When the Horde Breached My Sanctuary

When the Horde Breached My Sanctuary

Rain lashed against the bunker's reinforced windows like gravel thrown by angry gods. My fingers trembled as I scanned the thermal monitors - those pulsating red blobs weren't stray wildlife. They moved with terrifying coordination, flanking my hydroponic gardens. The underground base's ventilation system suddenly smelled of damp earth and decay, a sensory punch that made my stomach lurch. This wasn't supposed to happen. Not after three weeks of meticulously rerouting power conduits and reinforcing bulkheads.

I'd stumbled upon this derelict missile silo during a desperate scavenge run, its rusted blast doors half-buried under blackberry thickets. What began as temporary shelter became an obsession - mapping subterranean tunnels by generator light, discovering eerie pre-collapse lab notes about failed biocontainment. Tonight, they'd found me. The motion sensors screamed as pathfinding algorithms drove the infected toward structural weak points with horrifying precision. Not mindless shufflers but predators exploiting my imperfect welding on Section C's airlock.

Panic seized me when the first ceiling panel buckled. Muddy water cascaded through the breach, short-circuiting my oxygen recyclers. I watched in numb horror as fungal growths spread across my precious food vats, luminous spores dancing in emergency strobes. All those hours nurturing mutant potatoes - gone in acidic gurgles. The survival RPG demanded brutal sacrifices: torch the contaminated wing or risk suffocation. Flames reflected in my cracked visor as I incinerated weeks of progress, throat raw from screaming.

Salvation came from forgotten mechanics. Buried in the silo's mainframe were automated drone protocols originally designed for nuclear maintenance. With power at 7%, I jury-rigged construction bots into kamikaze defenders, their plasma cutters carving through rotting flesh like hot knives. Their sacrifice bought me ninety-three precious seconds to seal the breach with quick-setting polymer foam. The victory tasted like battery acid and adrenaline.