The Locket

Doomsday Diary

The hunger pains were getting harder to ignore. It was getting harder for her to concentrate and her mistakes were increasing. Making a mistake out here could mean the difference between life and death. The air was like breathing in fire despite the hydration and filtration mask she was wearing. All around her were heat waves emanating from dusty, abandoned buildings. The roads were so hot they had given up and buckled every hundred feet or so. There was no relief from the heat, even in the shade. Her chest was aching with every breath drawn in, but she had to keep going. If she didn’t find food soon, she would be too weak to make it past tomorrow. Water, she reminded herself, you need to find water too. There was only half a bottle left and she had to ration it. Easy to think this, but harder to do it when you are so thirsty your throat is a scratchy bramble of thorns. “One more step, another, just make it to the next building and then you can rest”, she tells herself

Stumbling forward, she reaches the next building. This one had looked promising. It was more intact than the surrounding buildings. Dull and uninteresting, which might be why the raiders have left it mostly alone and looted the ones next to it. Now, to find a way in. Looking at the exterior of the building’s side, she sees no obvious entry point. Cautiously, she makes her way around the building. This is when things could get dangerous. Sometimes raiders left booby traps behind to keep looters away. Sometimes empty buildings had desperate people inside. They often struck first and asked questions later. Looking up, down, afar, and near, why aren’t there doors? No windows on the first three floors? She makes a complete loop around the building in growing confusion. Her head was hurting so badly, maybe she made a mistake, but how could she have made that big of a mistake? No doors, no roads, no windows, no stairs, no fire escapes, just walls. Smooth walls. She pauses in the shade, squatting down with her back against the wall, and takes a sip of warm, chlorine tasting water. Splitting, parched lips and burning, tearless eyes demanded that she take another sip of water. Reluctantly, she puts the water away and continues scanning the building. “You just don’t put up a building and expect no-one to exit or enter”, she thinks as she refastens her mask. There must be a way inside. Too exhausted and hungry to want to think about walking around the building again, she carefully works her way through the list of her options. Make another circuit around the outside of the building and see what she could have missed? Leave this building and check out one of the buildings nearby?

As she weighs the pros and cons of each decision, her eyes scan the ground near the wall. “What if? What if? If you can’t get into the building through the sides, then what’s left is above and below. Since I don’t have wings, then all I can hope for is an entry way from below.” she reasons as she stands up, exhausted muscles painfully reminding her that she needs to eat, drink, and rest soon. Slowly, she walks along the building, keeping close to the wall, ears alert to danger, eyes scanning the ground. A glint catches her attention and she moves closer. The surrounding area looks undisturbed. No footprints, or tracks of any sort. She’s close to the glint now. The ground looks unremarkable, there’s no difference between that patch of ground and all the other patches of ground. Standing over the glint, she looks around for signs of danger, then squatting down, she brushes aside the dusty earth. “A locket? Here? Why?” She picks up the heart-shaped, golden, locket in confusion and in so doing, feels something odd. There’s something else beneath the earth. Something hard. She pockets the locket and brushes aside the dirt. Soon she can make out the outline of a square shaped object. It looks like a covering.

Excitedly, she puts her hand in the small, embedded circular hole and lifts the cover up. A rush of cooler air hits her face. Relieved and curious she peers into the darkness and can just make out there is a ladder she can climb down. She lowers the cover and rummages around her pack, pulling out two light sticks. She cracks them both and attaches one to her chest. Lifting the cover, she drops the other down the hole. “Maybe 10 or 12 feet?” she guesses as she thinks about her next moves. At the last second, she decides to smooth out the ground around the cover as best she can. She climbs down the ladder and lowers the cover down as she descends. The air is definitely cooler the lower she goes. She reaches the bottom of the ladder and takes her mask off. “How can the air smell so clean and fresh?” she wonders as she gratefully takes a few deep breaths. Looking around, she sees only one tunnel leading into the darkness. Rummaging in her pack again, she pulls out a handful of light sticks and pockets them. Slinging her pack on again, she starts forward into the tunnel. Mentally counting steps, she walks as quietly as she can. When she can no longer see the light stick she left behind at the base of the ladder, she cracks another light stick and drops it. “How many paces has it been now? Did I lose count?” and fears start to creep into her thoughts. “How long is this tunnel? What if I run out of light sticks?” She takes a breath and gives herself a shake as though physically shaking her head will clear the fears away. She starts forward again croaking out numbers of footsteps from a painfully sore throat to help her to remember the count. “510, 511, 511, 511” even though the cooler air was a relief, the heat and the hunger and thirst and the exhaustion was still exacting its toll. She cracks the fourth light stick and lets it drop. “What if I never come to the end of this tunnel? What if this is where I die?” she takes in another shaky breath and tastes moisture and chicken? Is someone cooking chicken? Excited, she moves with carefully tempered optimism towards the smell. It was gone now, but surely it wasn’t her mind tricking her was it? There it was again. Just a faint whiff. And the darkness wasn’t so pitch black anymore, there was some grayness creeping in. A lightness of sprit permeates her and her steps quicken. Soon, the smells of delicious cooking are stronger and she can see where she is walking without needing to crack the last light stick. She doesn’t even notice that she had stopped counting steps, she can see the outline of the end of the tunnel. Almost running now, she rushes towards the welcoming light and smell, then just before the exit, she abruptly stops. “Whoever is cooking, probably does not want unexpected guests” she realizes and she slowly starts to creep forward. Cautiously, she pokes her head outside the tunnel.

Surprised into losing caution, she steps forward into a dream. It’s a garden paradise! There are plants and birds and small mammals everywhere! She stares, mouth agape at her surroundings.