-Faith-
A light rain fell from the lead-colored clouds that hung over the somber, desolate town. The obscured sun had not shone for many days, and the increasingly damp ground had grown into patches of sticky muck consisting of dirt, debris, and remains. Nature had begun its slow reclamation and was the only life left to witness the passing days; vines strangled signposts, orphan trees grew out of the cracks in the pavement, and houses too close to the forest were being completely eaten alive by vegetation. The buildings that were left added to the solemn aura with collapsed and rotted exteriors, and created a tableau of existence bowed in funerary sorrow. The air was bitter cold and smelled of mold and decay. A bleached femur, a mound of filthy rags, glass and brick, and a scorched streetlight are the town's new landmarks. Time and worthlessness erased the town's name from human memory.
Julie nervously crouched next to a copse of scarred trees. The cold air began to burrow through her worn military coat and provoke the first hints of a shiver. She stared uneasily at the carcass of a brick apartment building. Most of the windows in the apartment had been blown out long ago and those that remained were caked with a thick layer of soot and grime, and looked like a scab long overdue for picking. She looked for any signs of subtle movement, avenues of quick escape, and noticed the fact that the first floor had no means of entry due to the amount of rubble from a collapsed second floor. The only way to enter the building would be the corroded fire escape.
"This is the place." Julie whispered to herself. She exhaled a slow, worried breath. "It's not a building, it's a coffin."
Toothless Tom had mentioned that this part of the country had a hidden town that was loaded with piles of junk ready to be stripped and traded. He said it had obviously been abandoned early after the war and its isolation had left it largely untouched. Now, from the look of the town, it appeared that he was right about it being untouched. She was unsure about there being "piles" of useful junk, but she had no reason to be distrustful of Tom. He had traded honestly with her father for years, becoming a family friend. He was even there the day raiders came.
Julie wiped a strand of wet hair from her eyes, readjusted her coat, and readied her pipe-rifle. "Get in. Pack what you can. Get out." She said to herself with a hint of uncertainty in her voice. She began to move toward the apartment building at a slow and steady pace, pipe-rifle shouldered and ready. Her progress was slow in her crouched position, taking care not to let her footfalls make any noise on the fragments of ruined town scattered throughout the street. Her pace quickened as she approached the fire-escape, and it looked as unstable as her initial observation had hinted.
She reached the fire-escape without drawing the attention of any irradiated residents, and confirmed the precariousness of the entire structure. The whole endeavor looked like a death trap. Many of the bolts that once held the fire-escape securely to the side of the building had pulled away, leaving chipped cavities. The rest of the bolts merely rattled in their sockets. Julie jumped and pulled herself onto the ladder that ascended to the first landing. As she climbed, the decomposing steel frame rattled forcefully against the disfigured brick. The sound of banging steel was dampened due to the rain, but was loud enough to faintly echo along the crumbled streets of the town, and broke the serene quiet of the dead. Quickly, she climbed to the landing where she paused to let the fire-escape settle its oscillations. Julie looked up and could imagine the whole thing pulling away from the building while she was in the middle of her climb, leaving her in a twisted heap of metal and broken bones, waiting for ghouls to savagely rip apart her body.
"It wouldn't be too bad to go back. How many caps do I expect to get from the stuff in this place anyway?" She wearily contemplated. "I've come this far, and what else do I have to go back to? Not much." Julie sighed and continued to the first step of four flights of rusted stairs. She took every step with a large amount of suspicion that it would not hold her weight. Julie could smell the rusted iron and brick dust as it was stirred by her movement and the swinging of the fire-escape. She realized it was a strangely human odor, similar to the iron smell of blood. Julie hoped it wasn't prophetic.
Julie reached the roof and carefully stepped over the low parapet. The main portion of the flat roof consisted of pooled, fetid water. The loose, wet gravel crunched underneath her boots as she took her first cautious steps. The roof access door had swollen shut and the laminated exterior had begun to warp outwards. The door frame was rotted and to Julie's inspection it looked like even if the door was locked it could be forced open with little effort. Julie slung her rifle and unholstered her pistol, with one hand on the door knob and the other on her gun. With a slight tug, the door barked open on shrieking hinges. Her nose recoiled at the power of the stale air as it mingled with the cold humidity of the outside. A short flight of steps descended to a hallway veiled in darkness. Julie's free hand reached around to the side of her pack and deftly lifted her flashlight out of a side compartment and flicked it on with her thumb as she entered the building.
The carpeted hallway was covered in dust, and motes flew in and out of the beam of her flashlight. Apartment doors lined the hallway, and trash piled up in the recesses of the doorframes. Old books, photographs, bits of clothing, valued memories shut in this tomb. Julie could picture all the people fleeing the hot death that was on its way. The people dropping the cherished items as they frantically ran. Julie continued on. Her flashlight scanned the walls and ceiling as she softly walked along the hallway. The ceiling had water stains and areas that sagged. Paint pealed and protruded from the walls like shredded, leprous skin that made disconcerting shadows that danced in the distance. The air in the hall smelled of decay, rotted wood and moldy plaster. Julie heard thunder in the distance.
She noticed that the layer of dust on the carpet had no footprints or any signs of disturbance, but she did not feel completely alone. This place felt less like a row of apartments and more like a mausoleum, filled with the ghosts of the long dead. She tried the doors as she passed, giving the knobs a gentle twist. All the doors were locked. She could have forced the doors open, or kicked them down, but she felt like an intruder, like she was disturbing a long-deserted sanctuary; a sacred memorial to life and death.
She grabbed the last doorknob before the hall turned to the right. She gave it the same gentle twist and the door swung open. The muted light of the stormy day filtered through a filthy window and revealed a small furnished room. Rain pelted the window. Nothing looked out of place at first glance. It appeared that nobody had been in this room since the original occupant left.
Julie ran her finger along high table, letting the dust build up on her finger-tip, leaving a clean trail in its wake. She ran her finger all the way to a picture frame. Julie took the frame in her hand and wiped away the dust and filth from the glass to reveal a photograph of a young couple standing in the shade of a large green tree, the man's arm wrapped around the woman's waist, her head leaning on his shoulder, her hands clasped in front of her held a pair of thin shoes. Both of them looked very happy. Julie was curious about the young woman in the picture. She spat on the glass and rubbed it with her sleeve to have a clearer study. The woman wore a yellow knee length dress with bare arms. Julie traced the woman's body with her eyes. The woman didn't have radiation burns or the thin muscularity of a wastelander. She didn't have eyes that continually watched the horizon, and she didn't carry a gun. Julie had never considered that a life could be lived like the one this woman had lived. She never considered that there was a time when people didn't have to fight to survive; that people were happy before the earth was ruined.
Julie tenderly put the picture down exactly where it had been and said, "These people are dead now." She turned and examined the rest of the apartment and murmured, "long dead."
The living room shown very little disturbance. The furniture and knickknacks looked to be in the same places as they might have been 200 years ago. The only difference was the layer of dust that caked everything. The little kitchen off of the living room looked more disturbed. Cupboards were open. Boxes of cereal were chewed open by mice and the food within eaten over a century ago. Julie walked toward a doorway that led to a bedroom. A few drawers had been left open and their contents draped over the sides or on the thrown on the floor. The closet doors were shut on a shirt wedged between the doors. On the bed was a large opened book. Julie wiped the dust from the open pages to reveal a photo album. She turned the pages and the cellophane page coverings cracked and fell from the page. She noticed that there were a number of areas where a picture or two had been ripped from the pages. Julie closed the book and crossed to the closet.
Thunder rolled in the distance this time closer that before, and the sound of rain against the glass increased from a subtle tapping to a round of applause. A gust of wind moaned as it ripped past the jagged edge of the building. she felt she understood this place. Her eyes were hollow too, eyes that yearned for the fire of life once again; a soul permeated with uncertainty, and yet a desire for survival. A desire to see a tomorrow that might be better than today.
Julie opened the closet doors. The smell of mold was heavy in the air. Clothes hung in the closet punctuated by bare hangers. The bottom of the closet was littered with rotted clothes and wire hangers. Julie imagined the girl who lived here madly rip whatever practical clothes she could from the hangers. She slid the clothes along the bar examining what was left. Julie stopped when her hand found the yellow dress from the picture. The dress had been hung up in a plastic bag. She took the dress from the closet and looked at it through a film of grimy plastic.
Julie carefully slipped the dress out from under the plastic; it seemed untouched, protected from the slow breakdown of time. Julie held the dress up to look at it, and it looked as it did in the picture. She brought it close and held it up to her body. Julie unslung her rifle, and against her better judgment began to undress. She let the dress slip over her head. She kept her eyes open and watched as the yellow fabric washed past her eyes. The dress fit.
She went back to the first room to look at the photograph; could she be a happy as the woman in the picture, would her face ever smile like that, would there ever be a reason to let someone put their arm around her. She hoped that she could. She hoped that the chance would happen, a chance for happiness. Julie turned from the picture and went back to change. She neatly folded the dress and placed it in her worn military bag.
"I am done here", she said to herself. "I want to go home."
Julie walked out of the apartment, and took one last look at the picture on her way out. She walked out of the door, gently closed the door, and looked down the hall back to the rain soak roof. The clouded, shadowed light coming from the rooftop door fell further down the hall than it did before. The sun was setting.
Julie stepped out onto the gravel of the rooftop and froze. She heard the unmistakable guttural growl of radiated atrocities. She quickly drew her rifle and scanned the roof. Rain blurred her vision, but she was sure there was nothing on the roof. Julie crawled toward the edge of the roof and pulled out a small mirror from her pack, and used it to look over the edge. She saw ghouls below; ten maybe more of them as they writhed and crawled over each other in the mud below. Their burned vocal cords only emitting animal growls, their black fingernails scratching into the bricks below as they tried to climb the vertical wall. They would accidentally claw the flesh off each other as they struggled to get up. Julie was thankful that they couldn't reach the ladder, but she knew they would eventually find a way in, and there would be nowhere to hide.
She shouldered her rifle and braced her elbows on the ledge of the roof. The ghouls let out a horrific wail upon seeing her face and redoubled their efforts to scale the wall. Julie sighted one and squeezed the trigger. The ghoul's face exploded in a shower of red mist. She moved to the next, its face splatted with the remains of the dead ghoul. She shot the next and the next. The ghouls never even noticed when one of them fell they just kept on trying to climb to her, their black tongues horribly extended out of their rotted mouths and hands reaching toward her. She hated this existence of constant survival against death, a death that pursued you at every turn. A death that never let you forget that it was there. Everything was death. The world was dead, the buildings were dead, the living were dead. She laid down her rifle and began to rapidly squeeze the trigger of her pistol taking out her rage on the sickening mass below. Ghoul after ghoul fell until there were no more left to kill.
The sunlight was losing its power on the day, and Julie knew that going into the forest at night would be a bad idea. She got up and walked to the rooftop door, back into the debris filled hall, and back into the woman's apartment. She shut the door and slid a heavy piece of furniture in front of it. Julie laid her pack down and sighed. She reached for the woman's photograph once more, this time she slipped the backing off of it and slid the picture out. She traced the outline of the woman with her fingers. Julie felt raised areas in the corner as her fingers caressed the surface, and turning the picture over she read.
Faith, my dear. I will always love you. You are the person
who changes my life every day. Remember, I will be back
from Alaska soon and we will never part.
Robert.
May 2077
Julie took the picture with the to the bedroom and sat on the bed. The room was in its own twilight and would soon fade into the deepest black of night. She read and reread the back until it was too dark to see. "You are the person who changes my life every day. Her name was Faith. Faith changed his life every day. Never part. Alaska." Tears rolled down Julie's checks in the dark. She tucked the photo inside her coat and wiped her face with the back of her hand. Lightning flashed and briefly illuminated the room. Julie closed her eyes and fell asleep with her gun in her hand.
The morning sun shone through the ash caked windows and gave the light a soft amber tint that made the dismal room almost pleasant. Julie stretched and grabbed a meager breakfast from her bag. As she ate, she looked at the empty picture frame; it seemed to her to look like an empty sarcophagus, or the scene of a grave robbery. She wondered if she should leave the picture here, to keep Faith at home where she has been for two hundred years in quiet solitude.
Julie decided they had spent enough time locked away in this room, devoted sentinels that watched the passage of time in units of deterioration. She couldn't bear to know that they would eventually perish, again, when the apartment building finally succumbed to gravity and collapsed under its own weight. It was time they came with her. She grabbed the empty frame on her way out. Julie needed Faith in her life too.
Julie climbed down the fire escape. Her stomach turned as she let herself drop from the last rung of the ladder and slipped on the carnage of dead ghouls; their bodies wet with rain and blood. She got up, slipped again, and ran toward the trees wanting to put as much distance between herself and this miserable town. As she ran Julie was very aware of the presence of the picture in her inside pocket so close to her heart.
Julie entered her home town two days later, tired and hungry, and glad to be back. She noticed that all the same people were engaged in all the same occupations, crops were being tended, shelters were being repaired, junk being torn down and repurposed. This feeling of normalcy and life always felt good after being own her own in the Wasteland, and this return home felt particularly delightful knowing that she would be able to put Faith back in her frame and placed on a place of honor on her shelf. Julie made her way toward her scratch-built shelter she heard a familiar voice.
"Julie, I have been looking for you."
It was Josiah, the famer's son. "You've found me." Julie said.
"I heard you went on a scavenging trip. Did you find anything good?"
"Yeah, I did."
Josiah looked down and let his hands slip into his pockets. "Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to go to the dance tonight. It's going to be at the barn. Dan got the parts and fixed the juke, so were going to do it tonight, and…"
Julie cut him off. "Yeah, I think I would. And I have the perfect thing to wear."
-The End-
