Fallout Dreams

miava 04

living room to kitchen to bedroom to living room; loud, frenetic gibberish still pummeled mia's guts as she trekked from one end of the house to the other, holding back tears and stifling the surges of panic.

you are not weak, she told herself. you are not a stereotype. calm yourself and focus.

she ignored the note disintegrating on the window. she grabbed the chair and dragged it to the wall beside the fireplace. with dirty feet she stepped on the pristine suede, lifted herself to the first speaker, and bashed her fist into the plastic until the ceiling crumbled, wires popped, and the speaker crashed to the floor in a pile of plaster dust.

as mia dragged the chair from speaker to speaker, she recalled the mystery man's power, not just the brute strength of his torso (how easily he lifted her) but the weight of his words... the electricity generated by the knowledge of his presence.

she pummeled the last speaker until it dangled from its wire like a half-demolished piñata. finally, the music stopped.

lightning struck as mia's feet hit the floor. i need to focus, she thought again, but the battle with the speakers left her even more famished than before.

she marched to the fridge, grabbed the tea, and gulped it straight from the pitcher—

she stopped. she looked inside and ran her finger along the plastic rim.

on a horrible hunch, mia threw the pitcher at the sink and rinsed away the tea. the faucet sputtered and the water shifted from clear to brown and back again, but she drank it anyway—straight from the tap—then splashed it on her face to clear her mind.

the windows were already boarded up by the time the man drowned her phone... which meant he must have had another entrance.

and mia knew where.

she kicked down ava's door. she barreled through the black walls and flung open the walk-in closet and there it was, a trap door, his secret entrance.

mia felt all twelve months worth of her sister's anxiety; that psychotic siphoning of FEAR from one twin to another via the cord that still bound them, severed but never fully cut.

hands and knees, she backed into the hole. her foot touched the first rung... and the anxiety struck again. she jumped away as if the hatch might bite, then bolted from the closet.

nolan was down there—she was sure of it—listening to every step—every creek in the floorboards—as his crumbling girlfriend paced from the closet to the kitchen to the bedroom to the living room...

* * *

"what's your name?" ava released the question into the black just loud enough to transcend the wood and glass and stone.

the man's reply resonated through the bunker, clanging against jars and rocky walls. "trevor," he said.

she meandered to the end of the first aisle. she could go left or straight... she chose straight. "i saw your books. you like astronomy?"

"i like stargazing," he replied, his voice creeping closer. "and i like to understand what i'm looking at."

"same with serial killers?"

"yes."

ava locked her gaze on the direction of trevor's voice. "you've seen me too," she said.

"i don't need a book to understand you."

"i'm that simple?"

"nothing about you is simple."

ava turned right at the next junction of jars. "the moonshine—"