BUNKER 56

Joint NBI-AFP Classified Report on Bunker 56

Appendix A: Journal Entries of Jonver Keith Meneses (Civilian)

7AM, Day 22 since Day-Zero

It used to be cold this time of day here, the kind of cold that can kill an erection and cause the balls to snuggle close and the bladder to shrink. It's the kind of cold that invites you to stay in bed longer with your imaginary girlfriend, crumpled like paper under the weight of two comforters; the kind of cold that wakes you up at the same time, with urgency, because your dick's awake and it needs to fuckin' pee.

I miss those cold early mornings. These days, 7AM is warm and sweaty like furtive sex in a tiny room with a broken fan. These days, gone are the cool, pine-scented wind, and sex, and many other things too painful to remember. Thank God this solar-powered computer survived the blast. Must have helped that it was in a bunker.

I wish my entire family made it to this bunker a day early. As things stand, I'm the only survivor of my family. Soldiers found me in our house, likely near-death.

We lived some distance away from the nuclear explosion – far enough away to watch the explosion and not die on Day-Zero, but not far enough to be safe from the radiation and the firestorms that persisted for weeks. It wasn't enough that Pa forced us all indoors to survive on canned goods and everything that Ma managed to buy from her panic-buying spree. We had two Orocan drums filled with water; the plan was to use it solely for drinking, so no dishwashing, no flushing the toilet, and no shower for our family of five: Pa, Ma, Kuya Nick who was bedridden and recuperating from liver surgery, me (who was asthmatic and couldn't qualify to the military), and our brown-and-white Aspin, Erap. The explosion cut the water supply; at first we all thought it was because the pipes broke from the water stations, but after suffering second-degree burns on almost a third of my body, including most of my head, I think the explosion must have vaporized all surface water.

Have you seen plastic melting inside a microwave oven? Something like that happened to my family. There was no fire anywhere but the last thing I remember seeing before radiation burned the top layer of my eye was my fifty-six-year-old father standing not a meter outside our front door, melting quickly like a plastic bottle. I don't even remember him screaming; I think the heat sucked the air from his lungs.

I can't see a fucking thing I'm writing now that I'm blind as a bat, but God Bless my IT-2 Instructor (who's likely dead already) because now, I can touch-type like a boss – kinda like Beethoven. Beethoven was able to compose music even when he was deaf as fuck, and he started going deaf early, in his 20s – again, just like me: the Blast came the day I turned 24. So yeah, I can touch-type this keyboard like Beethoven can see sound, and we're on the same path of genius that started at age 24.

Except unlike him, I'm in a warm underground military bunker with soldiers for company. Genius can't survive in a place like this, especially if the genius is a burn-unit patient. Unless, of course, they turn me into the posterchild of the dangers of nuclear war: hairless, one ear folded close to the scalp while the other is just a hole, eyes like beads with no lids, nose reduced to two small holes, and a lipless mouth. Or at least that's what I think I look like. I've asked one sergeant before to describe me. I can talk after all, though it hurts my throat to even say one sentence, and tinnitus keeps me from hearing well. The fucker brought me something to hold in my hands and then patted my shoulder to console me. If I wasn't blind, I'd sucker-punch the stupid fucker; he knows I'm blind and he gave me a fucking mirror!