Hello, friends! If you're enjoying Little Comforts, consider supporting me on Patreon! If you'd like more stories, I post new chapters to my mainline series every Monday and Friday, and I upload a new short story every other Wednesday! Below are some of my other stories.

The Old Brand-New: Lena lives in a lonely mansion, but one snowy night, a vengeful clone of herself comes to make her pay for the life she never got to live.

 

Chapter 5

“Nobody cares about right or wrong until they’ve pulled the short straw.”

Andrew rapped his knuckles on the floor to a slow beat. He glanced back for the thousandth time at the disheveled man huddled in the corner. That little Iton man—Dan, he’d said—hadn’t moved since he sat down. Granted, Andrew hadn’t either. But the sitting and the waiting didn’t help. It forced his mind to wander. And where it wandered, Alisa always returned, staring out her picture windows, tapping her spoon against her bowl of dry cereal. Andrew squeezed his temples. Felt the pulse under his fingertips. These circular, redundant, ridiculous thoughts couldn’t continue—not while he had the means to ignore them.

He sat up straight. “So, what’s the plan?” he said.

Dan glanced up.

Andrew hugged his jacket tight against his skin. “The radio guy—whatever they call him—he kept repeating a little PSA when I was driving up the mountain. Said we ought to keep holed up for a good while.”

Letting his legs unfold, Andrew took a deep breath. All at once, he realized how little he knew about survival. His expertise extended to the PSAs they used to play on TV, back when his head didn’t come up past mum’s hips. They had three cartoon meatballs who sang little songs and sounded they’d crammed wads of dirt up their nostrils. Usually, they said to find cover. Well, he’d gotten that part right. Huzzah.

“How long?” Dan asked.

Andrew struggled to recall—the signal had cut off as he raced back from the other side of the mountain—the viscount had kept him late, only to back out of the deal. Bastard. If he’d just signed, Andrew would’ve been home already. With Alisa.

Andrew realized that he was staring at the wall again.

He shook his head and tried to smile. “The guy was giving distances and figures. So, if you’re five kilometers away you wait two weeks or—”

“Two weeks?” Dan said.

“No, no. I mean, yes, but only if you’re five kilometers away. You wait less as you go further on.” Andrew paused to stare up at the ceiling. He clasped his hands together until his knuckles went white. “I don’t get out here often, I was only up here to see a local Lord.”

Dan’s eyes widened and he sat up straighter, shuffling a few centimeters closer to Andrew.

Andrew pulled his lips back, a bit put-off, but he continued. “How far’s the city?”

Dan looked down for a moment. “Maybe sixty kilometers?” he said. “I mean, you can see the skyline from the tunnel. Should be able to see a corner of Grant’s Crossing, too, if you’re at the right angle. It didn’t look like they hit Grant’s, but those bombs were huge enough to reach all the way here. Either way, we can’t be that far, right?”

Andrew looked straight into Dan’s eyes. “Alright.” He paused. “I’d guess—five days or so.”

Dan tucked his knees against his chest while Andrew leaned up against the door. Five days. Granted, he’d pulled the number out his ass, but—five days. Andrew’s eyes darted back and forth across the tunnel. Besides trash, loose tools, bundled pipes, and some scattered rat bones, it was barren.

Without a word, Dan stood up and marched to the door. Andrew clambered up behind him.

“What are you doing?” Andrew said.

“Radiation doesn’t come right away, right? There’s still time,” Dan said.

Andrew grabbed Dan’s shoulder. “What, are you mad? It’s been hours! Your bloody face’ll melt off! Good God!”

Dan stared at Andrew with wide eyes. He sunk down and sat in front of the door.

Andrew shook his head. “Sorry, Mr. Harrison—look, is Dan okay? We’re stuck together, so I’d rather not play the ‘mister’ game.”

Dan shrugged.

With that, Andrew started pacing. God forbid he started thinking again, that was the way backwards. Andrew lived in the future. He did good work, and good work paid off. “Look, if you’re worried about food,” he said, “I have a bit in my briefcase. We can probably stretch it out for a few days.”

Dan perked up. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Andrew said as he clicked his briefcase open. His voice had taken a deeper timbre, but he still couldn’t stop it from shaking. “It’s not much, but I like to prepare for things. Except for—you know. But I won’t take the blame for that. I’ve a bag of beef jerky and a bottle of water, and—blast—I ate the granola on the road.” He closed his eyes and exhaled. “I’m not finding any of it. It’s just the jerky. Shit, where did I put it?”

In an instant, that lightness, that confident smirk washed away. Sixteen ounces of water would get them a day. Maybe less. Even if he lasted all five, he’d die on the sixth. Sure, he’d get a few drops every day, but it would never satisfy. His lips would crack and his bones would ache and he’d want to scream, but he wouldn’t have the strength. But then, he wouldn’t have the willpower to let that all happen, would he? Dan had a little meat on his bones.

Andrew gritted his teeth and wrung that line of reasoning by the neck. He concentrated on the water bottle. There had to be a way to fill it. There had to be a way out. Then again—there was always another way out, if all else failed. Those pipes overhead looked like they could support his weight.

He shook his head and slapped his legs. “Okay,” he said as he sprang to his feet. “I’m open to ideas. Hit me.”

Dan stared at the door. “It was unlocked,” he said. “And I saw a few workers down the road from here. A few pathmen, one pathwoman—is it a pathman-woman or a pathwoman? I’m sorry, not that—I’m sorry, I don’t know the preferred term. Is it Huddsian?”

“Huddsic. Huddsic is fine. ‘Pathman’ is an old, old term. Not a slur or anything, but I dunno, it’s a sensitive subject,” Andrew said.

Dan shrank. “Well, I don’t want to—God, I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine! It’s complicated. There’s a whole reclamation thing going on—my wife actually loves it. Says it reminds the world that we built the cities in the endelwood. It’s like how some LGBT people use the term ‘queer?’ But it’s not universally accepted or anything, it’s just—there’s also the gendered issue, because it’s ‘pathMAN’ and not ‘pathwoman’ or ‘pathperson,’ but the latter just feels really cumbersome, so it hasn’t really caught on. I mean, this whole thing is my wife’s domain, I always kinda stayed away from the whole thing. For what it’s worth, she uses the term pathman, and I guess I do too… but it’s not terribly accurate for me. I mean, my family hasn’t worked the paths in centuries, so I guess it’s more of a problem for people with—well—less money than me. You know how it is, I mean, you’re not white either, are you?”

 Dan stared awkwardly. “Yeah, I’m half—Itonic—so… anyway, the workers must’ve come from here. Or maybe they were just passing through, I dunno. It’s probably empty, but if they were running away, they might not have taken the time to pack up, right?”

Andrew uncrossed his arms. He started nodding, and then started smiling. Standing beside Dan, he gestured down the tunnel. The men looked around, checking the debris near the corners. Andrew lifted a pile of pipes. The metal made a thunderous clack, but only dirt and grime hid underneath. For one thing, Andrew couldn’t understand why the workers abandoned a well-fortified, enclosed, radiation-proof utility tunnel for a forest. Even if they made it to Valton—no way they’d make it out alright. But they probably thought they’d have enough time to get back to their families. And maybe they did, who knew?

As Andrew walked down the tunnel, he watched the trash-piles grow. Once he’d walked far enough to round the curve, he finally saw the end. It was a giant mound of rubbish. Wooden slats, tables, and a mattress plugged up the wall from corner to corner. Drills and rotary saws and hammers and screws and even a tractor-mounted auger lay about, while a few neon vests and strips of torn cloth hung off a trestle-table beside another steel door that leading out.

Andrew cocked his head. “The hell’s all this?

“An HR problem,” Dan said. “Probably what the workers were here to clean up.”

Perhaps, Andrew thought, the tunnel saw so few visitors that using it as a dumpster was almost practical. But Andrew didn’t see anything useful. For a moment, he confused a brown paper bag for a lunch tote, until he saw the nails sticking out the sides.

“I found a sandwich!” Dan shouted.

Andrew ran over to see the bounty. Dan held up half of a partly chewed, stale ham sandwich with a fuzzy white mold feeding on the side.

“We can probably peel off the bad bits,” Dan said.

Andrew muttered a curse. Food meant nothing without water, and moldy food meant even less. The men slogged back to the start of the tunnel and sat by the door again. Neither spoke. Neither needed to.

The steady drip of the lamp kept the time for Andrew. Drip—one second—drip, drip, drip—three seconds. It was easy. But something irked him about that light—how it was still on? It was probably the auxiliary generators or solar panels or what have you. Why even ask? He wasn’t an engineer; how should he know? He could just focus on the drips.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Goddamn it.

“Or we could just put the bottle under that light,” he said.

Dan gawked at Andrew, then over to the light, then back at Andrew. The accountant smirked. Andrew began to chuckle, and then laughed harder and harder until he might as well have been screaming. Tears streamed down Dan’s face as he placed the bottle over the puddle where the droplets landed. Soon, the empty space in the bottle gathered a few drops of yellow water. Andrew leaned back, wiping tears from his eyes.

Watching the liquid rise became Andrew’s sole hobby in those next hours. The tranquil pace, that cheerful plink—he wasn’t even thirsty yet. But this was more than water, it was a promise. A future. Perhaps a short one, but a future even so.

In a way, that was almost worse than starving.