The Nuclear Winter

by Brian Thompson

  He opened the door for me, and I entered the dining hall. Of course, the décor was white and entirely too massive to accommodate the small number of people there. Fifteen heads besides ours, mixed ethnicities, with short haircuts if they were male, hair tied back for females. Nobody spoke to one another even if they sat within earshot. Nor did they look up when we neared them. This made it impossible for me to see any of their facial features or distinguishing marks. My peripheral vision didn’t help, and Liam, with a hand at the middle of my shoulder blades, moved me along when I slowed my steps.

  At the front was a luscious buffet of anything I could possibly want in a meal: medium rare steak, sautéed vegetables, lasagna, sausage pizza, shrimp lo mein, lobster tail, pasta with red sauce, king crab legs soaked in butter, and so much more. I’d missed Thanksgiving days ago, and this more than made up for it. The scents were varied and delightful. Seafood overpowered most of them except the fresh smell of yeast rolls.

  I piled two plates high with everything, stacking types of food that didn’t belong together to fit it all, and moved my tray to the end of the line near the desserts. Dessert! I wedged an oatmeal raisin cookie between my lobster tail and pizza slices. Considering all the rich food I’d be eating, I skipped soda and got a glass of water. Liam laughed at me, and when I glanced at his plate, it was a portion I’d have eaten if I was normal and cancer-free.

  When we sat, Liam performed some sort of prayer in a language I didn’t understand. I prayed, too, and did the sign of the cross. Most times, I was a terrible Catholic, but I at least did that. Though each item mixed together in my mouth, everything tasted wonderful.

  Just when Liam finished, I started on my second plate. Wait, he had powers, too. Why wasn’t he eating like I was? I immediately felt fat and chewed more slowly on the chunk of butter-drenched lobster tail I’d jammed mindlessly into my mouth.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked me.

  The soft meat gushed flavor as I chewed it. “Why aren’t you eating more like me? Don’t you need it for your powers?”

  Liam checked his wristwatch, swallowed another gargantuan brown pill, and gulped down a glass of water. “You were born this way. I wasn’t. The pill makes the difference.”

  Anger and resentment in his voice raised my guard. Surely, if he’d poisoned all the food I’d consumed, I’d have dropped dead by now, superhuman or not, so I continued eating. “You have a stone, then?”

  He nodded and stuck his thumb at his neck to reveal a reinforced chain, but [XW73]I did not see the color of the emeralds. From the bumps under his shirt,[XW74] he had more than one. Way more.

  Person by person, the diners in the hall left. They did not interact with one another. In fact, they did not come within five feet of one another at any time. Too strange. There must be a rule against regulars fraternizing, which made me want to become one to break it.

  Only one person remained in the front corner of the room — a girl from the look of her loosely wrapped [XW75]hair bun. I didn’t remember seeing her on the way. “What’s her name?” I pointed my fork at the girl while gnawing on a tender piece of garlic-crusted prime rib.

  He ignored me and kept chewing.

  I mumbled, “Does she smell? Pick her nose? Why doesn’t anyone sit with her?”

  Liam wiped his hands on a napkin, crumbled it, and tossed it onto his plate. “She’s a nonverbal autistic, unstable around strangers. She’s able to fold distance and time with her mind, and it makes her…she’s difficult to work with. Finish your food so I can show you to your quarters.”

  That seemed insensitive, like someone discriminating against me because of my bone cancer. She couldn’t help her autism. There had to be a reason they kept her around. Her value had to outweigh her challenges. “What does she do for you?”

  “Are you done stuffing your face?”

  Right then, I decided she needed a new friend — me. During my chemotherapy, it helped to have advocates in my corner to cheerlead for me. This girl might have issues, but who didn’t? Instability didn’t have to be a curse. I’d finished most of my second plate anyway, and the food’s richness weighed on me. A walk around would do me good. We’d walk, and I’d talk to her, and she’d listen and not say anything but appreciate the interaction.

  “You’re rude,” I said, standing up.

  “What are you doing?”

  “The right thing,” I told him.

  Liam nearly choked on his drink. “Don’t. What part of ‘unstable’ don’t you understand?”

  “She’s a human being. Ever think all she needs is a person to be nice to her?”

  Liam snatched my wrist. “You’ll only get hurt.”

  By that stick figure? One thing was for sure: if Liam didn’t let me go, he was going to get hurt. To make my point, I stared at his fingers and elevated the temperature of my arm to an uncomfortable level for a regular human being. He let go once the pain became unbearable, shook his hand, and rubbed his reddened palm.

  “It’s not going to end well.”

  I strode up to the girl with confidence, sat next to her, and introduced myself. I held out my hand and determined to prove Liam wrong. “My name’s Lucy Sandoval. Nice to meet you.”

  Close up, I could see honey-brown highlights in her greasy blonde hair. I also noticed faint but raised black scars snaking across her face. What were those from, the autism? The disorder was a mystery to me. And did her condition also mean that she didn’t understand English?

  I lowered my voice and slowed my speech in reintroducing myself. She remained silent. Next to her was a small tablet computer she must have used to communicate messages. On it were ornate drawings of colorful butterflies and underneath them were their scientific classifications. I swiped through pages of them. “These are beautiful. Can you — ”

  She screamed in my face so loud my ears rang, and she raised her hand to slap me, which I blocked. I dodged the head butt and many of the kicks she tried as well. Once her anger appeared to cool, I let her go. She wiped the screen clear and wrote one word over and over in crooked capital letters.

  DIE.

  By the second time she’d written “DIE,” I’d gotten up and jetted out into the courtyard. She didn’t have to tell me again.

  She stomped after me, screaming again, and she didn’t look as if she was going to stop following me anytime soon. I didn’t want to hurt her, but it was beginning to look like I didn’t have a choice. I wound up and threw a fireball at her. Totally missed. The next one grazed her face. “Stop where you are,” I shouted. “I don’t want to hurt you. I want to be your friend!”

  Liam didn’t mention how antisocial she was or that she’d respond with unintelligible gibberish. Then, her face softened, her eyes welled with tears, and she reached out her hand to me. I knew nothing about autism except that there were different kinds, and it obviously didn’t mix well with superhuman abilities. Up to this point, she hadn’t revealed anything about what she could do, so I extinguished my hands and approached her with caution. Our fingers grew closer, and when we clutched hands, she yanked me toward her so hard I’m surprised my arm didn’t break or dislocate out of my shoulder.

  “Die!” Her tone made it sound like she had really said, “Why did you stay, stupid?”

  She lifted me over her head and tossed me flailing across the lawn. I landed and slid face-first in the grass. By the time I flipped over, she was singing gibberish in a shrill voice, and she had almost reached me.

  Enough of this.

  I fired up my hands and blasted her in the stomach with flames. Her screaming changed from one of anger to pain. I didn’t let up until she sank to her knees and fell over. In an instant, my blood ran cold, and I remembered the guy who I’d burned to the skeleton. My inferno had scorched the grass around us and left her cowering. I’d seared away her clothes and much of her hair. She curled, whimpering and naked, into the fetal position. The dirt cocooned in a circular pattern around her body.

  A five-man crew rushed o
nto the scene and covered her reddened, smoldering body with what, I guessed, was a fire retardant, bright yellow blanket with a plastic appearance. One of the rescuers, a white guy with lime green eyes, broke protocol and glared at me as if I had barbecued his puppy. He had romantic feelings for her? Quivering lip, jerky movements…he had it bad. And I felt awful for pitying him. She couldn’t communicate if she loved him back, at least verbally, and that had to be frustrating.

  This time, when Liam grabbed me, I didn’t make him let go. I’d neglected his warning and, had I left well enough alone, there wouldn’t be a gigantic burn hole in their campus, and the autistic girl wouldn’t be naked in winter temperatures. I’d done something awful, and, no way around it, it was totally my fault.

  “She’ll be all right, won’t she?”

  He rushed me to a five-story building where he used his handprint to access. “You have no idea what you’ve done. We need her!”

  A guilt pang hit my stomach. He’d told me I’d get hurt, and I didn’t listen. Meanwhile, his expression did not change.

  “This isn’t my quarters, is it?”

  “No.”

  Liam’s pace quickened. He pulled me down a series of hallways, all of which were white and looked the same. I could spend days trying to find my way out of this maze. When it hit me that he was taking me somewhere I most definitely did not want to go, I commanded my body to light up. I couldn’t. How did he do that? Nothing about Liam’s arm strength suggested he had his abilities either, so I dropped to the floor and refused to move. Though I kicked with everything I had, he snatched me by the ankle and dragged me down the hallway to a specific door.

  When it slid open, he pulled me inside. Unlit, except for a vented window some fifteen to twenty feet above my head, the room looked to be circular in design. There was a toilet on the far side and, I hoped, toilet paper. I found myself bound to the ground at the hands and ankles by a weight I couldn’t see. I struggled to free myself. “Wait! Let me out! I’m sorry. Let me apologize to her. I can make it right.”

  Liam did not turn around except to say, “You nearly killed her. What did she say to you?”

  The truth was on my tongue. “Check her tablet.”

  “You melted it.”

  “She wrote ‘Die’.”

  He lowered his head. “I told you to leave her alone.”

  “What now?”

  “Stay here.”

  Like I had a choice to leave. I screamed after him. “What about my mom? How long will I be here?”

  He disappeared behind the sliding door, and when he did, I was able to get up. I still didn’t have my abilities, and there were only two ways [XW76]out — through that door or the glass above me. Mom was the flyer, not me. If I had my powers restored, all I could do was melt it away, and then what? Have a nice winter breeze blowing in? There was no climbing to that height.

  I walked the cell — for that was what it was — seven times until my legs started to hurt. It was about two hundred fifty steps in circumference, and I lost count doing the diameter, and the math to convert the numbers into feet made my brain hurt. The place was bigger than any room I’d been inside. Like all the other structures, it was painted white and had the powdery fresh aroma.

  I wiggled out of my bodysuit and was thankful it wasn’t funky smelling. My body, however, was. The toilet worked, and, surprise, surprise, there was toilet paper. But, no shower. Things were about to get interesting.

  After I washed my hands, I splashed lukewarm water on my face and hoped to wake myself up from this long and vivid nightmare.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Once it became obvious I’d be spending the night imprisoned here, I navigated a path to the toilet and practiced reaching for toilet paper with my eyes closed. In a room with nothing but a commode and my solar-powered body suit, which charged underneath the ceiling window, finding my way around in the dark seemed like the smart thing to do. Hours passed, and my confines grew more and more black and cold with the setting of the sun. My powers would’ve come in handy right about now with the temperature dropping.

  In the moonlight, I saw slivers of the cell and relied on my memory to get around. I rolled up my bodysuit to use for a pillow and lay on my side facing the toilet. After listening to my own breathing pattern, I drifted off to sleep and dreamt of escaping by flying — flying — through the ceiling window. I’d soared out inside a breathtaking bluish-white flame pillar. Was burning a different color than orange a good or bad thing or even possible?

  When I awoke, the temperature in the room had warmed up. However, the floor was cool to the touch. Next to the toilet was a glass door shower with towels flung over the top[XW77] and a brown cardboard box with folded clothing on top of it. My surroundings appeared to be the same, and I hadn’t moved. At least I thought I hadn’t. One thing was for sure — those things weren’t previously there. They were toying with me. I wouldn’t give them the pleasure of driving away my sanity. Instead, they would get a show.

  I didn’t remember the last time I had a chance to bathe. My legs and arms were grizzly, and my ungodly personal brand of funk wafted up to my nose. The soap bar created thick, mango-smelling [XW78]suds on my skin, and as they rinsed away, I lathered up again. Two more times, I repeated this not to eradicate the dirt and smell, but because I had nothing better to do in my prison. The razor they had provided me with was top notch. My skin was clean and hairless. The realization that someone was watching me quickened my pulse. Naked, on a wet surface, and without powers, I was at my most vulnerable. Suddenly, the water pit-pattering against the shower floor sounded weird like miniature footsteps. “Who’s there?” I screamed again and again until my throat hurt.

  Switching the water off, I stepped out of the shower and enveloped myself in the white bath towel. Its softness was no comfort. The thing might as well be his — my captor’s — dry, eager fingers touching my body’s contours. No. I dropped the towel at my feet and stood on the crumpled pile. There, he had seen me naked from my catheter scar and finger-swept wet hair to my chipped royal purple toenails. I strutted the length of the cell, lifted my hands in a flourish, and paraded my naked fat with confidence. This was what he wanted: what all guys wanted. By showing it to him, now he could not take it from me by force. And I was no longer afraid of it. There were other things I had yet to conquer — the lack of noise, the voices that weren’t real,[XW79] and the anxiety of it all.

  Baby steps.

  I’d been provided with plain cotton underwear, a sports bra, a pair of lace-up leather sneakers, and pants with a long-sleeved shirt. Everything white, of course, and in my exact size. Inside the box were toiletries: my favorite lavender lotion and hair products, high-intensity deodorant, a toothbrush, whitening toothpaste, and blue mouthwash. Whomever had scoped out my likes and needs had done their homework.

  I dressed without caring who could see me or my stretch marks. The battery meter on the bodysuit said it needed more time to charge to full capacity. Rather than leave it in the cell, I slipped into it and turned on the cloaking in case they moved me to another place. Right after I finished zipping up was when the sliding door opened about a foot. My feet were glued to the floor by the same gravitational pull as the night before. A white plastic tray slid into the room, and I was able to move once again when the opening shut. Breakfast. Nothing like the delicious meal from the night before, but those sealed packages that Old Guy had given me plus a plastic container of water. This time, I recognized which to eat in the correct order, and I was satisfied. First time I remembered the man since he sacrificed himself for us. Should’ve paid more attention to his instructions.

  Lunch followed when the sun was overhead and dinner right before it got dark. In between meals, I sang songs, did push-ups and sit-ups for exercise, meditated, took naps, talked to myself…I even prayed a little. That helped pass the first half of the day. Extra showers worked until my skin started to flake, and they wised up and let me access the water twice a day for a short peri
od of time. After that, it became a useless game of keeping my boredom at bay without anyone to talk to or the internet to entertain me. About the time I was going to bust from anxiety, night fell.

  This routine repeated — one day, two days…after that I lost track, and then, the sickness came. I tasted bile at the back of my throat and almost missed the toilet. Not a stomach virus or food poisoning. No way on earth I was that lucky. Soreness seeped into my muscles which forced me to move when necessary. Whomever had been feeding me continued sliding trays and bottles into the cell although I’d left the last four there out of pure exhaustion.

  The cancer had returned.

  I was going to die. Here.

  Mom would be told of my demise, and she’d be alone in this world like I was now. All the time I wasted cursing at her under my breath and avoiding her. What I wouldn’t do for her to hold me close and call me “Mariposa.”

  I licked my cracking lips and cried. “Help!” A wavering crackle came from my throat.

  Once I’d spent all my energy, I drifted off to a heavy sleep.

  Unaware of how much time had passed, for my surroundings were pitch-black, I blinked my eyes when the cell door opened. From the corners of my eyes, I spotted the night sky through the ceiling windows and wished for drops of rain to penetrate the glass and fall into my mouth. The trays rattled against the floor.

  Someone had kicked them away.

  Liam straightened my head, forced a pill down my throat, and poured water between my lips. The first swallows burned like alcohol, and some of it dribbled down my cheeks and into my hair. He patiently waited for me to swallow the pill and catch up with the flow before offering more. Inside my head, my sense of balance spun so fast that I thought he was rolling me. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep. My lips weren’t moving though I had plenty to say to him for abandoning me in this hole.