Kyle West - Darkness

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…”