The Cage

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Gray sheets of tepid water pulsed out of the motorized wall sockets, spraying down onto radiation traps, waterproofed glo-lites, lead-filtered drains, and the head of the shivering woman who lived, Sophia Ingrid St.-Germain.

She could not remember regaining consciousness, or crawling back into the shower nook just beyond the great room of the fallout shelter, or stripping off her soiled clothes. When she awoke to herself in revelation, she found herself huddled down in a corner of the shower, hugging her knees, with the fragile and intermittent gouts of water cascading down on top of her.

She was sobbing. Her vocal cords were raw and she believed she had been crying out someone’s name, but she could not remember.

She knew only that she was alive, that she was real. The shelter had held, despite the earthshaking violence which had cracked the heart of the mountain all around her. Most of the lights she could see out beyond the translucent shower wall were still functional, casting their false sheets of radiance through the falling dust, turning the ashes into gold. One bank of the caged ceiling lights had fallen, its fluorescent tubes shattered out of their sockets and spread like glittering flowers of razor shrapnel upon the concrete. Another light rack swayed gently back and forth in the air just inches above the floor, strung and held by the threads of a frayed and silvery cable. These last lights flickered madly and spun a strobe of shadows around the room, clockwise and pause and back again.

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