Free From the Fire II by Kent David Kelly

 
     
    II-1
    THE SPIDER AND THE HUSK OF SKIN
     
    Gray sheets of tepid water pulsed out of the motorized wall sockets, spraying down onto radiation traps, waterproofed glo-lites, lead-filtered drains, and the head of the shivering woman who lived, Sophia Ingrid St.-Germain.
    She could not remember regaining consciousness, or crawling back into the shower nook just beyond the great room of the fallout shelter, or stripping off her soiled clothes. When she awoke to herself in revelation, she found herself huddled down in a corner of the shower, hugging her knees, with the fragile and intermittent gouts of water cascading down on top of her.
    She was sobbing. Her vocal cords were raw and she believed she had been crying out someone’s name, but she could not remember.
    She knew only that she was alive, that she was real. The shelter had held, despite the earthshaking violence which had cracked the heart of the mountain all around her. Most of the lights she could see out beyond the translucent shower wall were still functional, casting their false sheets of radiance through the falling dust, turning the ashes into gold. One bank of the caged ceiling lights had fallen, its fluorescent tubes shattered out of their sockets and spread like glittering flowers of razor shrapnel upon the concrete. Another light rack swayed gently back and forth in the air just inches above the floor, strung and held by the threads of a frayed and silvery cable. These last lights flickered madly and spun a strobe of shadows around the room, clockwise and pause and back again.
    The woman stared. The water kept falling against her fingers, misting back against her throat.
    She blinked. It happened , Sophie thought to herself. She did not dare to speak the words, did not yet want to know if she could dare to hear and understand whatever her own voice might mean, a gift made meaningless in a world without other souls for her to confide in.
    They really did it. Damn them. It was all too enormous, too unthinkable. One world, and now the world is burning.
    Beyond the surging of her blood, outside her mind, she could hear the drops of falling water. But the sound was distant, as if she were adrift beneath the ocean and just about to crest the surface. The delicate bones within her ears ached and sang with a chime-like cadence of phantom sound.
    One world ever only , she mused. One world and there is nothing now.
    She could also hear and feel the generators humming out there, beyond the seal which led to the unexplored inner chambers. The shower was damaged but it was working, and somehow she had turned it on without remembering what she had done. She lifted her head — a white flash of pain greeted this unwanted dividing of tangled muscles in neck and shoulder — and slowly opened her mouth. Cringing, digging her fingernails into knees, she tilted her head back to the fractured wall-tiles and let herself swallow the falling water.
    It was slightly saline, with a taint of grit and perhaps chlorine. Warm, not hot. But the taste of the water began to tell her many things. The water from the tanks was drinkable, the filtration systems and pumps and ultraviolet purifiers must all be operational. Down by the floor, framed in ghost-light against the other side of the glass, a digital display glowed upon a small iPad-like LCD screen to show the water temperature, tank supply, filtration quality and other trivia, things which now were crucial and imperative measures of her survival.
    She could read the last nine lines displayed there as she lowered her eyes, lines which were blinking in digital crimson:
    ~
    SODIUM IODIDE CRYSTAL DETECTOR
    RADIOACTIVITY ::
    MAXIMUM CONTAINMENT LEVELS ::
    GAMMA PENETRATION
    SUBSTRATA SAMPLE ANALYSIS ::
    M-SIEVERT / HR. :: 482.66 [+++]
    (FLUX :: 36.3% [-], DATA INSUFFICIENCY)
    DATA CASCADE RELIABILITY :: 87.3% [+]
    ERROR CODE :: 3003.1v
    ~
    And what does that mean? How soon am I going to die?
    She lowered her head between her knees,