Chereads / The Fallout of 7642 / Chapter 4 - Rabbit Hole

Chapter 4 - Rabbit Hole

TUESDAY JULY 15, 7642

ARCHEBES, SURFACER'S CAMP

6 YEARS AFTER FALLOUT

There's no real way to explain the predicament I currently landed my ass in, well besides shit. After I left the sad excuse for an infirmary, thus began my search for any form of liquor one of us may've scrounged up. It didn't take long to realize there was none to be found.

So with my quest for the intoxicating substance brought to a swift and grinding halt, and my head pounding like war drums, I just went back to mine and Alysa's room shut off all the lights and laid in complete darkness. It was peaceful at first but then reality caught up with me. I've heard a ceaseless hum in my head for three days, sometimes I'll see the occasional feather like, something, float in my peripheral. It's always black, like a crow's, and gone within seconds of my notice.

I felt as though I was truly, undeniably mad. Such a feeling brought me back in time. Back to when I still lived below the ground where the sun's warmth couldn't penetrate. When my parents still breathed.

TUESDAY APRIL 24, 7632

PEARCE RESIDENCE, THE HUB

10 YEARS EARLIER

My mother came over to my bed in the corner of the small space allotted as my room. Sitting on the edge of my bed she held an old book with yellowing pages. The cover was adorned with the image of a little girl with golden yellow hair embellished with a dark headband, wearing a robbin egg blue dress with a white apron round her waist. The blonde was looking up into a tree where a small brown striped tabby cat with a wide, eerie grin lay perched. There were words written in elegant, swoopy lettering I couldn't read to the right of the blonde girl.

I looked up at the woman seated to my right and took in the oh so familiar face. From her dark, chocolate brown irises to waves of dark, silky hair falling over her shoulders. The kind ever present smile which graced her lips, and presented wrinkles near her eyes.

My mom, Kerraelas Pearce, reached forward, brushing some rouge tresses of redish brown hair behind my left ear. "So Little Crow, do you remember where we left off?" She cooed referring to the aged book she'd been reading to me.

"Um...The Tea Party," I replied.

"Your memory never ceases to amaze me Little Crow," My mom smiled as she opened the book and began to read.

"I don't see why she can't read it herself, Kerra," My dad, Travis Pearce, called from across the small space.

"Because I like the voices mom does," I hollered back as mom laughed.

"Sorry I asked," Dad said before adding, "She's just like her mother," with that, he smiled and went back to whatever calculations he was working on.

Everything was fine, I never thought about whether something was wrong. If we needed to leave.

I never got the chance.

Everything was fine, until, the supposedly sound ceiling that withstood bombs, collapsed.

I never saw it coming, but in the blink of an eye my world fell apart. My parents were crushed the only thing surviving besides me was the book. I grabbed the yellowing book as soldiers flooded the what was left of the room. They had to drag me out as screamed bloody murder.

PRESENT DAY

I must've fallen asleep because I jolted awake from the nightmare I relive every night. After the fear subsided, I realized the light was on which meant Alysa is back. I groaned as I sat up to see my blue haired roommate perusing my clothes.

"What are you doing?" I asked in a deadpan as I the dream brought back an empty feeling that's been following me since that night.

"OH, Vess you're awake," Alysa replied clearly startled.

'Apparently you didn't hear my sit up,' I thought to myself before saying, "And you're avoiding the question, now could you please tell me why you're foraging through my clothes," My voice remained neutral, conveying a fraction of my exhaustion.

She sighed, "One of the mechanics made a decontamination thing. I was trying to find anything that may have been exposed to higher amounts of radiation." Alysa looked about as exhausted as I felt. There's dark circles under her gray eyes, to be honest it looks like she hasn't slept in weeks.

She probably hasn't putting up with me. A sudden wave of guilt washed over me along with the realization that Alysa's current state was mostly my fault.

'Well mom, your nickname makes more sense by the day.' I thought her old nickname of Little Crow coming to me. I sighed, 'What'd I do, what was it that took you from me.' I thought to my parents, desperate for and answer that would never come.

I look over at the crow flag I'd found around a week ago. It's amazing, someone made an effort to stop what most people saw as an inevitably. But in the end they just die along with the heretics and tyrants whose hands were soaked in blood.

As that when through my head I remembered an old poem I'd read.

'Holy water

cannot help you now

a thousand armies

couldn't keep me out

I don't want your money

I don't want your crown

see I've come to burn

your kingdom to the ground.'

I don't remember where I read it who wrote it or why it came up from the depths of my memory now.

I look back over at Alysa and said, "There's no real point in what you're doing y'know," she looked up at that. I normally tend to not call stuff pointless as I myself have a rather pointless hobby with the bomb fragments.

"What do you mean there's no point," Alysa asked as if there was an invisible portal between us that's absorbing my voice before it could reach her ears.

"Look we have no way of reading the radiation levels, and you'd have to decontaminate my entire half of the room and probably my God damned bloodstream." I responded my voice raised but I wasn't screaming.

"Does Darven know about that, or anyone for that matter," She shot back, both concern and anger lacing her words in harmony.

There was a rare form constant hatred that Alysa would never truly be rid of, the dark gray hue of her irises didn't help. While that anger was always an undertone I never thought I'd receive a look that bore it to the world.

"I swear to God if you say Fynn I'm kicking your ass out," She said after I'd stayed silent for maybe a minute.

"No one," I said attempting to defuse the bomb I just unintentionally lit. "Okay, no one knows but me and you," that seems to have worked because the anger fade back to the background of her eyes.

Seeming right after the little crisis on our hands was handled I heard and felt a knock on the door. I sighed, and stood up to answer it.

As I crossed the room the ringing undulated and by the time I reached the door I felt like burying my head into my pillow. I gripped the knob opening the door to see none other than Fynn Stravic.

"Wh-" I started.

"Darven wants to see you, he says it's important," Fynn said cutting me off.

'What now?' I thought, walking out the door and into a world not unequal to hell.