FROM THE FIRE - An Epic Novel of the Nuclear Holocaust: (Episodes 1 to 6) by Kent David Kelly

Author:Kent David Kelly [Kelly, Kent David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wonderland Imprints
Published: 2014-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

23

Emergence

(This, then, is the very last shelter-oriented section of the diary which is written out in full. It was a bare skeleton of notations, once, the first time there inscribed. We can see from the many hands, the different ages of coded cross-writing, that Sophie revisited this tale several times, adding remembered details as she went. The resultant record is one of moments, with black gaps of the unknown dividing each of them.)

(— Alexandria S.-G. C.)

~

SOPHIE PUSHED the last of the cold aluminum supply carts out into the great room. Her ammunition-filled hand-sack, one of the most important things of all, was cradled atop its reflective surface. The crucial elements for her exit into the Burning World lay around the sack in a series of circles, like a surgeon’s tools. Submachine gun, crowbar, pulley winch, wrench, flashlight, flash-bangs, bottle of water.

She hoped she would not need to kill anyone.

At least not yet. Please.

She exhaled, a deep and misted sigh inside her armor. Reflections of LED displays danced over her faceplate. She had not practiced enough, moving things with the suit on. She was stronger, yes. Very strong now. But her gloved hands were still fumbling everywhere.

She triple-checked her suit. She was wearing an adult diaper of all things, something her humility would not allow her to dwell upon. Every seal of the suit was perfect, the gun then carefully hooked to her utility belt. Battery power optimal, timer ticking. She was giving herself one hundred and seventy minutes of exertion, ninety minutes to load materials and Silas, eighty minutes to load the car.

Whichever car that might be. Longer than ninety, and she would need to sleep in the underground, one last time.

She was not certain that she could.

Ignoring this, she tested her gloved grasp on each of the implements. The crowbar had a foreboding slipperiness to it. There was no grip, no certain leverage if it was needed as a weapon. The winch, the wrench, the flashlight, all were fine.

She slipped off the exterior mitt-gloves, down to the thin ones where she could actually manipulate objects with some certainty. The gun trigger, fine. The winch gauge, good. Even the line-feed, she could feel a little tease of its pressure as she ran it between her fingers. She clicked the submachine gun’s safety on and off, timing herself. The flashlight she clicked on and off six times. Then she switched the wrench-head setting from ninety millimeters to sixty, overcompensating the first time that she tried.

Seventeen seconds to calibrate the wrench and back again. Not good.

Keep it as sixty, then. She needed to be quicker, in case someone was still up there. Sixty it was. She looked again at the array of implements. What was she forgetting? Oh God, the car keys.

She cursed at herself. There they were, on the bottom shelf of the cart. These she slipped into a utility pocket directly over her right hip, taping the key ring inside her suit.

And then, timing herself with the clumsy and horrid mitt-gloves both back on.

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