Bunker

Bang!

Bang!

Oscar’s Hammer swung repeatedly at the last nail, finally securing the huge metal plate that was about to fall back to the wall. With it secured in place the entire Faraday Cage around the Shelter was no longer compromised.

Oscar wiped the sweat of his brow and proceeded to head towards the already cooking Pot of stew.

He could not get that stew out of his mind all month. In attempts to cope with the loss of that wonderful stew Oscar did the best he could to construct something to fill that void.

His new Hidy hole was at an All-In shop that had a bit of everything and with a bit of ingenuity, a drill, some planks of wood, some pieces of metal, a portable camping gas grill and wires Oscar developed a machine that could stir the stew in perpetuity so long as he remembered to fill it with gas and switch the batteries every now and then.

On top of that a big pot from aisle five and every suitable ingredient found in the store.

Oscar even hooked chestnut up to the stores power grid enabling him to use the Fridges and not loose the meat and fishes all month long.

So, while Oscar was eating good food, all things considered, he did not ever get close to that one bowl of stew that at this point seemed like magic to him.

Once a bowl of stew was secured, he threw a chopped potato into the pot, added some water as well as some spices and let the machine do its thing.

The man walked towards the table by the window looking at the Sacre Coeur through a metallic net and sat by the table besides it. He placed a hand on his round belly and began to eat happily.

Though he was a large man Oscar was surprisingly nimble and fast. At first, he worked really hard to look good with all those muscles everyone talks about, but he found he got better performance with a big belly, so he elected to keep his gut and continue to develop muscles all the way to adulthood. Now as a firefighter and as a survivor both things have come in really handy.

“Good thing I managed to build that metal cage. The damn purple eyed assholes would have found me by now if not for this.” Oscar thought aloud. “I hope the that the hole I just fixed did not expose my location over the night.” Oscar said to himself while cleaning his mustache.

He was about to finish his bowl of stew when the lights turned off all across the store.

“Dammit! Not this again.” Oscar said while standing up and searching blindly for one of the many lanterns and flashlights he strategically placed in his usual haunts.

“I really hope its just one of the squirrels that chewed on the cables again.” Oscar prayed as he rushed towards the roof where Chestnut was hooked up to the building with her solar panels open.

Chestnut was a C ranked Mech that was used by most fire stations worldwide. It belonged to a frame called Fire watch from the catalog of G.R.I.M(Global Research & Innovation of Mechs) the first corporation created by the UN to combat the threat of the fallen and was considered the golden standard of operations.

It was not great at any particular thing but not really bad at anything else either.

The mech was a three-meter-tall exoskeleton suit that felt more like a complicated armor than a fancy robot. It was designed to be as heat resistant as possible with strong hands with four fingers each. the mech was small enough to be able to charge it’s Blue T.Crystals with solar energy and not need any sophisticated charging station.

Furthermore, the mech had two main augments. The first was a spinning saw capable of cutting through metal that popped out of the right hand when needed. The second was a water hose that attached to a water tank on the mechs back next to a basket capable of holding a person.

The cockpit was where the head should have been making it so that the glass and metal surrounding the head of the pilot lets others see their faces while protecting them from smoke and heat. It was a good mech and Oscar was quite fond of it.

But after the past month chestnut was not in her best shape. She was pretty dinged up from the fall a month back and filled with scratches from close calls with some of the Yellow Devourers who chased him for a few days before he managed to lose them by sheer luck.

Oscar could almost relive the experience the moment he laid eyes on his Mech.

The terrible sensation of falling. The sounds of explosions and screaming. The monsters babbling in their nonsense speech while the group of what could almost look like a gray human with yellow crystals all over their back and jaws charged at him. Climbing the building he was on to chase him all over town. He could almost feel the exhaustion of the three days without sleep he had to endure just to lose them.

When Oscar arrived at the stairs, going to the roof of the small shop to see what caused the power outage. Oscar expected to see a fried braker or maybe a cut and an electrocuted squirrel. What he did not expect to see in the blind spot of the building he was in was a thirty-meter-tall giant human with green crystals all over his naked and deformed body like a spiderweb standing in a terrified expression while pointing at his mech and poking Chestnut as if to see if its moving, causing many of the cables to tare or disconnect.

“How did it get here without making a sound?” Oscar thought while adrenalin hit his unfocused brain. When it saw Oscar and Oscar inevitable jumped in fear, the monster immediately started screaming as it tried to slap the top of the roof Oscar was on, seemingly out of disgusted reflex.

Luckily Chestnut’s Cockpit was already open, and the roof was quite small, and Oscar was able to get in chestnut and roll of the building just as the hand of the Green Fallen descended on the building, crushing a quarter of it with ease.