Star Haven

Chapter 3.

Orion

For the first ten minutes, the crew was too rattled by the hot sun to notice that they were alone on the surface, the only humans to leave the bunker in five years. But the shock wore off when Jade let out a strangled cry.

From the shocked expression on her pale face, Orion gathered she had never seen a dead body before, nor had smelt one. There were at least six bodies by the door, each at different state of grotesque decomposition...Yet for Orion, watching Jade recognize a dead body was less alarming than what he saw moments beforehand.

Charlotte was by the door. Unprotected. And unsuited.

When she first appeared by the door, he thought for sure it had been a hallucination. The chances he was losing his mind from hours of not sleeping was infinitely higher than the Commander's daughter getting near the deadliest door in the bunker unprotected. He'd been shocked enough when, after hearing his name called for the mission, Charlotte's best friend, Jade, had been called too. And now, what of Charlotte? It seemed impossible, but there was no denying it. For a moment, an old instinct gave him the urge to comfort Jade. But Sebastian reacted first. Because of Jade, Charlotte left him with a broken heart. Her insecurities broke down the confidence Charlotte had in him. Whatever frightening thing she saw, and whatever she was feeling was no less than she deserved. 

"Orion."

He glanced to the side and saw Jo offering him a small smile. Jo looked at him, the only person in the group trying not to stare at the destruction around. Despite the grim circumstances, Orion couldn't help but smile back. Jo had that effect. Especially when she wasn't on the move to give someone a piece of her mind. In the days after Orion lost Charlotte, when his heartbreak seemed so heavy that it was difficult to breath, Josephine had actually made Orion laugh with her impression of the former president whose voice was so peculiar that whenever he had to address the public he would lower his voice to be taken seriously.

"Jesus Christ on a toothpick..." It had really happened. For the first time in five years, humans had left the Boston Bunker. He glanced at the others and saw that they had all gone quiet as well, a spontaneous moment of silence for the safety they had left behind.

But the solemnity didn't last long. For the next twenty minutes, the group wandered near the door. Sebastian and Atlas already held out their radiation monitors, both beeping in high frequencies. All too afraid to truly look up, and too afraid to leave the perimeter of the bunker. What other horrors were ahead?

"So much for being able to take our masks off..." Sebastian spoke. Jade looked at him and shook her head. He shrugged his shoulders, they all had this silent wish that the situation wouldn't be as dire as it was. But alas, it was just as bad as they thought. The Gray radiation reading measured incredibly unsafe levels. 

"I would recommend we keep this gear only at all times, unless we find a radiation free zone. Most of the city built small, short term shelters when foreign policy negotiations were going south." Jade said. "They may be the only places safe for us as we figure out what to do."

Orion looked around him, he was only aware of the colors, not shapes. Blurs of blue, brown, black,  and orange so vibrant his brain could barely process them. A gust of wind passed over him, his suit slightly rustling, but flooded his nose with the ghoulishly fruity scent of death. It came from every direction, drowning his senses as tears welled and threatened to fall. 

At first, all he could see were craters of overturned dirt, laden with broken steel spines and crushed concrete. There were hundreds of them, littering the ground, revealing where bombs and debris had fallen on that day. Beyond and between the cavernous craters lay crumpled buildings, some familiar and other unrecognizable. The Prudential Tower asleep horizontally where it had once stood vertical, glass from the windows protruded from the ground, casting broken rainbows across the ground. Steel bent in unnatural angles. Beantown had become a high-rise city graveyard. The ground stretched in all directions- ten times farther than the longest hallway in the bunker.  The amount of space was almost inconceivable and Orion suddenly felt light-head, overwhelmed by the destruction. He forgot what the outside felt like.