The air smelled of musk and moisture, as it always had. Nothing changed since she had woken up, but things felt different. She'd learned so much since her departure from the vault. Some of it inspired her. Most of it made her wish she'd never woken up at all.
The metallic floors were cold on the backs of her legs, but there were no chairs here, and she needed to sit. She felt as though she'd been running for years. Exhausted. So exhausted. The lid of the cryo-pod lifted, hissing, to reveal an almost perfectly preserved body.
In the silence of the hallway, a whimper escaped from her throat.
"Hi, Nate." There was no response, of course. She stood on wobbly legs and approached him, sweeping a few strands of dark brown hair out of his eyes. His head was draped, his eyes closed, but there was still so much tense emotion left in the lines of his face.
He'd had such a difficult life. The military treated him poorly. Letting him speak at the Veteran's Dinner was a sham in the face of everything he'd done for the United States. While his child stirred in her belly, one thousand miles away, he was lobbing grenades at Chinese soldiers and carrying his dead comrades over minefields. She felt a sickly guilt over it. "I should have been the one that died, Nate. Shaun needs you now. Not me." Can't change the past, Nora. Can't.
Her inner voice was certainly right, but it pained her to live a life in such contrast of those days hundreds of years ago. "I never saw myself as a mother," she said to him after she'd given birth. But there was Shaun, cradled in her arms, warm and soft and cooing. Such a happy baby. And there was so much love in their little home. Shaun was going to grow up cared for and adored, smothered in hugs and suffocated with kisses.
"The world is so different now, Nate." Maybe, somewhere, he was listening. She didn't believe in God anymore, but there was always the possibility of ghosts. Nothing shocked her. "Do you remember when we first started dating? You took me to the shore and tried to show off by picking up horseshoe crabs, like they could actually hurt you." She laughed, and it echoed like she had giggled into a tin can. "Try picking up one of those suckers now."
True, the radiation had changed everything. Even the animal life. And maybe the horseshoe crabs were fighting back now for decades of being manhandled.
"Fenway's a freaking shanty town, Nate. Don't be upset, though. They've done a good job with it. With how bad it must have been right after the bombs fell, I don't know how anyone survived." A memory came to her—a nice one. His arm draped around her, heavy and warm. That summer night at Fenway when he'd convinced her to go to a baseball game. She hated baseball. Besides, she had to study for midterms. But his smile was so perfect, so beguiling...
"You know how you always tried to convince me to get a dog? Well, I've got one now. 200 years in the making. Some old lady was calling him 'Dogmeat'. He's a brave dog. I tell him stories about you a lot. I know he doesn't understand, but it's nice to talk about you."
Her voice hitched and a painful lump formed in her throat. "Nate, you should see where the bomb hit…" When she'd arrived at the edge of the "Glowing Sea," as the locals called it, she felt a sense of panic. The Geiger counter whirred to life, clicking like nails on linoleum. There was no plant life there. She'd thought the absence of anything green was disheartening. Everything in the Glowing Sea was decrepit and dead, save for the violent creatures that made it their home, and those fanatics living in the crater. An ethereal layer of radiation lilted in the atmosphere. "I came across this plane. It was downed. I don't know why I did this but I—I listened to the last correspondence. The fear those people must have felt, Nate. The fear we felt can't compare. We thought we would be safe in the vault. These people had nothing to hope for." She was quiet for a moment. "What have we done to ourselves, Nate? We were such a wretched species. We still are. It's such a violent place out there. I can only hope Shaun is safe."
She lowered her head into her hands and began to sob. What was she doing down here? Nate was dead and he was never coming back. She was immersed in false hope. But was it foolish of her to hold on to hope? On bad days, it kept her driven, determined. On good days, it was merely a reminder of the good she could accomplish. The last remnants of Nate lied with the son they had together. Her only hope was that Shaun was as brave, kind, and loving as Nate. And still alive.
She latched her hand around his cold fingers. This would be the last time she disillusioned herself with the possibility of this being a bad dream—a very, very bad dream."I'll find our boy. I love you, Nate." She kissed his nose goodbye, and left the darkness of the cold vault to feel the sun on her skin once more.
No more Nate. I'm on my own now. Be strong. Be strong. The elevator rose to the surface and she could see the Bostonian skyline. The sound of a creature muling in the far distance forced her finger to the trigger guard. Once again, she repeated her mantra? Be strong.