labels fill up the walls, of which he can not read. Too fast! Too fast! Nowhere was the green glow of the exit sign, nowhere was anything to tell him where he was.
Sektor B! The walls screamed, the pipes running along the roof hissing and screeching, the valves creaking, creaking! That was irrelevant! He does not know where he is, so they do not matter, not in the slightest.
He stops, clutching his chest, the adrenaline pulsing in his body, through his head, clouding his thoughts, to his legs, begging them to keep running, running! Away from the danger, they say, away! His heart begs the opposite: to stop, to halt, now, now, or it'll die. Death! A threat yet to be comprehended by the mind of the child, but a danger nonetheless. Death!
The screaming in the background intensified, random, sporadic bursts of gunfire, bang bang bang! They are there for no reason, no reason! The walls contain complex diagrams, but none have the label of exit. His face felt hot, warm to the touch, positively glowing in the dim environment, the water sploshing below his feet. He bent over, hands on knees, gasping for air as his lungs finally awoke from their overdrive slumber. Air! Great gulps of it, all at once, down into his body. Air! Stagnant, rather, but air! His face was still burning, beads of sweat rolling down his cheeks, a breath of cold upon a furnace. He gasped, listening to the bursts of gunfire in the distance, the yelling of men to run, to hide, to run while they hold it off, whatever it is, then the grotesque sounds escaping their lungs moments later as the full fury of heaven befell them, consuming their body whole, incinerating their molecules beyond recognition, erased from the plane of existence.
He shudders, his memories drifting to the days his thirteen-year-old self wandered, carelessly even, through the mouth of the bunker, far, far behind him, behind the angel, behind the corpses. The ghastly, scorched surface, devastated from heaven's strikes, from smiting of hell's artillery barrages, from whatever is above ground. He remembers, oh, the pain of it, how foolish, how foolish he was! He and his friends, to think…they were right, to declare the world their oyster, to witness the truth…how the truth horrifies! They were told not to pray, yet they prayed, in the open, too! The angels smelled unholy faith, they know, they know! They can hear! That's what they were made for, to answer prayers; that's why they know! He still remembers it, vividly, the scarlet spray, the hawkish wrath, the white, holy, purified feather of God itself. Tearing a soul from the plane of men to die, without returning, without repentance! Why? Don't ask God why! That is an impossibility! He wrings his head in his hands, oh, the pain, the pain! They will kill me, it will kill me if I stay, but it also knows I can not run forever! It didn't pay notice to me then, using me as bait, hoping I'll return to the hiding hole it knew must exist, to eradicate the entire colony, to torture, to maim, to kill!
Why! The why of it all! Despair fills his heart. Where can he go now! The road ahead is an endless network of winding paths, one way, this way, another into everywhere and into nowhere at once. Which one leads to the exit? None? Or all? He screams, for he does not know. The overwhelmingness of it all!
He remembers, vividly now, the moments of the past, how the gentle wind carries onward the light air of whimsical petals, of soft, floating blades of grass in the air. How beautiful that was, underneath a blue, blue sky. How he nearly crashed into a car on his first time riding a bicycle, showing off, pedalling as furiously as his then-short legs would take him, hands nowhere near the handlebars. The hospital then, afterwards, wrapped white bandages around his head, one of his eyes covered by the stuff. He looked at himself in the mirror then, wondering how it could all happen so quickly, such a fleeting moment. He laughed, brushing off death as casually as a flake of dust on a warm summer day.
But death! Death now, right at his door! Death had come back to claim its victim that had so elusively escaped it years past, but it was here now, inevitable! Such is its irony!
The corridor ahead branches into two, each as identical as the last. Which way, which way! It matters not! He plunges down one as the silent inevitability of annihilation crept up behind his back, swarming through the tunnels with its scythe, decapitating, bisecting, anything! He can only hope to delay, but death is patient! It can wait as long as it takes!
Tears streamed down his face in torrents. He did not want to die, hell, no one wants to die, not yet, he has so much to do, so much to live. His eyes bled hot droplets of salty, uncomfortable water, streaking on his cheeks. Not yet, not yet! He must keep running on and on and on, never stopping to listen, never!
The tunnel seems to be sloping upward now, his heart pounding relentlessly inside his chest. Yes, yes! He made it to a higher elevation! He was closer to escaping, to exit, to at least witness the world above again, if he were to die! Yes! His feet carry him on with a new, determined pace, barely noticing the heat, the boiling heat, boiling up inside of his chest. It feels not! Success was close! Temptingly so. He burst forward, ready, awaiting the yearning of the air at the surface…
Yet there was none to greet. The greyscale greeted him just as the previous ones had done, forever onward. There was nothing ahead, for the tunnels, like his very life, had ended there.
He sat down, his chest heaving in exhaustion, the soft mist of his breath dancing on the cold, suffocating air at the edge of the world. Over…he sighed…it's over…His knees gave way, sinking onto the floor, followed by his now dejected body.
How the final moments of childhood tasted. The coldness evaporated like the mist on the wind. A grassplain. Ahead. Forever. He stepped forward, reaching into the blue horizons at infinity, his fingers rippling through the fabric…
"Sleep well. Child of man." The light flickered, disappearing, dying away. "Do not go gentle into that goodnight."
- Bob, November 2025.