Arlan held his broken arm as he looked at the 20 bags arranged side by side in a single row.
The soldiers had collected the corpses quickly stowing them in the bags to keep them out of sight of everyone in the common area.
But only a few were mourning the dead, most were sitting with a lost look on their faces.
After two weeks cooped up in the bunker watching the remaining ones slowly die off, their morale basically couldn't have been any lower.
Laurel was very busy while Tristan was standing guard in place of the group of soldiers that had left earlier that morning.
The whole bunker was very quiet, quieter than usual. In contrast, Arlan while looking at the bags was thinking something completely different.
'My arm is much better than yesterday'
Since there were few or almost no doctors in the bunker, all the medical attention Arlan received was as soon as he was brought into the bunker and was unconscious. Because of this, he knew his condition better than anyone else.
Noticing that the pain had decreased too much compared to before, Arlan knew that his wounds were healing at a faster rate than normal.
Leaving the place behind, Arlan made his way to a specific room he had never entered before but knew existed.
When he arrived in front of the metal door, two soldiers were lazily watching that no one unknown entered. So Arlan respectfully asked them to let him in and since the soldiers knew he was someone important, they didn't put up much of a problem and let him in.
The first thing Arlan did upon entering was to hold his nose at the strange and foul smell that permeated the room.
'What could smell so horrible, did someone die in here?'
The room was completely disorganized, piles of papers made it difficult to walk around and it seemed that trash cans were a non-existent concept in this room because of the amount of garbage lying everywhere.
And finally, on the other side of the room, Dr. Curtiss was studying a can of food with 10 others beside him for further testing.
The man heard that someone had entered but instead of turning and greeting him, he simply spoke without stopping what he was doing.
"Just leave what you brought and go"
Arlan who was still holding his nose stood still not knowing what to say for a few moments.
"Dr. Curtiss, it's me, Arlan."
Still not turning around, Dr. Curtiss went about his business without giving it much thought.
"The Fisher boy, what do you need?"
Arlan was starting to get annoyed at being identified just for being a Fisher, but he kept it to himself.
"Doctor, I'd like to help you"
Dr. Curtiss snorted in derision and didn't bother to stop.
"There's nothing you can help me with boy"
Arlan, however, smiled impishly.
"You need someone to taste the food to study it, don't you?"
Dr. Curtiss paused and for the first time since Arlan entered the room paid attention to his words.
The man turned and studied Arlan with his gaze in silence.
The smile on Arlan's face annoyed him slightly but being overcome by his interest in studying what would happen to Arlan after ingesting the affected food, the doctor kept his complaints to himself and pointed to a bed before turning his attention back to the cans.
"Sit there and wait"
Arlan heeded and climbed onto the gurney awaiting the doctor's next instructions.
The man took a closed can and opened it before handing it to Arlan along with a spoon.
"Eat"
Arlan received the can and spoon and looked at the canned food before he stuck his spoon in scooping out some food, then lifted it up and held it close to his mouth.
Arlan put the spoon in his mouth and tasted the food before swallowing it. For a few seconds nothing happened until he suddenly began to feel a slight burning in his abdomen.
Seeing Arlan's slight frown, Dr. Curtiss walked over to him and grabbed his arm to feel his pressure.
"What do you feel?"
The burning in his belly began to increase and even became a little painful.
"I feel a burning in my abdom--"
Arlan's eyes suddenly closed, and he fell to the bed unconscious. Meanwhile Dr. Curtiss began to study Arlan without much concern for his safety.
***
Feeling some discomfort from the light, Arlan squeezed his eyelids in an attempt to block it out. After a few seconds of comfort, he felt as if someone was coddling his head.
Arlan felt at peace, as if he was protected, as if all his problems had disappeared.
Arlan tried to move his body to get more comfortable only to realize that he could not move at all, at that moment he opened his eyes only to find himself floating in a dark space.
Remembering all that time spent in the darkness, Arlan began to tremble. It was a trauma he kept deep in his heart.
But from one moment to the next, the black space was illuminated and Arlan could see a view worthy of a great painting.
A great green plain, where the wind was lightly blowing the grass that stretched for hundreds of thousands of miles as far as the eye could not see.
Arlan felt like he was watching a movie through someone else's eyes. He could feel the warmth of the wind on his body and the warmth transmitted by the hand that continued to pamper his head.
"Did you wake up?"
Arlan heard a soft voice, surely the most beautiful voice he had ever heard in his life and the body from where he was looking through moved his head in the direction of the voice.
There, a beautiful woman with the white hair falling down her back like a waterfall and wearing a light silk dress that stretched to her knees was looking at him with a warm smile.
Arlan had never met this woman before, but for some reason he felt terribly sad.
The woman once again pampered his head soothing his altered feelings.
"It's all right...everything will be all right"
Arlan didn't notice any change in the woman's calm expression, nor did he manage to see the small tears that fell from her eyes, he couldn't see them because of the bandage that covered the upper part of her face.