The darkness in the shelter was a different entity from the darkness of a power cut. It was a solid, physical presence, an absolute blackness that pressed in from all sides, thick and suffocating. Adekunle could feel it on his skin, a pressure that was more than the absence of light. The silence, too, was a physical weight. After a lifetime spent immersed in the constant, chaotic symphony of Lagos, the utter void of sound was a violence all its own. His ears rang, straining to find a familiar frequency, but there was nothing. No generators, no distant traffic, no shouts, no life. The world had been muted.
He stood on the narrow landing at the bottom of the stairs, clutching the heavy toolbox to his chest, its metallic coldness a small, real thing in the overwhelming unreality. He could hear his own breathing, ragged and loud. He could hear his aunt's, a series of hitched, terrified sobs. And he could hear his uncle's, steady and controlled, the breathing of a man who had, in some strange and terrible way, finally come home.
"Stay here. Don't move." Ben's voice cut through the blackness, calm and certain. He was in command. This was his kingdom.
Adekunle heard his uncle's familiar, heavy footsteps moving away with unnerving confidence. There was a soft scraping sound, then the click of a metal latch. A moment later, a brilliant, clean white light flooded the small space, stark and unforgiving. Adekunle flinched, throwing a hand up to shield his eyes.
He was standing in a concrete box, no more than twenty feet long by fifteen feet wide. The walls were bare, grey concrete, cool and sweating with condensation. Along one wall were four simple bunk beds, their metal frames painted a drab olive green, each with a neatly folded blanket and a thin mattress. Along the opposite wall were floor-to-ceiling metal shelves, packed with a breathtaking degree of organization. Tins of corned beef and sardines were stacked in neat, gleaming rows. Sacks of rice and garri were sealed in heavy-duty plastic tubs. And there were containers upon containers of bottled water, dozens of them, stretching to the back of the room. A small chemical toilet stood in one corner, a hand-cranked radio on a small table next to it. Ben stood by a workbench at the far end, a new, heavy-duty battery connected to a string of bright, efficient LED lights. He had just brought his kingdom to life.
Funke let out a low moan, her eyes wide as she took in the reality of the shelter. This place, which she had always referred to with affectionate exasperation as "your husband's foolish bunker," was now their entire universe. She sank onto one of the lower bunks, her body trembling.
"What was that, Ben?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "What was happening out there? It was… it was like the Rapture. Like the scriptures say. The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised…" Her voice trailed off, her faith providing a framework for the horror, a story to contain the madness.
"We don't know what it was," Ben said, his tone firm, shutting down the speculation. He was a man who dealt in facts, in circuits and pressures, and there were no facts here. "All we know is that we are here. We are safe. And we will follow the rules."
The first rule was inventory. He pulled a laminated checklist from a clipboard on the wall and began a methodical accounting of their supplies, his voice a steady, calming drone in the sterile quiet. "Eighty tins, corned beef. Seventy-two tins, sardines. Four twenty-kilogram tubs of rice. Six of garri. One hundred and twelve five-litre containers of water." He was not just counting supplies; he was rebuilding the world, one item at a time. He was imposing order on chaos.
Adekunle found himself moving to help, his shock-numbed mind grateful for a simple, physical task. He took the heavy toolbox and placed it under a workbench, his hands finding a space for it as if they had done it a hundred times before. He looked at the shelves, at the neatly labeled first-aid kits, at the spare batteries and fuel canisters. This wasn't just a shelter. It was a time capsule. A self-contained world designed to outlast the end of the old one. His uncle's paranoia, which had once seemed like a peculiar character flaw, was now revealed to be a profound, life-saving wisdom.
As the first hours passed, a strange, surreal domesticity began to take root. Ben established the laws of their new kingdom. Water was strictly rationed. Food would be eaten cold to conserve fuel for the generator, which would only be run for one hour a day to power the ventilation system. The lights would remain on, a necessary bulwark against the psychological pressure of the darkness.
Funke, her initial shock giving way to a need for purpose, began to organize their small living space. She spread the blankets on the beds, arranged their few personal belongings. Her movements were slow, tinged with grief for the world she had lost, but they were deliberate. She was making a home in the tomb. In the midst of it all, she would stop and her lips would move in silent, constant prayer. She was in a dialogue with a God who had, it seemed, just ripped the world apart.
Adekunle felt adrift between his uncle's cold pragmatism and his aunt's fervent faith. His own mind, the philosopher's mind, could find no purchase. He sat on his bunk, his copy of The Republic feeling heavy and useless in his hands. What did Plato have to say about this? About people evaporating from their clothes? It was a reality so far outside the bounds of human experience that all the collected wisdom of history felt like the babbling of children. He kept seeing the woman on the street, there one second, gone the next. Not dead. Deleted. It was a metaphysical horror, and it left him feeling cold and hollow.
They spent the first day mostly in silence, each lost in their own private version of the apocalypse. The only sound was the faint, electric hum of the LED lights. On the second day, Ben decided it was time to consult the oracle. He sat at the small table and cranked the handle of the shortwave radio.
The static that filled the shelter was a harsh, grating sound, but after the profound silence, it felt like a connection, a proof that something still existed outside their concrete box. Ben worked the tuning dial with a surgeon's patience, sweeping across the bands. For an hour, he found nothing but static. No stations from London, no broadcasts from America, no local Lagos broadcasters. Nothing. The entire planet, it seemed, had gone silent.
Then, he found it. A voice.
It was faint at first, buried in the hiss, but it was unmistakably human. And it was calm. Terrifyingly calm. As Ben fine-tuned the dial, the voice grew stronger, clearer, cutting through the static with an almost preternatural clarity.
"...a divine event," the voice said. It was a man, his English accent smooth and educated, his tone resonant with a soothing, hypnotic authority. "Do not be afraid. What you have witnessed is not an ending, but a glorious, painful transition. The wheat has been separated from the chaff. The impurities have been taken, cleansed from the world to make way for a new dawn."
The three of them huddled around the small radio, their faces bathed in the dim light of the shelter. Funke's hands were clasped to her chest, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and vindicated faith. Ben's face was a mask of deep, critical skepticism. Adekunle felt a cold chill crawl up his spine. The man's voice was like honey, but Adekunle sensed the poison beneath it.
"The Age of Man is over," the voice continued, smooth and seductive. "The Age of Grace is upon us. But the world must first be purified. A final trial is coming. A final war against the heavens by the unholy. But you need not suffer. There is a path to safety. There is a way to declare your allegiance to the new world, to be sheltered from the fire to come. A mark of salvation. A promise of eternal life, not in some distant, unseen heaven, but here, in a glorious kingdom we will build together."
The voice went on, speaking of a new world order, of protection, of community. He never gave his name. He never said where he was broadcasting from. He just offered a simple, elegant solution to an incomprehensible terror.
They listened for an hour before Ben switched it off, plunging them back into silence.
"He is a liar," Ben said, his voice a low growl. "A charlatan. A wolf offering to protect the sheep while the shepherd is away."
"But he is right about the Rapture," Funke argued, her voice trembling. "The righteous have been taken to heaven, Ben. This is what the scriptures foretold. We… we have been left behind." The thought was a devastating blow to her faith, the terror of being found wanting on the day of judgment.
"I do not know what we are," Ben said, his voice softening as he put a hand on his wife's shoulder. "But we are together. That is all I know."
Adekunle said nothing. He was thinking about the voice, about the careful, deliberate words. It was a sales pitch. A recruitment drive. And he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that countless people, terrified and desperate on the surface, would be listening. They would believe. They would do anything that calm, reassuring voice told them to do.
In the middle of the third night, a new sound began.
It was a low, deep tremor that vibrated through the concrete floor of the shelter. It was not an earthquake. It was a rhythmic, industrial pulse. A distant, heavy thudding that seemed to come from the ground itself. It would last for an hour, then stop, only to start again later. It was the sound of something massive being built. Or dug.
Adekunle lay on his bunk, listening to the rhythmic tremors from the world above, listening to the faint sound of his aunt praying, her faith now a desperate, questioning thing. He thought of the calm voice on the radio, and the terrifying, industrial pulse from the darkness of the surface, and he knew they were connected.
They had escaped the chaos. But as he lay there, fifteen feet beneath the ground, he realized they hadn't found a sanctuary. They had only found a waiting room. And something terrible, something organized and powerful, was preparing the stage for the next, and final, act.