Soryu was ecstatic knowing his surface trip was not in vain. He excitedly opened another box with his claw hammer, only to be greeted with...
"Tampons...? What in the world did this truck deliver?"
Soryu furrowed his brow and, with a loud grunt, threw the tampon box against the trailer wall, making a loud thud. He pulled out another package. He opened more boxes, only to be met with even more disappointment: empty glass jars, a carton of paper clips, and a video game console.
He stared at the console for a few moments before exhaling loudly and shrugging.
"You know what, fuck it, why not."
Who knows — maybe he would eventually find a way to generate electricity in his shabby little home. Then he could distract himself from this hell he called "living," if you could even call it that. He shoved it into his bag and decided now would be a good time to move on. He could open the rest of the boxes later — it wasn't like they were going anywhere.
He opened the door to the truck and was immediately hit by the harsh elements again. He could never get used to just how hostile this storm really was. He pulled out and checked his stopwatch once again.
50 minutes, 39 seconds.
More than enough time to safely walk back to the metro and into his home. He tugged his line — and his heart dropped.
His rope had gone slack.
In a panic, Soryu managed to spit out, "Oh shit. Oh fuck."
He couldn't afford to waste any time. Maybe — hopefully — his footprints were still visible enough to navigate back home. He jumped out from the truck and hit the ground, then looked — his footprints were still there, though barely. Soryu guessed he had about ten minutes, tops, before they would be gone completely.
Running through the streets in a hurried panic, his gasps for air were drowned out by the forever storm — brutal and unrelenting — and it was no doubt about to be his doom if he didn't act quickly enough. In the midst of all this, he wondered what could have caused the rope to snap — or be cut.
Distracted by those thoughts that stuck like a thorn in his mind, he failed to notice a large rock on the ground and tripped.
"OOMPH!"
Dazed but still conscious, he looked back toward the rock that had tripped him — except it wasn't a rock.
It was a person.
And underneath the seemingly motionless body was a pool of blood, quickly being soaked up by the sponge-like ash.
Soryu must have gone crazy. Every other human being was dead — so what the hell were his eyes seeing?
He shook the thought away. Dead or not, he needed to bring whoever this was back with him.
He crawled next to the stranger and inspected them. They wore a ragged jacket that had clearly been patched up by an amateur hand. Rough, but functional — the kind of thing someone who knew how to survive the storm would wear. But their gas mask — completely different from Soryu's SCBA system — used replaceable filters. And there was a large crack running right down the middle of the visor.
"C'mon, you just had to make my life harder than it already was?!" he yelled — not to himself anymore, but to another person.
He pulled out his emergency duct tape — something he always carried in case his own system failed — and with shaky hands ripped off a piece and sealed the crack in the gas mask. Then he stuffed the roll back into his pack and zipped it shut.
"Can't just leave you here. I'll get you somewhere safe if you can hear me, alright?" he said to the unresponsive, nearly lifeless person.
Bracing himself, he slipped his arms under theirs and, with a heavy grunt, lifted them onto his shoulder.
And with that, he braved the storm once more — before death claimed them both.