The Soldier and the Girl

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. She knew when he would be off doing essential things like gun training or special meetings and time it so she was long gone before he returned. But in that small moment when she was all alone looking out on a world she had never stepped foot in, she found peace.

The sky was a dull yellow, dust storms blocking out a sun that now heated the surface outside past a point any human could survive for long. But in that barren wasteland that was earth, there was one thing that was surviving, and it was the reason she started risking her privileges to go to his window in the first place.

The tree bared no fruit and dropped no leaves, but it stood- tall and proud through the heat and winds, the only one you could see from the bunker- this window, in particular. She tried to picture how it may have looked before she was born. The way she saw trees in books. Green leaves shimmering against a blue sky, fluffy clouds floating on a soft breeze. A family picnicking in its shade, laughing and enjoying a quiet afternoon.

“What have I told you about being in here?” The voice was like a lion roaring more than it was human.

She realized in a panic that she had dozed off- something she had never done before, and now she was caught, and she would lose her privileges- the ones she had left anyways. She was about to stammer out an apology or an excuse, but she knew it was futile. She stood next to his bunk, her hands behind her back and her head hung low, her chin almost touching her chest.

All she could see was the tips of his giant black boots as he stood before her. Her own bare feet, dirty from the cement floors, dwarfed by his size. She waited for his torrent of ugly words to fall on her head, waited for his monstrous hand to grip her threadbare shirt and drag her out into the hall and back to the children’s center, where her teacher would reprimand her further and then stick her in the thinking corner, quiet and alone.

But no ugly words came, no hand on her shirt. Instead, she heard him sigh defeatedly and kneel down, using one roughened finger to lift her chin. “Why do you choose to break the rules all the time?”

She studied his grizzly face. A white scar ran from the edge of his right eye to the corner of his mouth. Grey stubble covered the bottom half of his face, and piercing blue eyes looked at her from under thick black eyebrows. They were not kind eyes, but they were also not mean ones.

What could she say? That there were so many rules it was hard not to break them? That sitting on the dingy floor of the children’s center with no windows was torture compared to the risk of sneaking into his room to see the tree? That she felt drawn to him and his room, not knowing why? That daydreaming about a life that would never be was better than living in this one?

She shrugged her shoulders, a single tear rolling down her dirt-stained cheek. In a perfect world, he would have wiped it away and given her a loving hug, telling her it would be all right, but this wasn’t a perfect world, and he was not that person. He was one of the soldiers. One of the men protecting the people that lived their lives in that bunker. He did not let his emotions get the better of him. Ever.

A red light began to flash over their head, and then an alarm began to sound out in the hall- harsh and loud. She flinched back as he jumped to his feet, but he was already running, glancing back as he shut the door. “Stay in here and stay quiet.” The metal door clanged shut, dampening the sound of the alarm and the running footsteps on the other side.

Alarms could mean many things: sandstorms, oxygen leaks, fire. The bunker was large, and the emergency could be happening anywhere. But when a red light accompanied the alarm, it could only mean one thing.

“Breach,” she whispered, running to the window.

They were hard to see through the sand; she squinted her eyes and could barely make out their shapes—the vehicles of the sand pirates. There hadn’t been an attack in months, and if the red light was flashing, the bunker hadn’t been ready for them, and they had gotten in. The pirates had learned how to live in the heat and wind and steal what they needed from the dead cities and living bunkers scattered across the desert. She knew of only one other time when they had gotten in- the night she was born. They had taken her parents from her that night, leaving her a newborn orphan.

Gunfire broke out somewhere close by. She glanced at the door, fear draining the color from her face, and quickly crawled under his bunk, curling into a ball and wrapping her arms around her head. She thought about the tree- her happy place. Something slammed against the door, and she squinched her eyes shut, trying not to cry out. A bird settling in its branches, fruit bright and sweet hanging in the leaves. The gunfire grew louder until it sounded like it was outside the door. A nest in the uppermost branches, the baby birds crying out for food.

The door swung inward; heavy footsteps sounded on the cement floor. She held her breath as the person came towards the bunk. And then she saw them. The giant black boots. As they stopped in front of her, she reached out and placed her hand gently on the top of one of them. She could see his body physically relax when he realized she was still there. He cleared his throat to speak, but the door opened again, this time more forcefully. Her hand shrank back under the bunk as he spun to confront whoever had followed him in.

The other person was not wearing boots. The other person had on sandals, their feet covered in a thick layer of sand; half the nails were missing, the other half black with rot. She heard grunts of exertion as they attacked each other. Should she come out and help him? No, they would take her if the pirates knew she was there. He was trying to save her, so she would let him. It was his job; he was a soldier. Her soldier.

Their struggle moved out into the hall. One of them screamed in pain, and then the door was slammed shut again. She waited impatiently for what felt like hours, but she guessed it was only minutes. The bunker had gone eerily quiet. At some point, she did not know when, the red light had stopped blinking, and the alarm had been turned off. There were no more sounds of people running, gunfire, bumps, or bangs. He did not return for her, which worried her the most. That meant she would have to go out and find him.

Mustering as much courage as she could, she crawled out from under the bunk and hazarded a look out the window. The tree still stood, tall and dark against the yellow sky. It comforted her that the pirates had left it alone- even they knew how special something like a tree was. Half their vehicles were gone. The other half no longer had riders. She hoped. She didn’t think any left in the bunker would still be alive.

Creeping as silently as she could to the door, she opened it a crack and looked out. Thick black smoke roiled down the hall from the direction of the engineering rooms. The smell was thick and rancid, making her cough and want to shut the door and stay in the room until someone found her. But when would that be? Days? Weeks? She would starve to death by then. She had to look for survivors. She had to look for her soldier.

Wetting one of his bandanas in the bathroom sink, she wrapped it around her face and got as low to the ground as she could. She opened the door wide enough for her body and squeezed through, trying to stay under the smoke. She focused on the floor in front of her, keeping her gaze from traveling over the bodies she ran into along the way after making sure they were not her soldier. Cutting into fruit from the tree and tasting the sweetness, the juice dripping down her chin.

She stopped for a break when she finally arrived at the children’s center. The smoke wasn’t as noxious here, and she wanted to rewet the bandana before she continued. But the door was missing- scorched metal on the walls told the story of someone forcing their way in. Inside, the main room was dark. Without windows or lights, the place wasn’t as cheerful as it had been with kids and teachers. She did not like it. It felt wrong. She decided to continue, not wanting to know what she might find in the place she had spent most of her life in.

The smoke cleared the closer she got to the main doors of the bunker. She was able to stand up straight and pull the bandana from her face. The air still smelled of gunpowder and fire, but there were no more bodies on the ground for her to try and avoid. None of them had been the soldier anyways, which meant he was somewhere in there, or the pirates had taken him. She didn’t know how they operated or decided whom to take, but they might have thought he was valuable after the trouble he gave them.

Turning one last corner, she found herself staring out into the bright world beyond the bunker, the whole front where the security doors had been, now an empty shell. She squinted into the bright light- the feel of the natural heat on her skin a new feeling. She began to sweat almost immediately as she ventured closer to the hole in the side of her home. She could see now that the yellow sky was individual specks of sand continuously blowing from west to east, blocking out anything you would have been able to see beyond it.

But then there was the tree in real life, not through a window. So close she could walk out and touch it. She glanced around, waiting for someone to put their hand on her arm and stop her, but there was no one. She was alone. She walked back down the hall to a soldier in the doorway of the security room and, without hesitation, pulled off his boots and took the socks from his feet. She placed them on her own, pulling them up to her knees. She rewrapped the bandana across her face and stepped out into the sand.

It was hot through the fabric of the socks and softer than she thought it would be. Each step sunk her foot deep into the yellow granules, making it feel like she was walking through sludge. About 50 feet from the bunker, the wind picked up, and she was pushed off course as the sand and wind pummeled her body. She fought her way back in the direction of the tree, keeping its silhouette in her line of sight as tears streamed down her face and her feet burned. It took the last of her strength, but she made it. She collapsed against its black charred trunk and crawled to the east side, where its size would block the worst of the wind and sand.

As the heat of the day began to recede with the setting of the sun, the sweat on her skin began to cool, and she shivered, snuggling up closer to the tree and its rough exterior. The sand under her had cooled to a comfortable warmth, so she dug out a little hole and laid down, running her fingers across the tree, studying it, memorizing it. It was just the two of them now. If the tree could survive all this time out in this yellow world, she would also find a way.

He found her sleeping against the tree after the sun was gone and the stars were out, shining down on a world that had lost its oceans and was clinging desperately to survival. He stifled a grunt of pain as he bent over, his breath coming out in white puffs- the night cold enough to cause frostbite. He picked up her slight form and cradled her against his chest as he limped back to the bunker. His wounds would heal like they always did, but thinking he had lost her made him feel something he had never felt before. No matter how mad he acted finding her in his room, he had become accustomed to it. If he didn’t see her running out his door and down the hall on his way back from work or a briefing, he would stop by the children’s center to make sure she was okay.

Now it would just be the two of them. He would look for survivors in the morning, of course, and they would rebuild. But his room with the window that looked out at the tree would become her home as much as it was his, and he would ensure that she was safe and protected for the rest of her life. He was her soldier. And she would now be his everything.