The next day, as I got up and checked whether any of the machinery had broken down, my mother approached me with an apologetic expression.
"I’m sorry. If I hadn’t suggested giving them food, this wouldn’t have happened."
"No. That couple knew where the bunker was from the beginning, so it would have happened eventually. Don’t worry about it too much."
After comforting my mother and checking the machinery again, I found that despite what had happened, there were thankfully no major problems.
Then, the internet suddenly came back online, which surprised me quite a bit. Apparently, some hacker had made Starlink free for the entire world.
Thanks to that, I spent five years making a survivor community with people overseas, exchanging information and making friends, so I was able to pass the time without getting too bored.
More than five years after coming to the bunker, the number of people using the internet suddenly dropped sharply. The prevailing opinion was that most of them had run out of food and starved to death.
China and Russia started firing nukes at nuclear power plants as if to say, "Let’s die together." Plants and animals around the world had already been dying from the abnormal temperatures, but now the contamination had become so severe that people could eat nothing except what they grew inside their bunkers.
And as countries collapsed, lawless criminals and raiders became more common. With food in short supply, there were even people hunting humans for cannibalism.
In the sixth year, my mother suddenly could not even get out of bed. Wondering if she was sick, I checked on her and found that her whole body was burning with fever.
"This is bad. I don’t have any medical knowledge."
I hurriedly searched online, but I could not figure out what illness she had. With no other choice, I took fever reducers and cold medicine from the emergency medicine cabinet and gave them to her, then brought cold water, soaked towels in it, and kept cooling her body.
The next day, despite my devoted nursing, her condition worsened. Her fever still showed no sign of breaking, and the time she spent awake gradually decreased.
That evening, she woke up briefly and tightly grasped my hand. Leaving behind the final words, "No matter what happens, survive. You have to become strong," she finally closed her eyes.
For two days, I could not eat anything. I cried until I collapsed from exhaustion, over and over again. Then, afraid I would die without even keeping my mother’s last wish, I pulled myself together and carefully wrapped her body in cloth, storing it in the coolest spot deep inside the warehouse.
"Mom, I’ll definitely make it out alive and bury you beside Dad."
Before my mother’s body, I made a promise I might be able to keep.
By the tenth year, most of the surviving people, like me, were those who had stockpiled food and lived in bunkers. It seemed that almost everyone outside had died.
But bunkers were not necessarily safe either. I heard that many bunkers were being overrun because they could not fend off attacks from outside, or were destroying themselves through internal conflict, contamination, food shortages, and so on.
Ironically, the bunker I was in had not been attacked since the raiders who attacked last time had covered up the entrance with dirt.
After more than fifteen years of living in the bunker, perhaps there really were only a few people left now. Fewer posts appeared in the community, and the friends I used to keep in touch with no longer responded.
The bunker I was in had developed many problems as well. We were almost out of air-circulation filters, so I conserved them, but the air quality inside worsened. The water purification system had been broken for a long time, and I barely held on using the dehumidifier I had installed to regulate the warehouse’s humidity and the water from the sump pit. My health gradually began to decline. The one fortunate thing was the food supplies. I had carefully calculated and rationed them, so it seemed I could eat for another five years.
Now it was the eighteenth year. I had endured and endured, somehow making it this far. It really felt like the end now.
For two years, something had been wrong with the solar and wind generators installed at the house, and they had stopped producing electricity. I had been living in darkness for a long time. Thanks to the air circulation ducts connected to the outside, I would not run out of air, but with no filters, contaminated air flowed directly inside.
Starting a year ago, my hair began falling out in patches, and then my teeth started falling out one after another. Now I did not even have the strength to walk around.
"Ah, is this the end..."
I did not know about anything else, but I deeply regretted that I would not be able to keep my promise to my mother.
[The last intelligent survivor of Planet ■AB■-X■■L-23854 has been confirmed.]
[Assessing the value of civilization...]
"Huh?"
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