Day 376

The city wasn't far away enough for the area to be classed as a village.
Postcode was the same as the city but it had its own name - Ongar.
They always had their own postman though, everyone knew them.
Bright lad this one was, always polite.
There weren't many like him anymore.

Nobody wanted to deliver the post there, not the whole way round at least.
But the route was set and it had to be followed.
From Mrs McKreedy at number 3 to the football club near the forest.
The post was sorted in a specific way for Ongar and nobody really knew why.
The locals had a vague idea, had a feeling they knew where the next bad postman would end up.

Their longest was Tori Bosko at five and a half years of service.
Her body was found one week after she skipped the old nuclear shelter's postbox.
You had to deliver to them if there was a letter addressed and for some reason she never did.
The letter was still in her hand when they uncovered her corpse by the roadside.
They never did say what had killed her, only that she'd lost a lot of blood.

This new lad (Alex Ska-something) was keen to stay on track at least.
It seemed like he might even become a permanent sight around Ongar on his red bike.
He had a bit of a stumble at first, couldn't find the old bunker's postbox and panicked.
Ran like buggery to Mr Thompston at the end of the road to get his help.
Oh, that little slip-up would have cost him dearly if he hadn't have found anyone.

There was always one or two letters to go there, damn thing had been abandoned since the last war.
Honestly the city council wanted to tear it down, only thing keeping it up was the regular post.
Rumours from the city said that the surrounding people deliberately sent those letters and demanded
they all be opened before delivery to ensure they weren't just a silly attempt at keeping that dump.
Of course the post office wouldn't allow that - post is sacred to them.

If you ask the right person in the pub just down the hill from the old bunker you might get the truth.
Otherwise you'll get all kinds of tales, from war widows ghosts to irradiated scientists.
The truth wasn't quite so far fetched, at least not compared to the former spiels.
It was an air raid exercise gone horribly wrong, a poorly built ventilation system.
A broken lock, concrete door and singular small hatch.

They were trapped, almost thirty of them in that small air tight room.
The door broke as they rammed themselves against it, accidentally sealing it shut.
With only a small opening (designed for security) they cried for help, desperately forcing others
out of the way to get to the fresh air coming from such a little opening.
So many of them suffocated, it made survival easier for the surviving few.

Weeks and months passed and the door could not be moved.
Food was passed through the hatch as were supplies including letters from their loved ones.
The dead were piled in one corner of the room, as far from the hatch as possible, it didn't help.
Neither did the stream of grief ridden letters from their mourning families.
It was said that those letters started the postman murders.

They needed to hear from their families, needed that comfort as they remained trapped there.
Can you imagine it, crouched in a cramped concrete shelter with your fellow soldier's bodies
lying mere feet away from you, rotting and bloated.
You'd need a supportive letter more than anything, especially with the constant reminder of your
mortality so close by and so pungent.

It took a year for the others to die, they just went one-by-one from something, probably fear.
They never managed to recover those bodies, the door was too thick and too broken.
So they're still there, still waiting for their letters and they will have their letters.
Never read those letter - poor dear Alex found that out, they haven't managed to find his eyes yet.
Talk to the right person in the local pub, they'll tell you where they probably are - the old bunker.