accidents happen

I opened the door tentatively, mainly because it was splintered to hell and looked as though it would fall off the hinges backwards and impale me if I opened it with the kind of gusto I opened most doors with. My sister, practically shaking with excitement beside me, tapped her feet on the ground, bouncing from heel to heel in an overly giddy manner. "Sunlight," she tittered, "warmth, flowers, yesyesyesyes-"

"Shut the fuck up," I grumbled. "Just because it's sunlight doesn't mean th-"

I jerked my arm which, as I predicted, caused the door to unhinge itself. It fell backwards, its splinters digging into my face, chest, stomach, and legs. My sister yipped and shouted, stomping over the door (and, consequentially, my body,) and out into nature. I groaned loudly, and carefully hefted the ancient wooden door off of my body. I meticulously picked some splinters from my good hand, then reached into my back pack to retrieve the Goop. I slathered it up my arms, made sure it covered every wound I'd just received, and let out a relaxed sigh as it expunged the splinters from my skin and patched the punctures they'd left.

Outside, Susanna was spinning in circles, her leather boots set against a boulder, her toes dug into some mushy dirt. I took in a deep breath, ran a hand through my graying hair. It'd been years since I'd been out here. "Alright, alright," I called. "Don't get too comfy, kiddo. We're not staying out long."

"Whyyy not!?" She groaned. She was 25, just half my age, but had never been on the Outside. Most of the City Folk hadn't been Outside either, save for myself and a few other scientists. We'd tried to discuss our findings with the government, but they weren't having it. We were free to come and go as we pleased... But normal citizens were left to believe the Outside was still recovering.

"It's for our own good," they'd said. "Earth has healed? Fantastic. Best to keep it that way."

I couldn't disagree with them. 

We kept walking for what seemed like days, but I knew to only be hours. We arrived by a lake, perfectly blue and brimming with life the likes of which had never been documented before. While humanity hid underground, the world had kept going, and going, with the aid of nuclear fallout and biological weaponry crafting it nto new and fantastical shapes. Susanna marveled as a serpentine bird drifted by, skimming the water with six talons and snatching up some oddly furry looking fish. 

"It's beautiful, Richie. I can't believe your stories were true...! I always thought you were just... Just telling bedtime stories- oh my god! Is that a Mammoth!?"

"Yeah," I said, my hands in my pockets. I pursed my lips, stared at my feet. The wind kicked up, rustling my hair. "They resurrected them at some point during the war, used them in place of drones for trade purposes after the Russians developed an electromagnetic field that disabled most technology. It worked out, for the first few years... 'Cept when the bombs dropped after the Aussies busted out some chemical weapons..." I kept talking, and failed to notice her picking something out of the water...

My eyes widened as I saw it. Metal shrapnel. "Ow- ow! Richie, look! Fuck... I cut mysel-sel-sel-sel-"

I bit the inside of my cheek, drew out a gun, and pointed it at her head. "R-r-r-ich-ch-ch-"Even as she struggled to speak, her body was starting to twitch and twist into something else. Her words turned into garbled screams. I shot.