Renewed Purpose

Theo was trying to make his way back to the bunker before the sun started to set. The air gets thick at night and the filter in his mask should have been replaced months ago. It was late spring. Most scavengers had picked this area clean to pad their summer stores. It was almost impossible to go outside once the temperatures got over 150 degrees and that was going to start by the end of next month. Theo was confident he would be able to wait out the worst of the four to five months by himself in the bunker without much sacrifice of comfort, but there was always room for that little extra insurance of more.

He missed the last supply drop by one day and 13 miles. The government wasn't the best at accurately hitting the landing pad and they weren't particularly forthcoming with changes in the schedule. That meant that he had to go out and look for the bodies of the people who weren't lucky enough to have fortified bunkers or the medical support needed to treat the various cancers one would get without said bunker. Most of the top-siders kept their rations on them and picking the pockets of the dead was a lucrative occupation. Theo was pretty good at checking unoccupied structures for small caches and noticing the out of place markers that signaled buried and hidden goods.

Today’s haul was meager. He found a small tin box of rusty tools on a mummified corpse 45 minutes into his day. Mummification only took a couple of weeks, what with the radiation, constant elevated temperatures, and the barren sandy earth that spanned well past the horizon. This was a blessing because it made touching a dead body less gross. A little later, in a wooden shack that already had it’s doors ripped off, he found two tin cans of meat product rations under a bookshelf that had been knocked forward to the ground. Theo had hoped to find some Potassium Iodide tablets on this expedition. Last year, he had a scare when the upper left side of the butterfly shaped thyroid gland at the front of his throat started to swell slightly. Luckily, it went away on its own in a couple of days, but he didn’t care for that extra anxiety.

The threat of summer also brought with it the dry monsoons. Sudden bursts of hot air would slam into the dry earth causing brief, but intense, sandstorms to barrel across the land. The only thing you could do if you were caught in one, is to get low and cover your head. The blowing sand could knock you over and would abrade thinner fabrics and the lenses of your goggles. Walking around with holes in your coveralls and occluded vision was ill advised. In times before him, regular monsoons would deliver mass amounts of needed precipitation. As much as the parched surroundings could use some water, the scant amount of rain that falls in the present time smells strongly of sulphur and will blister the soft membranes of your mouth if you tried to drink it without any of the filtration techniques.

Theo was 100 yards from the hatch of his bunker when the storm hit. It took him by surprise and knocked him forward a couple of steps. He righted himself long enough to sit down on the ground with his legs drawn up to his shoulders, his arms wrapped tight around his shins, and his head wedged between his knees. He was lucky to have a decommissioned military one piece filtration mask. It not only had the breathing apparatus but integrated solar goggles and a vulcanized hood that covered his head and, most importantly in this event, his ears.

He sat there, curled up in a ball, for a good 10 to 15 minutes. The wind was blowing so hard that his upper back began to feel bruised. A small drift of sand started to form up against hips and lower back. It spilled into the small void under his legs and held him in place. The storm gradually died down and he cautiously lifted his head to check. There were still flurries of sand kicking up, but they were manageable. He put his palms flat on the ground and pushed himself back and forth a couple of times to rock himself out of the form fitting clay seat he found himself in. He stood up, a little wobbly from the assault, and started to brush off the excess sand from his clothes. Theo had just looked up towards his bunker to get his bearings when a flash of light caught his eye.

It was quick. He didn’t think it was lightning because it was too low to the ground. He dropped his center of gravity slightly and got into a defensive stance as he scanned the horizon for marauders. Those who could not effectively scavenge, aggressively stole. Desperation often begets violence. There wasn’t any creeping form, human or animal, in his field of vision though. Maybe the sand had chipped his goggles and the light was bouncing funny off of the imperfection. Maybe the toxins and radiation had started to attack his optic nerve. Maybe, fingers crossed, he was just dehydrated. He relaxed his shoulders and started back towards the bunker.

Another flash.

This time he saw it more directly and could tell it was something in the dirt. He jogged toward it with hopes of finding more supplies. He saw a slight glimmer and fixed his attention on it. As he got closer, he could see a small flutter accompany it. Was it an injured animal? Theo would have to be careful on approach, Injured animals could lash out in fear but could also prove to be a good source of protein.

Theo ran right up to the object until it was right between the tips of his two feet. He looked down and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. The glimmer had come from a small, gold, heart shaped locket on a mismatched rusty ball chain necklace. The strange part of this was that it was next to something more delicate and green. It was a leaf.

Most of the plant was still under the dirt. The monsoon must have eroded the ground away around it to expose it. He hesitantly reached down to pick up the necklace as it was the more familiar of the two objects. He turned the locket over in his gloved hand. The front was carved with delicate filigree. The back bore three initials, “B.E.A.”. He pawed at the edge of the locket, but his gloves impeded his fine dexterity. In his pocket, he kept a thin strip of metal that he used as a pry bar to loosen the grip of corpses too stubborn to give up their riches. He slid the edge of the bar into the side of the locket and it popped open. An incredibly small folded piece of paper fell out and landed on the exposed leaf.

Theo gasped and stood frozen in place. He half expected the ground to open up and swallow the lot of them. But the paper just stayed still in it’s leafy cradle. He snapped to and swiftly picked the note up before the wind picked up and carried it away forever. He fumbled the paper trying to unfold it and wound up using his teeth to remove his right glove. As he unfolded it, words in perfect penmanship started to be revealed.

“Bryn,

My heart grows and blossoms in your sunny soul.

Love, Ev”

He stared at the paper, reading the lines over and over. He looked at the back of the locket again and then back to his feet.

“Hello, Bea.”

Theo shoved the letter and the locket into his pocket and put his glove back on. He looked through his pack for the tools he found earlier. In the box was a flat head screwdriver. He took a knee and used the end of the screwdriver to carefully chip away at the earth around the plant.

Dark green leaves, striped with lighter green and pale yellow, slowly emerged before him. When he got the hard clay off it and the roots came into view, he put the screwdriver back into his pack and used his hands to brush the softer dirt off the delicate tendrils. When he could, he reached both hands under it and gingerly lifted the whole thing up. He stood and cradled Bea close to his chest, picked up his pack, and walked deliberately to the bunker.

It was a precarious one-handed climb down the ladder into his living quarters. He didn’t even bother taking off his protective equipment before he walked straight into the galley to look for a temporary vessel for his new friend. He placed the plant in the chipped ceramic cereal bowl with the bright blue cartoon bird on the bottom and put a small amount of his filtered water in with it. Once that was done, he stripped down to his undershirt and shorts and set out to find the perfect corner of the bunker.

He pushed his chair closer to the galley and rolled back a corner of the thin carpet and exposed a small section of concrete. He grabbed the sledgehammer he kept in a storage locker, lifted it high above his head, and let it drop to the floor. The cement cracked with a high pitch squeak. He spent several hours swinging the heavy hammer and moving chunks of the heavier bunker floor. He worked until he could see the virgin soil below. He dug a hole deep enough for Bea’s roots to find purchase and gently placed her in it. He covered her up with some of the displaced dirt and poured enough water over her to darken the surrounding ground.

He put the sledgehammer back in the locker and stopped to pick up the clothing he left strewn hastily about the room. He reached into the pocket of the coveralls in his hand and retrieved the locket and love letter and absentmindedly dropped his clothes back to the floor. He meticulously folded the paper back up and put it back into the locket. Then, Theo slipped the necklace over his head. The cold metal warmed against his sweaty skin. He walked, still in his undergarments, to his chair and pulled it closer to the gaping wound he made in the floor of his house. He sat down and leaned back into the naugahyde with a groan that was indistinguishable from the one the chair made.

He stared at his discovery. He was proud of his handiwork. A slow smile crept across his face. There was a strange comfort in knowing that there is more than just self preservation in his life now. This small fragile organism waited for him to find her. He was obligated to care for it.

He closed his eyes and drifted to sleep, sitting up in his chair, and dreamed of a new earth made green and lush by him and Bea. Colorful visions of children playing outside in fresh air, lovers swimming in clean pools of water, people enjoying each other's company with no motive to kill or steal from the person next to them. Bea would eventually grow to carpet the majority of the bunker and when time came, she would cradle him for eternity before branching out under the concrete to breach the soil for another hopeful steward to enjoy. But that would be years from now. Until then, Theo and Bea would enjoy each others sunny souls.