The Summer the World Ended

by Matthew S. Cox

  Minutes later, Dad swept in, pulling the thick door closed behind him. He walked past her, paying no attention to her shaking. “Well, my face didn’t melt off.”

  “Dad!” She looked back and forth between him and the door three times, and ran over to him.

  He dragged his backpack to the table, put it on a chair, and sifted through it. “I’m going to do a wider sweep outside. No rads by the hatch.”

  “No.” She whimpered, putting a hand on his back. “No.”

  “You are without a doubt a teenaged girl.” He chuckled. “Beg like hell for something and as soon as you get it, you don’t want it anymore.”

  “But, Dad.” She pulled and pawed at him. “We don’t know what’s up there.”

  “Correct.” He zoomed off to the storeroom, yelling once he’d gone out of sight. “Exactly why I need to recon. I couldn’t find any radiation at all topside. I’m going to do a wider sweep, check the house, the truck… maybe we can expand our range.” He put a gentle hand on each cheek, cradling her head. “You don’t want to spend the rest of your life down here, do you?”

  “No.” Riley swooned on her legs and stumbled back until she fell seated on the cot. The Last Outpost replayed in her mind. Broken fences, scorched farm equipment, crazed farmers with glowing red eyes and scythes―a father and daughter trying to survive the apocalypse.

  This is a dream. I played that stupid game, and it got in my head.

  She slapped herself across the face. “Wake up.”

  Blinking spots danced through her vision.

  “Riley Dawn McCullough, wake up!” She hit herself again, seeing stars.

  “Riley?” Dad poked his head out of the storeroom. “What on Earth?”

  “Up, up, up, up!” She slapped herself in time with each word, falling over sideways into a sobbing ball.

  She wasn’t waking up. The bunker remained.

  Warmth circled her eyes, a part of her wanting to give in and wail like a little girl, but all she managed to do was send a vacant stare across the room. Her cheek tingled. Dad rushed over, touching a fingertip to the spot, proving it tender.

  “Oh, Riley… You’ve gotta hold it together.” He scooped her up and hugged her tight. “I wish this was a dream. I do. I wish the bombs never dropped. I wish your mother wasn’t killed. I wish I never left.”

  “Don’t leave. You won’t come back.” She gripped his arm with both hands. “I don’t wanna be an orphan.”

  “Two days ago, you were ready to kick down the door and go outside.”

  “So?” She pouted. “Doesn’t mean I’m right.”

  “Look… we can’t stay underground forever. This is a great shelter, but the less we need to consume our resources, the longer we’ll be healthy. I owe it to you to check outside. I swear on my life that if anything looks dangerous, I’ll come right back.”

  “Nooooo,” she whisper-whined.

  “Do you trust me?” He ran a hand over her head.

  “Yeah.” She sniffled.

  “Okay. I’ll just check the immediate area. Any whiff of radiation, and I’ll rush back. I should’ve gotten a reading of some kind in the shaft, but I didn’t. That’s the only reason I’m going to risk this.”

  She didn’t like it, but if she objected, she’d make a liar out of herself for saying she trusted him. Clinging tight and whimpering didn’t count as lying. He held her for a few minutes more and gestured at the mini-stove.

  “About time for lunch. I’ll wait till after.”

  “SpaghettiOs,” said Riley. “Can we have SpaghettiOs?”

  “Okay.”

  Slumped on the bed, Riley couldn’t take her eyes off him as he went to the storeroom to get cans and heated them on the hot plate. A short while later, he carried two steaming bowls to the table, and put one next to the Beretta.

  She moved to her usual seat while he pulled the chair from the radio table over. Spoon after spoon of canned pasta went into her mouth. Riley barely bothered to chew before swallowing. In the game, the father and daughter survived countless times because they weren’t alone. The programmers took great pains to set up situations where teamwork was mandatory. Fortunately, in the single-player mode, the AI was competent.

  Video games don’t exist anymore. All the programmers are gone.

  She put a hand on the Beretta. “I wanna go with you.”

  “Nope.”

  “Dad. I don’t wanna be alone.”

  “Nope.” He fanned his lunch to cool it off a little. “Not risking anything happening to you.”

  “Please?”

  “I need you to do something important while I’m gone. Someone’s gotta stay on the radio.”

  She pouted. “But…”

  “If Colonel Bering decides to pick the few hours I’m wandering around out there to ask if we still need a ride to civilization, I don’t want to miss it.”

  “Awright.”

  “Not to mention if there are any other survivors, you should keep broadcasting.”

  Riley couldn’t help but feel like she’d never see him again. After he finished his bowl, he packed four MREs in the backpack with four thirty-round magazines for the AR15. She idled the spoon around the half-inch of orange goop at the bottom of her bowl as he sat on the cot to put on socks and boots. Dad shrugged the backpack over his shoulders and went to the gun safe in the southwest corner.

  “05-18-02,” said Dad. “In case you need to get in here.”

  “My birthday,” she muttered.

  “Maybe someday you’ll believe I never stopped loving you… or your mother.”

  If you love me, you won’t go outside. “I do. It’s just a bad combination.”

  “You don’t like your birthday?”

  “Mr. West in computer class said family birthdays and pet names are the first things hackers try.”

  “Well… if some deranged wastelander manages to A, find this bunker, B, survive to get into it, and C, figure out what my daughter’s birthday is… they can have the guns.”

  Dad hefted the AR15, inspected it, and loaded a fifth magazine. Riley didn’t even jump when the bolt slammed forward. He slung it over his shoulder, picked up the Geiger counter, and walked up to the table. When he looked down at her, his face held no emotion.

  “Riley―”

  “Don’t.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “If you say ‘I love you’ or ‘goodbye,’ it’s gonna feel like you’re not gonna come back.”

  Dad stood still for a few seconds with the same blank face. “See you in a few hours.”

  “That’s better.”

  She gazed down at her pale feet peeking out from under the crumpled, black pant legs, not looking up as the dull tromp of his boots on the concrete floor grew faint. The thud of the armored door closing made her twitch. At the scraping, metallic sound of the wheel turning, she cried silent tears.

  Goodbye, Dad.

  After she could no longer hear him climbing the ladder, she plodded to the radio chair. Unlike the one at the table, it had cloth cushions, which held Dad’s scent. She curled up and put on the headset, which flooded her ears with a soft hiss.

  “Attention survivors. My name is Riley McCullough. If anyone can hear me, you’re not alone. I’m transmitting from New Mexico, near the town of Las Cerezas. Attention any survivors.”

  She traced a finger back and forth over the front of the olive drab radio. Overall, it had the profile of a stereo rack component. At the center, a numeric pad resembled a calculator with a few extra buttons: ‘freq,’ ‘erf ofst,’ ‘time,’ and ‘batt call.’ The tiny LCD screen above the keypad was blank. She recognized an empty coaxial cable port at the top left corner next to the word ‘ant.’ Below it, sat a circular blue socket with five bronze studs in a star arrangement labeled RXMT. Two similar ports on the right bore the labels AUD/FILL and AUD/DATA. The rest of the space was full of seven knobs surrounded by incomprehensible white lettering. Terrified to touch anything but the transmit button Dad s
howed her, she pressed it again.

  “Attention anyone who survived the bombs. Any survivors, please respond.”

  Riley shifted in the seat so she could see the front door. Her stare roamed around the bunker, the bunker in which she was now alone. She gasped with panic and flung the headset off. Squealing, she ran to the table and grabbed the Beretta in a two-handed grip, clutching it to her chest as though it were her most prized possession. Once her breathing calmed, she crept back to the chair. After putting the headset on again, she curled up facing the other direction―at the door―and kept the pistol aimed between her knees.

  Every fifteen minutes, she spoke into the radio. Riley clung to the pistol, and the hope that if she obeyed her father’s instructions, he’d come home safe.

  ay Eleven.

  Consciousness swept over Riley’s mind. Her eyes fluttered open, and she found herself still in Dad’s chair. The Beretta dangled in her right hand, at the precipice of clattering to the floor. She gasped and tightened her grip around it, sitting upright at the realization she’d fallen asleep on radio watch.

  “Dad?” She looked around. “Dad?”

  Silence.

  After a few minutes, she stood and stretched away the discomfort of sleeping in a fetal position. Her brain tried to get terrified and pissed off at the same time, winding up nowhere. She held the gun in both hands, pointed at the ceiling, barrel close to her cheek, and crossed the room. At the storage area door, she paused like every cop she’d ever seen on TV and whipped around to aim at the empty space.

  I’m alone.

  Worry faded to sadness. The wall clock showed the time at 10:42 a.m., Sunday, 07/24/16. Dad’s been gone all night. He was only supposed to be a few hours. She slouched. I knew it. Riley felt too sad to cry, and too sick to eat. She plucked at the waist of the fatigue pants until they fell around her ankles and availed herself of the toilet. For a long time after she no longer needed to sit on the bowl, she remained, occasionally pointing the gun at the door. There was no point in getting up. There was no point to doing anything. Why bother spamming the radio? I’m the only one left on the planet. If anyone else survived, they probably speak Russian or Chinese or Korean or subhuman wasteland babble and won’t answer me anyway. There was no one else left.

  There had been one other, but he was stupid.

  Apathy and hope went after each other like a pair of angry tomcats. Her stomach growled. She pulled her pants up and trudged to the storeroom to snag a granola bar. Somehow, the Beretta had become a subconscious accessory that followed her everywhere. It seemed so unreal to think that she’d ever been terrified of a handgun. She stopped at the mini-sink and stuffed the gun in the waistband of the fatigues.

  When I put these on, Dad was still alive.

  Riley doled out a portion of coffee in the French press and put only enough water in the electric kettle for one mug. Beretta in hand, she peeled the blanket away from the cot and curled up on the radio chair with it. The same faint hiss came out of the headphones.

  “Good signal, but no one transmitting,” her father had said. As long as she heard the hiss, everything was working.

  “Attention survivors,” she droned. “This is Riley. I’m in a safe place near Las Cerezas, New Mexico. If anyone’s still alive, please reply.”

  The burbling of water got her moving a short while later. With a warm mug of black coffee cradled to her chest, she huddled on the chair with her feet tucked under her, listening to the emptiness of white noise. As her father had done, she squeezed the button every fifteen minutes and recited her lines.

  When the clock read 13:18, she gave up on repeating some variation of an ‘I’m a little girl alone and defenseless, come attack me’ spiel and cracked open an MRE. Dad would want me to eat.

  She sucked down a glass of water, and sipped a second. After cleaning out the food packets, she wedged them all into the outer casing and put that in the garbage bag. Pacing. Back and forth, arm swinging around with the gun in her hand. Her mind raced for anything to do. She picked up The Cardinal of the Kremlin and resumed her place, but forgot what had been going on altogether and gave up after six pages. She didn’t care enough to start from the beginning again. Another glass of water. More pacing.

  Riley orbited the bunker countless times. Eventually, she flopped on the folding chair and draped herself over the flimsy table. The somewhat-padded vinyl surface had absorbed a lot of gun oil and cleaner. Scattered parts and tools gathered in piles where they’d been pushed out of the way of meals. Daydreams of Mom’s funeral played through her head, and at some point, the body in the casket became Dad. She daydreamed about having the Beretta with her that day, and shooting the old man for being so mean. In the world humanity had rebirthed, a person could avenge an insult like that with a gun and no one would care.

  Her arm stretched out over the top, and she plucked a brush out of the cluster. It resembled a toothbrush, but its olive drab plastic and black bristles said it had been made for weapons detail, not the inside of anyone’s mouth.

  Her mind presented her with reasons Dad was late: got lost because he hid the bunker too well, fell in a ravine and had a broken leg, bandits got him, walked through a rad zone and melted, giant scorpions ate him.

  Jesus, Riley, you’re getting silly.

  She froze, staring at the brush for a few seconds before clawing at the heap of tools. Rods that Dad screwed together to clean the barrel of the AR15 jangled to the middle of the table. Riley grabbed two of them, hands shaking, and screwed them together forming a longer strut. A few patches of duct tape pinned another single section crossways. After squeezing it in place, she taped the toothbrush to the impromptu crucifix as a stand-in Jesus.

  “I know Mom didn’t believe in you…” She set it on the table, staring at it. “I’m not sure I do, but I’ll try anything to get Dad back.”

  Silence.

  “Please?”

  Twenty minutes later―and no Dad magically appearing―she slipped off the chair, sinking to her knees and sobbing. She sprawled on the floor, not motivated enough to move. At least an hour went by as she kept asking no one in particular why Mom had to die, why Dad had to go away (probably die), and what the world did to deserve burning. The Beretta, heavy against her belly, offered a way out. She looked down at it and frowned, casting a sidelong, guilty glance at the toothbrush crucifix.

  “I’m being ridiculous.” She got up and walked to the radio chair, nylon ties thwapping at her feet. “Dad would want me to keep trying to live.”

  She set the Beretta on the table and rubbed where it had dug into her skin, curled up, and put on the headset. One hour blurred to the next as she droned at the mic over and over. Her eyelids got heavy and she snuggled to the side and let them close. When she looked up, the clock read 20:04.

  “Dad’s not coming back.” She hugged her knees to her chest. “Why did he have to be stupid?” It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have bitched at him for being stuck down here. If I didn’t break the alarm, we’d be together.

  Her face contorted in preparation for soul-wracking sobs, but she froze with only two tears racing each other down her cheeks. “What if he’s hurt and can’t get back?”

  She flew out of the chair and stomped over to the bed, pulling on socks from her ‘go bag’ followed by the combat boots. They were stiff, but he guessed the size well enough. Her heart pounded in her head as she laced them tight. She had to go out there. Dad was counting on her, just like the game. He went alone, that’s what went wrong. In the gun cabinet, she found two extra magazines for the Beretta, and loaded them before stashing both in her left thigh pocket.

  Two circuits around the room failed to give her any more ideas about what to bring. As soon as she put her hands on the wheel to open the big door, the word ‘light’ echoed in her brain. Once she had a flashlight clipped to the lip of her left hip pocket, she grasped the wheel and pulled with all her strength.

  It creaked. Dad made this look so easy. Grunting and panti
ng helped, and eventually she twisted it enough to retract the bars. Riley flung all her weight against it, boots sliding on the floor as she heaved. Inch by inch, it moved forward without a sound. Seeing the outer room brought back the fear of radiation, and he had the Geiger… but it’s not as if more bombs dropped.

  It was clean when he left. Radiation doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere, right?

  Cautious steps brought her halfway to the ladder before she whirled around to push the door closed. She did not close it all the way, nor did she turn the wheel.

  I might need to get inside fast.

  At the base of the ladder, she pulled the waistband of her pants away from her belly and nestled the Beretta in to free her hands for the climb. The thirty some odd feet of ladder felt like miles as she hauled herself up one rung at a time. Huddled at the top, she listened to silence. No light leaked in through the burlap-covered hatch. Dad had closed it on his way out, presumably so the disguised opening would protect her from marauders and looters.

  I’m coming, Dad. Don’t be dead.

  A tentative hand pushed against the raw wood and the pallet lifted, allowing a cool desert breeze in. The air smelled crisp and fresh, making the bunker feel stagnant already. She peered over the rim of the shaft at a dark blue sky, luminous with the last moments of twilight.

  It shouldn’t be dark at twenty ‘o clock. Holy crap, the Earth is like off its axis or something.

  She swallowed her fear and pushed, finding it a little tricky to climb out while supporting the hatch. Riley slithered through the space, belly crawling out into the desert sand. When the pallet clattered to the ground behind her, it looked like an innocuous lump of dirt. Two flat-topped boulders, about as big as large dogs, flanked it at ten paces to either side.

  That’s how you marked it, Dad.

  Without daylight, she couldn’t see the house. The night of the nuclear strike had been a blur. For all she knew, they had run for hours… but it had likely been much less. Two slow spins gave her a rough idea of which way east was, and she remembered Dad going straight out the patio door. The back of the house faced north, so that meant she had to go south to get to the house.