We stumble out into the sunlight, squinting. After twenty-seven months underground, I've almost forgotten what it felt like. The mayor shouts instructions through her megaphone as mothers try to shepherd their fascinated children and young couples whisper to each other, pointing at the trees and hills in awe. Some of the older women are crying.
I hear a familiar voice behind me. "Hannah!"
It's Darryl, stepping uncertainly out of the bunker, listening for the sound of my voice. "Over here!" I shout back, laughing. I grab his hand and lead him out into the field, past the snow-piles slowly shrinking to reveal grass almost afraid to turn green again. Instinctively, he turns his face towards the sun, amazed at the warmth the bunker's fluorescent lightbulbs never gave.
"What does it look like?" he asks me.
I look around at the melting snow drifts, like clouds too lazy to stay up in the pale blue sky. "It's beautiful," I answer.
In the distance, I can see the remains of the city, melted and charred in the aftermath of the war like a cake left too long in the oven. I shudder; I can make out the outline of what was once my office building in the mid-morning sun. I notice what remains of the city's residents around me peering over the hill crest, surveying the damage. The mayor says it's probably not safe to go into the city just yet, so we sit on the hilltops instead, sharing the last of our rations and wondering how to put our lives back together. Most of the survivors are women and children; some men stayed behind because of disability like Darryl or old age like the mayor's husband, but most were drafted to fight in the war. Once the bombs started falling, it's not likely that many survived.
We're refugees now, that much is clear. Nobody knows how many other cities built bunkers; any communication we once had with the outside world has long been cut off. It's scary to think about how empty the rest of the world might be, about the billions of lives gone in a flash of fission and a mushroom cloud. I try not to focus on what's been lost, try to tell myself that we're part of a beginning rather than an end, but it's hard not to think about everything that's gone. They say that the winners of wars write the history books, but it doesn't feel like we won anything.
Darryl and I are sitting on the ground now, his arm around my shoulder and his other hand trailing absentmindedly through the grass. Suddenly his thin, able fingers run into an unusual shape in the grass; he plucks it and presents it to me. "Is this what I think it is?" he murmurs.
"It's a snowdrop," I answer in awe. I gently take it from him, marveling at the perfect white bloom. "I'm surprised one survived." I remember back to before the war, looking for snowdrops peeking through cracks in the ice as soon as it started to melt. Finding them was always like finding a new beginning; the little flowers seemed to reassure me that winter was finally over, that life could finally come out of hibernation and start living again.
I turn back to Darryl. "It's beautiful."
"You're beatiful," he answers, although I know he can't see me. He brushes my bangs out of my face and tucks the snowdrop behind my ear, and we sit at the top of the hill in the sun as the world rubs its eyes and crawls out of hibernation, ready to start anew.
--Patti
