A Heart

She clutched the locket by its chain in her hand, crying as she huddled in the corner of the demolished building. Her fire burned steadily, its small light the only thing keeping the cold of the night away. In another time, this would have been spring. Flowers blooming, birds singing, animals coming out of winter habitations, the world rising anew from the depths of winter like a phoenix rising from the ashes. This was no ordinary winter. The world had burned in the fires of a nuclear war and now there was no spring. No summer. No fall. Only winter. A world burned to the ground, deserted cities the only evidence that anything had ever lived. Of course, there were those like her. Survivors. Ones who had been in a shelter when the first nukes were launched. The “best of the best,” chosen in the years and decades prior to the war as the most fit to propagate humanity should an extinction event happen. She was not one of the ones in a bunker.

…

The man sat in his office as he had every day of every month of every year since The War. No other names for it existed, since no other war like it had ever happened, and none likely would again, not with a planet that was destroyed. In one corner of his room was a cot with the same sheets he’d slept on for six years, ten months, and twenty-five days. Tomorrow, something important would happen, something that had not occurred for that span of time. He would go outside.

…

When you’re not chosen to go in a bunker, not chosen to survive, when your name isn’t in any records or lists of people who should have survived, people view you in two ways. As a monster to be feared, or a monster to be cut up and studied for science. After all, only a monster could have survived nuclear winter on the surface.

So her fire was small, and she carried nothing but the clothes on her back… and her locket. The only gift from the mother she’d never known. Well, one of the two gifts, she thought to herself. The other… she leaned back against the wall, reaching for the thing in her being that had kept her alive.

When she touched it, the world roared to life around her. The fire stopped being an object and became alive. Heat, light, motion, all shining with a different color and shade. She had learned long ago that the brighter a color, the more energy there was. Turning her attention from the pale, nearly colorless fire, she looked out around the corner of the building, seeing the world as a work of art.

Red, blue, green, purple, yellow, orange, and, of course, the sickly teal color that had gone from a gentle haze to a thick blanket over the world. Each energy gave a different color. Motion was red, sound blue, chemical green, electrical purple, light yellow, heat orange, teal nuclear.

If she concentrated, she could feel, rather than see, the potential energy in every object, as well as the dull thumping of gravity pulling the earth together in the direction down. She released herself and the world resumed its darkness, the fire its quiet, familiar crackling. She walked back over to it, curled up next to it, and released herself to the embrace of sleep.

…

The next morning, at exactly eight o’clock in the morning, the man’s alarm rang. He sat up, turned it off, stretched his body, and got out of bed. He changed from his pajamas into his uniform and opened his office door, walking out of the room. A short hallway stood before him, the only other thing in this bunker besides the elevator shaft and a stairwell if the unthinkable happened and the elevator was broken.

He pushed the only button on the panel beside the thick steel doors and waited, standing ramrod-straight as the elevator made it’s two-minute long descent into the bowels of the world where he had lived. When it arrived, he stepped inside, turned around to face the doors, and pressed the upper of the two buttons inside the small metal box, beginning his first ascent to the surface since he began the war that killed humanity.

…

She woke up with the dawn, scattering the ashes of the night’s fire, and headed toward the bunker entrance. She’d been making her way towards the building for several days, the large, reinforced concrete structure a beacon to everyone nearby of possible supplies and equipment. After all this time, it would either be completely raided or untouched. And, judging by the abandonment around the bunker, it was likely to be untouched. Ones that were raided often had colonies that sprang up around them, utilizing the supplies to grow food and slowly reintroduce animals and plants to the world.

She reached the entrance to the bunker and frowned a little. This was different. Usually they had huge doors and many elevators to allow for the fast movement of hundreds of people at a time. This one only had a single reinforced door leading to a hallway with a single elevator. As she stood there, wondering what this might mean, the elevator whirred to a stop and the doors opened.

…

As the doors opened and he saw the young woman in front of him, he froze. He had been promised that, when the world had forgotten about him, when humanity had moved on, when he could finally be free, he would be alone. And yet here was a young woman, standing in front of him. “H-hello,” he stammered, speech fleeing him when he needed it most. “Who… who are you?” The young woman stared back at him, equally confused by his presence. “My name… is Sam.” She met his gaze unflinchingly, though cautious of him. “And… who are you?” He thought for a moment, closing his eyes as he remembered all the ways he could answer that question.

“My name is Jeffrey. It’s nice to meet you, Sam.” His voice was deep and rather hoarse, having not spoken, even to himself, for the past almost seven years. “How did you get here? There’s… supposed to be an electric fence.” She giggled a little. “Well I kinda… walked through it?” “What?” he gasped, shocked. “You mean it’s broken?” She shook her head. “No, it works fine. It just… can’t hurt me.” He raised his eyebrow quizzically.

“It’s something I was born with. I was left on the surface and learned that… energy just can’t hurt me. I kept myself safe, but wasn’t able to save my mother.” She lifted the small, silver locket so he could see it. “This is all I have left of her. She left when I was a baby.” He shook his head sadly. “I’m… sorry for your loss.”

She tilted her head curiously. “Why are you sorry? It’s not like you made her leave, or killed her.” He shook his head a little. “It’s… something people used to say. Anyway. You can live through anything that could kill you?” “If it’s energy-based, yes. Some of the scientists who have caught me have said I might be able to stop bullets or make plants grow or make the world better. I don’t know. All I know is I see the energy of the world. When I want to.”

He nodded a little, curious what this girl might be able to do. “Well… you look hungry, and I just came upstairs for the first time in almost seven years. Would you like to see what is inside this bunker?” She nodded. “It’s as large as the others but… this is the only entrance and there isn’t anything else here.”

He chuckled and walked up to where she was standing, pressing on the panel of the wall. It pushed backwards and opened, revealing the rest of the bunker. A paradise of plants and animals from before the war, placed here as they were in the other bunkers, but with only them to experience it. She gasped when she saw it, looking around the small world of the bunker. “I’ve… not seen this much green in a long time… I forgot how beautiful it is.” Smiling widely, Jeffrey started walking around, enjoying the return to something like the world that he had known. “As did I… To think that this is what was lost with humanity…” He sighed and bowed his head. “I wish there had been another way…”

Sam turned to him curiously. “Another way for what?” He shook his head. “Another way for humanity to live. A way to avoid the war.” “Sometimes… the bad things lead into good. I wouldn’t have met you and been in this… incredible paradise without the war, as horrible as it was, and as horrible as the years after were.” He turned to face her and nodded. “I agree that it has been lovely to meet you… but you’re not the one who started the war. You’re not the monster that I am.”

Her eyes snapped to his, fear and shock painted on her face. “You! You’re… The Butcher?!” He frowned and nodded. “Yes… I am… Though I did not choose that title nor my fate for myself… I was just… following orders…” As he spoke he became more and more lost in the memories and suddenly turned and started running, weaving back and forth around the inside of the bunker as he tried to get away from her, to be alone.

She sat down in the middle of the room, staring down at her locket, the only gift from her mother. After a few moments with her thoughts she stood up and started walking in the direction he had gone, knowing he couldn’t hide from her forever. Though it took almost an hour due to the sheer size of the bunker, she eventually found him, huddled in a corner like she had been the night before. “Jeffrey… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… bring back the memories, and I certainly didn’t mean to call you a monster… though, truth be told, you’re not the only monster here.” She sat down next to him and laid a hand on his shoulder.

After a moment of quiet, he turned his head to her. “What do you mean?” She leaned her head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. “You think of yourself as a monster for what you did. Everyone else thinks of me as a monster for surviving.” He thought for a moment then nodded. “I can understand that. Maybe… it’s better that we’re alone, two monsters in a paradise all our own?” She smiled wanly, turning to look at him. “Maybe it is.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and sat with her, staring at the locket still in her hands. “You’ve still got your heart, though. Maybe I can learn something from that. How to be human again.” She smiled wider this time, chuckling a little. “You’re already human. You just have to learn how to live again. I guess you think you’ve lost your heart?”

He nodded slowly, eyes focused on hers. “I think I lost it a long time ago, if I ever had one.” She handed him the locket, wrapping his fingers around it and pushing it over to him. “Here, we can share mine. A heart is no good if it’s kept to yourself.”