Burn Out

300 years from now

S
IX MONTHS AND COUNTING, YET NOT A WHISPER OF A
fellow human to be found. I stared down at the small device attached to my wrist. The locator light on my Infinity, which would blink if anyone on the planet logged on to GlobalNet, taunted me with its perpetual darkness. Though it felt like an exercise in futility, I checked it multiple times a day due to equal parts habit and desperation. Despite my perseverance, bad thoughts surfaced again. I had to continually distract myself from my worst fear—that I was the last girl on Earth.

Weary of the blank screen, I pressed a small button on the Infinity but hit the wrong one. My little sister’s smiling face floated out in front of me. I fought back tears and quickly punched another button. She disappeared and the
room filled with a moving, three-dimensional image. My happy place. Sunlight reflected off the water’s surface and a lime-green fish darted through the waves. Seaweed floated by me as the smell of salt water invaded my nostrils. The sea stretched out in all directions, surrounding me, endless in its reach. I pushed my hand into the bright blue water, desperate to immerse myself in it, yet grasped only air.

The stupid oceans had tricked us all. They weren’t endless—they were gone. Most of the people too, after the sun started to burn out a kajillion years ahead of schedule.

The saltwater scent from the program caught my attention again and I focused on the aquamarine water. It was superimposed on the stark walls of the bunker. I lay down and pretended to be submerged in the cool depths as the waves crashed above me. It was somehow harder to catch my breath down here on the imaginary ocean floor. After another minute, the need for oxygen overwhelmed me. I must have done a better job visualizing than I thought.
You’re not really on the bottom of the ocean, Tora. Yeah, tell that to my lungs
. I powered off the Infinity and sat upright. The ocean disappeared in an instant. My need to breathe did not.

Breathing was supposed to be the one thing I could count on down here. Maybe there was a leak in the shelter’s oxygen line. My lungs burned in protest and my chest ached. I staggered to the front room in search of my helmet, using what little air I had left to curse a blue streak. Most people didn’t have to deal with this crap.

Most people were dead.

The steady hum of the generators surrounded me, and provided my only break from the silence. Solar-powered lights flooded the room, making it easy to see the oxygen saturation meter flashing red. The level had dropped twenty percent. Though the oxygen level in the shelter had been erratic for the last twenty-four hours, it hadn’t dipped below ninety percent before today.

My father had placed all the important meters in this front room, which was convenient in a twisted way—I could get all the bad news at once. I peered over at the water machine, noting the low level, and more flashing red lights. God, I hated those lights.

I followed the air line across the room to the hole in the ceiling where it exited the shelter. It was intact, which meant the problem lay somewhere aboveground. Perfect—a choice between braving the scorching sun or breathing. Breathing won. My lungs screamed for oxygen. I pulled on the protective sunsuit and twisted my dark hair into a knot before I yanked the helmet down over it. The repair job wouldn’t go so well if my hair burst into flames.

Once the helmet snapped in place, the emergency oxygen activated from a small tank inside the suit. When full, the tank could last a few hours tops. I gulped huge mouthfuls of the stale air, then grabbed my father’s tool kit and climbed the ladder to the door in the ceiling.

When I pushed open the door and stepped out of the underground shelter onto the surface, dust invaded my
throat and my eyes burned from the airborne particles. While my tinted helmet protected me from the harsh light of the sun and provided oxygen, the air filtration system was crap. It was beyond hot out thanks to the sun’s ever-expanding size.

Sweat drenched my body within seconds as the intense heat enveloped me. Some early survivors had said this was what hell was like. They were the same ones who claimed the asteroid incident was God’s will. Though they preached with righteous indignation about mankind being punished for their wicked ways, they ended up dying just like everyone else. Guess nothing brought out evangelism faster than disaster, but they didn’t get that the real hell was Earth.

While trying not to breathe in more dust, I dashed the fifty yards to where the oxygen tubing emerged from the ceiling of the shelter and connected to a converter box in the midst of a monster cactus cluster. My dad took care to keep as much of the line as possible underground, but he couldn’t avoid the small part that connected to the plants themselves.