IRT Seventh Avenue Line

After the bombs, ice is the only constant. Children are born and die of hunger a dozen times before the end of winter. Those who remember the sunshine search for it through slits in insulated windows and the annual opening of the subway doors. They send the oldest up to open the doors—one less mouth to feed if the sacrifice doesn’t make it back to the tunnels.

Their world is dark and cold, huddled together in the tunnels of abandoned MTA subway lines. Ifé learned early how to make the meat of a single rat feed two people for a week. They collect melted snow like rain water from faulty leaks and die of dysentery and typhoid. She’s survived it twice now, writhing and feverish in the abandoned NJ Transit waiting room, as close to the surface as anyone is willing to get. They made this sick bay because the dying can’t really complain. There’s no medicine left, and most of the doctors committed suicide after the Covid-37 strain depleted their numbers by 70%. No one nurses Ifé back to health, but both times her body refuses to die.

When she isn’t sick, she works as a body collector. So many people rushed below ground when DC got hit—they all knew the blast could reach them, knew the subways were safest from the blast. In the first few years her job was gruesome and demanding—hundreds of bodies to be collected a day and carted to the tunnels of the Long Island Railroad. They keep flesh burning night and day in those tunnels, a constant stench that lingers throughout the whole of the subway system, from Harlem all the way to South Ferry. Nowadays, she collects maybe a dozen dead a day and the people they leave behind actually mourn for them.

“We’re sending Ruth up to the doors tomorrow,” Bridgette tells their train car one day, at what they’ve collectively determined is nine in the morning twelve years after the bombs were dropped. Ifé looks at the old white woman she’s kept alive for over a decade. Ruth is elderly, there’s no denying that. Some people say she was born during the the Cold War, though Ifé doesn’t think anyone could actually be that old. Her hair is gray from root to tip and her face crinkles like the candy wrappers in the trash piles. Sometimes, she talks about computers and television and billionaires who wanted to colonize Mars. Ifé doesn’t think she’ll survive a trip to the doors, let alone be strong enough to return.

“Can I go with her?” Ifé asks, speaking before she has time to process the words.

The lights are kept on from the wind turbine off the coast of Jersey. As far as Ifé knows, no one has serviced those turbines or the energy system in twelve years. That’s why the lights flicker constantly, and Bridgette’s only half visible when she shrugs and says “No,” her eyes hidden and no remorse in her tone. Still, Ifé has traced Bridgette’s body with her tongue in absolute darkness and she knows the older woman’s tells. Bridgette feels guilty for this, but, as a former US Senator and the closest thing they have to a scapegoat in this makeshift fallout shelter, guilt is a feeling she knows and hides well.

“I know this subway like I know my own name,” Ruth tells her. “I’ll check the snowfall outside, grab some buckets of snow to drink, and be back before you know it, Ifé.” And though the words are meant to comfort, Ifé sees the way her friend is pulling on the gold chain around her neck. Few people keep jewelry down here, the world too dark for it to sparkle and life too desperate for ornamentation. But Ruth’s husband bought her the heart-shaped locket right after he was drafted in World War Four, and Ifé knows Ruth wants to be burned with it when the time comes. Some love lasts, even during the apocalypse.

All day, Ifé sits with Ruth. She tells Tommy she can’t join him on their rounds to collect the dead and she sends Bridgette away when the woman appears late in the evening, offering an escape.

“Do you think the sun will be out tomorrow?” Ifé asks, watching Bridgette walk away.

“Bet your bottom dollar!” Ruth says, then dissolves into giggles. Ifé doesn’t understand Ruth’s laughter, but echoes it anyway. Every moment feels like a gift right now, and she doesn’t want to squander it. Only four people have returned from opening the doors in the last twelve years. It’s not good odds for survival.

“My whole life has been shitty odds for survival,” Ruth tells her, when Ifé dares to speak this fear out loud. “Two world wars, a handful of global pandemics, forest fires and tsunamis, and at least eleven atomic bombs. I should be dead twice over at this point, Ifé Obuwola. It’ll take more than a bit of snow to do me in.”

It isn’t Bridgette who comes to collect Ruth in the morning. Robert and Yvonne show up instead. They’re both almost as dark as Ifé is but bigger, with more muscle. Maybe Bridgette thought Ifé would try to fight if Bridgette showed up to take Ruth away. But Ifé’s never been much of a fighter.

Ruth starts to follow them. “Wait,” she says, turning around to face Ifé again. “Take this. If I don’t come back, it’s the best way to remember my face.” Ifé opens the locket Ruth hands her and sees the beautiful faces of Ruth and her husband inside. They look happy. In that moment, Ifé realizes she’s never seen Ruth happy.

“Goodbye, my friend,” Ifé says, clasping the locket around her neck. “Come back and get this when you return.”

Ruth smiles at her and turns back to walk in step with her two guards.

“I am off to conquer the sun. Moritūrī tē salūtant” Ruth tells them, loud enough for her voice to echo through the tunnel. From behind her, Ifé hears Bridgette chuckle.

For hours, Ifé waits. Tommy drags her on a round, talking the whole time about an excavation effort up in Harlem, where they’re attempting to make contact with Queens and the Bronx. His brother is involved, and Ifé tries not to be jealous that his actual flesh and blood is down here with them. They eat a midday meal of tepid canned corn and it’s then that Bridgette comes for her.

“The doors are open,” she says, a smile so wide it sparkles in her eyes. “The sun is shining and you can venture out in a winter coat. We’re giving them away to anyone who’s willing to go outside and bring back information.”

Tommy is clapping and whooping and joyous. He hugs Bridgette and takes off running uptown, probably in search of his brother. “Where is Ruth?” Ifé asks, not looking at Bridgette’s face. She doesn’t need to watch her friend’s face fall to know Ruth is dead.

Bridgette is quiet when she says, “She died almost immediately after stepping outside. I’m sorry Ifé. It was a heart attack. Robert says it was fast.”

Ifé nods, fingering the heart locket with her dirty hands. “At least she got to see the sun one more time before she died.”

When Ifé finally walks outside a few minutes later, the heart-shaped locket shimmers in the cold, winter sun. When she finds Ruth’s body, the old woman is smiling.