“What happened?” asked the congressman’s wife.

“Something’s wrong with the monitor panel. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. They’ll have it fixed soon,” he soothed.

“Senator?”, the technician called, “There’s no air coming in from any of the shafts except No. 9.”

“What’s going on?” demanded the President.

“Sir, it looks like we have a real problem. Here’s what we know. Most of the air intakes have been blocked by something outside – maybe something’s fallen on them. And the water is down to a trickle.” The Greenbrier shelter staff had prepared for any such inevitability, had contingency plans for everything, had in fact, books and plans for any conceivable problem, but one.

Bobby.

Bobby was hard at work outside. Not the Communists, Trotskyites, neo-anythings, but Bobby, all by himself.

Bobby had been a low level worker only marginally involved in the subterfuge Congress had allowed to make sure that they would have a shelter to go to in the event of a missile exchange, and Bobby had thought it unfair that Congress, who got us into this mess, should live and he should die.

Bobby was out there sealing off the air intakes, had found the well bore with monitoring instruments for the water intake and poured a couple of bags of concrete down the hole, knew where the fiber and microwave communications links were and cut them.

“It’s like this,” the staff continued, “There’s not enough air coming in to keep the generators going. We can’t have lights and power like this much longer – there’s not enough air.”

The staff did the best they could. All the generators were shut down but one, no power consumption of any kind was allowed but for a single lamp in some rooms. All one thousand two hundred and fifty government leaders and two hundred and fifty shelter staff were reduced to waiting in the gloom, activity came to a halt, nothing to do but wait.

Wait for what? The prospects weren’t good. No water to speak of, little air, no heat, no ventilation, no communication with the outside.

Life in the shelter had become Hell, worse that anything imaginable. The air was fetid, and people were beginning to die. There was no way to dispose of waste, nothing to do with dead people but pile the bodies up in the furthest reach of the furthest passage. Ventilation fans didn’t work, and the only air coming in was from shaft No. 9, and that went directly into a small pantry area that had been used for freeze-dried food storage, useless now because there was no water for re-hydration. There was no way to cook, anyway.

The frozen food thawed and went bad, the canned goods consumed. The original one thousand five hundred souls rapidly declined to about five hundred, the strongest and youngest and most resilient.

Civilization broke down.

It was every man for himself. A gang of the strongest men formed, and systematically began killing off all the other men to reduce the consumption of air that still got in, and the slight trickle of water.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” had been a constant wish, but earlier it had been thought too risky to try to open the doors. Later, when things had become really bad, and people began to die, did they decide death inside was certain, they would take their chances outside.

The doors to the outside wouldn’t open. Bobby had taken care of that, and the secret escape tunnel was caved in, too. Bobby, again.

Wherever men and women congregate, babies are sure to follow, and even in this desperate affair, pregnant women delivered on schedule, and there were twenty four children conceived and born in the shelter.

The strongest survived, the weakest fell away. The survivors eyed one another. Nothing to eat, no way to cook. All the food was gone, and the decision was made.

“OK, let’s eat the babies.”

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