The Clockwork Girl: Chapter II

The first thing Terri was aware of as she slowly woke up was that she was cold.  Freezing, in fact.

And hungry. Very hungry, a growling emptiness in her belly and her mouth feeling parched, like she hadn’t had a meal or something to drink in ages. Terri tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids seemed to be stuck, crusted over. She reached up, feeling odd pains running through her arms, and rubbed her eyes clear, blinking as she took in the room she was in.

For a moment, Terri just lay there in shock. There was a hole—an actual hole in the ceiling, through which she could see star-speckled night sky. Terri shot upright in the bed and then cried out in shock as the blankets seemed to just come apart around her, along with her nightgown.

“What-what?” Terri said in horror as the dusty remains of the clothes rose up around her, the thick dust causing her to start hacking and coughing, spikes of pain running through her parched throat with every hacking cough. Terri rolled off of her bed, the rough, debris-strewn floor, sending another spike of pain through her bare knees when she landed on it. She suffered through another coughing fit and then staggered to her feet, grabbing the edge of her bed.

I need… Terri turned to her closet and opened the door, the hinges squeaking with long disuse. Please be in here, please be in here… And there it was. Still intact, the little box with the faded lettering on it.

Only a few letters were still legible: CO AN ON PP IES. Terri didn’t care. She remembered Doctor Simmonds reminding her that if she needed an emergency energy boost or of anyone forgot to have her eat, she had the supplies that came with the house.

“Just in case you’re stuck out on the road with nothing to eat. Remember, it’s for you, not your mom, because we wouldn’t want you to shut down and leave her alone,” he’d said with a grin. Terri had always assumed that it was a joke, but right now she wasn’t in a joking mood. She quickly opened the box, grabbing one of the foil baggies of water. Poking the straw into the baggie, Terri quickly drank the whole thing down in one gulp. It didn’t satisfy her thirst, but at least it moistened her throat enough so she could swallow. The next thing she did was pull the foil off the dense, black bar of concentrate.

Terri grimaced. She didn’t like them much, having only eaten the energy bars once before, when Doctor Simmonds insisted that she try the food to make certain she knew what to do if there was an emergency.  The taste wasn’t bad, but the food was so dense… But it didn’t matter. She needed the food. Quickly, she devoured the bar and sucked down another baggie of water, marveling that she’d been able to eat so much. Terri hardly ever drank that much water, and when she’d first had a bar of concentrate, she’d barely been able to finish half of it.

But now with her hunger conquered, Terri looked around the decrepit room, unable to ignore the disaster surrounding her.

What happened? The lights were off but unlike her mother, Terri had never had much trouble seeing when it was dark. She could clearly see the strained and damaged plaster, the way the light was hanging from the ceiling by its wiring… she had just gone to sleep a few hours ago.

I have to find Mom! That was the most important thing. The only important thing. She had to find her mother and make certain she was safe! That was her duty! She pulled her small closet door open and grabbed the first wearable things she found, a pair of outdoor pants, plain white shirt and a jacket that had survived better than her gown. She pulled them on and reached under her bed for her sneakers. Fortunately, they were still intact, if a bit ragged.

Then she went to the door and tried to open it. It moved slightly, but then stopped, evidently blocked by something in the hallway.

Dammit! Terri thought angrily. How could she get to her mother… There was only the single door to her room and… She shoved again and glared at the door. Whatever was behind it was heavy.

On the other hand. Terri stepped back and looked at the door frame. Like the rest of the building, it was damaged, the wood splintered and cracks running through the plaster surrounding the frame and there was nothing keeping her from pulling it towards her. Terri grabbed the doorknob and holding on with both hands, pulled as hard as she could.

For a few moments, nothing happened. Then, with the sound of cracking wood, the door was pulled out of its frame, hanging loosely from one hinge. Terri sighed and  climbed through the gap, holding the box of food close to her body.

The door had been blocked by one of the cabinets that held Mom’s old knickknacks. They were now mostly broken, littering the floor in a detritus of ceramic fragments.

Mom loved those… Terri thought mournfully. She picked up one little kitten figurine, miraculously still intact, gently cradling it in her hands.

Terri made her careful way down the hallway, looking at the windows, their glass blown out, warped wood and crumbled plaster showing that they had been that way for a long time. Long enough for the wind and rain to do its work. There was even a small tree growing in the middle of the hallway.

How…how can this be? Terri felt numb. She couldn’t have slept for that long. It was impossible. It was…

Terri broke off the half-formed thought as she came to the door to Mom’s room. It was in fragments, as if something big had smashed through the door. She looked inside and…

Ruin. There was nothing left of the room. The wall to the outside was gone, showing the bedraggled remains of Mom’s garden. There was no sign of her mother, either alive or—Terri’s brain stuttered for a moment at the thought—dead.

Where is everyone… Terri thought. If the house had been broken like this, where were the firefighters? Where was Doctor Simmonds? She paused for a moment and then nodded as she turned to head for the living room. Maybe someone had left a note. If they had taken her mother, maybe they didn’t have time to worry about Terri.

But she found no note in the living room. The living room and kitchen were smashed. The kitchen looked like it had been looted, with drawers tossed open and the refrigerator lying on its side.  Whoever had done it had been in a hurry, which was probably why they hadn’t found Terri.  The couch was partially intact, though ripped and mold-ridden, while the TV was shattered, fragments of glass and plastic falling out of the broken frame.

And it was silent. The only sound was the wind moaning through the gaps in the roof.  Nobody talking. No electric carts humming their way down the main road of the neighborhood. Just the lonely sound of the wind moaning through the gaps in the walls and ceiling.

Terri sat down on the couch, remembering how comfortable it had been…

When she’d last sat in it. Not last night. Somehow, time had passed. Somehow, a lot of time had passed. Terri shivered, remembering a story she’d read about a man who had visited a faerie kingdom for a day, only to find all he knew dead and gone when he returned home.

“What happened…” she moaned.  “Mom… Where are you?”

For what seemed like hours, she just sat like that, while the outside darkness slowly turned lighter with the oncoming dawn.

What do I do? Terri thought. I have to find the others— Doctor Simmonds, or Mike and my other friends. They can tell me what happened. They can help me find Mom.  Terri nodded to herself. They would know what to do. But first, she had to get ready for the road.  She had enough food and water for at least a week, but she’d have to find something to eat after that. She checked the closet and found the heavy jacket she wore when it was raining and a backpack she used to carry stuff for Mom in. She paused for a moment, and then took the food and water baggies out of the ration box and put the kitten figurine into the box, stuffing the box with fabric to protect the delicate ceramic.

Mom would want Terri to keep it safe. She looked around for a moment, then grabbed a knife from the drawer. There might be animals out there, and she could use the steak knife to pry things open if she had too.

Terri looked over at the window, the light of the dawn shining through it.

It was time to go.

Before Terri opened the front door, she looked at her face in the miraculously intact entryway mirror for a second. What she saw caused her to gasp.

Her skin was stretched over her bones, her blue eyes looking sunken and dull.  Even her hair looked lifeless.  She’d been hungry, but this looked like she was starving…

But why didn’t I wake up before? Terri shook her head.  She didn’t know.

But she wouldn’t find out by staying here.

---

When Terri walked through her door, she had expected many things.

But she hadn’t expected to find a skeleton on the sidewalk that ran to the house. It was sprawled out, wearing the remains of some form of armor.

“A soldier?” Terri said to herself. She tossed her thick braid of black hair over one shoulder with a quick, nervous motion, looking up and down the road. Frighteningly, it looked like her house was one of the better preserved homes. Kim’s house looked like it had caught on fire, only a skeletal frame remaining. Mike’s house was just gone, with what looked like a big, burned out tank standing where it had been, one hatch open and another skeletal form halfway out of it. She looked at Molly’s house, all gone except for what looked like a cluster of scattered bones on the concrete sidewalk that led to the front porch, or what would have been the front porch, now just part of a big hole in the ground. Like all the other skeletons, they were clean.

Terri bit her lip. Bodies didn’t get like that in a day.

It takes years for a body to get like that. Years and years… finally she looked to the end of the little road, to where Dr. Simmonds’ hospital was.

Or rather, what remained of the hospital. It had collapsed into a pile of rubble, smoke stained chunks of concrete spilling out into the parking lot.

She didn’t see Doctor Simmonds’ car.

Maybe he got away and took Mom with him…

Terri nodded. But he wasn’t here right now, and so she had to go find him. Find… someone. Mom would know what to do, if she could find her. She skittered to the side, walking through the overgrown yard to avoid the remains on the sidewalk.

Walking down the street, Terri passed the ruins of the hospital and came to the fence that marked the end of their neighborhood and the beginning of the larger world outside of it. She was never supposed to pass it.

Not unless she was with Mom.

Terri paused, unable to move forward for a moment, even though the gate that normally blocked off the street from the outside had been torn away, likely by the burned out tank behind her.

I have to…

I’m not allowed. It’s forbidden. I have to get permission.

Nobody ever thought about this happening…

Terri whimpered with indecision. The idea of going against what Doctor Simmonds said caused her to shudder. She’d never done that.

Not ever.

But Doctor Simmonds wasn’t here. And he hadn’t been here for a long time.

Terri bit her lip. She had to leave. If there had been anyone else… she shook her head and took one step over the boundary.

As she stepped over the boundary, she felt an odd feeling, almost like a tether had snapped and then she wasn’t worried about leaving her neighborhood anymore.   Terri shook her head, looking at the homes and wrecked hospital. Suddenly the houses seemed small and shabby, and oddly similar, as if they’d been made in a factory. The same doors, the same little gardens and back yards…

Terri hadn’t remembered that. For some reason her memory insisted on seeing the houses as larger, the neighborhood more vibrant, with more people in it than those few homes could have held.

Terri shook her head. It didn’t matter now. There wasn’t anyone there. The neighborhood was dead and she had to find someone who could help her find Mom.

She looked down the road that led into the neighborhood, curving off behind the low hill that separated the neighborhood from the towns she’d grown up in.

“Maybe it’ll be all right,” she said to herself, her voice unconvincing in the air, the only sounds those that nature made.

No cars. No planes.

No nothing.

It didn’t matter. There was nowhere else to go and she certainly couldn’t stay here.  Terri started walking, not sparing a single backwards glance for the place where she had lived for so long.