Chapter Text
Look at yourself, look in the reflection that sits lifelessly on that mirror of yours, look and think what brought you here, what keeps you here. Is it the will to survive against all odds, to thrive in the wastes, where no human soul will step for years, where no car will drive for decades, and where no one will live for millennia. Look at yourself Sophie, and think of what you have to do, of what will happen if you do not do what you must do, what will happen if you won’t survive.
“A single BIC ballpoint pen can write over 45,000 words.”
An unbearable cold swept the ruins of what was once a family home, snow piling on top of the ceramic tiles still glued to the kitchen floor. The sky was covered in clouds, the stars hidden behind them, alongside the moon, conditions in which it would be dangerous to be outside, but under the house lays a basement, built 30 years before the day the world came to an irreversible halt, it now housed a lone girl, not older than 26, not younger than 20, with a hair described by her long-gone friends as reminiscent of the golden shade taken on by the fields of rye bordering their childhood town, her eyes a lignite brown adorned with a pair of glasses tied together with thin strips of electrical tape, her lips, chapped and cracked from the wind and cold, her hands covered in scars from battles no one could have helped her win, but herself.
“It is the 25th of January 1990, the wind outside is going at around 140 km/h during the strongest of gusts, the temperature is negative 30 degrees on the Celcius scale but with the wind chill it feels closer to negative 54. I have enough firewood to last me 3 more days at my current burning rate, but if the weather keeps getting worse, I’ll run out by the 27th and then I will freeze to death. Food is not an issue ever since that trading caravan came by on new-year’s day, and water is easy to come by due to the snowfall, purification is a non-issue since the stove is on 24/7 I can continuously boil portions of water if need be. The radio has been silent since the 10th when the survivor camp 20-ish kilometers away got overwhelmed by an epidemic and they had to abandon the sick and move on. Even though it all looks bad, yet there is still hope.”
These words came into existence on the paper of what used to be her history notebook, the pages had bent corners in places where she kept important notes, slightly faded ink in spots where her hand would rest while writing, and doodles of crowns and swords made during boring classes on wars that faded into obscurity long ago. A memory from days when life was nothing but going to class, drinking beers at college parties and going on hikes along the shore of the nearby river during the weekends, simple times. The rivers stands frozen, the campus is nothing more than rubble and craters strewn across what was once a lawn cut with surgical precision, nothing will ever be the same…
She sits alone in a basement, a fire slowly burning, her clothes drying, pinned to a rope tied to the chimney, her body tired from the toils of the day, yet she won’t rest, her ears covered by a headset, its green paint chipping away slowly, her hand on the knob of a radio, slowly rotating it, searching for a transmission that might never come, still she hopes for an anomaly on the airwaves, for something to catch her attention, for someone to reach out and say: “Hey, we are here to get you, pack your things, come outside!” For a voice that would be so familiar to her it would make her shiver at the thought of them being alive, but it might never come.
The static is monotonous, the constant humming of the radio’s internals, could drive someone insane, yet she sat there, persistent in her search, until her watch beeped. It was midnight, she should go to sleep. So she did, turned off the radio, set the headset onto the desk, pushed the chair back under, and switched off the lamp, no need to waste electricity. With slow steps she made it to her bed, well, it wasn’t really a bed, more like a cot with a blanket, a pillow and that was it, yet it was enough for Sophie, reminding her of a time when she used to go with her grandfather on long fishing trips and sleep in his cabin, on a cot that was just like the one she slept on, but something was missing, his bedtime stories, his comforting voice, and the good-night kiss she’d get after a long day of fishing and hiking through the woods close to the village she visited.
Her eyes were heavy, she closed them, and not long after, she fell asleep, her body tired from the toils of the day, her mind cloudy, yet it let her rest without darker thoughts, the memories had managed to keep them at bay.
A new day came, the clouds made way for the sun to rise, yet the cold did not heed its orders and stayed, weaker than the previous day, yet still unyielding in the face of the sun. The ground still frozen solid, the trees still covered in snow with branches moving in the wind. It was a dead world, no crop would grow in these conditions, no beast could thrive like this, no life would prosper in conditions like these.
She woke up with a headache, a head-splitting one at that, blurry vision made it hard to put on the clothes left out to dry, and her glasses only made it worse for reasons not known. It was bad, but it wasn’t anything she had not lived through yet, so she donned her clothes, put on her thickest jacket, an aviator hat, and goggles, alongside a woven scarf she bought from the caravan that came by when the years changed, grabbed her ax and went towards the hatch leading to the outside world.
The hatch swung open with little to no effort. Against all odds the snow hadn’t piled on top of it, so she managed to get out. Right after she closed the hatch behind her, Sophie set a 15 minute timer on her watch, a Casio she had gotten from her father in her second year of university. In 15 minutes her hands would become too numb for her to open the hatch so she had to get to work. The day before the girl eyed up a tree that looked like it was about to fall from damage sustained during the blizzard, and today, it was about to fall, but not from the winds, but from the blade of her ax. In a short sprint she got to it and began to swing. One swing, two swings, three swings… The blade of the ax struck the trunk of the tree hard, woodchips flying out in all directions. The timer ticked closer to the 15 minute mark, and by the time it sat at 1 minute and 42 seconds before completion the tree fell to the ground and she began to drag it to the place she called home. One minute left, and she was nearly there. 20 seconds left, her hands moved slow yet she managed to open the hatch. The watch began to beep just as she jumped in. It was done, a bit more firewood was acquired, it would keep her warm for 2 more days, if she managed to saw it into logs and split them.
The clothes went up to dry and warm up again, it was still snowing outside, and quite heavily at that, so they got covered in snow, soon it will melt and dry, soon it will all be back to normal…
Sophie sat down at the radio desk, her journal still there from yesterday still the same notebook she used to write in during history class, still with all the notes she took, and doodles she made when bored, the dick her desk mate drew in the corner of a page and she tried to turn into a face failing miserably. She opened it, and with a pen in her hand she began to write.
“It is the 26th of January 1994, the temperature is 25 degrees on the Celsius scale
with the wind speed of around 30 km/h it feels closer to negative 39. I have acquired more wood thus allowing me to heat this basement for two more days increasing my time here til’ the 29th. I have yet to check the radio for today but I do not think I will get a signal in such weather, the snowfall outside will most likely block the signal from going out or coming in, so I believe it will be total radio silence. The food and water is not an issue as of right now due to circumstances mentioned in the last log entry and generator fuel is plenty with my consumption of electricity being low, thus requiring less fuel than expected. I woke up with a headache that cleared by the time I got back inside so I believe it was caused by a lack of fresh air, cold fresh air. It might all look bleak, but as of right now, there is still hope.”
She finishes it with her signature, a simple “Sophie”. What a beautiful name…
The survivor stand up from the chair and moves to the stove, taking a cast iron pan from the ground near it and putting it on the stove. She looked in a corner to where the fridge was, a luxury in the apocalypse, to have a working fridge means having the ability to keep food fresh, and it just so happened that today she had steak on the menu. She traded away a broken shotgun and the 4 Gauge shells she found it with back in November to get 4 steaks alongside butter from that caravan on new year’s, and since she had a fridge and freezer combo, it was no issue to preserve it.
She put the butter on the pan, and waited for it to melt then waited for it to heat up, and threw on the steak, searing it slowly, with the little salt that she had added in for some taste, the smell making her mind wander off…
“I used to love Sunday morning steaks with my dad, what about you, Archibald?” she said looking at the long haired boy.
“Oh I loved them a lot! My father used to cook this big brisket every last Sunday of the month and we’d gather all of our neighbours and have a big party,” he said with a look filled with nostalgia for days gone by. “I remember there being a grandma down the street, she used to bring empanadas con queso for everyone and you bet sure we could not get enough of them!”
“How lovely, isn’t it, that we’re friends,” said Sophie, a smile forming on her face.
“It is, it is a beautiful part of our student life, this friendship I hold so dear.” replied Archibald.
Sophie’s mind snapped back to reality as her watch beeped again, the steak was done, it smelled like heaven for a person who has not eaten something like this in months. She smiled, grabbed a plate from a shelf she put together not long after getting to this basement, and set the steak on it, she set it aside to cool off, it was still too hot to eat, not even a ravenous beast would bite into it, not now at least. She didn’t give her thoughts that much attention, Archibald was a good friend of hers during her years in college, but he was the first to fall when the epidemic kicked into full force so she doesn’t really think about him that often, at least not anymore.
The girl slowly walked back towards the desk where her radio sat, there she sat down and opened one of the drawers, pulling out a small sheet of paper, on it, at least 20 radio frequencies, written down in pencil, alongside them sat the names of the operators that run those frequencies. Sophie powered on the radio and equipped the headset, slowly tuning to the first frequency. She turned the knob, expecting to eventually hear the voice of Vladimir, the radio operator from the North-Eastern settlement respond, but it wasn’t there yet. Her eyes turned to the watch that sat on her wrist, it was 1 PM, she tuned in earlier than she should have. Defeated, Sophie began to take her headset off but suddenly, she heard a voice over the radio.
“November, Echo, sector Two, Zero, Four, broadcasting,” a robotic tone spoke over the air.
It is their automated tone, ever since they stumbled into that UN convoy they had one, took their radio equipment and modified the message it broadcasted before every human transmission, Sophie said to herself.
“This is Sierra, Oscar, sector Two, Two, Niner, how am I heard, over,” said Sophie, bringing the microphone closer to her mouth.
“Loud and clear, long time no hear, how is life going on?” replied Vladimir.
“Seen better days, the settlement near sector Two Four Five got overrun by the infection, they had to evacuate and leave the sick behind, heard it over the waves on 12.4 MHz as they were passing by my place.”
“No way it got to them, they had support from beyond the wall, good prevention, quarantine zones, even some medicine that can partially cure it! I wonder how it got out of control…” said the man, his voice shaky as the realization of what had happened began to dawn on him.
“It did, the convoy that was supposed to evacuate the healthy got ambushed by raiders and everyone there got killed, now they’re moving towards sector One, Niner, Eight, it’s a place with little to no high speed winds like here, there’s an abandoned outpost there with some places still intact according to the scouts that broadcast on 273.1 KHz.” said Sophie, her voice was noticeably sadder than before.
“Those bloody bastards, they tried to raid us two days ago and got the broadcast antenna, we couldn’t get our transmissions out up until today! They scouted us out the day before while that blizzard was still going, and since our guards weren’t expecting it we lost nearly all of them, only Artyom and Vytaly managed to make survive that. 20 God forsaken renegades, all of them armed to the teeth with military grade shit, not the things we have here, have it not been for our beloved Dashka we would have been done for. Good thing Leon still takes good care of her and she works just as she used to before all of this happened.” replied Vladimir, anger slowly taking form in his voice.
“Yeah, you are lucky to have survived, I heard from the scouts that they have become more aggressive lately going so far as attacking UN forces and traders, for gods sake, didn’t we all, as in people from beyond the wall, agree to explicitly not attack?! And they dare to call themselves the new standard of humanity?” said Sophie, as her left hand clenched into a fist and her voice slowly rose in power as anger got over her.
“For now it is what it is, our time on air is limited today, the antenna is still somewhat messed up so we have to keep working on it. If you need anything we can send a caravan over with supplies, after all we still owe you one from that time in August,” replied Vladimir, his voice now calm, as he settled back into his seat.
“It is not an issue, I still have supplies, if the worst is to come I will radio over. This is Sierra, Oscar, sector Two ,Two ,Niner out.”
Sophie felt odd, Vladimir’s voice was familiar to her, back in August she helped them set up their radio equipment, coming all the way from her sector to theirs. Along the way she met the people from sector 2/4/5, the ones that were now on the run, the ones that had to leave mothers with their sick children behind, the ones that forsook their morals in the name of survival, just like the governments of old.
The steak was tough, she cooked it for way too long and it became like rubber, yet it reminded her of those old cook-outs she had with her dad, and the empanadas Archibald used to bring on Saturdays, she would never get to taste them, but still, a memory is better than nothing, right?
The tree she brought down was frozen solid, she could try to saw it down and then split the logs into firewood, then stack the logs inside, then burn them to keep herself alive, a cycle she was all too familiar with, a simple, repetitive, yet highly efficient cycle. Wake up, chop wood, cook, eat, listen to the radio, measure the outside temperature and wind, calculate wind chill, note everything down, read, work on fixing the long range radio, go to sleep, repeat. She’d done this ever since she got here back in June of last year, when things truly went downhill and the wall was set up.
The watch beeped four times, the time on it said 18:00, the day flew by, and Sophie did not expect it. She went over to her cot and sat down before pulling out a cardboard box from underneath it. She opened it and grabbed a book, the title read: “How to fix a Buran snowmobile, complete guide”. It was written in Russian but that was not a problem, Sophie knew the language way too well ever since she got airlifted from her home town to this new zone, east of the mountains, in the unforgiving Siberian wilderness. She had a plan, get to the mountain range and link up with two more survivors she knew, then head back towards her sector and house them at her place. She had come into contact with them three days earlier, on a frequency not used by anyone else, abandoned some might say, but not for a curious girl stuck in a basement with nothing better to do than eat, sleep, read and listen to the radio, or at least that’s what she wants to believe.
Midnight came, all too fast for one to process, she realized this only when her watch beeped in four short bursts and the time on it read 00:00. So she put the book back into the box, slid it under her cot, and lied down, sleep overtook her body in an instant, she was far more exhausted that she realized, since June she lost 10 kilos in weight, her vision had gotten worse, and she couldn’t get over the memories of days gone by. Memories which made her condition much worse, even though it didn’t seem like it.