Intro to my story June

The cameras watched the walker stumble towards the bunker entrance. First, from a distance as the tower of sensors caught a glimpse of him cresting the lip of the bunker dugout, his feet shuffling through a cloud of dust and decay. He stopped for a moment and wiped a film of dirt away from his suit’s visor, and started down the embankment. June noted that his environment suit wasn’t the type ADMIN used for maintenance. It was clear plastic with a HUD that was visible in the lower corner of the faceplate. The stranger could see the nuclear wasteland of the world clearly, and still he walked. June hadn’t seen a walker in forever.

June oriented the cameras to watch the walker as he approached the bunker ramp. He stepped over the dry and brittle corpses of long dead residents who had tried to re-enter the bunker after being banished. In his exhaustion, the walker’s foot bumped one corpse, causing it to collapse into a cloud of dust that blew away in the toxic wind. June didn’t think the walker noticed.

When the walker was several yards inside the entry ramp, June saw him stop. A pile of dried bodies, all without any sort of protection other than bunker jumpsuits, blocked his way. June wondered what sort of thoughts were going through the walker’s head at that awful sight. Very few bunkers, as far as she knew, had ever had their population attempt to leave without protection. At least not in such numbers. June remembered the chaos of that time. It was certain death inside, and certain death outside, and some people just chose to gamble that maybe, just maybe, they could survive the outside. Or they thought the view of the outside was somehow fake, like the daily morale speeches given by the Mayor the last few weeks. Either way, there was no one left for her to ask.

The walker tried at first to climb the pile of bodies, but quickly found that they didn’t provide much support as they broke and crumbled under his boots and gloves. But it gave him another avenue to try, and June saw him begin to kick a path through the dead. Soon the walker was wading through a fog of powdered corpses, requiring that he wipe the horrible debris from his visor every few feet.

Finally the walker was through the largest collection of the dead, and could step over the rest. He squeezed through the rusted opening of the outer bunker door and into the airlock. He turned suddenly as June closed the huge outer door behind him, the massive gears grinding with protest. The walker ran to the inner door, possibly afraid he would be trapped inside the airlock, but June kept the door open. She had complete control over the bunker, and she wasn’t about to kill her first guest in ages.

She cycled the airlock and opened the inner door.

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