Post Apocalyptic Diaries: The Lab

(This is an ongoing series — See my reading list for earlier episodes?)

How do. I’m still not dead.

So it’s just me and Bert back on the road again. We have bugger all in the way of supplies but the sun is shining, I’m free and in a great mood. I throw a tennis ball for Bert and he dashes off to fetch it. He’s back in moment ready for the next throw. I throw it hard and it bounces off a burnt out car and into an open doorway. Bert is away after it like Usain Bolt with ants in his pants.

“Bert wait….”
Of course he didn’t.
“Bert!” but this time he doesn’t come back. At the doorway I see that it is pitch black in there. Of course it is. I step over the threshold and look for Bert and his tennis ball. No sign of them. Of course there isn’t.

This is some sort of ante-chamber with a staircase to my right and there’s another door which is also open but just a little bit. I tiptoe to it because in this post apocalyptic world no good ever came of being a noisy bastard. I look around the door and of course it’s dark inside. Suddenly I hear running steps and I startle as Bert crashes into me. He drops the tennis ball at my feet hopefully.
“You little bastard, scared me half to…”
I hear a noise from the first floor and like any pillock I do the stupid thing and climb the stairs TOWARDS the noise. At the top there is a sourness to the air that I cannot place but it does not smell good. I see there’s a door at the end of the corridor so I head towards it slowly. Bert pads up behind me. I can hear him panting, no, wait that’s me I’m breathing hard through and my nerves are jangling like a hillbilly on his banjo.

The door in front of me is suddenly flung open and a man in a white lab coat pushes me aside and runs down the stairs and out of the building. Bert chases him for a moment and barks but when it becomes clear that this new person won’t throw him a tennis ball he comes back to me.
I look at Bert.
He looks at me.
We head into the room that was exited so quickly by lab coat guy. It’s quite a large open room with a row of windows down one side and a door that looks like it leads to a large metal fire escape that I’d seen outside. There is another closed door at the opposite…