The Last Resort

The Last Resort

By Paul McCann

About six missiles crossed over the rooftops before hitting their target in the city centre .
It was the first attack of its kind and no one expected it to come .
As I watched from the bedroom window I realised that this was the beginning of the end .
Wondering how long did we have left , I decided to try to do something good in the last moments of life on earth .
I also didn’t want to die alone so I went  outside and down the street to the house on the corner and knocked on the door of the old man who lived alone there .
Over the years I would always see him on my way to work . We either gave a nod or said hello as he was working out in the front garden . 
The old man welcomed me inside and he told me to take a seat and decent enough of him he went to make us a cup of tea .
He returned with a tray of cakes and a pot of tea and we started  talking about life and some of the people and places we had known.  
During our conversation further missile attacks on the city rocked the house to its foundations .
The old man seemed untroubled with the explosions outside .
I was getting very worried as the missiles continued to pound down outside .
He spoke calmly telling me  stories of his life .
He started out  as an engineer and went into construction then married a girl who died three years after they were wed . They never had any  children and he never remarried spent his life working in his garden or renovating around the house . I was the first person who visited him since his wife died over twenty years ago. 
I told him about my job as a nurse in mental health and shared  the dream I had about becoming  a rock and roll superstar .
As the missiles started to get closer he asked me to come into another room because he wanted to show me what he had spent his life doing .
In the room there was a lift and we both went inside .
He pressed a button that took us under the ground and when the lift stopped and the door opened up we were inside large underground complex .
 “This is my shelter from the fallout . I spent my life building this place with the thought that a war would come one day . I expected the war to come long before now but at least we can both be safe here ."

He took me in a tour of the underground shelter that was well stocked with food and other resources .
He had installed a camera above to monitor what was happening and then he decided to show me his capsule of death which was a coffin with built in automatic syringe drivers to put him into a deep sleep and eventually assist him to pass away peacefully .
The capsule was called 
The last resort and he built it in case he would get infected or too old or sick to continue living in the shelter underneath the ground waiting to see out the nuclear winter .
He built a small shrine were he had a music system with ambient mood music for  meditation .
There was a computer system hooked up to a generator driven by petrol oil that was stored in an underground tank .
The entire place was encased inside a lead wall casing .
I was amazed at what he had built .
No wonder he never seemed to be worried about the missiles that were falling down all around the city . We had each others company for a long time watching the city above fall into ruins during the nuclear war .
I found him one morning inside  The Last Resort .
He had passed away peacefully .
Now I was alone in the world .
After  giving it a lot of thought I decided I would return to the surface to see if life was sustainable again on the earth  .  Who knows maybe there would be others who were living in bunkers underground during the war . 
Maybe I can find others like myself who managed to survive .

The End