"Where do we start?" I asked my companions in misfortune, who stood behind me, frightened and bewildered.

  "In my opinion, we should start with the power station," I said myself. "We need to try to get the lights on; I can't fight much with just this spotlight."

  "We need to help those who are still dying out there in the corridors first!" Sarah objected; her voice, though firm, held fear.

  "No," I interrupted, trying to speak firmly. The auxiliary services and technical areas sector had too many nooks, dark corners, unchecked branches. An encounter with spiders there was guaranteed, and we were too few to both rescue survivors and fight simultaneously. "First, we check and assess the main danger. Without light, we'll all perish."

  Ignoring further objections, I directed the spotlight beam into the narrow gap of the partly opened gates separating us from the technical sector. A wide door framed by massive steel beams led into semi-darkness. Behind it should have been the battery substation, water treatment facilities, the communications hub with its server halls, and further on—technical and storage areas, including the weapons arsenal.

  We moved forward, creeping, pressing our backs against the cold concrete walls. We passed sealed warehouses, on whose matte doors faded inscriptions were still legible: "Vegetables. Canned," "Freeze-Dried Fruit." We peeked into several empty, dusty service personnel rooms—not a soul, no sound except our own heavy breathing. Deciding there were no survivors here, nor spiders that could attack us from behind, we returned to the atrium to check the most dangerous place—the reactor compartment.

  Before the entrance, a large, unlit sign without power read: "REACTOR COMPARTMENT. SPENT FUEL STORAGE. ACCESS FOR PERSONNEL CATEGORY 1 ONLY." Beyond it, a long, dimly lit corridor led deep into the mountain, under the very bottom of the shelter. The walls, floor, and ceiling were covered with the same layered, gray blanket of webbing that swayed from our steps as if alive. Finally, at the corridor's end, the massive, round blast doors of the reactor compartment appeared. But before entering, as if obeying an inner instinct, I instinctively turned to check our rear.

  And froze.

  Running the entire corridor's length, to our left, gaped another opening. The heavy lead doors of the nuclear waste storage, which should have been sealed shut for centuries, were wide open. And from that black maw, from beneath layers of webbing, thousands of tiny, dimly light-reflecting points stared at us. They didn't move, just watched—with a greedy, unblinking gaze. Only the bright, cutting beam of the spotlight on my chest, shining directly into this mass, kept them at a distance, blinding and causing discomfort.

  The first impulse was to fire a long burst, mow down as much of this filth as possible. But the spotlight hung on my chest, and its body hindered proper aiming. To shoot, I'd either have to remove it or abruptly turn the beam aside, plunging into pitch darkness—and then these creatures would attack immediately.

  "Go ahead, fire a few shots over there," I said quietly, without taking my eyes off the glowing points, gesturing with my chin toward the storage.

  A deafening, thundering roar of gunfire erupted, amplified many times over by the echo in the narrow corridor. My companions, feeling the same blind disgust and terror as I, poured out their fear, emptying almost entire magazines. I saw muzzle flashes piercing the darkness, some of the points instantly extinguishing. Sarah, firing almost instinctively, hit the densest cluster.

  Before the echo of gunfire faded, something unimaginable began in the storage. Catching the scent of blood and death, the spiders went berserk. A wild feast began. They pounced on killed and wounded kin, tearing them to pieces. To secure their prey, some individuals tried to crawl into the darkest corners, but were immediately attacked by those who got nothing. A tangle of dead and living, fighting and devouring, began slowly but inexorably spreading from the storage room, crawling into the corridor and moving toward us. The sight was so repulsive and unnatural that Sarah, gripping her rifle, covered her eyes with her free hand.

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  "Horrible!"

  "Let's go!" I commanded, already retreating toward the reactor door. "Quick!"

  We rushed into the power station entrance. While Howard and I pushed the heavy steel door with all our might, Sarah stood in the doorway, covering our retreat, and methodically, almost without pause, emptied magazine after magazine into the approaching wave of chitin and clicking mandibles. The roar of gunfire merged with the screech of the door on its tracks. The last thing I saw before the doors slammed shut with a dull thud was a sea of small, fighting shadows flooded with the glare of her shots.

  The silence after the door closed was deafening. We stood leaning against the cold metal, listening to the muffled but furious din from outside—the sound of the continuing cannibalistic orgy.

  The beam of my spotlight, now directed inside, snatched a huge room from the darkness. In the center, on a massive foundation, stood a compact modular reactor in a protective casing—a cylinder of matte metal, entangled with pipes and cables. Nearby were three large steam turbine generators, powered by steam from the reactor, instantly turning water into steam. Along the walls stretched control panels, and one wall was a solid control console with rows of screens, buttons, toggles, and blinking—but currently dark, inactive—indicators.

  Why the station wasn't working, we had no idea. Much later, we learned the truth. In peacetime, to conserve expensive nuclear fuel, the shelter was powered by a separate surface transformer substation rated at 350 kilowatts. At the moment of the catastrophe, it was destroyed instantly. And into the shelter, not designed for a shockwave of such force, water from aboveground sources began seeping through ventilation shafts and cracks. The main computer managing life-support systems, receiving a signal of external power loss, was supposed to start the underground station. But its algorithms, programmed for safety at any cost, detected the threat of flooding the machine hall and completely blocked reactor startup to avoid a catastrophe.

  The duty power engineers, as it turned out, were not at their posts at that moment but in the international communications hub room, playing miniature golf.

  Emergency power batteries couldn't sustain autonomous operation for long, and within a few days, the shelter plunged into absolute darkness. All hermetic doors of technical areas, whose locks were held by active electronics, emergency-unlocked when power failed—as designed for repair crews to access possible damage.

  This darkness and open doors were exploited by the spider colony, which had mutated for years in the abandoned, unvisited nuclear waste storage. They broke out and massacred personnel in the pitch-dark corridors, who, disoriented and unaware of the internal threat, became easy prey.

  We learned about this much later. Right now, at this moment, we were concerned with something else—there were no spiders inside the power station itself.

  For a long time, confusedly, we studied the inscriptions on the consoles until Howard pointed a finger at a large, glass-covered button labeled: "Main Circuit Startup."

  "I think that's it," he said uncertainly.

  I nodded. He removed the cover and pressed.

  A quiet, rising hum came from deep within the reactor. Relays clicked, signal lamps blinked. Screens on the consoles glowed dimly blue, displaying diagnostic lines. The modular reactor shuddered with a deep, powerful vibrational thud and came to life. We held our breath, watching as emergency messages on the main board extinguished one by one, and a green line lit up:

  "Reactor at nominal power. Ready for load."

  "Now we need to feed steam to the generators," I said.

  We found three large red buttons under glass covers on the control panel. With labels: "GENERATOR-1," "GENERATOR-2," "GENERATOR-3." I removed the covers sequentially and pressed them.

  Of the three massive units along the wall, only one—the far left—started. It roared, then settled into a steady, powerful rumble. Needles on instrument panels jumped, screens lit up.

  But the lights didn't come on.

  "The distribution board," Sarah realized. "Automation might have shut off the voltage lines."

  We found a massive metal cabinet with rows of switches. Most were in the "Off" position. We began turning them on one by one, starting with the largest. The first did nothing, the second the same. Finally, we turned on the third, and suddenly, through the thick armored glass of the viewing window in the corridor door, a dim but undeniable beam of electric light broke through.

  "Perhaps that's enough for now," I exhaled with relief, feeling tension fall from my shoulders.

  I approached the door, cautiously slid the heavy bolt, and opened it a centimeter. In the corridor, now lit by sparse but working emergency lighting fixtures, it was empty. Only on the concrete floor far away, right at the entrance to the waste storage, were dark, shapeless spots and a slowly spreading puddle visible.

  "Well, and now," I said, turning to the others, "let's go save those who might still be alive."