Cora sweeps her kinky black hair into the hood of her tattered cloak, she slips on the gas mask and gathers a handful of supplies, one of which is a long makeshift staff as a weapon. She taps the screen inputting the code and the greenish heavy metal doors tremble open. Once outside she does the same thing, tapping a screen and the doors shut, and she faces her day of scavenging that will likely produce nothing.
Treading in thick black boots across brittle concrete and rubble Cora looks, searching for any scrap of food or resource she could harness. She travels into the heart of her crumbling city, going into expired convenience stores and exploring the smaller apartment blocks for anything left behind by frightened and long dead people from two years ago. She gives up on the square homes and returns to hunting outside, eventually giving up on that too and sitting on the sidewalk. All the food she had found had perished or was leaking vivid green ooze, any potential resources had a sickly wash of oil slick green that was best left untouched.
It was as if the critter had known, and when Cora begins crying behind her gas mask, a mutated gerbil with four ears and two tails scurries up her leg and into her lap, squeaking.
“Oh, hey there little guy,” Cora reaches out a hand to touch him with her gloved fingers. She giggles at the tiny creature and begins to pet him, his ears extending back and leaning into the scratch. “Are you all alone too?” Cora asks and scoops the gerbil into her hands and raises him to her face to have a better look, which he is more than happy to sit still for. “May I keep you?”
The gerbil stares back with eyes too aware for a creature that is supposed to be mindless, twitching his ears and nose, titling his small head.
“May I call you…” Cora has a moment to think, picking out a name for her companion. “Mascot?”
The gerbil sits attentively and either he nods or he has a serious head twitch, which wouldn’t be surprising. Cora takes it as a yes and slips him on her shoulder, “Mascot it is then.”
She begins the journey home, checking a few last convenience stores and cutting through a smashed in mall, a last hope for finding anything today, but of course they reveal nothing. Upon seeing the front thick greenish metal doors to what she has called home for the past two years, she freezes. It was a large public bunker that starts at ground level, then delves deep underground, Cora only uses the top few levels as the others are too far down in the dark of the earth. She touches her brown satchel bag with only a few bandages in it, and runs her fingers through her pockets with nothing them.
“I don’t want to die here,” she whispers, the bunker looks too dark and to frightful, long shadows from the hot sun reach out their inky tendrils like a welcome home sign. “I can’t die here,” her heart clutches, her throat cutting off her airway in a dry reach. There was nothing here, no survivability, food has become too scarce to even try looking for it, she feels as though she has exhausted all this broken city has to offer, and the threat of dying here is too apparent. With trembling fingers and a great urgency, Cora pulls open her satchel, finding a few bandages and a tiny bit of water inside. It will have to be enough.
She has been standing here too long, her body begins screaming and shaking at her to run far away from here and never look back. This is home, why leave it?
Because this has never been a home.
Cora races to the edge of the city, sweat boils beneath her thick layered clothing and behind the gas mask, her feet pounding the dirt so hard she may trigger another reaction if there was enough radioactivity in the air and ground. Mascot had buried himself in the collar of her cloak and enjoys the warmth now rising from Cora.
She runs and runs, never stopping and never looking back, her heart thundering and throat itching for a drop of water. Still trembling and body aching Cora kneels to the cracked orange ground, trying to catch her breath. Her chest heaves up and down, breathing so fast she fears her ribs may split, she sits back to allow her legs room to rest.
Sitting out in the open like this is dangerous and only the most brave of idiots would do it, but Cora wasn’t either of these and instead fit into the other category. Exhausted people leave slumped skeletons next to a gas mask they had removed, or their bones would pave the way to a hideous monstrous beast that had been lucky enough to be in the area. Cora hopes she is lucky today and nothing does come to attack her, but it is too risky to gamble on, so with the one clear thought of ‘Keep moving,” she rises using her staff as support. She forces her feet to shuffle forwards, forwards, forwards.
Stark dirty orange rolls into the horizon, grey plants providing the odd spot of contrast to the scene. The sun was once yellow and the sky blue long ago, but now the heavens have a smoky green filter that will make you sick to look at for too long, the horizon is often lined with red but whenever you reach it, it has already transformed back to the green haze.
Each strike of the staff into the ground leaves behind a shallow indentation, broken rock sprouting from the hit and decorating the mark. Mascot stirs and scurries to perch on Cora’s shoulder to observe the new area, he has never been outside the city before.
“Oh!” Cora jumps, having forgotten about Mascot entirely. “Sorry little guy, I didn’t realise you were still with me,” she smiles behind the mask. Mascot twitches his nose in response.
They trek for hours, the sun melts into the distance and what once used to be a beautiful sunset is now streaked with dirty yellow and vomit green, neon purple and brown. The night sky is also tarnished, but instead of green it has a brown haze, the moon burning in a brownish glow and the stars have almost vanished.
Cora whips her head around looking for shelter, anything, and the entire lack of anything is the first time she regrets leaving home. Her stomach twists into a knot, then goes further and warps into a blackhole, her shoulders shivering as the light disappears and God knows what is about to emerge from the dirty blackness. Fear kicks her feet into overdrive and she is racing again, praying that some feeble shelter will materialise before her and she will be safe, if only for one night.
There!
A small cluster of sheds reflect the inky yellow light that clings to life on the tin roofs, here’s hoping nothing hungry lives inside. Cora’s feet slow as she approaches the sheds, the first one is too destroyed to be of any use but the second looks okay, so with shaking fingers she pushes open the door. It’s too dark to see, no shapes are obvious, she closes her eyes to listen, trying to hear if something better left alone lurks among the contorted shapes. Nothing.
She presses into the room and gently closes the door behind her, silently she sits by the door, curling up against a table with a long worn cloth drooping from it. Cora didn’t want to sleep, because that is becoming vulnerable, but exhaustion takes over and she is sucked into the world of dreaming in only a few minutes.
A sharp growl jolts Cora awake, she lunges for her staff and bounces to her feet, ready to attack. The growl sounds off again, now completely conscious does Cora realise the growl is coming from her empty stomach. A relieved sigh escapes her as she drops her weight against the wall, Mascot scurries up her leg to perch on her shoulder, offering her comfort.
“It’s okay, Mascot, I’m just a little jumpy,” she peels herself from the wall and leaves the shed, not bothering to look at the night’s home. The green sun had risen, it was too high in the sky for it to be early morning, great, lost time. Cora readjusts herself and continues on her journey to nowhere, her clothes soaking with sweat and gas mask glued to her face.
Hours pass, the sheds have long since slipped from the background. Cora wanders absent-mindedly, a mistake really, because if she had been bothered to occasionally check her surroundings she would see something slithering towards her at an impossible speed.
A scream forces Cora to look over her shoulder, a large hulking beast with thick muscles that look like they could burst, two disproportionally shaped heads and three grotesque arms now stands menacingly over her small body. It had no legs, only a long slimy tail, it’s flesh was patch work, tufts of hair, sharp scales, bulging wrinkled skin made up the body. A monster in every sense of the word.
Cora has no choice but to run, and run she does, now filled with adrenaline her blood boiling in fear, her mind is blank and instinct has total control. But she is a fool if she thinks she can outrun such a creature.
It strikes the earth with its largest arm, sending shockwaves and tripping up Cora, she persists and keeps her feet. The monster swipes, only just missing her cloak. It lurches forwards and grasps the streaming fabric in one giant oily clawed paw. Cora is jerked backwards as the creature lifts her into the air, she screams and thrashes, trying to be released. The monster inches her closer to it's now wide split mouth of the largest head, the stench of death bursting from its throat, mouth pulling back and lifting its eyes from their fixed spot. Its whole head is a giant mouth. The sight, the smell, Cora wants to vomit, but she can’t lose what little remains in her belly.
She reaches to her belt and frantically searches for the knife that so often hangs by her waist- Ah ha! She tugs the knife and sweeps it above her head, severing her cloak and she plummets to the ground. The monster shrieks in rage and Cora begins to sprint again, needing distance. When it reaches for her again she is able to strike with her staff and stab with her knife, weakening its hands. The creature pulls it’s limbs close and drops its body to the ground, mouth open wide as it propels the snake body forward.
Cora wants to keep running, but she knows this won’t end until one of them is dead. She darts to the side and leaps onto the monster’s back, it screams. She uses her staff to push its lips away from the back of its head so she can have a better look. Underneath lay thousands of pitch black eyes, she brings the knife down hard with a cry of her own. The creature screams in pain and pulls up, trying to shake the mere flea from it’s back. Cora clings to the beast and keeps stabbing, stabbing, stabbing, green blood shoots from its eyes and spills from it’s head, finally collapsing to the ground. She continues stabbing, ensuring that it is dead.
She stumbles away from the seeping rotting corpse, all her energy had been zapped in the fight, and her extra reserve was burnt out in the adrenaline rush. After a good fifteen metres of staggering, Cora collapses.
Moving, she is moving, but not of her own accord. Her feet drag along rocks, her arms slung over two soft things she couldn’t recognise by feel alone, hushed whispers bounce around her head. She passes out again only to wake up, and through blurry eyes she can she a large red building, undecipherable signs plastered the walls. She slips back into the unconscious.
When she wakes up the final time she is still, lying on a soft surface she will soon realise is a bed. She lifts her head to look around, to understand, but her half closed eyes are met with lights and grey walls she had never seen before.
“Ah, you’re awake,” the smooth voice came from a corner in the room, a few things clang before the owner of the voice comes into Cora’s view. “I’m Peaches, and I’m glad to see that you’re still alive. We got you just in time too, another night out there and you’d never wake up again!” She is too cheery for discussing death. “I can’t believe you took down a Slither Hulk, and all alone!”
Cora groans as she sits, resting her head in her hands and waiting for her vision to become clear.
“Can I get you anything?”
Cora looks to Peaches and can now see the overweight woman with short curly hair, cracked glasses over her eyes.
“Water,” Cora croaks, Peaches hands her a glass much too quick for it not to have already been sitting out.
“What is your name?” Peaches sits on the bed.
“Cora,” she downs the whole glass of water. “Where am I?”
“You’re in a community bunker,” Peaches answer is simple, but it caused a whole lot of confusion.
“What?”
“You’re in a community bunker for survivors,” Peaches moves to open a door, revealing a giant bunker full of healthy looking people. They were smiling and laughing, dressed for comfort not survival, they trailed hallways that extend the bunker beyond anything Cora could imagine.
Mascot scurries up Cora’s arm and perches on her shoulder, alerting her that she isn’t wearing the mounds of clothing she usually does. Her arms were bare except for a few careful bandages, she could actually see her brown skin which is now free of filth and sweat. She looks over her body and sees her new clothes, she’s clean, her long kinky hair is brushed and bouncing freely. She looks back out the door to the clean happy people, living as if nothing has ever been wrong.
“Cora,” Peaches voice draws her away from her trance. “This can be your home now,” the offer is so genuine and sweet.
It is not just a bunker with the bare necessities, this is home for all these people. For the first time she can belong, she doesn’t have to be alone anymore.