by Kyle West
“And you’ve been here ever since?” I asked.
Ruth nodded. “For the most part, yeah. I’ve come out a few times. Once, to try and escape. That’s when I met him. I should have said...there is another survivor. A man.”
“Who?” Anna asked.
Ruth shook her head. “I’ve thought about this a long time. I’ve never really gotten a good look. But one time, I did – it was the time I tried to escape. He was no one I’d ever seen before. Which confused me. I mean, I knew everyone in this Bunker. Everyone. We all did. And I had never seen that man before.”
“Who could he be?” I asked.
“A few weeks ago, I realized who he was. Which explained why I’d never seen him before.” Ruth looked at me, her eyes intent. “Old Darcy.”
Old Darcy. That was a name I hadn’t heard in a while. Fifteen years ago, there had been a man named Clyde Darcy who was said to have gone crazy. He had killed his entire family, the only murders to have ever occurred in Bunker 108. The aftershocks changed the fate of the Bunker forever. Clyde Darcy, or Old Darcy as he was later called, wasn’t just any man. He had been a Colonel, Chan’s superior, and had been in charge of Bunker 108 before he was executed.
No one knew what caused Darcy to snap, and if you knew what was good for you, you never brought it up, especially around Chan. There was a rumor that Darcy really hadn’t been killed, that Chan had kept him alive for one reason or another. There were many tossed about. Several centered on the belief that Darcy had known something so critical to the survival of the Bunker Program that he couldn’t be killed, and maybe it was the thing that caused him to go crazy. Another rumor was that he was the highest ranking official in the United States, effectively making him President. Or, so the speculation went.
Whatever the reason, Chan kept Darcy from being executed, locking him instead deep in the Officers’ Wing. Kids told stories about seeing Officers carrying food down to the cells when they were thought to be vacant.
I had thought it all ridiculous. It sounded like a rumor, something we kids made up to scare the crap out of each other. There had been a Clyde Darcy; that was fact. But him being kept alive for fifteen years because Chan somehow needed him?
“You really think it’s Clyde Darcy?” I asked.
“It couldn’t be anyone else,” Ruth insisted. “He was old, and I’d recognize anyone from this Bunker. The fact that I didn’t recognize him was proof enough for me.”
“What did you do when you saw him?” Anna asked.
“I ran. I ran as fast as I could and locked myself back in here. He beat on the door for a while, but those monsters came after him. I heard him curse and run off.” Ruth shuddered. “I haven’t heard him since.”
“You think he’s still alive?” Anna asked.
Ruth shrugged. “I hope not. Crazy man like that, who knows. I’m still alive, aren’t I?”
I had difficulty believing this. Yet again, sometimes rumors existed for a reason. If Darcy were alive, it meant we just didn’t have the Howlers to deal with. We had a crazy, murderous man.
“Whatever the case,” I said, “we need to find a way out of here.”
“The door lost power,” Anna said. “I switched it to auxiliary.”
Ruth shook her head. “Bad move.”
“What?” Anna asked. “Why?”
“The main power is spotty,” Ruth said. “But the auxiliary power is kaput. As soon as you switched it, everything went dead. You should have just kept it on the main line.”
“Crap, how was I supposed to know that?” Anna asked.
“You couldn’t have,” Ruth said. “I arrived too late to stop you. I did the same thing with a section of grow lights that went out. Now, that section is dark for good. The plants are withering.”
“How did you know we were up there?” I asked.
“I could hear you guys talking from behind my door. It’s so quiet in here. Things carry surprisingly well. I hear weird clicks and clacks all the time. You learn to ignore the sounds or you go crazy. But when I heard you guys talking, I knew you had come from the outside and that you didn’t know about the danger in here. So I came out.”
Anna reached out to touch her arm. “Thanks. As Alex said, we wouldn’t be here without you.”
“It was what I had to do. But the bigger question is what we do now.”
“We can’t go out the front anymore,” I said. “That means we have to try for the motor pool.”
“I didn’t say we couldn’t go out the front,” Ruth said. “You can open the outer door manually, of course. That’s how it was usually done, right? The computer thing is just an automated system. The inner and outer doors can’t be open at the same time. The inner is open right now, so we could still get into the tunnel and manually open the outer door once we close the inner one.”
“Of course,” I said. “I should have known that, because every time I’ve gone out I had to open the door manually.”
“Should we leave now?” Anna asked.
“No. We should wait for things to calm down a bit, first,” Ruth said. “Those...Howlers, did you call them?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Howlers. They take a while to go away. An hour or two at least.”
We all sat quietly. Maybe getting out wouldn’t be so hard after all. Just wait out the Howlers, then go back the way we came in.
“Why did you only try to escape the one time?” Anna asked.
“I’ve actually been preparing to leave,” Ruth said. “I’m trying to work out a plan. I know it’s cold out there so I need more clothing than this. Only, that requires me going to the apartments, which are pretty far from here. It’s too dangerous.”
What she said was true. Her camo pants and wear-resistant polyester shirt might be sufficient for summer, but they were insufficient to survive a Wasteland winter.
“Not only that,” Ruth said, “but I want a better weapon than this pole. The few times I’ve been outside Hydroponics I haven’t even found a security baton. It would be nice to have a gun or something. This pole works well enough, I guess. We have several of them in Storage. We mainly used them for reaching shelves that are too high up.”
“Well, you don’t have to wait for all of that now,” I said. “We have a whole team out there that you can stay with. Hell, even Michael and Lauren Sanchez and their kid are with us.
Ruth’s eyes widened. “What? They’re alive?”
I nodded. “Yeah. They took one of the Recons and made it to Vegas. That’s where we met them.”
Ruth’s eyes looked hopeful for once. “Lauren...she was my best friend. I thought she was dead. You’re telling me she’s alive?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She’s with us right now. Not here, obviously, but with the rest of the group outside.”
“Outside the Bunker?” Ruth asked.
“Up in Pyrite,” I said. “It’s this small town and...”
Anna placed a hand on my arm. “Maybe we should tell her the whole story first.”
Ruth looked from me to Anna.
“Alright,” I said. “Just to warn you: it’s a very long story.”
“We have time,” Ruth said. “But first, tell me: Lauren is alright? Callie?”
I nodded. “Yeah, they’re both fine. They’ve been through a lot, but so has anyone who survived this.”
Ruth nodded. The news brought peace, softening the features of her face.
“Okay,” Ruth said. “Tell me everything. Why you’re here. How you go out. Everything.”
Chapter 4
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 g
o 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.
