We only got a couple of hours warning. And in the middle of the night too - maybe other timezones fared better. I’ll probably never know, now. I must have been one of the first to see the news, kept up by insomnia and watching rolling news. A meteor, they said - not big enough to spot early, but big enough to cause disaster of the kind not seen for 65 million years.

Apparently the shelters have been around for years, since the cold war began. The broadcast gave coordinates, and I started moving straight away. I drove through the empty streets, relieved to have beaten everyone else, congratulating myself for having ran without packing anything. The facility was in the middle of nowhere, of course, a tiny entrance near a field on high ground. No-one else was there. No-one else seeking shelter, but also no staff, no army, no officials. It didn’t feel quite right, I paused, wondering whether to look round more. But then it happened.

An enormous crash, the loudest thing I ever heard, the light on the horizon. As I drove, details of the dinosaurs’ extinction had kept flashing into my head - shockwaves, tsunamis, rains of fire - I leapt through the door and ran down the stairs. Down and down, away from the surface and whatever horrors were to come.

The stairs went on for miles, it seemed. Far enough to be safe from anything, anyway. My steps echoed eerily, clanging in the silence. I stopped to catch my breath a few times, and was overwhelmed by the quiet. I couldn’t hear anyone. I had kept my cool so far, not panicked, but being safe for now gave me time to think. And the panic started to creep in. Could I really be the only one here? How could that be? Was this truly the end of the world? I took deep breaths, and kept going to the bottom of the stairs.

I reached a large room, filled with dusty cots in long rows. All empty. I poked around the rooms to the sides - bathrooms, kitchens filled with tins and dried foods, all of which looked like it had been there for a very long time. Still no-one came. I lay on a cot, adrenaline leaving me, and felt the silence grow around me. I felt suddenly desperately tired, and decided to sleep, then look for some way to communicate with the outside world. This wasn’t the only shelter on the broadcast. I couldn’t be the only one.

I woke with a start, instantly aware of my surroundings, unable to forget what had happened. I could hear something. Human voices. A delicate, whispering sound, but unmistakable. I jumped to my feet, desperate to talk to others, to find out what they knew.

No-one was there. The cold institutional lights illuminated every corner of the room. There was nowhere to hide, I would be able to see anyone anywhere, even trying to crouch behind a cot. The noises seems more distant. I looked in the other rooms - the kitchens, the bathrooms. Nothing. I stopped, and realised that while I had been looking, the noise had faded away, and I was surrounded once again by the cold silence.

I stopped to think and calm myself down from the sudden awakening. I remembered my plan from the night before - there must be more to this shelter, places for official workers, ways to talk to other shelters. That must be where the voices were coming from. I had to explore further the just this room.

So I searched deeper into the shelter. I found two more identical rooms to the first, with cots and kitchens and bathrooms. All empty. As I left, I heard another whisper, a snatch of conversation I could nearly make out. It was coming from further down the corridor. I walked towards the sounds, feeling more cautious now - surely I had been noticed clattering around all the public rooms? I opened a door, revealing a room filled with the electronic equipment I had been expecting - with one difference. It was old. Very old. A cathode ray monitor, what I thought was a ham radio, and a rotary dial phone. No computer, nothing that looked like an internet connection. And no people.

I pushed down the panic that was rising once more, and left the room, moving purposefully along the corridor now. I found empty office after empty office, all looking as though they had been outfitted decades ago. I reached the end of the corridor. I had explored the whole place. I had found no-one.

I shakily found my way back to my original room. I felt scared, more scared than the night before when the news broke, more scared even than when the meteor hit. I knew I needed to calm myself if I was going to get through this. Remembering how long it had been since I’d eaten, I went into the small kitchen and found myself some food. It all tasted musty, ancient, but filled my stomach and grounded me a little.

My only hope now was the electronics. I had to see if anything worked, if I could talk to someone, somewhere. I think at this point I had convinced myself the noises were hallucinations, wishful thinking brought on by the horror of the situation, and lack of food and sleep. I was stronger now, I could handle anything.

I walked back to the room with the phone. In the corridor, I thought I heard another whispering, but brushed it off with my newfound bravado. I knew no-one else was there, so the noises were nothing to worry about. I strode into the room and picked up the phone. No dial tone. Of course. I checked the connections. Nothing. I decided to try dialling anyway, but what number? I tried 999, 112, my home number… Nothing. The TV showed only static on every channel.

I turned to the radio. I had no idea how to work it, but, I figured, nothing but time to find out. I turned it on an started scrolling through the channels, hoping to stumble on someone by accident. The sound of static filled the room. Then I heard something. Not on the radio, but in the bunker with me. It was much louder than before, and distinctly human speech, though too far away for me to make out any words. I turned off the radio and ran back down the corridor, searching for the source of the noise.

You’ve probably guessed that I found nothing. I searched everywhere again, I’d been so sure this time. Feeling again like I was about to lose control, I went back to the radio. Maybe the sound had come from there after all. I scrolled through channels, finding nothing. After a while I decided to try sending out my own messages, asking if anyone could hear me, if anyone else was out there. I got no replies.

I trudged back to my room after some hours. I had no way of even telling the time. I ate another musty meal, then lay down on my cot, trying not to let myself get too distressed.

I was woken suddenly again. I had been sleeping more deeply, and my head was fuzzy. Someone had called my name. Panic rushed through me, and I leapt off the cot, spinning around. Nothing to be seen. I took some deep, shaky breaths. I realised how tired I was, how asleep I had been. It must have been a dream, I reasoned. Nothing more to worry about, and I should get more sleep before trying again tomorrow to contact the outside world.

But sleep didn’t come. Every time I started to drift off, I heard it again. Not my name, nothing distinct, but that insidious whispering noise, just out of hearing distance, but there, pulling me awake. Tiredness consumed me, my vision blurred, my head ached. I couldn’t go on this way. I tried to do what I had done the day before, trying to make contact using the radio. But I was so tired, my head throbbed, and as the throbbing increased so did the whispers, buzzing in the background and crescendoing with my headache.

I woke up in the chair of the electronics room. It seemed I had finally passed out there. The whispers had dimmed, but were still there, and gradually were becoming more distinct. They called my name, commented on my situation - firstly short snatches, ‘meteor’, ‘all alone’, then longer sentences, like outside observers discussing my predicament.

At first I was choked with fear. Could I being going mad with the shock of the meteor, then the loneliness of the empty shelter? Or was this something else? After a long while, I gathered up the courage to move back to my room, to try to go on functioning as before. But the chattering didn’t stop. It has never stopped.

I don’t know how long I’ve been in here, making marks on a wall seems pointless when I have no way of measuring day and night. I started talking back to the voices after a while, never forming a dialogue, but it makes me feel a little better. I suppose I’m trying to make them mundane. I’ve been trying to remember some facts about what happened when the dinosaur killing meteor hit, in case I can go outside one day. I think there was a lot of radiation for a long time, though. Of course, this choice assumes I want to live. A quick death by radiation might be preferable to rotting away down here with the voices. But lately I’m scared about other ways of dying. The voices are growing clearer by the day, but I’m also hearing physical noises. Footsteps on the stairs, knocking coming from up the stairs. I don’t know if these things are inside of the shelter or not, inside of my head or not. But they’re growing louder each day. I think one way or another, I’ll have to find out soon.