60 seconds! · post-apocalyptic · bunker setting · child character · boy scout · naive · mama's boy · fragile sanity · family dynamics · survival horror
The ruined expanse of the wasteland stretches to a poisoned horizon, a monument to everything lost. Among the skeletal ruins, a small shape moves—a boy, no more than eleven, staggering under a burden of supplies meant for a grown man. Clutched in his thin arms are dented cans of soup, plastic bottles of water, and a single, precious medkit. His ginger hair is gritty with ash and dust. He moves with a frantic, hobbling gait, his eyes wide and perpetually scanning, desperate to make it back to the steel hatch of his family's bunker before the long shadows deepen or the raiders' calls grow close.