The dots still wouldn’t line up.
Half an hour ago, Brian had dropped the map into the group chat and told Jessica to load it onto the tablet.
Jessica Bryce let out an annoyed sigh. The thing was ancient.
After her dad died, her mom had shoved it into the garage along with a pile of other junk nobody touched anymore. Jessica only remembered it existed because Brian Wallis — her classmate, amateur conspiracy addict, and self-appointed expedition leader — had invited her to join his urban exploration group.
The tablet froze again.
“Seriously?” Jess smacked the side of it with her finger. The screen flickered.
Then, somehow, the map snapped into place. Three blinking points connected into a perfect triangle — the same triangle the group called R.A.L.H. was planning to reach before nightfall.
Short for Radical Anarchist Local Historians.
Yeah. The name was stupid.
Jess leaned back in her chair and glanced out the window.
Sunlight flashed through the thick green leaves of the walnut tree outside the house.
Jess set the tablet aside, relieved that the map had finally loaded correctly.
She checked her backpack one more time. Water bottle. Batteries. First-aid kit. Rope.
Just as she headed for the door, Tissa drifted into the room, wrapped in a giant pink towel, steam practically following behind her. Her honey-blonde hair was still wet from the shower.
“Don’t forget my flashlight,” she said.
“It literally doesn’t fit anywhere,” Jess muttered.
Still, she clipped the flashlight onto the side of her hiking pack.
“Thanks.”
“Wait.” Tissa grabbed something off the desk. “Take this too.”
She handed Jess a Swiss Army knife with a faded red emblem on the handle.
Jess stared at her.
“Why would I need that?”
“You’re going into the woods with three idiot guys. You never know. Maybe you’ll have to fight off a bear.”
Tissa laughed and shoved the knife into one of the backpack pockets.
“Seriously, though. Do you actually enjoy crawling through abandoned places with those weirdos? One day you’re gonna break your neck down there.” She flopped dramatically onto the bed. “Stay here instead. We can watch a movie.”
She gave Jess an exaggerated puppy-eye look.
No reaction.
“You know I already promised Brian.”
Tissa rolled her eyes.
“You really think he notices half the stuff you do for him? Trust me. Guys don’t care.”
“Tissa…”
“Okay, okay.” She raised her hands. “At least tell me where you’re going.”
Before Jess could answer, a car horn sounded outside the dorm.
Brian was already there.
The five students from Virginia Wesleyan University were heading out to explore a site near Harvey Point.
Jess had heard stories about the old military base since she was a kid. Her dad used to talk about it all the time. The place had been shut down decades ago, though before that it supposedly operated as an airfield for military blimps.
What exactly Brian hoped to find out there, Jess wasn’t sure even he could explain.
But Brian had instincts.
And somehow, they usually paid off.
Last semester, he and Henry Sybill had stumbled across a hidden stash of weapons left behind by a gang inside an abandoned coal mine near Raleigh.
“Damn, look at you,” Sylvia said, lowering her sunglasses as Jess walked toward the SUV. “You look like Lara Croft.”
“Then you’re Samantha,” Jess shot back. “Remember Lara’s friend?”
Sylvia groaned.
Jess climbed into the backseat beside Sylvia and Henry.
Brian turned around from the driver’s seat and kissed her quickly. Rich, sitting shotgun, made a face.
“Can we not get stuck in traffic because you two are flirting?”
Brian grinned at Jess in the rearview mirror.
Traffic was surprisingly light. Most cars were heading in the opposite direction.
About forty minutes later, Brian’s Dodge Durango left the highway and turned onto a narrow dirt road cutting through dense forest.
“Oh crap,” Sylvia suddenly said. “I forgot to text my mom that I’m staying in Norfolk for a couple more days.”
She pulled out her phone and frowned at the screen.
“Oh, come on.”
Brian winced a little.
“Yeah… I probably should’ve mentioned this earlier. Cell service out here sucks.”
Sylvia looked even more irritated.
“Can you chill for, like, one day?” Henry muttered.
“Why do you care?” Rich snapped, twisting around in his seat.
“Guys,” Brian said sharply, glancing back at them. “What is wrong with everybody today?”
The SUV slowed.
Ahead of them, a chain-link fence appeared through the trees.
Everyone went quiet.
Pine forest stretched endlessly on both sides of the road.
“Jess, can you hand me the tablet?”
Without turning around, Brian held out his hand. Jess passed him her father’s old tablet.
“We’re climbing over that fence?” Henry asked.
“No,” Rich muttered. “We’re phasing through it.”
He was still annoyed about the comment Henry made to Sylvia.
Sylvia suddenly looked pale.
“You okay?” Jess asked, lightly touching her arm.
“My head hurts.” Sylvia rubbed her temple. “And now there’s no signal. My mom’s gonna freak out.”
“Oh my God, here we go again,” Henry muttered.
Rich shot him another warning look.
Finally, Brian got out of the SUV and walked up to the fence. He grabbed the chain and rattled the lock.
The others climbed out after him.
“This is definitely the place?” Henry asked.
“Look.”
Brian held up the tablet.
Five green dots glowed inside a blue triangle on the screen.
“That’s us?” Sylvia asked quietly.
Brian nodded.
“I found a book in the university library,” Brian said, still staring at the tablet. “It mentioned a bunker built somewhere in these woods back in the forties. No exact coordinates, obviously.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Sylvia pointed at the endless forest behind her. “Do you realize how huge this place is? We could spend a week looking for it.”
“And why do we even care about some bunker?” Rich added. “We should just head to Harvey Point. At least there’s actual stuff there.”
Brian looked up.
“That’s not why I came out here.” He narrowed his eyes at Rich. “You know that.”
“Are you guys coming or what?”
While everyone else argued, Henry had already wandered far ahead down the road.
Sunlight caught in his messy red hair, almost giving him a golden glow.
He might’ve looked angelic if it weren’t for the huge glasses on his thin face that made him look vaguely insane.
Brian took Jess’s hand, and together they headed deeper down the dirt road into the woods.
Nobody bothered checking the time anymore. It felt like the forest had slowed everything down.
Sylvia kept messing around with Rich the whole way. First, she jumped onto his back, and he carried her for what felt like half a mile. Then he started tickling her until she could barely breathe from laughing.
Jess watched them with a smile, though her eyes kept drifting back to Brian.
His dark hair kept falling into his face. Every time he leaned over the tablet, a loose strand brushed against his cheek.
It looked unfairly good.
Half the girls in their program were obsessed with him.
Brian, meanwhile, seemed more interested in abandoned buildings than actual people.
They’d been walking for almost two hours, and there was still no sign of anything on the map.
The weather had turned colder fast. Wind pushed through the trees hard enough that everyone ended up pulling on hoodies or jackets.
When Brian suggested leaving the road and heading west through the woods, Sylvia started complaining again.
“I’m serious, I need food,” she said. “My blood sugar is literally crashing.”
“We’re close,” Brian replied calmly.
A sudden crack of branches cut him off.
The entire group froze.
Everyone turned toward the sound.
A deer burst out of the trees, dirt and grass flying beneath its hooves. It stopped right in the middle of the clearing.
Jess instinctively stepped back.
The animal stood only a few yards away, completely still, breathing hard.
All five of them stood frozen.
It was weird that the deer hadn’t bolted immediately.
Sunlight filtered through the trees in scattered patches, making the animal look almost unreal, like something out of a nature documentary. Its sides rose and fell heavily. Its huge dark eyes seemed locked on all of them at once.
“Jesus,” Henry breathed. “I thought that was a bear.”
“If it were a bear, you’d already be halfway back home without your shoes,” Rich muttered.
Nobody laughed.
The deer stayed perfectly still, twitching its ears as if it were listening for something far away.
Then suddenly it jerked sideways and disappeared into the trees.
A few seconds later, the sound of snapping branches and pounding hooves faded into silence.
“Did you guys see that?” Sylvia whispered. “It wasn’t running from us.”
Nobody answered.
The silence suddenly felt thick, as the whole forest was listening with them.
Finally, Brian spoke.
“We need to keep moving.”
“And if it was running from a bear?” Sylvia asked nervously.
“Then we should definitely get out of here faster,” Henry said, picking up the backpack he’d dropped during his spectacular panic stumble.
“You okay?” Brian asked Jess quietly.
She nodded, still trying to shake off the sudden rush of fear.
“I almost broke my ass,” Henry complained, brushing dirt and tiny bugs off his jeans. “Seriously, where the hell did that thing even come from?”
“What do you think scared it?” Jess asked, scanning the trees.
For the first time since they’d entered the woods, she had the uncomfortable feeling that something else might be out there watching them.
“I don’t know,” Brian said. “But animals that big don’t usually come flying out of the woods for no reason.”
Everyone turned toward the trees again, listening.
Jess felt a chill crawl up the back of her neck. She clenched her fists without realizing it.
“We came all this way,” Brian said after a moment. “It’d be stupid to leave empty-handed.”
He pulled the car keys from his pocket and tossed them to Rich.
“Take Sylvia home. Come back in like three hours. We’ll meet you at the gate.”
“No.”
Rich tossed the keys back.
He avoided looking at Sylvia, probably because he already knew she was pissed at him for trying to decide for her.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Sylvia said, surprisingly calmly.
By now, the afternoon sun had disappeared behind the trees.
The forest felt cooler here, damp and stale.
The group moved quietly through the woods, boots sinking into soft earth, none of them totally sure where the bunker actually was anymore.
Jess’s new sneakers were already rubbing a blister into her right heel, but she kept her mouth shut. The last thing she wanted was another round of Sylvia complaining.
They’d only gone a few hundred yards when the shape of the structure finally appeared between the trees.
It looked bizarre.
Long, gray, and rounded like some rusted submarine buried in the forest.
Its two empty windows stared out at the woods like narrowed eyes.
“Holy crap,” Rich whistled. “I saw something like this in a movie once. Some hydrogen bomb testing thing.”
“Comforting,” Jess muttered.
Rich heard her anyway and made a stupid face.
The windows had been smashed out years ago. Cold air drifted from inside the bunker along with the smell of mildew and old concrete.
The bunker’s first room was tiny, maybe twelve feet across, and completely trashed.
Dirty paper littered the floor alongside cigarette butts, broken bottles, and torn clothes. A stained mattress sat shoved into one corner, looking like it had seen way too much.
Along one wall stretched an old control panel covered in cracked buttons, rusted switches, and years of grime.
“So this is what we drove all the way out here for?” Sylvia said dryly.
“You wanna head back?” Jess asked Brian.
But he barely heard her.
He was running his hands along the concrete wall, searching for something.
“What are you doing?” Rich asked, stepping closer.
“You seriously think a military bunker is just one tiny room with two windows?”
“I mean… kinda, yeah.”
“Move.”
“What?”
“Everybody move back,” Brian said sharply.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then the concrete beneath their feet began to shake.
A loud grinding noise echoed through the room.
Jess stumbled backward as part of the floor slowly split open, revealing a dark opening below. Cold air rushed out of it like breath from some huge sleeping animal.
Jess carefully stepped closer and looked down.
A narrow stone staircase disappeared into the darkness at least twenty feet below them.
“Give me your flashlight, Jess.”
Brian stepped down first.
The narrow beam cut into the bunker’s interior as if it were testing the space. Jess followed right after him. Rich came behind her.
He switched on his own flashlight too, which made the tight corridor a little easier to navigate. Thick cobwebs clung to the walls, brushing against their shoulders as they moved forward.
At the end of the passage, they found a door.
It looked exactly like the hatch of a submarine — the kind Jess had only seen in movies. A wheel handle in the center served as both lock and grip.
When Brian started turning it, the wheel groaned loudly, the sound echoing down the concrete walls.
“The guy who built this was pretty damn confident about how the Cold War was gonna end,” Henry said as he stepped up beside Brian.
“Lucky for us, he was wrong,” Rich replied.
The door finally gave way and swung open, revealing an odd sight.
A small, windowless room with almost no furniture.
Two rows of bunk beds lined the space, separated by metal shelving stacked with cans of old, dusty food supplies. The mattresses were still there, but they were half-rotted, stained, and stripped of anything resembling bedding.
“Perfect place for junkies,” Sylvia snorted.
“How many of these useless things do you think were built with taxpayer money?” Rich said, tossing his backpack onto one of the bunks. The frame let out a sad creak under the weight.
“Useless?” Henry frowned. “Bunkers are built for when things go wrong.”
“Yeah,” Jess muttered. “Feels like things already did.”
She didn’t finish.
Behind her, the hinges groaned again.
Then came a sharp click.
All at once, everyone turned.
Their flashlights snapped toward Sylvia.
She stood by the door, smiling faintly, brushing her hands together as she’d just finished a chore.
“Holy shit—!” Henry rushed to the door and yanked at the handle. “What the hell did you do?”
“Relax,” Brian said, dropping his backpack onto the concrete floor. “Don’t panic. Let me try.”
He turned to Jess. “Light here, please.”
“I’ve got it,” Rich said, stepping in beside him.
Together, they grabbed the wheel and started forcing it back.
The metal didn’t budge.
“Damn it!” Brian snapped, glancing over his shoulder. “Why would you do that, Sylvia?”
“How was I supposed to know it would lock?” she shot back. “Aren’t you supposed to turn the wheel? That’s how it works in movies. Submarines too.”
“If you watched fewer movies and read more,” Henry said through gritted teeth, “you’d know doors don’t all work the same way!”
“Hey, easy!” Rich stepped in front of Henry. “Keep it up, and you’ll lose your glasses too.”
“Enough!” Brian snapped. “Let me think.”
The metal creaked as he sat down on one of the bunk beds.
“Check your phones. Maybe there’s still a signal down here.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Henry was breathing hard. “There’s no signal. Nobody even knows we’re here.”
“Tissa does…” Jess leaned back against the wall, exhausted. “I mean, she knows we’re somewhere near Harvey Point.”
The air in the bunker was thick and stale, dulling even her hunger.
“This forest is huge,” Henry said. “We’re basically a needle in a haystack. And this place isn’t even on normal maps.”
“So yeah,” Rich muttered, shaking a can from the shelf, “this is officially ridiculous. Anyone want rabbit in cream sauce with beans, vintage 2015?”
He rattled the can like it was a prize.
“Your jokes aren’t really helping right now,” Henry said sharply, still tapping his phone screen. “Just try calling someone. Anyone.”
“Rich, help me,” Brian muttered, pushing at the door again. It didn’t move an inch.
Jess stood still, the realization settling in slowly.
They were inside a forgotten bunker, miles from anywhere. And there was no guarantee anyone was coming for them at all.
The thought hit harder than she expected.
Judging by the looks on everyone else’s faces, she wasn’t the only one feeling it.
“I sent an SOS to emergency services,” Henry said, forcing a bit of optimism into his voice. “Help should already be on the way.”
He even seemed to forget Rich’s earlier threat about his glasses.
“Anyone want a sandwich?” he added, as nothing had happened.
“Get your feet off my face. Beds are meant to be slept in lengthwise, not sideways.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Rich muttered hoarsely. “What is this, a hotel?”
There was rustling from the right, and a flashlight beam cut through the darkness.
“Is it really five in the morning and you guys still going at it?” Brian groaned.
“How are we supposed to sleep when Sylvia basically buried us alive in here?” Henry shot back.
“You asked for it,” Rich said flatly.
His voice echoed off the concrete walls.
Then came a series of dull thuds.
Brian clicked his flashlight on.
“Jess, hold this.”
He practically shoved it into her hands.
Now three bodies were tangled on one of the metal bunk beds, the frame groaning under the weight of the struggle.
“Idiot!” Sylvia hissed between hits and shoves. “I didn’t mean to lock the damn door! Aren’t engineers supposed to design this stuff so it can be opened from the inside?”
Brian finally managed to pull Rich off. The scuffling stopped.
Jess picked up her father’s tablet again and lay back down on the bunk.
Brian settled onto the bed next to hers and took her hand. He was still catching his breath.
She noticed the battery icon dropping fast.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Anything about this bunker?”
From somewhere in the room, the dull banging started again — this time on the door.
“Waste of time!” Henry called out.
“If you helped instead of complaining, maybe we’d actually move it,” Rich said tiredly.
“And where’s your help now?” Sylvia added, rustling through plastic bags as if she was looking for something to eat. There were no windows. The darkness had started to press in on them.
The only light came from Jess’s face reflected in the tablet’s weak glow.
Everything suddenly went quiet.
Then a faint buzzing sound appeared—soft at first, almost like something electrical waking up.
It grew steadily louder.
A vibration ran through the room.
The bunker shook.
Cans started falling off the shelves, crashing down onto the bunk beds. Sylvia let out a sharp scream.
Instinctively, Jess dropped under the bed and covered her head with her arms.
A powerful blast hit.
The sound didn’t come through as words anymore—just pressure, force, impact.
Dust and plaster rained down from the ceiling.
It lasted less than a minute, but Jess’s heart was pounding as she’d just run miles without stopping.
A hand landed on her shoulder.
Brian.
“What the hell was that?” Henry’s voice was shaking.
A flashlight beam cut through the darkness again.
“You didn’t hear it?” Rich was coughing, wiping dirt from his hair. “That was a damn explosion!”
“What are you talking about, idiot?” Henry snapped, swinging the light up at the ceiling and then the walls.
Jess spotted a new crack—at least a meter long—running across the concrete.
“Then what was it? Fireworks in the woods?”
“Jess, what time is it?” Brian asked suddenly.
“6:06 a.m.”
“You think…” Henry stepped closer to him.
“I know,” Brian said flatly.
“What are you two talking about?” Sylvia’s voice came from behind the shelves that had somehow stayed upright.
“Something powerful just went off,” Brian said. “That wasn’t fireworks.”
“It wasn’t a bomb either,” Rich said with a nervous laugh. “There are no test sites near Harvey Point. Those are all on the islands.”
“So maybe it wasn’t a test,” Jess said quietly.
“Then what the hell was it?”
“Henry,” Brian cut in. “You did send the SOS, right?”
“Yeah,” Henry said immediately.
“Absolutely.”
“Then it could actually be a bomb,” he added, already digging through his backpack.
“Why would anyone do that?” Rich muttered. “And who would even—”
“Were you watching porn sites during history class instead of actually listening?” Henry snapped.
“Oh, you want more?” Rich leaned forward. “Keep talking, and I’ll give you more.”
“Rich…” Brian warned, tired already.
Silence dropped over them again.
“I’m gonna die in here,” Sylvia whispered.
“Well,” Henry said flatly, “the world won’t lose much.”
He started scraping something at the door lock again. Metal screeched against metal.
Jess winced.
“Stop it,” she said sharply.
“Oh wow,” Henry muttered, pulling back. “Jess is mad. That’s how you know things are bad.”
He finally gave up and flopped back onto his bunk.
“At least I’m doing something,” he added. “Unlike the rest of you.”
The room went quiet again, broken only by shifting clothes and uneven breathing.
“Shit,” Brian suddenly said, sitting up so fast the bed frame creaked.
“What?” Jess asked immediately.
“There has to be ventilation. Otherwise, we’d already be dead.”
“So we go up?” Rich asked.
“I don’t know,” Brian said. “But I’d rather die in open air than in a concrete box.”
“Help me.”
Henry turned his flashlight back on, scanning the room. Nothing. No vents. No openings.
Brian took the light from him and crouched down.
He checked under the beds. Then under the shelves.
“Rich. Henry. Help me.”
Together, they shoved the shelving units across the room.
Behind them, at floor level, a square metal vent appeared in the wall.
Covered in rust. Thick with dust.
Sylvia groaned.
“I’m not crawling into some filthy hole.”
“Then stay here,” Henry said. “With the rats.”
“Brian, this is a bad idea,” Jess said, grabbing his sleeve to stop him. “We don’t know what’s down there.”
Standing next to the vent, she pulled in a breath through her nose.
Rot. Something sour and old.
“It’s either this or we wait to die in here,” Brian replied.
“You girls can stay if you want,” Rich said, stepping closer and placing a hand on Brian’s shoulder. “I’ll go first.”
“Are you sure this thing even leads outside?” Henry frowned as he removed the grate and peered in. He shone his flashlight into the long, narrow tunnel.
Sylvia made a disgusted face.
“I think I’ll just stay here,” she muttered. Then, looking at Jess, “You with me?”
Jess shook her head.
“I’m going.”
The vent was barely wide enough for them to crawl through.
Only Jess and Henry could fit.
Cold, dirty metal scraped against Jess’s bare shoulders as she moved forward, making her shiver in disgust. She tried not to think about getting stuck here, wedged in this narrow tunnel forever.
Henry crawled behind her, breathing hard, muttering under his breath.
It only made her more irritated.
“Hey—if there’s another room, come back!” Brian’s voice echoed from far behind them, distorted, as if it were coming through water.
Jess lowered her head into her arms and forced herself to keep moving.
Her panic was rising.
She hated tight spaces.
Once, as a kid, she’d gotten trapped for hours in an empty water tank in her backyard. It was mounted on a small shed roof, intended to collect rainwater.
She was four.
She remembered sitting inside that dark, filthy box, with a half-rotted bird beside her, convinced she would never get out.
Her father had found her asleep later, covered in dirt and tears.
She never told anyone how long she had screamed before she stopped.
“Were you asleep or what?” Henry tapped the sole of her boot.
Morning light came through the grate, tinted purple.
Jess struck the metal several times. It gave way, breaking loose with the last fragments of plaster.
Cold air hit her face.
A faint smell of lilac mixed with chemicals drifted in — like someone had spilled shampoo or cleaning products into the world itself.
The vent led outside.
But what was outside didn’t make sense.
Everything — the bunker, the trees, the forest floor — was covered in pale violet flakes.
They drifted slowly through the air, settling on branches, grass, even the ground itself.
Jess held out her hand.
A few landed in her palm.
Light. Powdery. They didn’t melt.
Ash.
It was ash, she realized.
She turned to Henry.
He stood there with his mouth slightly open, staring at the falling violet snow like his brain had stopped working.
Their eyes met.
“Open the door, Henry,” she said.
He nodded slowly, circled the bunker, and disappeared.
Jess tilted her head back.
The sky was still shedding its endless soft ash, drifting down onto her face, refusing to melt.
If she stood here long enough, she thought, it could bury her like a blanket.
The tablet was still inside.
But it didn’t matter anymore.
Follow and Connect with Lena Tsi
About
Lena Tsi is a Russian-born writer and the author of the upcoming dystopian novel Dragonfly Valley. She was shortlisted for the 2024 technological action fiction competition Project of Special Significance Russia, and her short story Seller of Luck was included in the 2025 anthology Sleep Mode. Her work explores memory, identity, freedom, and psychological transformation through speculative fiction. She currently lives in Prague, Czech Republic.
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