White crippled wings beating the sky

“That’s a badass name. Asher,” he said, taking the offered hand and shaking it firmly, “nice to meet ya, even if the circumstances are royally fucked.”

Shouldering the heavy bag, he fiddled with the straps for a bit before hefting his weapon of choice over his shoulder.

“Alright. I say we keep scavenging for supplies as we go through the vault ‘cause we’re in for the hike of our lives. Weapons, food, and water. My sense of direction is not the best so if you’re down with being the brains of this operation - which you clearly are - and navigate us in the right direction, I’ll be the pack mule.” To prove his commitment, he grabbed another bag, an empty one, and threw it over his shoulder to join the one already there.

Then, he smiled.

“As long as there’s no rabid, mutated anything, we have a good change at making it to Cali.”

For the first time in a while, Radix wasn’t taken by surprise.  She still managed a good handshake, though, something her very first foster father had taught her.  “Thank you - most people just think it’s weird.  I like Asher, too - sounds like the strong, silent hero from a 90′s video game.”

Radix laughed softly.  “You’ve got yourself a deal.  I won’t make you carry everything, though, I can help out a little if we’ve got to walk all that way.  From the plans I could find there are a couple of storage rooms that are our best bet.  And we need to get into the Administrator’s office.  It’s the only area controlled by its own locking mechanism which means it’s where the good stuff is.”

“No, but I think I saw the golden gate.”

At that point, he was truly starting to lose all belief in coincidences. The odds of them seeing technically the same place and literally the same faces - because he had decided to simply assume they were the same, were simply too small, and yet…

It had to mean something, right?

Then, there was the pull, the almost violent need to go to the bridge. It was so strong and persistent that he knew ignoring it for too long would be next to impossible soon enough.

He sighed and cursed under his breath; San Francisco was not exactly around the corner, and god only knew what was waiting for them outside of the vault.

Jaw set with determination, he didn’t even hesitate to break the glass of an emergency box and exchanged the pipe for the ax held inside. Better safe than sorry.

“Guess we’re going for a hike.”

Radix considered that for a moment.  Perhaps that had been the point of her...vision, or dream, or whatever it had been.  The bridge had certainly been in her field of vision at the very least, and the fact that they’d both been seeing the same thing was too much to write off.  Especially when they’d seen each other’s faces before they’d even known the other existed.

She tugged a pair of shoes on that almost fit, comfortable and utilitarian without looking like something a frumpy aunt might wear, and smoothed down her clothes with practiced ease.  The smashed glass caught her by surprise, but her companion had surprised her in a pleasant way - he was right, they needed weapons if they were expected to make it as far as San Francisco.

“I guess we are.  Those nukes would have triggered an EMP, so we can’t count on anything electronic between here and there actually working.  Cars, computers, nothing.  I think we’re going to have to take the long way.”  Walking to San Francisco was not going to be fun, especially through a changed world that had to be full of surprises.  But it needed to be done, and so it would be.

Walking around the vault was eerie, to say the least. The silence was almost suffocating on itself, and it made their footsteps sound like gunshots in the dead of night.

Picking up some sort of military-esque looking backpack, he took it upon himself to start packing whatever he thought they might need. Tucked away in a cabinet, he found some food without expiration dates, it was fishy, but it didn’t look moldy and they had very little options if they wanted to survive. He was more than okay with eating stale cookies if it saved their lives. As many water bottles as he could find ended up in the bag too, along with a small first aid kit.

Ever the gentleman, he turned around to grant her as much privacy as possible while they changed. There wasn’t a whole lot of variety in clothing, so he settled for keeping the jumpsuit on and tucking away a set of clean clothes in the bag, just in case.

The question was not something he had been expecting, the shock so acute that he whipped his head around to stare at her, modesty be damned.

“You saw them too.”

Radix wasn’t exactly bothered by being alone.  In fact it was her default state, if she had any choice in the matter.  But the longer they spent in a sealed underground vault filled with the dead, the less she found she was enjoying it.

Letting her new companion handle food collection, she focused on terminals - stopping at each to see whether there were any hardwired unites that might contain more than they already knew - that everyone was dead and they weren’t.  Unfortunately, the primitive network seemed to extend throughout the facility.

When he didn’t change she shrugged, knowing that the selection was a bit limited - her pants were a little too big, cinched with a belt, and the t-shirt she was in the midst of pulling on when he spun around was going to be a little too tight.

“Well… Maybe we just happened to be lucky. I ain’t gonna to start complaining about being the glitch in the matrix.” But as much as he tried to sound confident in his words, the shift back and forth of his eyes told a different story.

He wanted to believe there was an error that allowed them to live; he had to believe, lest he started losing his mind.

Then, he groaned at the woman’s words. He knew she was right, they should at least take a peek outside and gauge the situation above ground, but it was still a scary prospect. He had watched the Chernobyl documentary once upon a time, and it didn’t paint a pretty picture.

“I dunno, you look pretty in blue, but I guess we should find like, supplies and stuff. I’m just realizing I’m very, very thirsty.”

Looking around, he spotted a metal pipe near one of the pods and picked it up. It was not baseball bat, but it would do in case they found anything unsavory.

“Alright, I’ll bring the rear and keep an eye for anything trying to jump us.”

Giving him a sidelong glance, Radix barely avoided rolling her eyes.  She understood denial, but considering she’d punched her way through the pod’s controls after she’d already choked to death once, the answer seemed clear.  Once you eliminate the impossible, what remains - no matter how improbable - must be the truth.  So they’d died, and come back to life.

“It’s not really my color, but thanks for that.  You’re rocking the jumpsuit harder than I’d have expected though, so go you.”  She had to hide a smile at the idea of him beating off some sort of zombie attack with his pipe - so far he didn’t strike her as the type.

While the only other living being in the immediate area went to a computer and started typing away, Ash carefully got to his feet. Moved by a morbid sense of curiosity, he ignored the slight chill still refusing to leave his body, he approached one of the pods.

The man’s skin was still covered by a slight frost, the unsettling stillness of the body made his insides churn, but not with disgust. Whatever the feeling was, he didn’t have much time to identify it before his companion’s voice filtered through his brain.

“What?” Making his way over, he read the systems report over her shoulder. He wasn’t a computer wizard, but no special skills were needed to understand the plain as day statements.

All two hundred and twenty five occupants of the pods scattered around the vault were marked as deceased.

“Well, that’s clearly bullshit, since I’m pretty sure we’re not dead. Here,” he offered his arm still covered by the royal blue uniform provided upon arriving to the vault, “hit me; hard.”

Radix shot him a withering look.  “I’m not going to hit you.  It says you’re dead, not dreaming.”  She pulled back from the log she was in, eyes scanning the screen as she searched for more information.  “Actually, this makes even less sense than I thought it did.  If the life support failed right here...” she hopped between screens, brow furrowed.

“Then it didn’t shut down just a few minutes ago.  It was hours ago.”  Which would mean that they’d somehow survived hours in a failed cryogenic state before waking up and falling to the floor.  That was impossible.  Radix didn’t know much about cryogenics, but she did know a lot about computers - and the log in front of her didn’t seem manipulated in any way.  So if the log wasn’t lying, then what did that mean?

Keys were pressed in rapid sequence as she moved out of the systems log and into the command menu, turning on the lights and wincing at the harsh glare  before opening every security door in the place - other than the one in the Administrator’s office that was hardwired to another terminal and inaccessible from where they were.

“Yeah… Come here often?” Even in the midst of a rather dire situation, Ash couldn’t help himself, and the ridiculousness of it all made him chuckle. Which, of course, sent him into another violent coughing bout.

As he looked around to try and process the situation, his memory started coming back to him piece by piece, and all the humor died out.

War, sirens all around, screaming mobs as their end was plainly announced. He ran just like the others, thanking whatever deity up there that he had signed his name on the dotted line when the salesman came knocking on his door. At the time, he had thought it to be a scam, a waste of his hard earned money, but not long after he had been proven wrong.

He had a spot reserved among the few that would survive what would take the lives of millions all over the world.

His train of thought was abruptly interrupted by loud hissing and his head whipped back and forth in fright. The pods opened, but nobody came out.

Wide eyes stared at the one before him, where a still frozen body remained unmoving.

“Uh… I have a feeling that’s not a good thing.”

“First time,” Radix coughed.  “So far it gets a zero star rating on Yelp.”  Her memory was still in and out, but the longer she lay on the floor looking up at the pods the more came back.

The world had finally done what it had promised to do for so long - let the doomsday clock tick over to midnight and violently removed itself from existence.  She’d barely made it into the Vault, with a place that she’d scored by hacking their systems a few weeks prior to the end.  It hadn’t been because she was prescient enough to see the end coming, it was just another exercise in hacking.  One that had, apparently, saved her life.

The hissing of the pods caught her attention as well and she rolled onto her front, looking up at the collection of corpses around them.  “No, that...seems bad.  Some kind of systems failure.”  Carefully, on unsteady feet, Radix rose from the floor and looked for a terminal.  This many units, there had to be a controller somewhere.

“One sec, let me...” she shuffled slowly toward it, turning the screen towards herself and working the keyboard like she owned it.  “Why is this encrypted?” she slapped the terminal, quickly breaking through into the system.  The first few logs were normal, but then...Radix slapped it again, trying to make the screen say something else.  It didn’t change the green text, though, and she bit her lip.

Age: 31 (Born February 12)

Birthplace: Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

Current Residence:

Biography:

Radix never knew her parents.  The only thing of theirs that she carried into the foster system was her name, and no matter how much teasing she received for it she never let anyone change it.  No nicknames, no short forms, she was always Radix.  If it was all that she had, she was going to hold onto it forever.  Developing an affinity for computers in her youth, she became a prolific hacker in her teens and even tried to unseal her birth record (unsuccessfully).