Day 346 - Underground

 UNDERGROUND

Prompt - Underground : Imagine living in a home underground and use that as inspiration for writing

You can't see me here.  You don't know that 'here' exists.  I want to keep it that way.  There are bad people out there, people who would do bad things to me if they could only find me.  So I remain hidden, in an obscure district of an unexceptional city.  Underground.

It happened like this.  I visited this place many years ago, on a tour of disused nuclear bunkers (I was always a strange young man).  This one stuck in my head for the long discussion I had with the guide about how much work it might take to fully reactivate the place.  I asked that in all the bunkers I went to (seven in all, since you ask), and this was the only one which seemed simple enough to make habitable.  There was electric power, unmetered it seemed, running water, working sanitation and drainage.  There were beds and showers and fridges and freezers. 

 Ventilation shafts would require a lot of work to function, so, for tour purposes, the unfiltered shafts leading to the nearby river bank had been uncovered.  Temperature wise it felt tolerable, although my questioning suggested there might be extremes of both hot and cold depending on weather conditions.

At the time this was all based around a nerdy fascination for that tense Cold War period that had spawned these creations.  At the time I didn't know, couldn't begin to imagine, that this information would save my life.  And not from H bombs.

It's a long story.  I'll keep it short.  I'll keep out the worst, you don't need to know that.  But I've made mistakes in my life.  Too many mistakes.  Mistakes that brought me here.  The wrong people leading to the wrong life.  Get rich quick, get out quick, I thought.  But once you're in with these people the getting out becomes more difficult, and it was them who got rich.  That pissed me off, made me rash.  I tried to be smarter than everyone and ended up hiding from them all.

I worked for an organised crime gang.  We had powerful rivals that were a constant threat.  I devised a plan to bring them together, unknowingly, so that they would fight, I walked off with the already-laundered cash they both thought they were coming for, and tipped off the police.  It all seemed so perfect.  It wasn't.

The rivals didn't fight, but quickly figured out who had brought them face to face.  The police arrived to find nothing going on, except a bunch of guys who they thought hated one another, but were united in saying that I had been responsible for three murders, and they had evidence.  Liars.  I'd only murdered once.

So there I was with a big case of cash, two gangs out to kill me, and the police ready to charge me.  If only my overconfidence hadn't got the better of me, I could have been out of the country and away.  By the time I realised my passport details were known to every customs officer.  My face and name was spreading through the underworld, district to district, city to city.  Honour among thieves.  I had nowhere to go.

Except here.  I knew the tours had stopped, had read that the bunkers had either been closed up, or converted into luxury holiday apartments for weirdos.  A bit of internet searching in a library helped me find out that the one I remembered the best had been closed up four years ago, and didn't appear to be used or inspected on any regular basis.  It was worth a try.

I travelled by bus, always short hops, always changing direction.  Checked it out cautiously.  The surface entrances were both sealed closed.  It would have taken explosives to shift them, and calling attention to myself was not on the agenda.  The ventilation shafts looked as impregnable as you'd expect from the purpose they had been designed for.  My last hope were the shafts on the river bank.

It took me a couple of days to find them, for I never wanted to be seen in one place for too long.  Invisible from the opposite bank, set darkly into the clay above the water, they were only found by scrambling down the banking, hanging on to the tree roots and bushes that also provided me with concealment.  Once found I then had the task of working out the tools I'd need to get in, which might change as I got down further, hit more obstacles.  Finally I'd had to hope that nobody had closed off either of the huge airtight shutters that would seal in the occupants in the event of radiation in the atmosphere.  They'd have left them open to keep the place aired, wouldn't they?

Cutters of various weights, screwdrivers, a cordless drill, a crowbar, sundry other tools, had to be purchased, each one in a different town, and conveyed, as inconspicuously as possible.  All while avoiding the possible gaze of police or criminals in on the story.  It took almost two weeks.  I feared that I was wasting my time.  But, without any better options being apparent, I kept at it.  With eventual success.  

You can't see me here.  Nobody knows that anyone is down here.  I am safe.  For now.  I shop for food at night, I stay underground most of the time.  Unless I have some very bad luck, or someone decides this place needs to be inspected, I have a place to stay, to sleep, to exercise, to hide.  

I also have that one unanswerable question.  What next?