The new world.

“Albert is finally asleep. It took him a while; he’s very excited about tomorrow. Poor thing, he thinks some of his friends might still be alive. That’s going to be hard for him.”

“Cynthia…I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh?”

“I…don’t think we should leave tomorrow.”

“The levels have been down for weeks now, John. Now we’ve waited long enough, I’m tired of being cautious.”

“I don’t think we should leave at all.”

“…I see. Well you always were a cowardly little man.”

“I was going through storage today Cynthia. There’s clothes back there for a little girl. They had a kid for God’s sake.”

“So that’s what this is about. We had a kid too, and we did what we had to do for him. You saw the state of that house above us. Those people were probably on welfare. If it’s them or my Albert I’m not going to lose any sleep about it.”

(laughter) “Do you hear yourself? You’re explaining why it was ok for us to kill a mother, and leave a little girl somewhere up there. For two years I’ve been trapped down here thinking about it. We’re evil! We have been our whole lives, looking down of people, clawing our way up. We were just able to hide it because we were safe. Then they started dropping bombs and…well now we know how ugly we are.”

“Oh you poor thing. Do you feel better now? – getting that off your chest. So you feel a little guilty and now you’re going to do the right thing and let your wife and son walk out of here alone. Because you can stay if want, but don’t think for a minute we are. Me and Albert are leaving this cement hell-hole first thing tomorrow.”

“I changed the codes.”

“… You did what?”

“At random. Even I don’t know them now.”

“…You…you bastard. How could you do that? What gives you the right to make that decision FOR US!”

“They're starting over out there Cynthia. I think about it at night….I mean it’s going to be bad in places sure. But, there’s going to be a lot of good people climbing out of these things. And the world is all reset for them. They can start from scratch, build whatever they want. I know it will be hard for Albert living down here…and for you. But one day he’ll understand. We just can’t get in the way of what’s happening up there. We’re the old world, we don’t deserve a new one.”

The end.