Life in the bomb shelter was strained, at best. It took days for everyone to get over the initial shock of hearing that nuclear Armageddon had actually come to pass - everyone except the little boy, anyway, who didn't understand exactly the gravity of the situation - and beyond that, simply the limited space, the finite resources, to perpetual darkness, it was enough to eat away at even the most patient and reserved of people after an extended period of time.
It had been a year. Over twelve months had come and gone since that booming voice from the radio, like the voice of God himself, had announced the end of the world, and tensions were rapidly rising. Food was finally starting to run thin, water going even faster. The two teens - Alex and Joanne - were finally finding it impossible to suppress their natural desire to go and explore and just be away from the same people they always saw every day. The little boy was starting to get ill, it seemed. His skin was constantly flaking, his throat always sore.
Alex thumped his head against the wall gently, again and again.
"I seriously can't take this anymore, Dad." He said. He was tired of all the arguing to leave the bunker that he had partaken in for many months now, but not quite tired enough to give up completely. "I think I'm getting cabin fever, for real."
"Oh shut up, you idiot." Joanne snapped. Unlike her brother, who had let the fire in his belly dwindle to a spark, the captivity had done nothing but increase hers. She struck at every comment venomously.
"Joanne, calm down!" Donna tried to defuse the situation before it started.
"It's okay, Mom." Alex said weakly, still facing the wall. "It's not Joanne's fault that all the radiation mutated her to be on a period 24/7."
"Shut it, you dumb asshole!" Joanne cried again, hopping up from her cot and pushing her brother forcefully.
"Stop it, you two!" Howard shouted, "We're the only ones we got and I'll be damned if I'll let us lose each other to your little squabbles!" That had become something of a catch-phrase of his. Joanne, in response, simply shot Alex with the evil eye and returned to her bedside, sitting down with a hard thump and crossing her arms. This was even worse than the constant bickering had been, Howard could just feel a seething disdain for the whole situation, for their confinements, for each other, building up. It was only a matter of time before it finally came to a head.
There was a quick succession of metallic pings near the door to the shelter that quickly alerted everyone's attention.
"What was that?" Alex asked, turning in the direction of the noises.
"Probably just a tin can or something that came rolling down the stairs." Howard reasoned.
"Do you think that maybe-" Donna started, but was cut off.
"No, honey, no! You can't go thinking that every little sound you hear means there's someone making it!"
"What? Someone's out there?" Joanne cut in, hearing only half of the conversation.
"No!" Her father said again, "It was just the wind, I'm sure of it!"
"But what if it's not though, Dad?" Alex turned around finally to face his family. "I mean, what if there really is someone out there?"
"There's nobody out th-"
"How can you be sure, Dad? Come on!" Joanne interrupted.
"Howard...It's been a year." Donna cooed soothingly in her husband's ear. "And there really might be people out there. Don't you think it's safe, now?"
Howard sighed, exasperated.
"Fine, fine! I'll go up and check." He said, finally.
"Yes!" Alex and Joanne began to form a line behind him.
"No, you are all staying down here. It might still be dangerous."
"Awww, come on!" Alex moaned.
"No! This is the best you're going to get! Now stay down here. I'll be back in a minute."
Alex and Joanne both moaned in displeasure and walked back to their original positions: Joanne on her bed, Alex leaning against the wall. The little boy remained on the floor, scratching at random patches of crumbling skin.
Howard approached the door hesitantly. He had allowed his imagination to run wild in the year of confinement about what the outside world looked like, leaving vivid, terrifying images of what lay beyond their steel barricade. He glanced back at his wife, who gave a small but reassuring nod. With a deep breath, he turned back to the door and, for the first time in almost fourteen months, lifted the latch.
The door creaked open in a whine to be oiled, a request not likely to be met any time soon. As he slipped out, onto the stairwell, he spied the can that had made its clandestine leap down the stairs. Howard's worry grew as he examined it - charred black, lid blown open, the contents gone - spilled out or evaporated or some other misfortune. After a moment, he steeled himself again, and made his way up the staircase to ground level, though this resolution was quickly draining out as well as he noticed sunlight filtering in through the broken remains of the basement door, hanging off a lone hinge, ajar.
The scene at the top of the stairs was a horrific one. Howard's house was all but gone, leaving little left than some of the frame, probably destroyed by another, closer explosion after the initial one that caused him to retreat into the bunker. All of his and his family's worldly belongings existed now as piles of dust and ash coating the smashed concrete floor of his destroyed abode. He couldn't help but to let out a gasp.
"What was that?" A voice snapped. Howard felt his breath catch in his throat. Boots stomping through dirt and shattered glass filled his ears from behind him, around the lone, intact wall of his house. "Anybody there?" The voice continued after Howard stood silently at the door, hoping that the intruder would simply go away if he waited long enough. Eventually, the figure that the voice belonged to rounded the corner. "Who the fuck are you?!" He shouted, spotting Howard instantly. The unarmed family man quickly raised his hands into the air.
"Nobody! I'm nobody! I mean you no harm!" He spoke rapidly, noticing that, aside from the brash man's strange looking attire, he had what appeared to be a working, sawed-off shotgun in his hand.
The man looked Howard over.
"Where the fuck did you come from, buddy?" He asked, noticing the shaking man's comparatively normal mode of dress.
"This is, this was my house." Howard said again, trying not to fumble over his own words. "When, when the bombs dropped, my family and I moved down into a small shelter that we had made, we've been there ever since." Howard had diverted his eyes to the ground, not wanting to look the man in the face, but he heard his boots shuffling across the dust and ash as he walked around him.
"You and your family have been down in there for under a year?" He finally asked after a long silence.
"Yeah." Howard answered, slightly more comfortable as it sounded like his assailant was softening up to his plight.
"A little mini-Vault built for five, eh?" He asked. Howard couldn't help but chuckle a bit.
"Yeah, I guess you could say that." He looked up to the man, a small smile spreading over his face.
With a thundercrack, the intruder unloaded both barrels of his shotgun right at Howard's head, sending miscellaneous chunks of viscera and bloodspray all over the last, standing wall behind him. His body jumped into the air, slamming against the same wall and stumbling to a resting place on the ground.
"Come on, boys!" The murderous man shouted, loading two more shells of buckshot into his gun, "I found us a little mine o' gold!"
"What was that??" Alex sprang off from the wall as he heard the gunshot above. Donna felt her heart stop.
"Mom? Mom, is Dad okay??" Joanne stood up from the bed and walked to her, but she was frozen in time, until she heard the sound of several heavy footsteps making their way down the stairs.
"We've got to lock the door!" She shouted, jumping over to the barricade. With all her might, she gave it a hard push to shut it as quickly as she could. There was a loud thud as the edge of the door slammed against a rifle barrel, which had been shoved between it and the doorframe just before they could meet. "Oh God!" Donna gasped.
"Well hello, there." A face peeked into the room from the crack, smiling sadistically. With a powerful kick, one of the assailants knocked the door open, sending Donna to the floor.
"Run! Run!" She managed to shriek out to her children before she felt the muzzle of the rifle that had kept her from locking the door jam against her temple, and with another loud bang, sent her to a black rest.
"Mom!" Alex and Joanne cried in unison. The little boy, scared and confused, dove underneath one of the cots. Alex, filled with rage, charged at the man who had just shot his mother, grappling and scratching him with his hands.
"Argh, get this fucker off of me!" He howled, slamming the butt of his rifle into Alex's side.
"I got him!" A third intruder pulled a knife and quickly jumped over to his comrade, jabbing the teen straddling him several times in the back and sides. Alex screamed out in pain, which quickly turned into a gurgle as blood filled into his mouth. He let go of his mother's attacker and fell to the ground, where he was punctured several more times with the blade until the stabhappy man was sure that the boy was dead.
"Hey, that bitch is getting away!" Joanne heard one of them scream as she dove past them and made a furious run up the stairs.
"Move over, move over!" The last of the quartet pushed past his partners and pointed his uzi upwards, letting go with a fusillade that sent bullets from one wall to the next, striking Joanne several times in the legs. She cried out as she fell forward, her body catching on the steps. The four men filed back through the door and up the stairs to her.
"She's still alive." one of them noted her quick, heavy breathing.
"Good." Another smiled psychotically.
The little boy opened his eyes after everything in the room went quiet, noticing that it was finally empty, save for the bodies of his mother and brother. He clamored out from under the bed, walking over to his big brother's corpse.
"Alex?" He asked naively, crouching down to be more at level with the fresh body. "Alex? Are you hurt?" He shook the cadaver gently with his hand, trying to wake it up. When he pulled it away, he realized it was suddenly coated with a thick, red liquid. "Alex?"
Heavy footsteps began down the staircase again. The little boy quickly ran over to the side of the door, peeking out carefully at the men.
"That was fun." The rifleman said, tying a rope that apparently acted as a belt back around his waist. "So are we going to loot the bunker now, Thor?"
"Not yet." The shotgun wielding man, apparently named Thor, answered. "I remember seeing some little shit in there when we first came in, I'm sure he's hiding around somewhere. Tank and Zeus, you look for him while Hansel and me grab all the goods." The three subordinates nodded. As the gang stepped off of the last step, the little boy quickly stuck his head back inside the room. He pressed his body up against the wall, trying to stay as quiet as possible. The four murderers walked into the bunker, passing right by him without noticing his small frame in their peripheral vision. As soon as their backs were to him, he turned and made a break up the stairs.
"What the?" The rifleman, Tank, said as he heard the sound of little feet running up the stairs behind him. The four men turned around.
"There's the bastard right there! Fuck!" The knife-wielder, Hansel, shouted. The little boy made it much farther than his sister had done, leaving the sights of the uzi-wielding man, Zeus, before he could bring him down as well.
"Get him!" Thor roared. Everyone charged up the stairs after the boy.
He didn't understand what was happening, or why, but he knew that he just had to run. He had to run and not look back. He heard the four men who murdered his family shouting obscenities a distance behind him, and every now and again a loud pop as they squeezed off another shot, whizzing right passed him, but he never turned his head. He sprinted for what felt like hours or days, nonstop, his developing brain screaming at him to ignore the fire in his legs and trudge onward.
Suddenly, he felt the world disappear.
Tumbling, rolling down a steep river bank, he plunged into the Potomac River, his tiny body disappearing under the viscous, green water. Thor and his entourage quickly came upon the bank, carefully moving down the steep hill to the water.
"Man, he fell in." Hansel stated.
"Fuck that, he ain't getting away!" Thor said with determination, plunging a hand into the murky water to try and grab at the boy. "AAAAARRGH!!!" He screamed in pain, pulling his appendage out of the river and holding it up. It was beet red, sizzling with radiation. "Fuck fuck fuck son of a BITCH!" He cursed.
"Are you okay?" Zeus asked, moving to inspect the throbbing hand.
"No, asshole!" Thor snapped. He breathed deeply. "Fuck it...That kid's fried in this fucking water. Shit, let's go." He turned around, hunched over and nursing his wounded limb, and began walking back to the bunker that he had just raided. His comrades followed.