Mementos

I found the locket hanging on the neck of a woman long deceased. Though she was nothing more than a collection of bones when I found her, she still wore a faded paisley dress, cinched at her forgotten waist with a simple belt that may or may not have been brown leather at some point. Faint wisps of copper and rust red strands still clung to her dusty skull and her hand clenched tightly in her husband’s. He wasn’t much better off, his remains having long deteriorated to skeletal aspects, though he still wore a faded tweed suit and his dancing loafers. The couple were draped in Death’s wedding veil of cobwebs as they sat haphazardly together in the ruins of what was once their family home.

The object, itself, was nothing special, though how it caught my eye became a mystery as soon as it found my hand. It was small, heart-shaped, and may have once been gold. I polished the thing for a moment between my hands, hoping to dislodge some of the dirt and dust that clung to it and was rewarded with the gleam of shiny, precious metal. Now I could see the intricate details carved into its surface of swirling ivy spattered with leaves and flowers. It had been carefully crafted long ago.

…before the bombs fell…

Fifty years ago, the War to End All ended as soon as leaders throughout the Old World pushed their big red buttons. The surface world was decimated. Billions of lives were lost. What was once known as The Great Western Civilization was obliterated in less than an hour. Centuries of work and technological advances had led humanity to the brink of extinction by their own hand. The Apocalypse.

Now, the only thing that remained of the surface world were ruins and rubble, and sad, despairing lives ended too quickly. The ghosts of the past still lingered in the monuments to that forgone time, much like this woman and her husband.

I pocketed the trinket and glanced about the room – possibly a living room – and found my attention drawn to a hallway, cast into shadow by the setting sun. My boots crunched through the debris, rifle at my side though the neighborhood had been cleared the week prior. Still, it didn’t hurt to be careful. As I approached the hall and gained a better view of what might lie at the end, I witnessed a line of doors, one of which sat ajar and cast a scant amount of light into the darkened hall. Carefully stepping, I approached the door.

The room I stood before had once been a nursery. Compared to the rest of the house, it was well-preserved, though a light smattering of dust covered everything, from books on a slightly askew shelf to the broken mobile still clinging to its moon, stars and cloud shapes.

The room was eerily quiet and painfully empty. Some part within me bemoaned the loss of the infant this room had felt, as though the child’s presence had made it a living thing long ago. I approached the crib slowly and reached a hand in to pull away a blanket covering a soft, small lump…

A stuffed elephant toy gazed up at me, instead.

My heart swelled and relief had me sinking in my boots when I realized the crib had long been vacant, the infant gone. In its place was a soft toy, practically new and well-kept by the crumbling blanket that protected it. I scooped up the toy and smiled behind my mask at it, squeaking it gently. I stashed it in one of my other pockets, checked the time on my mask and prepared to head home.

***

“Please stand by for radiant decontamination.”

The machine whirred loudly in my ears that coupled blowers, some lasers and misted chemical products that made me glad I still wore my mask. Re-entry into the Hole was always a pain, especially after scientists had determined the fallout in the area to have already dissipated. A woman approached from behind wearing a full hazard suit and began uncinching my own jumpsuit and unbuckling straps and clasps. It fell away and I shook out, tossing stray red strands out of my eyes. Another puff, another command, and I was filing through with the others, wearing my civvies and feeling naked for it.

The next in line got the same treatment and I glanced back at the other reconnaissance soldiers as I collected a bag that contained my loot, ammo, and weapon.

“Enjoy the scrub, guys. I’m off!” I called to other team members, who groaned in return for the harsh treatment they’d have to endure.

I giggled and practically galloped along the walkways and catwalks, . She would be so excited to see the things I’d found in the Ruins today. While I was far from being a spring chicken anymore, the giddiness I felt from the treasures I’d unearthed made me feel like a teenager, again…more so that they were gifts for my mother.

As I entered the lab, I could already hear Dr. Curtis grumbling about something to her staff, a gaggle of post-scholar-level-education idiots barely a handful of years younger than me. She had her back turned and I could see her one arm perched neatly on her hip, the white of her coat casting sharp angles to her back and glittering iridescence to her ruby-and-silver hair.

“And if THAT wasn’t enough, you had to go and dump old COLA in the centrifuge! Jebediah save my brain…Just go and decon the damn thing already!” she shrieked. Apparently she’d been on a rampage and I just happened to catch the tail-end of it.

“Uh…Mom?”

“What?!” she growled, whipping around with her fierce green eyes and a snarl on her lip, before hesitating and relaxing into a tired smile. “Oh. Jessica, dear. How are you?” she crooned sweetly. I grinned in response and pat my bag, to which she lit up and hurried over. It always made me laugh to see her empty sleeve flop around uselessly behind her.

“I’ve got presents for you. Happy Birthday, Mom!” I said with a laugh as I set the military-issued duffel bag down on the nearest table that wasn’t covered in paperwork or expensive lab equipment (which was hard to find, all things considered). She chuckled in return and rolled her eyes before adjusting the reading glasses perched delicately on the end of her nose.

“You always bring me ‘presents.’ What makes this-“ she said, pausing mid-sentence as I began to pull out the artifacts.

She became quiet and reserved and the rest of the lab seemed to follow suit when I laid everything out on the table. Old money. Magazines. A music box. A stuffed elephant toy…and a golden, heart-shaped locket. Her hands, shaking, reached out to the toy first, running her hands over it’s soft and plush head, before she touched the locket. It seemed to shimmer at her touch as she gently picked it up.

“Where…where did you get this?” she asked breathlessly, her eyes never moving from the object.

“In the Ruins. An old house with a couple inside. Same place I found the elephant. Why?” Curiosity ran in the family, evidently, and I was dying to know by this point. I had never seen such a headstrong, obstinate woman act this way before. It was as if she’d seen a ghost.

She didn’t answer and I watched her carefully as, almost by instinct, she picked up the elephant and curled it in her arm before undoing the latch on the side of the locket and opening it. There, inside, was a faded picture of a small family…a loving mother, an adoring father, and a little, smiling baby girl with a ribbon on her head, swaddled in pink. Both the babe and the mother had bright green eyes. And crimson hair.

Tears welled in her eyes and fell fat and heavy over her cheeks and I realized the true value of the object I had bestowed upon my mother. A larger version of the image contained therein sat on our mantel piece in the den, beside another picture of an aged but otherwise unrelated set of parents. She clung to the elephant and sobbed like a child and before I knew it, I was throwing my arms around her and pulling her tight. Hearing my mother break down so viscerally made tears escape my own green eyes. My throat closed up and I found myself at a loss for words.

The crib had been empty because the babe had been rescued, brought to the Hole, and raised. She went on to become a scientist who studied the old world, married a military man, and had a child of her own. All the while, she had been searching for her ancestral home, trying to learn whatever became of her birth parents and while, I’m sure, her adoptive parents had tried to be kind, they died before they could tell her the truth.

The locket was my grandmother’s.