Hoping you can help me with a science-fiction short story I read when I was about 12 (~1994). It was my first exposure to the post-apocalyptic genre, and still informs my love for it now, almost 25 years later.
It's about a group of boys (feel like they would be aged about 15), who set off away from their homes to explore. I think they live on some sort of fairly primitive settlement. Perhaps a secure compound or village.
They discover an old bunker, which they enter. They make their way through it passing signs which they cannot read (due to not bring able to read, or perhaps it being a language they don't understand). Eventually they get to a room in which some sort of warning lights or alarm goes off, but one of them continues forward. He awakens some sort of defence system, which kills him with gun/laser fire.
Unfortunately, that's all I remember.
The story was in an anthology, which I feel like might have been called '15 science fiction short stories for teenagers' but '15' may have been a different number, and 'teenagers' may have been a numeric age. I think Flowers for Algernon was also in the book. Maybe Harrison Bergeron too.
Another was an excerpt where a guy accompanied some sort of butcher who cut meat directly off the body of a giant organism whilst inside it, relying on a supersonic whistle to trigger the 'door' or exit to open - it finished with the butcher guy saying he'll not know until it's too late if the whistle isn't working.
