Someone

All he heard was a slow, rhythmic thump... and then the ringing came. The incessant ringing. "Where am I?" he thought, "Basement. I'm in the basement."

On weak legs he struggled up the stone stairs. He unlatched the lock, metal creaking as he pushed the cellar door open. Then, utter silence.

He turned to look at what was his home, now just a twisted mountain of splintered wood and chipped paint. Gray soot floated slowly to the earth, as he walked the path out to the front. Yesterday he would have been surrounded by greenery, but now was encircled by black and ashen land. As he stepped into the street he paused to look around.

Nothing.

What had been a vibrant neighborhood, with kids laughing and playing in the cul-de-sac, was now a mess of burnt wood and steel. He had seen this all before. The explosion years prior. The havoc brought on by the radiation sweeping his childhood home. The lives lost.

How none of it had had any effect on him.

Stepping onto the asphalt he couldn't help but picture his grandfather, donned in a white lab coat. "Ty klyuch," he would say, "you are the key." It was his mantra, repeated countless times accompanied with a stare through horn-rimmed glasses. A mixture of love and confusion in his eyes.

He had hated the needle pricks. The bright lights. The stacks of Cyrillic laden papers. The pokes and prods from strangers in plastic suits, day in and day out. Years spent on research, wondering why he had not perished along with the others.

His mother had saved him from that. Spirited him away from Pripyat in the night. Bribed a dockworker. Found them transport. Then a long trip surrounded by containers of varying colors. She had given up everything for him. Freed him from the relentless tests and questions.

Now he was here. Free, but alone. "Was she right? Or did she save me only to doom everyone else?" He realized he was crying now, on hands and knees. The silence was deafening, broken only by the echoes of his own sobs.

He stared down at a mound of dirt in front of him. A bright shimmer caught his eye, hidden in the soil. As he reached out to touch it, the dirt turned to ash. Jumping back, he understood the reality of what laid before him. "A child..." he shuddered.

What he mistook for a pile of rubble had hidden tiny fingers, digging into a golden locket. The hand had been the only thing shielding it. The heart shaped piece of metal a stark juxtaposition to the hellscape surrounding him.

Looking out he noticed all the others. Children and parents whose faces he could picture. People who he greeted on his walks to the store. Not one distinct from the other. Bundles of flesh and sinew and muscle and bone, charred beyond recognition.

"I was the key..." he repeated. His mind reeled. The connections between the explosion that plagued his childhood and the years spent in the lab coming together. If he had not been spared the discomfort of those pokes and prods... these people may have had a chance.

He struggled to his feet, tears streaming down his cold, soot stained cheeks. He began to walk. Where? He wasn't sure. But he couldn't be the only one left, could he? "Please don't let me be the only one left." he repeated to himself as he trudged down the road. Unable to look upon the devastation, he just stared at his Converse as they shuffled, one in front of the other. He would find someone. Sooner or later.

He had to find someone.