Through the Door

A steady wind had kicked up, scattering tattered papers and dust around in circles. I looked on as my brother, Riley, climbed on the ruble of an ancient building.

As I watched, the radiation meter on my hazmat suit started beeping uncontrollably. I sighed and called out to Riley through our communication systems.

“Riley,” I said. “We need to head back. The radioactive winds are returning, and fast.”

“But Sky, we just got here!”

“I know we did, but do you really want to die because of some radioactive wind?”

“No…”

“Then c’mon, we don’t have all day.”

Riley jumped down from the ruble and trudged his way towards me, a look of disappointment on his face.

“Hey,” I said. “Cheer up. We can come back another time.”

He looked my way, shook his head, and kept walking.

We had gone through a lot as kids. Our parents vanished one day and never returned, any friends we had died of radiation poisoning, and to add the sprinkles on top, we’ve been alone ever since. I’ve taken care of Riley for most of his life, seeing how our parents vanished when he was five and I was 12.

“It’s been a long six years,” I muttered to myself.

Riley paused, looked towards me and said, “Are you coming or what?”

“Yeah,” I responded. “Just give me a moment you twat.”

I looked back at the town and sighed.

“It must’ve been a beautiful place before the world went to shit. I am almost certain of it.”

I turned back around to see that Riley had continued on without me. I jogged lightly and caught up with him in a minute or so.

“What do you think you’re doing sport?”

“Walking back to the shelter, what did you think I was doing?

“I thought you were walking back to the shelter.”

“Okay then, so leave me alone.”

“Look here Riley, I’m in charge right now. You answer to me, not vice versa, is that understood?”

“Yeah, whatever you say Captain Asshole.”

I stopped, both shocked and angry. Did Riley really just call me Captain Asshole? Trying to hold back both anger and tears, I said to him, “Come here.”

He groaned, turned towards me, and walked up to me.

“What do you want?”

“For one, I want you to quit with that attitude. Mother and Father wouldn’t appreciate that kind of language now would they?”

Silence.

“Second of all, I want to talk to you.”

“Haven’t we done enough talking Sky? Give it a break already, sheesh.”

With that he turned around and continued walking.

In a state of anger, I grabbed at him and my hand caught on the tube on the back of his helmet that filtered oxygen out of the radiation and gave it to him. He staggered and tried to get away from my grip. After realizing that it was hopeless, he tore the tube off his helmet, threw his helmet onto the ground, and began to run.

“He’s not going to last long,” I whispered.

And I was right because a few seconds later, he collapsed to the ground, heaving for breath.

“Sky,” he cried. “Get me my helmet please.”

“There’s no way to fix the damage that you’ve done to it Riley. You and I both know what is going to happen.”

“No… you… can’t leave… me here… to die.”

“Actually, I can. You did this to yourself.”

I began to walk away, but he grabbed my leg and pulled my leg, pulling me to the floor.

“You… aren’t… going anywhere… you… devil. You’re… going to watch… as I die.”

“Let go of me!”

“Why… should I? You’re just… going… to… lea-”

He then went still, a heavy, shaky sigh protruded from his mouth, along with blood. I turned my head, trying not to have such an image glued to the back of my mind.

His grip loosened on my leg, giving me the freedom to move again. I stood up, brushed the dirt off my hazmat suit, and left. Riley had been carrying important materials on him, but whatever he had been carrying, I had back at the shelter.

The trek back to the shelter was long and tedious, but I managed to get there before sundown. I slammed the door behind me and lit a candle that sat on a lone table in the middle of the room.

The shelter was fairly small, and only roomed two people, but when our parents had still been around, we managed to stuff four people into the confinement of our “home”.

It was a two room, half-bath building. One room accounted as the sleeping quarters, dining room, and family room, while the other room was used as the lavatory. There wasn’t a kitchen in the entire facility, but Father had found a way to fix that.

When we first got situated in the shelter, he had taken to remodeling it so that there was a kitchen nook leading off from the main room. The remodeling was cut short when he and Mother both disappeared, but with time, I finished it along with Riley’s help. It now served as a pantry since the use of a kitchen was absurd seeing how most of the food we got was canned and any animals out there were dead.

I took a seat at the table and pulled a small, tattered notebook from my bag along with a pencil. I flipped it open to the first blank page which I saw would be the last page as well and began to write.

Journal Entry #300

It seems that I am the last remaining survivor of my entire family’s bloodline.

Today, Riley died due to him removing his helmet and suffocating from radiation poisoning. I knew he couldn’t be saved, so I left him to die. I assume that it makes me a bad person, but in this world, we are all bad people.

This is going to be my last journal entry sadly. I’m out of pages and every other notebook I come across is either too damaged to write on or is full of scribbles. I still pick them up to see what other people have written before their demise and find that they all speak of a wooden door that they’ve seen in a burnt cornfield.

I’m probably being told that I should go towards the door, but I’m skeptical about it, especially since with me being young and a girl, the odds of getting raped are higher than usual.

Anyways, this is Sky signing off for one last time. I will probably never come across this thing again, but who knows. The future holds strange discoveries.

I closed the journal and sighed, leaning back on the seat as I did so.

My mind began to wander aimlessly, until I was snapped back into reality by a pounding knock on the door.

Quickly, I blew out the candle and slid under the table. It was a safety protocol that Father had taught Riley and me when we were kids. He had told us that if we were at the shelter alone and somebody knocked on the door, then hide under the closest thing to you.

I sat there, waiting. The knocking had stopped, but I never heard the sound of footsteps leaving the shelter. I began to move when the door was suddenly kicked down, a flurry of dust being kicked up as it connected with the floor.

“Search the whole house for any survivors. If you find a girl, you know what to do with her.”

It was a group of bandits. I had heard a lot about them when I was a kid, but I had never encountered them.

I sat there staring at their leader for what seemed like hours when I was grabbed by the ankle and pulled out from under the table.

I let out an ear-splitting scream, but they didn’t seem affected by it. The one who had pulled me out from under the table only chuckled and said, “Hey boss, look what we got here, a straggler.”

He then proceeded to shove me towards the leader, who grabbed me by the waist and looked me in the eyes, a grin spreading across his face.

“Hello there sweetheart,” he said.

Before I knew it, I was lying on top of the table, my hazmat suit being torn off with ease.

The thing about the shelters was that there were oxygen bubbles surrounding each. The government had implemented them there, thinking that it’d be good, which it was, but when the bandits came, it was a living hell.

The leader loomed over me, a grin still on his face. He grabbed me by my waist again, tore off my panties and proceeded to screw me.

Once he was satisfied, he got off of me, only for one of his henchmen to take his turn. This continued until they were all satisfied with the pleasure that they had gotten from me. They then grabbed their clothes, put them on, and left.

I lay there, quivering and crying, my entire body in pain.