She backed away, staring in horror at the broken floor. Holy crap! A few seconds later, she ran to the corridor. I’ll pee later.
When she ceased trembling, she ventured into the hall and resumed her quick search, hoping to find curtains, fabric, or anything she could wrap herself in. All the rooms contained dust, broken furniture, and occasionally, smashed electronics. Old computers too damaged for the earlier scavengers to bother with remained as well as a mini-fridge or two that had long since been looted. Desk by desk, she pulled open every drawer, but someone had beat her here. Finger smears in dust indicated where a prior scavenger had taken things.
One small office still had vertical blinds, but the plastic slats would never work as any kind of garment. As soon as she touched one, it crumbled in her fingers. Whatever toxic mess it had been exposed to left the material as brittle as a cobweb. Scowling, she stormed across the hallway to the next room and flung the door open. At least ten skeletons slumped against the far wall on their knees, plastic ties around their wrists. All had holes in the backs of their skulls.
Kiera screamed and jumped back, hands clutched at her chin. After a few seconds of horrified staring, she bolted down the hall to the stairs and up again. Empty rifle brass, bones, and a skull littered the landing at the switchback, near a hole in the wall where a rusted bolt-action rifle remained lodged. Bare footprints in the dust, much larger than her feet, recorded the steps of whoever had looted the dead person. They hadn’t bothered taking any of the empty casings.
She crept forward and peered out the gap between rifle and concrete, which looked down on the old city street over the sandbags. Sniper nest. The remains had broken apart so badly, she couldn’t tell how he died other than not being shot in the head―the skull didn’t have any holes in it that shouldn’t be there. The gamer in her came out. She took a knee, hefting the rifle to her shoulder and pretending to be a sniper camping in a high-rise building. Alas, the scope had turned opaque grey, the lens having fallen victim to whatever corrosive substance had ruined everything else. Since she pointed the weapon at nothingness, she tried to fire it, but the trigger didn’t move at all.
“Wow… guess the gun’s rotted inside.” She set it back as she found it and wiped her hands off on the wall.
When she noticed she’d put her knee down on a patch of dried blood, she winced, leapt to her feet, and tiptoed past the dead guy, back to the stairs.
The door to the fourth floor creaked, sending a screech of rusty metal echoing in the stairwell. She cringed at the loudness, but kept pushing until the fire door jammed on something inside. Enough space had opened for her to attempt squeezing by. Cinder blocks scraped at her backside, cool metal along her front, as she wedged herself past the gap into a hallway full of smashed rubble. The floor above this part had collapsed in, leaving her staring up at the ceiling of the fifth.
Uhh, maybe I shouldn’t be in here at all. This whole place is going to fall apart.
A doorway straight ahead led to a giant spread of office cubicles. Another pair of bathroom doors flanked vending machines on the left side of a short hallway. On the right, an archway opened to a break room.
Kiera crept down the hall to the cube farm, grasping at a thread of memory, how her father used to keep a spare suit in his office ‘for emergencies.’ Maybe one of the employees had stashed clothing in their workspace. She went from cube to cube, searching dust-coated desks and drawers. More handprints and swipes in the grime told the story of other scavengers who’d already gathered everything shiny, electronic-looking, or useful.
After a while of searching, she took a break, sitting on a padded office chair in one of the cubes. The crusty, damp fabric scratched her skin and reeked of mold, disintegrating as she put her weight on it. Pictures tacked to the grey cube wall showed a smiling man a little younger than her father and a pair of two-year-old boys. Some of the photos had a strawberry-blonde woman with the same man and kids. A handful looked like they’d been taken at Disneyland, with a row of militarized police officers in the background.
She swung her feet back and forth, thinking about a news voice mentioning anti-corporate terrorists attacking the theme park. The woman reporter made a comment about how could people still bother going to amusement parks when the world was falling to pieces. Her co-anchor started an argument on air, which had caused the network to go to commercial.
Out of sheer randomness, she sat up straight and set her hands on the keyboard connected to nothing, muttering as she typed, “If this is a nightmare or if I’m in virtual reality right now, please let me wake up.”
She waited a second, not really expecting anything to happen—and nothing did.
“I’m wasting time… and this building is going to fall apart.”
More searching brought her to the end of the room by a long window. Cubes took up most of the fourth floor, and fortunately, only that one section of hallway by the stairs had collapsed. She stepped up on a slab of crumbled wall to get closer to the window without entering the field of glass shards all over the carpet. Balanced on her knees, she grasped the top of the concrete chunk and peered out between two twisted bits of rebar at the ruins of downtown.
“Mom, Dad… are you dead?” Tears came without warning. “Where are you? Please… I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
The ruined city went on for several more blocks before giving way to open desert again. At this height, her view of the surroundings made the cloud cover appear dome-like. The robot had told her a hundred miles out from the Citadel, the world became toxic. She pictured a bubble of ‘good air’ pushing the clouds away.
Off in the distance, smoke trails suggested the presence of other people, perhaps the village that robot mentioned. Her stomach growled, so she put a hand to it. The protein bar she’d had before didn’t fill her up, but it was concentrated. Eating more than two a day would be both wasteful and unhealthy.
A laugh belted out of her. Are tribespeople worried about getting fat?
She pictured a pair of loincloth-clad spearmen stopping at a Starbucks on their way to the campfire, and cracked up giggling at the ridiculousness of it. Laughing soon became crying at the worry she might not be dreaming. She slid to the bottom of the slab and curled up on the rug, sobbing.
No amount of wanting made her parents appear out of thin air.
9
Small
Kiera rested her chin on her knees, staring down her legs at the clear plastic pouch by her toes. Two protein bars represented the entirety of her worldly possessions. She heaved a sigh and wiped her face dry. Her parents were probably dead. The ghosts she’d been living with in virtual reality didn’t behave like her parents. They’d been programs made to act like parents. Her real parents ‘gave her space’ since she’d become older.
She made a sour face. ‘Giving her space’ had been a nice way of saying she had to cook for herself when they didn’t come home from work until after her bedtime, or how they left her alone with video games every day. Her grief over their loss darkened to anger at them for ignoring her.
“So what if you’re dead! You already were!” She leapt up to stand, hands balled in fists. “You ignored me. I’m not sad you’re gone!”
Another wave of sobbing gathered in her chest, but she forced it down.
“Think. I gotta think. I’m going to die if I’m stupid.” She gulped. “I can’t be stupid.” Her lip quivered as tears fought to come out. “This isn’t fake. I’m not dreaming.”
She slapped herself on the thigh hard enough to sting.
“Aww, crap.” She cradled the spot, limping to the side. “Ow. Nope. This is real.” When the pain faded, she stooped to grab her protein bars, and sighed. “Double crap. I’m in deep crud.”
Creeping along, she made her way out of the cube farm and back to the stairs. The rest of the floors up could go to hell. Her fear of the building falling apart overpowered her curiosity. Anything that might’ve been here had been taken already, no sense risking her
life on the small chance prior looters missed something. She hurried down the stairs to the first floor and ran straight into the door―which didn’t move.
“Oof.” She backed up, rubbing her arm. “Ow.”
Again she pushed on the bar, shoving until her feet slid backward over the floor.
“Oh no… what happened?” Her heart thudded in her chest. “It opened before….”
Kiera flung herself against the door over and over, bouncing away without budging it even an inch. She considered shouting for help, but still feared those three men more than being stuck in the stairwell. Did the ceiling fall in when the toilet broke?
“What am I gonna do now?” She paced around in a circle, debating between another set of stairs down to a basement level or heading up to the second floor and looking for a way to climb down outside.
Basement didn’t seem likely to offer a way out, but the idea of going out a window on the second floor scared her. I should at least check. She edged over to the stairs and peeked around the corner. Metal-capped concrete steps brought her to the opening of an underground garage. A few cars remained in parking spaces, many she recognized. That, of course, meant the cars approached sixty years old. Dried stains on the ground below them didn’t bode well for their odds of working. Not that she had the keys anyway. She grumbled, about to give up, but froze at a sudden thought.
“Cars! That’s awesome! There’s gotta be a ramp!”
Kiera jogged into the basement, finding herself shivering at the unexpected chill. Like a cave, the underground concrete structure had made the area a shelter from the oppressive heat. She proceeded past a row of parking spaces, forty in total, before the room bent rightward at a corner and continued to a ramp blocked off by two guard booths and a steel garage door.
She shook her fists in victory. “Yes!”
The clap of her feet striking smooth concrete echoed as she jogged across the length of the garage. A golf cart with security markings sat parked near the booth. She hopped in the driver’s seat, cringing at the sensation of dry-rotted fabric crumbling beneath her, scratching as she moved. She grabbed the wheel, but turning it didn’t do anything, nor did stepping on the cold pedals.
“Duh.”
She twisted a small key in the dashboard to the on position, but the cart remained dead. Frustrated, she folded her arms across the steering wheel and put her head down on them. “Ugh. What am I thinking? It’s been sitting here for like, ever. The batteries are gone.”
Reluctantly, she abandoned the cart, brushing fabric bits off her rear end, then ducked under the yellow-and-white striped arm of the security booth. Ancient dried blood spattered the inside wall. She cringed away, not wanting to see what might be inside there, and scurried over to the exit ramp.
A rolling steel door covered the three-lane-wide opening, with a few inches of gap at the bottom. Warmth breezed in over her toes, almost pleasant compared to the chilly basement. She got down on her hands and knees and peered under at the outside, grinning at her almost-freedom. Grabbing the bottom of the door and pulling succeeded only in making a large amount of clattering noise.
“The button’s in that nasty booth, isn’t it?” she asked no one in particular.
Hoping not to have to go anywhere near where someone died, she looked around for another option. The flexible door unspooled from a long, cylindrical housing along the top. On the right end, an electric motor connected to the spindle, but it also had a chain over a spoked wheel that hung down near the floor―a manual backup.
“Yes! Luck!” She grinned, but frowned a second later at being stranded in a destroyed world with nothing to drink, or wear, and only a couple of protein bars to eat. “If this is good luck, I don’t want to know what bad luck looks like.” She thought of the bandits carting her off to slavery. “Okay, I take that back. I’ve seen bad luck.”
She dropped the protein bar pouch on the floor and took the chain in both hands. Pulling lifted her up on tiptoe, but didn’t move the door. Maybe I got it backward? She grabbed the other side of the chain loop and tried again, but couldn’t budge it. Grr. I hate being so weak. Kiera frowned at her arms and chest… both of which looked more sinewy and muscular than she remembered. Huh what? She even almost had abs. I’ve been a couch potato forever… why do I look like I’ve been taking gymnastics? That climbing stuff was in VR….
Grumbling, she stared up the length of chain at the spoked wheel. If it connected to the spindle without some funky gear system, it would need to rotate counterclockwise to pull the door up. She grabbed the inner part of the chain loop again and lifted herself up off her feet, hanging on it. Grr! Come on! Kiera wrapped her legs around the chain and climbed it like the rope in gym class for a few feet. She pulled herself up until her fists reached her stomach, then dropped to hang by her hands, using all her weight to heave at the chain. The door shook in response. It’s stuck. She repeated the process of pulling herself up and falling.
“Come on, move!” she yelled, and did it again.
The fourth time, the mechanism gave way, rattling as she glided down until her toes touched concrete. While the chain had moved several feet, the door had only gone up two inches. Grumbling, she tried to climb again, but the chain didn’t resist enough for her to leave the ground. A little while of pulling raised the door, creating a gap she could fit through. Eager to flee the deathtrap building, she didn’t bother wasting the time it would take to open it enough to walk out, preferring to lay flat on her chest and scoot under.
Once outside, she ran well away in case the old office decided to spite her escaping by collapsing on top of her. As soon as she felt safe, she stopped to rest and took a seat on the soft dirt. She picked at her hair, still sticky from the dried residue of the tank slime. Taking a bath ranked low on her list of priorities (and also required a whole bunch of water she didn’t have), but she still spent a while pulling the matted slab apart into separate strands at least so air could move across her back.
Confident that the silt wouldn’t collapse out from under her like the last toilet had, she ducked behind a pile of rubble and relieved herself on the ground, blushing despite having no other choice. Do the villages have toilets or are they like, super native? Fortunately, she didn’t have to do the other thing, so not having any toilet paper didn’t present an immediate worry. With any luck, maybe those high-efficiency protein bars would make it so she didn’t have to go for a long time.
“Eww.”
Using the wind to aim herself toward the village, she walked on. Soon, she left the dead high-rises behind for shorter ruins. Light faded far faster than she expected it to. In barely three blocks’ distance, she almost couldn’t see twenty feet away from where she stood. Despite the pitch darkness, she continued walking with her arms out in front to catch anything she might stumble into.
A glimmer of moonlight ahead led her to a demolished building that consisted only of two fragmentary walls barely a full story tall, a broken wedge pointing into the wind. Kiera figured she could find shelter there for the night. Traveling alone scared her plenty enough when she could see. Having no desire to roam blind, she scurried into the remnants of a structure so far decayed she couldn’t tell what it had been. In the corner where the walls met lay a mildewed mattress. Someone had made a home of this place some time ago, but she spotted no sign of recent use.
The wind whistled overhead, shaking the flimsy walls. She tested the mattress with a foot, finding it damp. A spring poked out here and there, but enough area looked safe for a kid to sleep on. She sat on the edge and opened another protein bar, nibbling on it while thinking about how much she missed her home, even if it had been fake. No matter how hard she tried to remember where she’d lived in the real world before, she couldn’t picture anything—only that her parents had never been around. Faint memories of breathing masks and plastic ponchos flickered in and out, and something about school being cancelled for a long time due to poison in the air; the government didn’t want children goin
g outside.
Clouds thickened, dimming the moon even more. She might as well have closed her eyes, for it had become so dark she couldn’t see her arm an inch in front of her face.
After finishing the bar, she eased herself back and curled up on her side in a fetal pose. Her bed smelled like a sneaker that had been left out in the rain. Indirect wind tousled her hair against her back, though the temperature remained uncomfortably warm. She had trouble falling asleep without at least a sheet on her, more out of habit than being cold. All her life, she’d slept in air-conditioning with winter blankets up to her chin. ‘Snug as a bug in a rug’ as Mom always said.
Mom.
Kiera sniffled, but refused to cry. “I’m still mad at you for ignoring me.”
Curled up with her hands at her chin, she gazed into the darkness, and shivered out of worry despite sweating. For the first time in her life, she felt completely alone and unprotected. No parents to stand between her and whatever wanted to hurt her. No bedtime, no rules, no school. She sighed. No video games. No food. No clothes. No friends. No idea if she’d be alive in three days. Her throat scratched with every breath. She’d gone a day without water. Miss Lentz in biology said something about that. How long could a person go without water? Two days? Three? Four? The robot told her she could make it to the village before she died from no water. But he didn’t expect her to waste hours exploring an old building.
Tomorrow, I’ll go straight. No stops. She smacked her lips, worrying at how dry her mouth had become.
A while after lying down, the cloud cover thinned, brightening the weak moonlight enough to suggest the basic shapes of her surroundings. Of course, her pale skin practically glowed blue in the dark. Feeling conspicuous, she looked around for something to cover herself with, but the only option involved burrowing under the powdery silt—or lying on top of it; the pale grey substance took on the same luminous blue as her body. Hoping that the rubble and the walls would keep her safe, she closed her eyes and tried to stop worrying enough to sleep.
Citadel: The Concordant Sequence Page 11