"But how?" He sounds stunned. "Was there a malfunction in the environmental systems? A revolt?" He waits for a response, his eyes boring into me. "Please, Milton... If you were attacked, we may have a common enemy—"
"I don't think so." My voice sounds strange. Lifeless. Why am I telling him this? "His name was Jackson."
"Jackson." Luther sits back slowly, waiting for me to continue. He looks genuinely interested, maybe even concerned. Why should he care?
"Jackson was our leader. He said there was a food shortage." I clench my fists. Why didn't I stop him? "He lied." I was weak, and he was the strongest. But I could have stopped him. "And they all died," I grate out, my eyes stinging all of a sudden. Tears? "He killed them, one at a time...until it was just him and me left."
That was my reward. My punishment. He let me live. He kept my name out of the lottery until the very end.
There was no food shortage, no need for the lottery every four months, no reason why one of us had to be selected at random to die every time. Jackson said he had it all figured out, that there would be enough nourishment packs if we did it this way. All fifty of us wouldn't survive until All-Clear as things were, he said. But he had to make it, of course, since he was the only virile male among us. The future would depend on men like him. The rest of us were expendable.
"The new earth won't need a sterile labor force," he told me in private. "More than anything, we'll need to repopulate. And we'll need food." He cursed, shaking his head. "I don't know what those government jerk-offs were thinking! There's no way we'll survive out there with the limited supply we've got. Cutting back now is our only option, and that means less food down here so there'll be enough up there." He pointed to the surface far above us. "You understand, Milton? We've got to think of the future!"
After he explained the situation to everyone, he instituted the lottery. Every time, one of our group was selected to die. Jackson made a big deal out of it, and we always celebrated our bunker mates for an entire day before their time was up. Then I would take them back into one of the storerooms and shut the door. We didn't have anything painless they could take in their sleep. I don't think the government geniuses had planned for us to kill ourselves while we were underground.
But we did have rope.
"Then what happened?"
"What?" I swallow.
"When only you and Jackson were left—"
"I killed him." I cut him open, again and again, and his blood covered the floor in a thick layer of crimson liquid mercury. "It was either him or me. I wasn't going to let him kill me."
Luther nods slowly, watching me. "I can't imagine what it must have been like for you. To lose everyone—and then face this new world alone." He pauses. "You've been out there for nearly ten months."
"Yeah." I relax my hands and rub between my eyes. I can't think about it anymore.
It will drive you crazy.
"She was the first person you've seen in all that time?"
She was my first love: Julia. I managed to keep her name out of the lottery for years—until Jackson found out. When her name was selected, my heart nearly stopped. The others celebrated her all that day, but I couldn't. I met Jackson in the back storeroom, and I hit him as hard as I could. He beat me down hard because of it, and I couldn't walk straight for a week after.
He knew I loved her. He knew she loved me. He couldn't stand to see us happy together.
"Yes," I manage. "She was the first."
Slipping the noose down around the nape of her neck... I couldn't look her in the eye.
"Don't hate yourself, Milton." She gazed at me, her green eyes glistening. "Be strong. We have to think about the future."
"There is no future," I grated out through clenched teeth. "Not without you."
"Milton." She touched my cheek, swollen from my fight with Jackson. "The future is a whole lot bigger than you and me. I'm helping others to live by doing this, so the future will be secure for our species."
Jackson's rhetoric leaking from her lips.
"There was no other—not in all that time?" Luther sounds uncertain, like he's having trouble believing me. "You haven't met any other survivors?"
Well, there was Adam and other skeletons like him, and there was Rocky my erstwhile pet... I should probably keep that to myself. "Just remains in the rubble. Bones. That's all I've found."
I was a scavenger from the moment I stepped out of the bunker. I took all the nourishment packs I could carry, wrapped them in my bedroll, and headed east for no other reason than to see what lay on the other side of these mountains off in the distance. I left Jackson to decay in an empty storeroom. Julia deserved a proper burial. They all did, every one that I'd killed. But I heaved the bunker door shut and left it.
A dark, festering tomb.
"You were running when she found you."
I ran away and left them all behind. But now Luther knows where I came from. If he finds the bunker—
"She says you were...under attack."
"Yeah." I look him in the eye. "Like the earth itself was out to get me. What the hell?"
The giant rumbles with a low chuckle.
"Wasn't funny." It was the weirdest, most frightening thing ever. "What was that all about? She wouldn't tell me anything."
Luther hesitates, again choosing his words carefully. "There are a few opinions circulating among us at present. But suffice it to say, you're not the only one to have experienced something like this. Had you not been wearing that jumpsuit, your skin would have been completely ravaged."
"So why'd you take it from me?"
A
