Revalation

8. Room Six

"Everyone here has been expecting you. We had a gathering last night in this main hall to tell all those who reside here about your existance." Noah said. Those who were sitting in the middle of the hall were now standing and staring at Mort and I.

"They found it hard to believe you guys actually did exist. We will do introductions later on, but first, we must do a tour of this place and a quick rundown of how we work to survive." Joel said, staring straight at me, then motioning us to follow him. We walked past the people standing in the middle and through one of the archways. My spine tickled as I felt their eyes still on us. Actual people...

It was a short, wide hallway made of smoothed stone that opened up into another big room, roughly the size and shape of the previous one. There were fifteen wooden picnic tables scattered all over the room, and a small area in the far corner that appeared to be a kitchen. A few people were sitting together on one of the tables, chatting quietly. Another few were working in the kitchen, talking loudly to each other about not burning the bread, stir the soup, add salt, etcetera. They worked so quickly and with such ease that it was almost mesmerizing to watch.

"This is the dining hall, or the cafeteria as most of us call it, where we all eat and catch up on breaks. The chefs work the longest shifts out of all of us, so it may seem like they want to kill someone at times. Be nice to them and you'll love it here." Noah said from behind us. Everyone in the hall, including the chefs, had become aware of our presence and stopped what they were doing to looked at us. It was making me extremely uncomfortable now.

"We haven't seen any other survivors for five years, and here you are, so there will be a bit of staring" Joel whispered to us.

There were no other arches in this hall, so we went back to the main hall and through another hallway. This one was long and thin.

"If you ever need to, you know, do your buisness, it's down this hallway, as well as the showers." Joel explained, a tinge of red creeping into his cheeks. The hallway opened up to a room much smaller than the previous two, with eight stalls on both sides, -one side was the toilets and the other was for showers- and four sinks at the back of the room with cheap square mirrors hanging above them. It was an obvious bathroom.

"Sorry to say this, but it's for both genders." Joel continued, Noah snickered behind us. I didn't mind the idea, obviously it might get a bit awkward sometimes, but at least they had a fully functional bathroom.

We didn't stay long in that room. Once we saw it, we were out and into another hallway. It was about the same size as the first one, only leading the largest room yet.

It was huge. There were sturdy wooden fences aligned neatly over half the room, forming cages that held different types of farm animals. The other half of the room was dedicated to vegetation and wheat. The smell hit me, it was a mixture of hay, animals, and freshness. Like a farm. Like our house before this all started. I looked up to see that a massive hole had been dug out from the center of the ceiling, letting in enough sunlight to cover the whole room. There were no powered lights in this area, unlike the previous rooms. I could see that the sky was turning a shade of purple, darkening the rest of the room, then I realised something.

"Won't they get in?" I asked the two boys, not letting my eyes off the sky. My voice was only just more than a whisper.

"Don't worry. There's a fifteen-foot high protective barrier around the roof. No brute has ever gone over it." Noah said.

"'Brute'?"

Noah shrugged, and smiled at me. "A little nickname we give them, seeing as no one actually knows what they are."