Crimson Colony

Crimson Valley. A vast land stretching into the horizon, encapsulating the Vault from every angle.

Traces of radioactive nuclear waste layered the topsoil of Earth, making no room for life to grow on the dirt.

…soil…an Old World abundance.

…a New World legend.

I’ve read it in the books. Soil stretched into the whole land mass of the planet, giving billions of people the opportunity to advance in agriculture.

If only I lived back then…

I kicked the tiny pebbles on the ground with my feet. I dragged my shoes through the dirt as my mind raced about somewhere else.

“Be quiet, Kath,” I heard a voice speak in close proximity to my ear—my radiocom.

I looked up at the much taller person beside me. Cyan had a daffy look on his face while we walked at the same pace.

“I wasn’t talking,” I retorted and held my hands up in defense.

“Yes, that’s exactly it. Your thoughts are the loudest. It gives me goosebumps,” He replied and imitated a shiver, rubbing both of his palms on his radiation suit-covered arms.

“Shut up, Cy,” I snorted, reminding myself that I was this comical critter’s sibling.

In five short minutes, we reached the crest of the hill. There stood dozens of rovers lined up in a row, awaiting our use. The scorching sun and its strong rays of sunlight had all of them fully recharged by this time.

“Do you reckon that we take Barnaby, or Jeremiah?” Cyan asked. He looked at me before pointing at the two rovers with distinct differences in the paint finish.

“Well, what about Venice?” I suggested, placing my hands on my hips as I directed my eyes to the rover located at the end of the row. It had a blue color hastily painted over the driver and passenger door, giving it its distinct color variance.

“Her engine is getting rusty. Didn’t you hear that clunking sound on the breaks when we used her last week?” He pointed out and mimicked a cluk…cluk…cluk. Though, it sounded more of an imitation of the underwater creature recordings we had to listen to during Early Education.

I let out a laugh and shook my head at Cyan’s attempt in making the clunking sound.

It was true, though. The rovers were in their later years now. Give it a few more years and the engines originally built for the planet Mars would lose its function. It thankfully bought our colony more time for being unused prototypes.

“I suggest we take Barnaby. He’s got the last remaining decent engine out of all of them,” Cyan reckoned, not waiting for my reply before he marched toward the second closest rover from us. I followed suit and gave in to his suggestion. He was right anyway. Out of the remaining functional vehicles, Barnaby was the least rusty.

It took approximately twenty minutes before we reached the abandoned research facility on the south of the Vault. A huge, three-storey architecture made of floor to ceiling glass windows stood with the horizon on its back. The building itself spanned more than three hundred feet wide.

Barnaby went to a halt once we were in front of the structure. I looked over to my brother who unbuckled the rigorous mechanism of the seatbelt with much ease. I did the same and pressed my thumbs simultaneously on both release buttons, which in turn loosened the seatbelt’s grip on my body.

I reached for the handle that opened the hatch. As it opened, a gust of wind mixed with dry, dusty dirt immediately entered its way into the interior of the rover.

I swung my legs over the exit door and stepped on the attached metal ledge before I landed on the dry earth. Cyan did the same on his side. I walked to the front of the rover as he did, meeting in between.

“Same protocol, Kath,” Cyan began and marched over to get closer into the entrance as I followed.

“You go right, I go left. Go back the way you came and let’s meet right back from the beginning. If you find anything or anything happens to you, communicate with me. Radio me every ten minutes, and if I get no response, I will be going to your location.” He instructed, finishing just in time as we reached the entrance.

I nodded in compliance and fully immersed myself in the dangerous situation. The building wasn't entirely hazard free despite its familiarity.

Cyan stepped in first through the man-made hole at the side of the original entrance, where it had been completely blocked by metal debris.

I followed and stepped through the short cement elevation and into the spacious, dark hallway. I turned on the light attached to the shoulder of my suit that revealed Old World clutter on the floor.

“See you, Cy,” I waved and walked toward the right-side hallway as he did so on the opposite direction.

“Stay cautious!” He shouted as he gestured a single wave behind his back.

“Yeah, yeah,” I smiled.

I walked into the dark hallway. Metal scraps littered the floor to both my sides. Any sign of biodegradable waste such as paper or cardboard boxes were either gone or unrecognizable due to biodegradation and decay.

There was a lone, rusty metal chair that was in an upside-down position ahead of me. I was quick to avoid it as I passed, careful not to touch anything that might contain high levels of radiation.

I sighed, already thinking of the day’s outcome. I would scout the entire area to discover nothing but fresh radioactive rat poop laying around somewhere.

Back and forth, my eyes looked for any abnormality. The faded white, steel doors that led to other rooms were a no-go. The team figured that most doors were accessed using a specific technology that existed back in the Old World.

“Mission report, Kathia. Over.” Cyan’s voice through the radiocom halted my gaze into the darkness. I haven't realized that I had been aimlessly walking around for ten minutes.

“Nothing unusual so far, Cy. How about you? Over.” I replied. I resumed my slow yet sure assessment of the hallways.

“Same here, Kath. Is it just me or are there more rats the last time we’ve been here? Over.” He asked, catching my attention as I have, in fact, seen more small, dark shadowy creatures running away when hearing my heavy footsteps.

I walked slower while I tried to look for solid confirmation. I closed my eyes to heighten my hearing sensitivity. Gradually, my ears caught on the chattering, the squeaking, the hissing.

“Hold on a minute, I think I hear a lot of them,” I responded after a momentary silence.

I advanced closer into the source as the sound grew louder, myself growing more curious as I had never heard the mischief make as much noise as I was hearing them now.

I stopped in front of an open entrance to a small room. It was almost just the size of two bunker rooms back in the Vault. It was dark, but the light on my suit and the rats’ squeaking sounds made it a much intuitive journey into the area.

“Cy, do you hear that? Over.” I asked my brother through the radio receiver. I stepped cautiously into the room, directing my light into the mess.

The other end of the communication device was silent for a moment. I took a few steps closer to the sound, assuming they were somewhere grouped behind the shelves.

“Wow. That’s a lot of rats.” Cyan pointed out. “Be careful, they might attack and bite into your suit,”

I nodded to myself, though fully aware he couldn’t see me.

In purposeful steps I closed in on the squeaking noises. I narrowed my hearing to better locate them, realizing they were not coming from the shelves. They were from beneath me.

In swift realization, I looked down and quickly bent over, moving away the debris that covered the tiled floor.

I swept and swept until the area on my feet was clear. I leaned closer and focused my eyes on the tiles. Dusty, grimey, and full of unidentified mixtures of chemical waste. I laid my glove-covered left palm on the wide panel, eyeing for any loose one that may have been hollowed out.

I carefully moved my hand in extreme vigilance. One wrong movement might cause the floor to give in and swallow me whole. I tapped on a tile to my right. Solid and firm to the ground. To the center, the same, firm feeling. The left tile was also the same. Solid adhesive cement bonded it together with the others.

I slid my body over to the farther tiles. One by one, I checked for any inconsistencies within the meticulously arranged plates of marble.

I extended my arm toward a tile near the shelf. The second I put pressure on it, it wobbled.

Bingo.

I leaned down to place my ear on the tile as close as I could through the radiation suit. My suspicions were confirmed once I heard the rats squeaking from behind the cold tile, and they were louder this time.

“Uh, Cy, I think I just found a hollow space on the ground. Over.” I updated my brother through the small device in my ear.

“Is it an open space? Over.” He quickly responded.

“No, it’s hidden through a tile. I can hear the rats, over.”

“I’ve got nothing here. I’m coming to you, wait for me in a few minutes. Over.”

I continued to move my fingertips across the groove of the panel, noticing that it was looser than the others. I tried to insert my finger in between them to try and lift the tile.

It finally lifted after a few seconds of struggling. I used both my hands to pull the tile off the floor, revealing a narrow, half crescent cemented opening.

I shrieked and jumped away when rats immediately came flooding out of the entrance and to my feet, making me drop the tile and it caused a loud bang, shattering to pieces.

“Shit!” I cursed, leaping backwards by a few feet.

“Kathia! What happened?” Cyan’s concerned voice flooded my ears.

I held my hand to my heaving chest in recovery. “The rats startled me,” I breathed out.

“There’s an opening here. Should I go down?” I walked closer again to the hole, avoiding the shattered tile in the process. It was narrow, about half a meter in width. Utilizing the flashlight attached on my shoulder, I guided it toward the bottom of the entrance. About eight feet deep.

“No, wait until I get there,” I could hear Cyan panting, like he had been jogging his way to me.

There was a metal ladder leading down to the bottom. Without thought, I slid my body in the narrow entrance and took solid, careful steps on the metal bars. As I stepped into one that was particularly loud, like a rusty squeak, it wobbled onto my weight.

I descended further down the steps until my feet landed on the cement floor. I turned around to observe the dark space, parts of it illuminated by my light. I estimated the room to be just approximately less than forty square meters all in all.

“Are you kidding me? Did you go down?” Cyan asked in disbelief.

I ignored him, too excited about a newly discovered area in the facility to even acknowledge any of his reproachings. I took a step, and my eyes darted towards a disarrayed table to the right. What seemed to be thin, ancient computer monitors littered on the surface.

There were rows of unidentified liquids inside flasks and glass jars sitting on top of a tilted shelf.

Unlike the befouled hallways upstairs, this place had seen less of the harsher side of time. Old and dusty, but still manageable to the senses.

I proceeded to walk forward to scout the entire area. It wasn’t a massive space. It was more likely a laboratory of some sort. Before I could reach the farther back of the room, my hip collided with a hard object, causing a loud echo.

“What the hell?” I looked down and hissed at the area of impact on my hip. I rubbed it to ease the pain slightly.

A subtle blue light suddenly blinded my sight within a millisecond after the impact. I groaned, my hand reaching up to cover my eyes.

In utter puzzlement, I warily uncovered my eyes. I looked down at the object I had just hit. It was made of glass. I leaned closer toward the transparent portion and wiped off the accumulated dust on top.

With the blue light now thoroughly illuminating parts of the room after clearing the dust, I stared at the object inside it. I sucked in a breath and let out a silent gasp.

A body laid before me.

A human behind the glass, eyes closed and his body unmoving.

“Cyan, you have to get here. Fast.” I nervously spoke. The adrenaline in my veins began to catapult. I couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing—with the dim blue light illuminating the human who laid lifelessly still, confined behind the metal chamber.

His face was relaxed and in a deep state of slumber, and only God knows for how long he had been that way.