“What?!” I yelled to my friend less than a foot away from me. “I said let’s go back inside!” She practically screamed.

When we returned to the bunker it was so silent, I heard a ringing in my ears. Ever since the first blast happened, it set off a bunch of other blasts. Of what we don’t know. All we know is that outside of this bunker the noise is unbearable.

There are seven of us in the bunker. It’s pretty big, so crowding isn’t an issue. Cash, Sora, Ivy, Zion, Lola, Violet, and myself, Jo. We met at college, at a party actually. That was when the first blast went off. It knocked everyone unconscious except for the seven of us. Sora told us to come with her and so we all blindly trusted our acquaintance. What else is there to do when the world is seemingly about to end?

So we took two cars. Three of us were in Sora’s car and four were in Lola’s. We arrived at a huge house, nearly the size of a mansion and followed Sora who was sprinting to the side of it. She shuffled around the dirt under a flower bed until she felt a latch. Sora yanked it open, the blaring noise from the blast drowning out our aggressive panting. We climbed down into the dark hole we now call home and shut the door behind us.

Its been three months since then. We’ve learned from Sora that the company her dad worked for dealt with interstellar communications. Her dad said to her, “Sora if a blast goes off, I need you to grab as many people as you can and go straight to the bunker. The damage these blasts do to the brain are irreversible. But you must understand, when the noise from the blasts stop it means we’ve made contact.” We’ve had so many conversations around the subject I sometimes tune it out. We do our rounds every three days. Two people go outside to check if the noise is still going. We’re thinking of spacing the rounds out because the memory loss is getting worse. In all of us.

We spend the day watching “pulp fiction” on a loop and eating Kraft Dinner for all three meals. When its about 12:00am and we’re all beat we head to bed. I bunk with Lola, and Sora and Cash bunk together (there’s definitely something going on there). Ivy, Zion, and Violet sleep in separate rooms.

Zion’s alarm wakes us all up the next morning. It’s his and Violets turn to make their ears bleed. We all wake up, feeling sluggish from eating too much KD, to assist the two when they get back in.

About five minutes after being outside, Zion and Violet stand in the doorway with pale faces. Violet begins to say, with a terror in her eyes, “Guys there’s something outsid-“, before they fold and drop down the stairs, their bodies lifeless. There is still a figure standing in the doorway. Trembling behind me I hear Sora say, “We’ve made contact.”