Countless years later

The books recommended this, so here I go.
Dead diary,
I can’t say we haven’t seen it coming.
Oh, we did and we knew it will happen, so we prepared for it.
Now that I look back, we were really stupid not to do something against it, rather than just prepare after it happened.
The end of the world.
Or at least, the end of the world as we know it.
It happened, and actually it was pretty solid combination of things that we knew would happen.
Global warming, a heavy solar-storm, a tiny bitsy pandemic, sprinkled with a war or two.
That was the recipe for humanity’s demise.
But worry not, there were contingency plans in place.
10 million younglings, frozen in pods deep underground, ready to repopulate and re-start our civilization.
We were grouped in batches of 20 thousand all over the world, but we were given means to communicate.
The deal was quite simple.
When we wake up, probably thousands of years have passed.
Nothing is as it was, but most likely if we do wake up, then the surface is likely to be habitable.
If it’s not, we shall start our life underground.
We were placed in smaller batches and all over the world, in case something big happens on the surface that would affect even the deep underground.
You know what they say, right?
A smart person won’t put all their eggs in the same basket, lest they break.
Well, our technology is top-notch, we have all the records of our race’s researches, achievement and history…
Well, mostly, we were mixed pretty damn well, everybody speaks at least 8-10 languages, and we are actually cooperating…
Something that from what I’ve read at least…wasn’t a thing back then.
But that’s enough with the backstory.
Let’s start with a new story…
Our story…which begins on the day we woke up.
It was weird.
It felt like waking up from a long, long sleep…under ice, being completely motionless.
The moment the pods opened, we were injected some serum to improve our bodily functions, but nonetheless, we still all fell down, almost face first.
Unfortunately, I was the first the wake up properly, and the first to activate my watch.
This meant that I would need to be the Mayor of my group, at least until we actually build and secure a new town/village/city, make your own choice for what you want to call it.
 It took a week for everyone to wake up and get used to “moving” around.
In that time, I checked our resources, which were all intact, thank God.
We had enough food and water for a century or so if we rationed it.
The technology around the base was flawless, energy levels were lower than 100%, but since they were from a renewable source, they were as high as 80% even after all this time.
Don’t ask me for the source of it, it’s written in a book somewhere on the watch computer, but I haven’t read it.
I’ve read up a lot about psychology, basic needs, survival, leadership and feng-shui.
After all, I need to lead my friends here in his base onto the surface, and build an place where we will live.
Thankfully, we were all friends here, just as I said.
Before being frozen, we spend a year and so locked here, and we talked…a lot.
We have no videogames or movies down here, so nobody had the chance to just shut themselves from the rest of us.
Anyway, after we selected some people willing to start extensively learning martial arts, scouting, trap laying, hunting and many other wilderness skills, we started to divide the other roles.
We needed bakers, butchers, cooks, doctors, engineers, architects, builders, handymen, programmers and law enforcers.
At the top, it was me alongside with randomly selected and rotating 10 member council.
I only had the chance to make the last decision, but the council had the right to veto it.
After the roles were decided, we started studying properly.
Together with the help of serums, and the A.I. in our watches and the little chip in our brains, after 3 weeks, we have more or less achieved an advanced level of knowledge in the fields we’ve chosen.
That meant we weren’t experts yet, but we were better than newbies by a lot.
Now, it was time to check the results of the drones that were sent scouting.
From the discussion we had with another batch, on another continent, whom were a little hurried and sent the drones out on day 1, they were quite unlucky.
On the surface, there was a strange storm raging, and they needed to travel a lot underground, until they could reach a clean area.
Our luck was better.
Right above us was a plain, with several lakes forming nearby all inter-connected and further being connected to a water source somewhere in…a forest…
Forests are bad news for us…especially one so close to us.
Even before we’ve seen the footage, forests, swamps, desserts were the worst case scenario.
After all, hidden amongst trees, who know what creatures can be waiting in ambush for us, right?
And after seeing the footage, I’ve sighed, my would-be wife sighed and everyone else sighed as well.
The forest was humongous…
The trees were lush, tall and wide, with bright red leaves, silvery bark and spikes on them.
Oh, right forgot to tell you.
Everyone here is engaged.
20 thousand people are all divided in half male half female, so there are no problems.
Back to our sheep.
The drones send back the environmental data.
All is good: air is perfect, actually there is more oxygen now in the air, than back before, so we need to take some serum created by the machines down here, before going up to change our lungs strength, but other than that all is good.
Nothing is too deadly at least in the air.
After arming up, taking a ton shit of antidotes in case of poisons or what not, we’ve left.
Sadly yes, you’ve read that right, dear diary.
“we” have left.
I had to go with the scouting/soldier team, as I was the leader…quite sad to have too many responsibilities.
The moment we arrived at the surface it was
They were really good, I was surprised.
I knew how good this learning technology was, but damn, they were able to sense that there were creatures moving in the outskirts of the forest, just by smell, wind and the …ruffling of the leaves?
Complicated stuff to me, all I knew that I ordered them to be on high-alert.
And then a sound that was a mix of a moan-screech and roar was heard.
Golden little spots were slowly appearing from the shades of the forest.
They were the eyes of some…primate looking creatures.
They were walking mostly on two legs, but they were…ripped.
They were like towers of muscles lining up at the entrance of the forest.
And then…they stopped.
Soon, loud thuds could be heard, and the ground around us shook.
A terrifying behemoth of a primate appeared.
It was easily as tall as half a tree, and that meant it was as tall as 20 of us.
It walked almost completely straight, had a spear in its hands, was mostly hairless and tattooed.
It looked at us, roared and threw his spear a few meters outside the forest.
He roared once more that started a roaring contest amongst the other primates.
Afterwards, the sea of primates receded, but some remained, watching us.
“They are warning us.
That’s their territory, if we enter it, we will most likely die.”
I said.
The others nodded.
Our weapons were advanced, but we weren’t sure that the bullets, high-voltage, energy, gunpowder, poison or whatnot were in them would be able to one-shot even the weakest looking of those animals…
We need to head towards another direction, and we needed more soldiers…
Most likely everyone was required to learn how to handle professionally at least a gun and a melee weapon.
After all…the animals have been left alone for countless ages…
They don’t welcome us here…
And we aren’t at the top of the food chain anymore…
I sighed and frowned…
A lot of plans were needed to be made.
That’s it for now dear diary.
This was but the first part of my story.
And to write in “you” actually helped me relax my nerves.
Until next time.
Signed: Hopefully, the “temporary” mayor of survivor group 104239, Alex.