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Over the next two hours, we explained everything – how I escaped Bunker 108, met Makara and Samuel, and how Anna had joined us at Raider Bluff to head to Bunker One in order to discover the origins of the xenovirus.
Ruth stopped me when I reached the hardest part – Khloe dying.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you liked her.”
I felt my eyes moisten. “How did you know that?”
Ruth smiled. “It was obvious. We all knew you liked her. She liked you, too, even if you two were different. You were quiet, she wasn’t. You got that way when your mom died.”
“You remember that, too?”
Ruth nodded. “Of course. No one forgets the death of someone who isn’t supposed to die. Especially someone as beautiful as your mother.” Ruth paused, not sure how to go on. “She was a kind woman. A bright soul. I was thirteen or so then, but old enough to remember.”
I smiled grimly. “You remember more than I do, then.”
I thought of my mother. Her brown hair, her warm, hazel eyes. Always smiling. I was seven when I heard the news, when my dad told me that she had died. We had expected a new life that day. I was excited to have a new sister. But instead of one new life, it was two new deaths. That day I felt as if I’d learned everything about life I’d ever need to know.
In Bunker 108, I’d gone quiet. My dad buried himself in work while I tried to forget and disassociate from the pain. The only person I allowed in was Khloe, but even she only got to see so much. When I tried to think about how I felt, the feelings wouldn’t come. Khloe was always there for me, even when she couldn’t understand.
When my dad and Khloe died, I wandered into the Wasteland where I should have died. But in the Wasteland of death, by some miracle, I had found life. Losing Khloe was far more crushing than even I’d realized. I was always good at burying my feelings, at my raw emotions that I felt were too dangerous to express. I had buried my emotions as much as I had buried Khloe that day. I never understood how people could live with them. Feelings made things too messy. Too complicated. Too real, maybe.
That was what Makara and I most had in common. She didn’t wear her heart on her sleeve. We had found each other in the Wasteland, perhaps by fate. And as new people entered my life – Samuel, Anna, Ashton, the Wanderer – the pieces began coming back together.
I wasn’t whole. No one was. No one lived life unscathed. People without scars were people without stories. But I’d learned that even when shattered, I could heal.
At these thoughts, I started to cry. Ruth watched, her own eyes shining with tears as Anna wrapped an arm around me.
“It’s alright,” she said.
“Tears are a sign of weakness,” I said.
“No,” Ruth said. “Sometimes, crying is what keeps us strong.”
I didn’t understand this, but decided Ruth’s words made enough sense. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t control everything. I had to pull myself together, at least long enough to finish this story. Being in the place where it had all started probably hadn’t helped matters.
“Sorry,” I said. “Lost a bit of control there.
“It’s alright. A lot of life is realizing what you can and can’t control, and learning to be okay with that.”
Anna and I then told Ruth about what we discovered at Bunker One, how Ashton rescued us in Gilgamesh, and how he flew us to Skyhome. It took time to convince Ruth that spaceships were real and she would see them soon enough.
We described our mission to Nova Roma – surviving slavers, the Coleseo, the attack of the xenodragons, and how we failed in convincing Emperor Augustus to help us. We spoke of meeting the Vegas gangs and how they joined the Raiders and the Exiles to form the New Angels. Ruth listened as we talked of the Great Blight’s attack on the city, forcing everyone to evacuate west toward Los Angeles – which we still had to take over from the Reapers.
I spoke about how I was infected with the Elekai version of the xenovirus while in the Great Blight. We told Ruth everything I had learned from the Wanderer – about the Elekai, the Radaskim, along with the Eternal War that has gone on for millions of years over thousands of worlds.
I talked about what remained. I still had to go to Ragnarok Crater and infect Askala, the Radaskim Xenomind, with the Elekai version of the xenovirus. According to the Wanderer, this was the only way to stop the invasion.
We clarified most of these points until Ruth understood fully. Anna explained how the Exodus was cold and starving, how we had to find space to house fifteen hundred people for the winter while keeping them all fed. A suitable shelter had to be found before Augustus could reinforce the Reapers.
After we finished our story, Ruth didn’t say anything for a while. It was a lot of information to absorb, but it looked like she had taken it all in.
“A hundred might live here for a few months,” she said. “If the Howlers were cleared out. This is the only safe part of the Bunker. No slime. No Howlers. I wouldn’t risk living anywhere besides here. But fifteen hundred?” Ruth shook her head. “No way. The lab would be picked clean in days.”
“You say that this place is a no-go as far as holding fifteen hundred people,” Anna said. “It’s what we expected, anyway. We just came to recon and confirm that. Now we just have to get out.”
“We’ll have to wait for them to go away,” Ruth said. “With us talking like this, I’m sure they’ve hung around. Best bet is to sleep and try once we wake up. They should be gone by then.”
“Before we do that,” I said, “I need to raise Makara on the radio. She’ll want to know about all of this.”
***
I WASN’T ABLE TO CONTACT Makara; all that came through the radio was static. I figured it was from being so far underground. Makara would be worried after not hearing from us for so long, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that.
When I put my radio away, frustrated, Ruth reached into one of the two sacks of fruits and veggies and pulled out three peaches. She handed Anna and I each one.
“A little snack before we sleep,” she said.
I took a bite eagerly – it was an explosion of succulent sweetness, perfectly ripe.
Anna just stared at hers.
“What, you’re not going to eat it?” I asked.
Her mouth turned down distastefully. “I don’t know. I’ve never really liked peaches. Whether it’s the fuzz, or the smell – they’ve just always freaked me out for some reason. But I’m so hungry that I don’t even care.”
As she took a giant bite, I laughed. “They freak you out? Peaches?”
“Yeah, I know. I’m weird.”
“Well, I have other stuff, too” Ruth said. “Blackberries, raspberries, strawberries...”
“Oh, no,” Anna said, taking a bite quickly. “It’s fine. I like peaches.”
Ruth eyed Anna skeptically, but ended up saying nothing. She gathered herself in one of her blankets and continued to lean against the wall. The way her eyelids got heavy told me that she was tired, but she wasn’t going to go to sleep. Not yet, anyway.
“There’s more blankets you can use,” Ruth said.
Indeed, some blankets were piled up next to the sacks of food. They were dirty, but Anna and I each grabbed one. We didn’t want to offend our host.
As I wrapped one of the blankets around me, Ruth closed her eyes. She looked peaceful. I thought about who she been before Bunker 108’s fall: happy, the center of attention, always talking to people.
That, for her, must have been the hardest part about surviving here.
Ruth opened her eyes once more. “It’s hard to believe all of that really happened. I mean, there’s a whole world out there that I’ve never seen. I’ve been outside only once – when I turned sixteen. I...sort of broke down out there. It was all too much, so Chan said I had to stay here. A few years later, I got married to Mark.” She halted at his name. She then forced herself to on. “I started working here, in the lab. Things were going good, until...”
Ruth’s eyes became distant, and she sighed.
“My husband was a good man. Mark protected me, right to the end. I don’t know where he is now, but I didn’t have to kill him, thank God. I couldn’t have handled that.”
“He would have wanted you to get out of here,” Anna said. “You have that chance now.”
Ruth nodded. “We just have to go out the way we came in. It’s the easiest way out. It’s worth a try before we go the other way.” She sighed. “But let’s try to get some rest first.”
By “the other way,” I knew Ruth was referring to the motor pool. It was on the main level, but it was quite the jaunt to get there. We’d have to walk to the opposite side of the Bunker using the main corridor. We were almost sure to run afoul of some sort of trouble.
As Ruth curled up for sleep, I found that I could use a bit of rest as well. Checking my watch, it was 12:30 already – midday, but the mission had been so eventful and I’d gotten so little sleep the night before that a nap did not sound like a bad proposition. Besides, Ruth was right. We had to give time for the Howlers to go away before we could chance the rock tunnel again.
So, I laid down, and Anna put her back to mine, facing the direction of the door. My last sensation before falling immediately asleep was the green of the plants and the buzz of the grow lights.
***
WE AWOKE SOMETIME LATER. I checked my watch.
5:00.
“Damn,” I said.
Anna and Ruth were still sleeping. It had been four and a half hours, probably enough time for the Howlers to have cleared out.
I stood, feeling a bit drowsy. I walked over to Ruth and knelt down.
“Hey,” I said.
Ruth started, her entire body doing a little jump. From her eyes it was clear she didn’t know who I was. It lasted half a second before recognition dawned.
“Sorry,” I said quietly. “It’s been over four hours. Maybe we should get going.”
Now alert, Ruth nodded. From behind, Anna stirred.
It didn’t take long to gather our things. We filled my pack with food – apples, oranges, anything that would travel well. We also packed the rest of the walnuts. We refilled our canteens from one of the irrigation lines. It was slow going, so while the girls filled up our canteens, I decided to try and find a better spot for reception to reach Makara.
“I’ll be back,” I said, holding up the radio.
The women nodded as I walked off. This attempt at communication was somewhat pointless, but it was worth a shot. Makara would be worried sick not hearing from us for this long. She might feel forced to come after us unless she realized we had a shot of getting out on our own.
“Makara, you have a copy?”
I walked a few steps more. I left the grow lights behind, entering a shadowy area of the Hydroponics Lab. Thick foliage covered the lane I walked on, reducing Anna’s and Ruth’s voices to nothing. There was nothing but the buzz of lights, the clack of my boots on metal, the hissing of static. On my left rose the one living walnut tree in Bunker 108, its upper roots bathed in translucent hydroponic fluid. The nuts in their thick husks carpeted the floor thickly along with fallen leaves, so much so that as I walked, my boots crunched over them.
I listened intently to my radio, but no voice came through – as expected. I sighed, stopping on the other side of the lab. I was far from both Anna and Ruth. If I couldn’t pick up Makara here, then I couldn’t pick her up anywhere.
I had raised the radio to my mouth once more when...
“...Hello, Alex.”
A male voice I didn’t recognize garbled through the radio. I stared at it, wondering if I’d misheard.
“Who is this?” I asked.
Silence. My heart raced. Finally, the man answered.
“You let him in, three months ago,” the voice rasped. “Now, you’ll have to let him out.”
I let him in? It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about: the infected man from Bunker 114.
“I asked you a question,” I said. “Who is this?”
The man didn’t respond for a long time. When he finally did, his voice sent chills down my spine.
“You have to let him out.”
“What do you mean, him? No one’s in here.”
I had no idea who or what this crazy man was talking about. I thought of what Ruth told me about Old Darcy. Could this really be...?
“Darcy?”
There was silence for a moment.
“Yes,” Darcy said. “Good to know I’m not forgotten.”
“Everyone knows about you. I didn’t think you were alive.”
Darcy gave a sigh, long and tired.
“I never got enough credit,” Darcy said. “No one believed me about Bunker One. They were hiding it from us. There’s a lesson for you, Alex. You tell the truth and they lock you up.”
“What truth was that?”
“They let it in there. Just like you let it in here.” The man sighed. “It was only a matter of time.”
“Is that why you killed them, then?”
Darcy went quiet. “You know nothing. I loved my family. It had to be done. They were infected.”
“Or maybe you were just paranoid.”
“Lies,” Darcy said, with a snarl. “We will all fall, one day. I had to stop it while there was a chance to. Something you should have done, Alex. Sacrifices must be made.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I heard your girlfriend talking to you. Makara, was it? She’s got a pretty fancy toy. Not every day you hear Odin mentioned.”
“How do you know about that?”
Darcy laughed. “I know more than you think, Alex. Much more.”
I realized that Darcy knowing about Odin probably wasn’t too Earth-shattering. He had been a colonel, after all, and could have been privy to that information.
“But let’s get back to you,” Darcy said. “Maybe I should thank you for letting him in. When you did, they let me out.”
“Why?” I asked.
Darcy chuckled. “Why? Because I told them what they wanted to hear. And they believed me. People will believe anything they want to be true, Alex. Never forget that.”
“Who let you out?”
“Officer Burton did personally. Put a gun in my hand himself. Maybe they all died, in the end. I survived. And that’s what matters.”
“Where are you?”
Darcy sighed, disappointed. “Alex, I’m not going to tell you that. That would be no fun.”
“What do you want from us?”
“I want out of here. I want the open air and freedom and...” Darcy sighed. “I don’t know what I want, to be honest, Alex. I thought I wanted the girl for a while. Elusive, that one. I’m very lonely, you see. I’ve been living in the dark too long.”
I said nothing for a moment. I wondered if I was being too loud – if my voice was only serving to draw the Howlers back to me.
“I’m tired of this,” I said. “Goodbye.”
I paused, waiting for a response. But nothing came.
That was when I heard a metal door slam open from somewhere beyond the lab. All doors to the lab itself were shut and barricaded. Still, I heard the cries of Howlers from outside the door nearest me, maybe twenty feet away. Suddenly, that door was getting slammed, rattling the furniture gathered in front of it.
And judging by the way the furniture was being scooted back along the floor, that barricade wasn’t going to last long.
“Good luck, Alex,” Darcy said.
Somehow, Darcy had let these monsters in.