Chapter 42 Chapter Forty-Two

Juliet threw the soup-stained helmet on the ground, and walked towards the dim green light.It looks brighter now than before.I don't know if it's because I just put on the helmet, so it looks particularly dark.Now that her consciousness has recovered, she realizes that the helmet visor is not transparent glass, but an evil display screen, changing what she sees in front of her.Possibly due to the darkening of the image during the alteration process. Then, she noticed that the dirty protective clothing still had a stench. It was the stench of moldy and rotting vegetables, but it could also be the stench of toxins in the air outside.Her throat felt hot and her skin began to itch as she walked from the dining room to the stairwell.She didn't know if it was because there was really poison in the air, or because she was too scared to have this illusion.But no matter what, she dared not take the risk.So she held her breath, dragged her tired legs, and walked around the corner to the stairwell as fast as she could.In my impression, the stairwell should be right there.

In the dim light of the emergency lights, she walked down the first floor, telling herself that the bunker was exactly the same as the one I lived in.God didn't just create a bunker. Her heavy shoes were still stained with soup, and they were slippery and unsteady on the steps.When she reached the platform on the second floor, she stopped and took a few deep breaths, feeling her breathing was easier.At this time, she began to think about how to take off the protective clothing on her body, because it was too bulky and inconvenient to move, and there was an unbearable putrid smell.She looked down at her hands, and thought that this protective clothing was put on for her by someone else. There were two zippers on the back, and Velcro felt, and the outermost part was wrapped with heat-resistant tape.Then, she looked at the knife in her hand, and suddenly she was glad that she didn't throw the knife away after taking off the helmet just now.

She was wearing gloves, and her hand movements were very clumsy, but she still managed to grasp the knife, carefully aligned the tip of the knife at the position of her wrist, inserted it into the sleeve of the protective clothing, and then pushed it out along the direction of the arm, so that it was considered forceful. If the knife stabs forward suddenly with too much force, it will not cut yourself.The fibers of the protective clothing are very tough and difficult to cut. She grasped the handle of the knife and turned it slightly from side to side. Slowly, a small crack was cut in the protective clothing.So, she began to insert the knife into the slit, with the blade pointing up, and the back of the knife pressed against the skin, and began to push hard towards the knuckles. After a while, the tip of the knife cut through the glove all the way, and pierced the part above the knuckles of the palm. At that moment, her hand was finally able to reach out through the hole, and the front half of the sleeve was just hanging under her elbow.

Juliet sat on the gridded floor, shifted the knife to her free hand, and began cutting open the hazmat suit in her other hand.Not long after, the protective clothing was cut open, and the soup ran down her shoulders and down her arms.Then, she began to cut open the protective clothing on the chest.Now, I don't wear gloves on my hands, and my movements are much more flexible.She cut the outer metal sheet first, and peeled off the body layer by layer like peeling an orange, but the helmet connection ring could not be removed because it was fixed on the carbon fiber inner layer.However, she still managed to cut off the outer protective clothing piece by piece.The hazmat suit smelled so bad, partly because she had just been covered in rotting soup, and partly because it still had toxins from the outside air.

Next is the shoes.She first cut the protective clothing around the ankle, then cut down the outer edge of the shoe along the crack, and the shoe came off after a short time.Then came another shoe. At this time, the protective clothing on her body hadn't been peeled off, and there were still many fragments left on the zipper on the back, but she decided to leave it alone for the time being.She stood up quickly and rushed down the stairs, trying to get away from the poisonous air above as soon as possible.There was still a burning sensation in her throat.In the dim green halo of the stairwell, she descended two more flights of stairs.At this time, she finally felt the joy of being alive.

She is still alive. Although I don't know how long I can live, but for Juliet, just thinking that she is still alive is good enough and exciting enough.Not long ago, she climbed the stairs for three days to face death on the top.And the staircase at that time was almost the same as the staircase at this moment.On the fourth day, she spent a day and a night in a cell, and then she would become another corpse on the hill.But unexpectedly, at this moment, she was still alive.She traveled through an impossible wilderness, escaped from the fate of death, and walked towards an unpredictable future.She survived.

No matter what happened next, at least at this moment, Juliet walked down the stairs barefoot and felt a slight tingling pain when she stepped on the cold steps.She took a deep breath after another, the burning sensation in her throat had gradually disappeared, and the suffocating stench and the terrifying sight of death had gradually moved away.Before long, in this dark and empty stairwell, only her solitary figure remained, and only the echoing footsteps remained, like a dumb bell, but it was no longer the bell of death, but a tribute to life .
When she came to the platform on the sixth floor, she stopped to take a rest, and cleaned up the remaining fragments of protective clothing by the way.She raised the knife to the level of the collarbone at the shoulder, pierced the black undershirt, then cut a circle under the link, then grabbed the back of the undershirt and tore off the link.Shards of heat-resistant tape remained from the connecting loops, and a zipper dangled from what at first glance looked like a spine.Now, she can finally remove the link from her neck.So, she picked up the connection ring and threw it on the ground, and then she began to tear off the black carbon fiber underwear on her body, starting from the arms, then the legs, and all the fiber cloth that was torn off was thrown on the double fan on the sixth floor At the door, piled up in a pile.

Then she thought that the sixth floor should be a residential area.She had considered going in and looking inside, yelling a few times to see if anyone was there, or looking in the inner room for clothes or some necessities.However, she couldn't wait to get to the bottom of it.She felt that the upper floors were too close to the top floor and might be poisonous.Maybe it was her delusion, but it might also be because when she was in her bunker, she experienced too many tragic things on the top floor and suffered too much inner torture, so her body instinctively rejected the upper floors.It's safe to be at the bottom.From before to now, she has always felt this way.

However, what she just saw in the kitchen on the top floor sparked a glimmer of hope in her heart.The shelves are lined with food in cans and jars.This made Juliet think that the big restaurant below might be the same.Also, the air in the bunker should be fine, since she's breathing normally now.The burning sensation in her lungs and tongue had gone.Maybe it was because the bunker was so big that she was the only one breathing, and there was plenty of air, or maybe it was because the air-making equipment was still in operation.Thinking that there were still so many resources in the bunker, she was suddenly filled with hope.Those contaminated clothes have been taken off, and now, she only has the knife in her hand.So, naked like this, she walked down the spiral staircase.The more she went down, the more she felt full of vitality.Now, she is now more and more confident that she can keep it that way.

When she came to the thirteenth floor, she stopped and walked in the door to have a look.The two bunkers were likely to be identical in structure, each floor being the same, so since she knew which floor contained what, she didn't need to plan in advance what to search for.On the upper floors, although she is not familiar with many floors, as far as she has seen so far, the layout of most of the floors is exactly the same as that of the lower floors.The thirteenth floor is the one she is most familiar with.Everything on this floor was familiar to her since she was a child, and the memory was so deep, it seemed to have been imprinted deep in her heart.That's something about her that will never fade away.Even if one day her body is corroded by the poisonous acid in the wind, or buried in the soil of the cultivated area and turned into nutrients, her heart will never rot and disappear.The moment she pushed open the door, she suddenly felt as if she was not in another abandoned bunker, but walked into the home of the past.Pushing open that door is like walking into her childhood.

It was dark inside, the emergency lights weren't on, and, besides, the smell was different.The air here is relatively stuffy, and there is a rancid smell. Juliet yelled down the corridor. "Hey?" She heard her own voice echoing across the empty walls, and the echo sounded far away, faint, and high-pitched.She seemed to see her nine-year-old self running up and down the corridor, calling her now from a distant time.She seemed to see her mother chasing the little girl, trying to catch her and tell her not to run around.However, the imaginary scene soon disappeared, and the echo disappeared, leaving her standing alone at the door. After a while, her eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness inside, and she vaguely saw a service counter at the end of the hall.The light reflected off the glass on the counter, where it was exactly as she remembered it.The layout here is the same as the nursery area where her father works.She was born and raised there many years ago.It was really hard for her to imagine that this was another bunker, another childcare area, and it was hard to imagine that someone else lived here.Those children were born here, grew up here, played here, and across a hill, in another bunker, at the same time, on the same floor, she was born, grew up, played like them before play.They ran and frolicked on the same floor, playing hide-and-seek, playing various games of their own invention, but completely unaware of each other's existence.Perhaps it was because she was standing at the gate of the childcare area at the moment that brought back so many memories, but she just couldn't help but think that so many people lived here.Here are the people who were born, grew up, fell in love, and one day buried their loved ones with their own hands. And those people are all outside now.She had just stepped over their corpses, kicked their bones and ashes, into the place where they had escaped from long ago.Juliet couldn't help but wonder, how long ago was that, how long has this bunker been abandoned?What happened?There are still lights in the stairwell, which means that the storage room still has power.At this moment, she suddenly needs to find a piece of paper to calculate how long they have been dead, and it is not only because of curiosity, but also because it is closely related to her: Is there any way for her to survive here? She took a last look inside, and suddenly felt a little regretful that she didn't see her father for the last time when she passed the childcare area.Then, Juliet closed the door, leaving her past memories and regrets in that dark world, and began to think about her situation.She is probably the only one left in this bunker.Thinking of this, the excitement of surviving suddenly disappeared without a trace.At this moment, what occupied her mind was the absolute isolation and the daunting challenge of survival.Her stomach groaned a few times, which further proved that the most urgent problem in front of her was how to survive.She still seemed to smell the rancid stench of the soup, and there was still stomach acid in her mouth that she had just nauseated and vomited.She needs water.She needs clothes.This most fundamental need for survival has become the most urgent problem to be solved, forcing her to temporarily stop thinking about the current isolated situation, and forcing her to quickly put past regrets behind her. If the structures of the two bunkers are the same, then the 30th floor should be the hydroponic area on the first floor, and the ground floor of the hydroponic area should be the soil farming area.There are two layers of soil cultivation areas on the upper floors, and this layer is relatively large.At this moment, Juliet felt a cold wind blowing up the stairwell and shivered.Apparently, the stairwell has air circulation, which means it gets colder the further you go down.But she decided to keep going down—the farther down, the better.On the next floor, she opened the door again to look inside.It was too dark inside to even see the entrance to the foyer hallway, but it looked like an office or something.She tried hard to remember what the fourteenth floor of the bunker she lived in was, but she couldn't remember.Still, is this any surprise?In the bunker she lived in, the upper floors were unfamiliar to her, and she had no idea which floor was for what, so in the other bunker, she was also completely confused. So she pushed the fourteenth-floor door all the way open, and stuck the knife in the gridded floor, the handle protruding just enough to catch the door panel and hold it open.This allowed the light from the stairwell to shine in, and she could use that dim light to search the outermost offices to see if there was anything she needed. She opened the doors of each office one by one, and found that there were no work clothes hanging behind the door panels.One of them had a conference table, as if someone had planned to hold a meeting there.There is a water bottle on the table, but unfortunately, the water has evaporated, but the purple tablecloth on the table should be able to keep warm, at least it is better than being naked.Juliet removed the cups, plates, and water bottles from the table, and then took the tablecloth and draped it over her shoulders, but she found that if she moved a little, the tablecloth would slip off.She grabbed the corners of the tablecloth and tried to tie a knot, but after a long time she couldn't tie it well, so she went out on the terrace, where it was brighter and she could see better.She removed the tablecloth from her shoulders, and picked up the knife.As soon as the knife was drawn out, the door began to "creak" shut again.She cut a long slit in the center of the tablecloth with the knife, then took the tablecloth and slipped it over her head, so that the front and back sides of the tablecloth hung down to her feet.So she spent a few more minutes cutting off the too long ends of the tablecloth.Two long strips of cloth were cut, one was tied around the waist as a belt, and the other was wrapped around the head.This keeps you warmer. In this way, she figured out a way to solve a problem, to accomplish a thing, and that feeling was wonderful.Now, she has tools in her hands, and she can even use them as weapons when necessary.And, she already has clothes.There is a long list of problems to overcome in order to survive, and now, the problems have been reduced.She continued to walk down, and the more she walked, the colder the soles of her feet became.She needs a pair of shoes very much, and, besides, she is very thirsty and wants to drink water.She knew very well what to do next. When she reached the fifteenth floor, she suddenly thought about what she needed, but at this time, her legs were already weak, and she almost fell to her knees on the ground.She hastened to grab the handrail.She suddenly understood that she was exhausted.She's made it this far purely because of adrenaline, and now, the adrenaline has run out.She bent down on the platform, put her hands on her knees, and took a few deep breaths.How far has she come?How far does she have to go?She raised the knife, looked at her own reflection on the blade, and found that her face was terribly pale.So she decided to take a break before continuing on.Get some rest now, because it's warm enough here not to shiver. She had an urge to find a bed inside, but after thinking about it, she decided to forget it.It's pitch black inside, and I can't see my fingers. I'm afraid it's very uncomfortable.So she lay down, curled up on the grid floor, her head on her arms, and pulled the tablecloth tight around her body.She was still thinking about what to do next, but she was so tired that her mind was no longer clear.At the moment when she was about to fall asleep, a trace of fear suddenly appeared in her, and she felt that she shouldn't be so tired.Fall asleep, will not wake up again?Maybe I was destined to be like the people in this bunker, lying on the ground, motionless from now on, turning into a cold corpse, gradually decomposing——