The Wait- Part One

Another day, at least I think it was day, has passed by. Stuck inside with no way of knowing the light from the darkness. Lissa looks across the bunker and decides she needs to get up and find something that can keep her thoughts busy. She passes her mother and the other ladies while they are preparing dinner in the make shift kitchen. Funny how little gender roles change even when society as we used to know it, is gone. She catches a whiff of what she knows will be beans, rice and canned peaches. Again.. What she wouldn't give for a plate of fried chicken, with mashed potatoes, corn and bread with real butter... Focus, she tells herself. There is no point in getting her stomach all excited for things it will not be able to enjoy for a long time, if ever again. They are lucky to have what they do.
She continues down to the hub and turns left up to what they are now calling the entertainment section. She has to stifle a laugh. Boxes of puzzles, word searches that are mostly finished, coloring books and crayons whose points have been used up leaving rounded stubs, and boxes of old family games is hardly what she would consider entertainment, but then there were the books. Stacks and stacks of them. She had never been what you would call an avid reader before. She was a normal teenaged girl. Her time was spent with her friends, chatting on her laptop, facebook, twitter, and snapchat... Oh how she missed those things.. Stop it, she scolds herself again. The time here goes by slowly enough without her constant reminders to herself of what she's missing.
She stands in front of towers of books and looks for one to jump out at her. She closes her eyes and breathes in the smell. Old and musty. Its a smell she would have never enjoyed before, these days however, she has come to find her brain jumps to attention when the odor hits her nose. What type of adventure does she want to partake in today? Classics? Fantasy? She avoids the horror section. It smaller compared to the rest, I'm sure that was on purpose. When they started to prepare and stock this place, they rightly assumed there would be enough horror to go around. She shudders and is glad at their forethought. Lissa runs her hands along the spines of the books in the largest stack. Count to ten, she tells herself, then stop. When she does, she pulls out a plain looking book. Dark green with maroon edges. Strange that there is no title on the front, or on the spine for that matter. She cradles the book in her arm and heads back out to her room.
The layout of her new home seemed rather odd to Lissa when her family first arrived. She thinks of it as a wagon wheel. A hub in the middle serves as what we would call the dining room, except for the fact that the hub is much larger. There is a huge dining table. Long and rectangular. With enough room to easily seat twenty.
There are six separate bunkers that everyone can use and two that only the leaders have access to. I couldn't even begin to tell you what they do there. One bunker is used for storage. Food, medicine,and basic need storage. We were lucky enough to have a woman here who was a nurse in her old life. Her name is Jan. She is friendly enough and from what we have seen, is competent. She is also the only person allowed to use the medical supplies. If we are in need of anything, and if Jan thinks it necessary, she fills out the request and as long as its approved by the leaders, we get it. I guess in order to keep everyone healthy, its important to have a system. It isn't like we can just run to the nearest pharmacy and get more.
The leaders, not sure what to think about them. They aren't very talkative and outside of knowing they are "the leaders", Lissa doesn't know much about them or how they got their titles. Their names are Thomas and Stella. We used to think Jan was one of them when we first arrived, but quickly realized if she were, she wouldn't need their approval every time someone in the group needed a Tylenol or a band aid. We can see the frustration on Jan's face every time she submits one of those forms.
Thomas and Stella use one whole bunker for themselves. At times you can hear them having discussions and although we try, we cannot hear enough to piece together anything coherent. Their bunker is named Bunker One. Of course it is. None of the other bunkers officially have a name, so we all just followed suite and numbered them all. Two is the food and medicine storage, three is the Ruizs' Bunker, four is Lissa and her parents, five is the entertainment section, six is the Johnson family, seven is the Anderson family, and eight, well, eight is the bunker with the one and only exit.
Lissa throws herself on her bunk and opens the green book. She loves to analyze every detail, no matter how small, about a book before she starts to read it. Sometimes coming across a dedication from the author or a personal note from the person who bought it to whomever received it as a gift. Those were her favorites. She tried to imagine what it was about the book or the person themselves that could compel someone to buy it for them. Like the buyer wanted to make sure the two met. The book and the reader. Something connected the two together, in the buyers mind, anyways. Lissa always made it her mission, when she came across those books, to figure it out and solve the mystery. Make the connection herself as to what kind of person the receiver was and how they connected to the book. She would never know for sure, of course, but it was a fun game to play. She turned the page and although this wasn't one of those books, there was a message scrawled on the blank page. In black ink with lettering that seemed to flow even though it wasn't moving it said, "When the eyes are closed, the mind is open." Lissa allowed the words to sink in for a moment, trying to decide what the writer intended them to mean. She turned the page and was shocked to discover it was empty, no words. Nothing. She flipped through the pages and found them all that way. Empty. She felt the lump of disappointment in her stomach. Why? Why would someone go through all the trouble of binding together a bunch of blank pages to look like a book. Was it meant to be a joke? Lissa flung the book on her floor in frustration. Slumping on her bed, she was beyond irritated. Now what?