What the Hell can I do with a phone of all things?
But still, this phone was familiar. For some reason. Resting her head with her fingers steepled at the back of her neck, she closed her eyes and tried to remember. Another world, another day long ago.
“Nice phone, Tom. So very stylish. Surplus City?”
“Something like that.”
“Ah. So if this world ends, we call the next planet. Hopefully collect. Better rates at night. Right?”
“Hey, you’re really funny! No. See, it’s for… a lesser disaster.”
“A lesser disaster? Is this one your ‘military intelligence’ jokes?”
“No, see? Like… like a fire, or earthquake, or pandemic or something.”
“A pandemic is ‘lesser’?”
“Ha. Okay, you’re tired. Slide it back, it’s okay. See, it wouldn’t be any good in a nuclear war, God forbid. You know. I just thought… for Lacie…”
“Oh. Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t —”
“Huh? No, it’s fine. Look, let’s just go, okay?”
Let’s just go.
And here she was. She clicked the field phone off, lowered the dome and pushed it back onto its tray.
She decided, in that moment as the green fluorescents flickered down and died, not to feel anything. Not unless she truly couldn’t help it.
The second aluminum panel door revealed a compact Intel computer, which she harbored even fewer hopes for than she had the useless phone. The third panel stuck on its hinge, but she levered it open with both hands. She cursed as the gauze of a trailing bandage snagged in the door-joint and bit into her tender fingers. Levering the panel open further, she saw a Grundig radio, an ominous-looking technical beast socketed into a conical faraday cage, replete with a headset and a wooden box full of gadgets.
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.