Last One Out
May 14, 2018 15:52:50 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on May 14, 2018 15:52:50 GMT -6
Part 1
Just once, Lilith would have adored a sound that wasn't the tick of a Geiger counter.
It seemed that this was not the red-letter day when any such noise would grace her ears. Her gentle, deliberate footsteps, matched to the slow pace at which she drew breath through her filtered mask, left the world around her bereft of sound. Nothing but the steady wrwww-wrwww-wrwww of the device hung at her belt echoed off the rubble surrounding her. Had she not grown accustomed to the thought of such silence reigning in downtown Los Angeles, her mind might have gone already.
As they had on every one of the fifteen hundred trips she'd taken down this street, her eyes darted back and forth between massive piles of concrete and steel that had once jutted far into the sky. Through the grime built up on a thinning plastic faceplate, the dark irises made a visual dig through every inch of debris, hoping that movement would catch the eye. Anything, anything at all, she would've taken it. Movement of another human being wandering as she did, movement of an animal that could be felled by the rifle gripped in her hands, or even the movement of a random piece of paper floating on the wind, perhaps bearing some new words of entertainment that she could bring home.
Nothing, save for disappointment.
Yet she'd found that a familiar feeling on these excursions, almost to the point of feeling comfort in the dull lack of everything. To be greeted with silent rubble all the way out to the edge of a vast blue sky that. It used to make her chuckle to look up, scanning where the birds and planes used to fly, and realize that for all the ash and dust thrown up, the air above LA had never been cleaner.
The sun continued beating down, drawing sweat from her pores as the long, slow walk brought Lilith near her destination. Half-buried amid what had once been an office building, a crude, twisting path through the jutting rebar led to the basement, where a heavy steel door sat sunken into the floor. She almost slipped several times on concrete that grew more powdered with every trip, but regained her footing, keeping upright until she was at the threshold. It took both hands to pry open the huge chunk of lead-lined metal, her grunts providing some small crack in the silent air before all her little sounds were overwhelmed by the creaking of rusting hinges, and the crash of the door as it tipped over.
No time was wasted in scurrying down the staircase now exposed to her, just enough to get inside and pull the door shut. The locks clicked into place, and she huffed, hurrying to pull off the mask that was no longer essential to her continued breathing. The bunker's air, musty though it may have been, was still a welcome change from the even more enclosed environment of the radiation suit that she was already stripping off. The fading military fatigues underneath the suit ruffled as she pulled the patchy plastic off, tossing it all off to a locker once it had been removed. Decon would come later, when she'd cooled off from the intense heat of the outside.
Even that proposition was tricky with the incredible heat retention of this box of reinforced concrete. Walking further down the cramped corridors, she made her way to what could affectionally be described as a foyer: a room somewhat smaller than one of the restrooms that used to give workers in the office above this spot a place to slack off on their phones. Lining the walls were racks of random equipment, some spare ammo and weapons, survival essentials, a bugout bag in case she had to flee in haste; on the opposite side of the space was a bunk that had seen better days, positioned with a fan standing at the end to blow on the occupant.
Coughing, she switched on the fan before crashing down upon the bunk's worn-out, long unwashed sheets. A piddling amount of cool air was better than none at all, Lilith told herself, soaking in little breeze that brought some much-needed coolness against her dark skin. The comfort may have done nothing to stave off the next time she'd hack up a lung or writhe with agony at the burns on her arm, but it could beat back the throbbing, intense heat that the sun seemed to thrust upon her with an almost hateful enthusiasm. It was... something, in a city of nothing.
The thrum of the generator one floor below provided her with precious, precious breaks in the silence, but she could manage even more right now. After several minutes of the fan's desperate attempts to cool the air, she reached out with a groggy hand, grasping at a cassette player sitting on a shelf above the bed. Her fingers fumbled at first, but with a few attempts, she managed to hit the play button, producing a sharp crackle before the voice of the singer started to reverberate in the room, drowning out the hum that had been vibrating her down to the bone, ever so slightly. By the time the intro was over, she was even feeling lucid enough to make out the words.
Been working so hard
I’m punching my card
Eight hours for what?
Oh, tell me what I got
I've got this feeling
That time's just holding me down
I'll hit the ceiling
Or else I'll tear up this town
Her eyes shut as the tape went right along filling the air, the occasional crackle signaling where it had been damaged over the past few years. Nothing significant enough to rip her into more awareness as she drifted back off into something halfway between awake and asleep. Just tired enough from another fruitless day of hiking through ruins that she couldn't push herself to walk around, yet not so comfortable as to rest completely. The in-betweenness had become a rather apt definition of her life. Still, at least nothing pierced the immersive haze of recordings from long-dead musicians insisting, in their own ways, that everything would be fine.
Not until she heard the thunder.
The sound had started low, at the edge of Lilith's awareness, blending seamlessly with the throb of the electrical systems. She couldn't be sure how long it had taken to grown from some small, finally noticeable thing to a sound that began to overwhelm even her blasting music; about 11 or 12 minutes? Three songs completed from when she first noticed it to when it became deafening.
Such raging roaring became familiar as she jolted back to full lucidity, scrambling off her bed in shock. The furious release of fire, that was the sound - an engine. The mighty, thundering spew of thrust from the bottom of a rocket lifting off into the atmosphere. Her mind flashed with so many possibilities that it almost crippled her with terror. Was this another missile? Some delayed retaliation, launched by an automated system? Something falling back to Earth from space, a satellite hurtling towards what was once a heavily populated target? God himself tearing down from the heavens to reap the last of a race that had become his greatest shame?
She was so engrossed in considering what hell had visited upon her that it took her several minutes to notice it had just... stopped. At its loudest, when the roar seemed to be right above its head, it cut out abruptly, as if the whole raging thing had fallen over dead. When the realization came, Lilith smacked the stop button on the cassette player, abruptly cutting off Bob Dylan in favor of listening for any other noise, anything that could give some clue as to what had been screaming in the afternoon air just moments before.
Thick cement blocked any sound of movement above, containing her own hushed breaths and the endless thrumming of her bunker's power system for the eternity that passed before she heard something else. Something far more intimately familiar than the far-off roar of fire spewing in the air: metal creaking. Steel straining against itself. A door opening - her door. Her heavy door that should have taken explosives to open, if it had been locked - and quite some time ago she had fallen out of the habit of locking it, when it had become evident that even in LA, there was nothing else nearby that might attempt to break in.
You fucking moron.
Instincts not put to use in years returned in an instant, lighting up her synapses like a wildfire across the whole nervous system. The rifle she'd casually tossed onto its rack was right back in her hands, safety off and barrell up. The acoustics of the bunker carried towards her the sound of footsteps, several of them - a group, their rapid clatter against the concrete steps growing louder with every passing moment. Her rifle was already pointed at the corner they would soon be force to turn when she heard them speak.
The first voice Lilith had heard in three years did not speak in English, or Spanish, or Russian, or Chinese. It spoke in what she could only describe as gibberish. Rapid clicks of a tongue, guttural growling, almost, that echoed across the depressed halls of her home. Already tense, she now trembled ever so slightly, wondering what kind of madness had gripped whoever was invading her space. A resolution came to her and was solidified in moments - she would find out what insanity had broken in by force.
A deep breath was taken as she moved forward, rifle at the ready, steps kept light to avoid tipping off her intruders until she was in position. At the turn of the corner, she paused, pondering firing off a prayer before deciding that it held no value, not when anyone who might hear it had long ago stopped listening. Without another stop, she shifted around the turn ready to open fire instantly, or duck back behind the corner of the reinforced walls if the situation proved untenable.
No chance was given for either. Her body was at most halfway around the corner when a bright green light, more luminous than even the sun in a Los Angeles summer, filled her vision. At the same instant, a searing fire more painful than any wound she'd ever suffered rippled from her arms across the whole of her body, overloading her nervous system with vast, flooding agony. She screamed, the harsh screeching joining in with a flurry of new sounds from her intruders, as she crumpled down to the grimy floor. The rifle clattered against the wall, as did her head, adding a new pain in her skull, though she did manage to avoid slamming her cranium into the ground. Not exactly a comfort right now.
Before blackness overtook her vision, Lilith could've sworn she saw a pair of hooves clattering down the stairs towards her.
