Down they
go, through murky brambles in dusty plastic precip, probing the Earth for the
great hole in the crust that would keep them safe. Blackened shapes,
tarnished trinkets, shrapnel fossilized by the erosion of civilization.
Sky pulverized into grimy sheets of ash, separated by red openings to the
sky. The Earth shakes, spewing fumes, gaseous souvenirs from ages before
the darkness. A girl holds a doll to her chest, a shield against
semi-supernatural forces; a professor carries a map, ripped in places where it
doesn't matter; others are parched and bleeding, their bodies swelling and
receding, like the ancient moon-tide.
The entrance
to the cavern shows promise, like most of them do; only this time, it's a
hollow one, for the darkness there triumphs the one outside. It's a long
way down, they know it, but the chance for food and shelter at the bottom makes
it worth the struggle. In they go, several miners leading the way, their
headlamps illuminating the walls. The professor remarks on the lost languages
of the writings sprawled on them. Even he can't decipher their
meaning. There are pictures, however; the atomic symbol is one: an
exclamation mark another. A woman whose eyes are bleeding says that at
least some ancestors cared about them enough to communicate. A religious
man says it's a sign from God, pointing out they must keep going, that any
place is better than the surface.
He's right,
so they carry on, down granite corridors of dread, the distant sound of
explosions receding with every switchback through the cavern. A steady
dripping of water can be heard. The cavern's made of limestone, that
malleable canvas for caves, ripe of carbonate to shape their distorted
topographies. Stalactites hang like threatening icicles of teeth that the
jaw of the cavern produced. Down here, nothing exists but microbes that
don't need sunlight or oxygen, at least according to the professor. The
girl thinks they'll be the only survivors after it's all over, if it ever is
over- those invisible seeds of evolution that made it possible for bigger life
to graze the fields of yore.
When they
get to the vault, it's marked by a giant "X". Below it is an
oil drum with a skull and bones tattooed across it. Exasperated, the
survivors have nowhere left to go. The only option left is to have the
strongman try opening it, despite the blatant warnings. For once, the
religious man wonders if God has deserted them. As he watches the
strongman move the wheel, he hears a collective sigh from the group as it comes
full circle, releasing a sound that Satan might have produced if they were at
his doorway. But it's not Satan. They look upon a sea of nuclear
waste, suspended in a sea of magma. The magma is churning broken rods
that once held the waste deep underground, so nothing would ever become
contaminated by this vast storage of radioactivity. The first words come
from the professor, who remarks that the increased pressure from underground
eruptions must have caused them to sever, that the waste must have had a profound
impact on the world below, radiating strongly enough to alter the crust in ways
never predicted. Out it erupted into the atmosphere, creating a fallout
that didn't require the crimes of war, only a willingness to produce
prolifically, inverting the underworld from within to without.
They all
suspect there is no escape. Only the professor knows for sure. The girl
drops the doll and takes the map, leading them back through the tunnel, holding
it like it was their last ounce of hope. In despair, the religious man
declares they are the last humans on Earth, that this is a condemnation of
mankind, a Judgment Day. The professor counters, saying there are others
in the south, sheltered from the radiation. If only we lived
there, thinks the red-eyed woman, if only we'd heeded their
warnings. Where the underland meets the overland, they see water
pouring through the entrance.
