Kent Kelly - The Cage

Wooden? Interesting. Then she remembered. The box had belonged to Tom’s father, he had been a shortwave radio man in Vietnam long ago.

Perhaps the radio would be her answer. But first, she needed to see all of her potential options, her array of four tissue-thin hopes hidden behind the doors, sacred keys with which to reach out to an outer world which was probably already in its death throes.

The thing behind the fourth door, it took her awhile to identify.

What in the world?

It was a telegraph. Mouth open in disbelief, shaking her head at how little she really knew about survival or shelters or any of those things which were never supposed to happen in a world filled with sane human beings, her gaze wandered to the black binders she had stacked upon the floor. Each binder had a separate title card inserted beneath the vinyl spine, with Tom’s characteristic inverse capital-letter formatting in evidence on every single one.

Turning, she slid off the stool, and sat on the floor with all of the vertical-standing binders arrayed in a semicircle before her. There was so much to read, so much to know if she was going to live on and find her daughter. It was overwhelming:

(a)NIMAL HUSBANDRY / (l)IVESTOCK SUMMARY / (r)EGIONAL SPECIES.

(a)RCHITECTURE / (r)EINFORCEMENT / (u)NFINISHED EXCAVATION.

(b)UCKLEY / (p)ETERSEN / (a)CADEMY.

(c)ABLING / (p)IPING / (w)IRING / (p)LUMBING.

(c)ARSON / (f)ITZSIMMONS / (p)UEBLO.

(c)LOTHING / (s)EWING / (w)EAVING.

(c)OMMUNICATION / (e)NCRYPTION / (s)TEGANOGRAPHY.

(c)OMPUTER / (d)ATA RESTORATION / (d)EEP INTERNET.

(c)RAFT / (w)OODWORKING / (l)EATHERWORKING / (p)OTTERY / (t)EXTILES.

(d)EFENSE / (o)BFUSCATION / (r)ECON.

(d)ESIGN CHRONOLOGY / (f)UTURE UPGRADES.

(f)ALLBACK / (c)ONTINGENCY.

(f)OOD / (r)EGENERATIVES / (s)EEDS.

(f)UEL / (e)THANOL / (p)UMPJACK.

(f)UNGI / (l)ICHEN / (e)XPERIMENTAL SUSTENANCE.

(f)URNACE / (h)EATERS.

(g)AS MASKS / (l)EAD SHEATHS / (e)NVIRONMENTAL SUITING.

(g)ENERATORS / (f)LYWHEEL / (t)READMILL.

(g)OVERNMENT / (e)NFORCEMENT / (p)OTENTIAL INTERFERENCE.

(g)RAND TETON / (s)HOSHONE / (y)ELLOWSTONE.

(h)OLOCAUST SCENARIO / (i)MPACT EVENT /(n)EMESIS THEORY.

(h)UNTING / (f)ISHING / (g)ATHERING / (h)ERBALSM.

(i)NFRASTRUCTURE / (s)YSTEMS TRIAGE.

(l)IGHTS / (e)LECTRICITY / (g)RID PRIORITIES.

(m)APS / (t)ERRAIN / (h)YDROLOGY.

(m)EDICAL / (d)ETOXIFICATION / (f)AMILY HISTORY.

(n)EWS / (f)ORUMS / (i)NTEL.

(r)ADIATION / (b)IO / (c)HEM.

(r)ADIO / (c)ODE LISTS / (i)DAHO.

(r)ECLAIMERS / (s)UB-TANKS / (g)RATING SCHEMATIC.

(r)EDUNDANCIES / (o)VERLOAD PROTOCOLS.

(s)ALVAGE / (f)ACILITY PROXIMITY.

(s)CENARIOS / (p)AN / (f)IRE / (f)LOOD / (l)OADOUTS.

(s)CHEMATICS.

(s)HELTER (OVERVIEW).

(s)HELTER (PORTABLE).

(s)UPPLIES.

(t)ELEGRAPH / (m)ORSE / (e)LECTROMAGNETIC COILS.

(t)ELEPHONE / (c)ONTACTS / (o)UTREACH (POTENTIAL).

(t)OOLS / (r)ETOOLING.

(v)ENTILATION / (a)IR COMPRESSION / (o)XYTRANS.

(w)ASTE DISPOSAL / (g)LASS / (p)LASTICS / (r)ECYCLING PARAMETERS.

(w)ATER / (f)ILTRATION / (w)ELLSPRING.

And, at the rightmost end of the line of volumes standing upon the floor, the sole red binder:

(w)EAPONRY / (m)ERCY…

Tom’s voice arose within her mind, so pure in its reluctance to speak the words, it was as if he was just behind her and whispering into her ear: “God forbid if ever, the mercy.”

So that’s what he always meant. Sophie sighed. Killing me, killing our daughter if it was hopeless. I have a lot of reading to do. And nothing I want to, nothing I can bear, nothing I can, I.

Nothing…

And what else, Sophie, if not reading? What else are you going to do?

Again, the horror began to trickle in around the walls that she was still frantically reinforcing in her mind. She felt too much like a beast reduced to slinking on all fours from corner to corner, a fantastical monster reduced to an actuality beyond its own control, a mind-death coiled inside the stone and steel of the ever-constricting Cage.

She stood up and turned away from the semicircle of binders, pacing. She left the work table. She was limping, she realized. Her right hip socket clicked every time she took a step.

The spinning,

the spinning is almost done.

Girder to girder,

she’s crawling upon the ceiling.

If you look up, the feasting.

And only then.

It’s a game, Sophie.

How long

can you keep from looking

at the ceiling, seeing

the spider-skin of yourself

shivering up there and gazing down at you?

How long can you keep from seeing

the smile of the feast?

“I am alone.” She pounded the wall. “Alone!”

Pacing would accomplish nothing. She went back to the binders.

She read the spine titles again, and finally selected (h)OLOCAUST SCENARIO / (i)MPACT EVENT /(n)EMESIS THEORY. Hefting the binder and catching the few three-holed pages that had torn away and were trickling out of its bulky sheaf, she made her way back to the laundry pile and sat down. She surrounded herself with Tom’s jackets and jeans, tightened the bandages around her hands, and she began to read.

Hours, a newfound Thermos of water and a cup of spinach, a can opener and a food heater. It was strange how the world would fall away when she was reading, no matter how grim or daunting the tale set out before her. The only difference in Tom’s writings — as opposed to the horror tales she favored on her own — was that the hypothetical, the unthinkable, had become the real.

She made her way through printed survivalist forum threads, Wikipedia articles, NSA briefs (many still printed “SECRET” and one even “EYES ONLY,” surely it had been criminal in some way to be gathering these outside the agency), and she began to fathom just how the world had ended.

The reports on estimated fallout drift in event of a thermonuclear war were by far the most disturbing. Prevailing winds would come from the west and in high spring, with many winds and temperature changes, air currents would cause wide swathes of radioactive dust to wash over the entire eastern United States. The withering deluge would move in sky-corrupting tides like a sandstorm, like the black choking fog that had roiled out of the Dust Bowl in the Thirties. And what was the dust composed of? Pulverized buildings, molten cars, disintegrated corn, splintered trees, shattered earth, and tiny motes of radioactive flesh and bone and hair, the cinder-remnants of incinerated people.

For two weeks at least, or perhaps for years, cyclones would form and spin their way from west to east, scattering remains out over the Atlantic Ocean and leaving only the Gray Death in their wake, a wasteland where nothing would ever grow again. The more optimistic reports (including a rather idealistic survival book written in the Eighties by an Oak Ridge research engineer) theorized that the fallout cyclones would remain fatal for weeks, and present for several years; while the more menacing reports suggested that the storms would become the atmosphere, would coil and lay waste to the entire world for centuries.

Whatever the truth, if there were to be any survivors at all, the message to them was very clear: Keep away from once-populated areas. Avoid cities. Stay on rural roads whenever and wherever you can. Never go east. And, if you happen to be along the eastern face of the north-west spinal Rocky Mountains, go to the plains. Go north to the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming.

Go north.