Pineapples Have No Place In The Apocalypse

The wind was a persistent intruder, trying to push its way through the door despite the woman's insistence that it was not welcome here. Finally the swirl of snowflakes abated and the lock of the heavy steel door made a sound that could've been a click, but instead was more of a rasping 'chunk'.

She pulled off her hat first, wrestling it free of the firey strands of curly hair that clung to it like a drowning man clings to a piece of driftwood. Next came the gas mask, which parted with her face much more easily than her hair parted with the ragged brown cap.

The air was stale in comparison to the artificial freshness provided by the filters, but it was a relief to be able to scratch her darkly-tanned nose with wild abandon. "Mark? Are you in here?"

He poked his head out from the back room, chapped lips splitting into a grin when he saw her. Idly, the woman noticed a bright bead of red beginning to form where the skin had split. "Be right out. I have a surprise."

His reply was the sound of dull thuds as the woman attempted to kick the thickly-caked snow off of her shoes, which dissolved into muddy clumps that lay forlornly on the ground.

Mark glided out of the back room, something concealed behind his back, and the woman raised an eyebrow. The man wasn't known for playing games, but the idea that he possessed some sort of surprise was… unnerving, to say the least, the too-wide smile with the cracked and bloody lips only made worse by ice-blue eyes hovering over them.

The surprise abruptly slammed down on the table before the woman, who was startled but masked it with an air of boredom that soon turned to shock. Her eyes flicked between the object, to Mark's eager face, and the knife off to the side.

Somehow, she managed to stammer out "Where on earth did you get a pineapple?"

Mark shrugged, the action slightly infuriating to the woman. "It's been a while since we had fresh fruit."

A faint, tropical scent wafted over to the woman and she nearly drooled. They might have a few cans of pineapple rings somewhere in storage, but fresh…

"But," she said, shutting her mind against the siren call of the fruit as one glaring inconsistency rang through, "Where did you get it? There hasn't been a supply caravan in months."

The knife glided through the air and hacked the pineapple into two glistening golden discs. "Well, to be honest, I found it."

Her eyebrows knit together in worry. "Found it? Did you, did you even test it or—"

An air-raid siren managed to worm its way through ten feet of concrete and steel, causing the occupants of the tiny bunker to freeze. The sweet fragrance drifting from the fruit clashed horribly with the tension wound up in the two people's shoulders, the suddenly painfully tight grip on the knife.

With as much warning as its initial sounding the siren faded away and the scene lapsed back into a parody of normality. Mark delicately extracted a piece of yellow flesh, practically glowing against the backdrop of dull browns and grays in the harsh fluorescent lighting. "Come on now, don't want you getting scurvy."

Juice exploded on her tongue and for the first time in a long, long time, she smiled.