Jeremy Robinson - SecondWorld

He grinned at his success.

And then he wheezed.

He breathed again, but found no air.

He looked at the pressure gauge.

The air that was left was draining quickly.

He spit the regulator from his mouth and inspected the hose. Air hissed from a torn hole. And then, it stopped. The tank ran empty.

He hadn’t snagged his clothing on the metal sunglasses display, he’d snagged the air hose. Stupid! Miller thought to himself.

There was a half mile between him and his air tanks. He cursed himself for not bringing a spare. His heart pounded with fear, realizing that death was two minutes away, three minutes at most. His last breath had not been deep and he already felt the need for another. Then he saw a sign on the back wall of the store.

PHARMACY.

He ran for it and jumped the counter. Pills littered the floor, where they had dissolved into sludge by some now-evaporated liquid. He had no interest in drugs or pills right now. Air was his drug of choice. Then he saw what he was looking for—an oxygen tank. Just one. The kind with which you see old folks shuffling around, or those attached to the electric go-carts of the morbidly obese. He picked up the white tank and set it on the counter. A plastic face mask in a sterile bag went next.

He ignored the reflection of his beet-red face in the reading glasses display on the other side of the counter and quickly attached the face mask. He loosened the valve. When the hiss of escaping oxygen hit his ears, he placed the mask against his mouth—and breathed.

After taking a few deep breaths, he realized that the air tasted different. Unlike the compressed air in the scuba tank, this was straight oxygen, meant to be breathed along with normal air, not in place of it. The tank would keep him alive, but it wouldn’t be long before he started feeling loopy. He swiftly left the pharmacy, taking several pairs of sunglasses on the way, and transported his last shipment of goods to the Montrose. By the time he arrived and switched over to a new tank of air, he was feeling great. The weight of the air tank on his back felt heavy, but he was glad for it. The straight oxygen had worked wonders for his psyche, but too much would be deadly.

When the Montrose was loaded with enough food and water to last several weeks, and air to last for a little more than two days, Miller set sail for Miami.

TWO DAYS LATER

Only two hours of air remained when Miller caught his first glimpse of the Miami skyline. The doldrums had settled in over the ocean and left the Montrose ’s sails limp. With no wind and no way to start the engines, the ship floated adrift for days in the now sludgy waters of the Bermuda Triangle. Surrounded by an otherworldly red ocean and pink sky, Miller had retreated to the cabin and tried not to think about his dwindling air supply. But that had been hard to do when eating meant holding your breath and sleep was interrupted every two hours by sudden asphyxiation.

When the winds returned, Miller had stumbled up on deck, unfurled the sails, and pointed the sloop west. With no idea how far out to sea he was, all he could do was pray for wind and stay the course. The wind blew gently—a breeze really—but it was enough to get him to Miami.

As the Montrose cut through the waters alongside Miami Beach’s now pink shore—white sand mixed with red flakes—he kept a constant lookout for someplace that might have scuba gear. But all he could see were nightclubs and hotels. Having never been to Miami, he wasn’t sure where to look. Rounding South Beach, he maneuvered the sloop into a channel. A buoyed sign read: MIAMI HARBOR—NO WAKE ZONE.

Miller looked at the harbor, dotted with large islands, and the mainland beyond. Off the starboard bow he spotted a marina filled to capacity with massive white yachts. He spun the wheel, directing the Montrose through the maze of barriers that protected the marina from the open ocean.

With thirty minutes of air remaining, he didn’t bother to find an actual slip. He simply pulled up alongside the end of a dock, hopped out, and tied the boat off. His footfalls on the dock echoed like gunshots in the still silence of the dead city. He could hear nothing else, save for the water lapping against the docks.

To his relief there was a sign at the end of the dock pointing toward Scuba Emporium. He followed it. One hundred feet later, he found a large shop, one of many, at the base of a sky-rise apartment building. The sign on the door read CLOSED.

He tried the door.

Locked.

Cupping his hands to the glass, he peered inside. The shop was expansive and well stocked—a scuba enthusiast’s paradise.

Miller looked around for something heavy that could break the window. He found nothing in the immediate area, but as he was searching, he noticed something unusual. The walkway in front of the store was free of red dust. While much of the dust on the surrounding surfaces had been blown out to sea or piled high against buildings, a fine layer still coated almost everything—except for the space in front of the Scuba Emporium.

He kneeled down and looked at the walkway. Fine streaks of red stretched across the cement surface where a broom had passed over.

The rust had been swept away. With red flakes still falling from the sky, the sweeping must have been done recently.

Miller took a deep breath, removed the regulator from his mouth, and yelled, “Hello!”

His voice bounced off the city’s buildings as though he’d just shouted into the Grand Canyon.

“Is there anyone here?”

No response. And his air was running low.

He took one more deep breath, removed the regulator again, and slipped out of the air tank. Holding it like a shot-put, he took two fast steps toward the glass door and let it fly. The glass exploded. Much of it fell straight down while the rest burst into the shop.

Miller entered slowly, aware of the glass shards poking out from the door’s frame, and of the possibility of getting his head blown off by a justifiably paranoid survivor. The store, like the sidewalk in front of it, was immaculate—seemingly untouched and certainly not looted. He picked up his air tank, checked to make sure the regulator didn’t have glass in it, and placed it back in his mouth.

Squeezing through several racks of wet suits, he cautiously worked his way to the back of the store, where he hoped he would find full air tanks ready for renting. He pushed the last of the wet suits aside, glad to be free of them. That is, until he saw the body that waited on the other side.

The man’s death had been violent, and bloody, and the investigator in Miller wanted to look things over. The man had only recently died. But there was no time for that now. He needed air.

He tiptoed across the sticky swath of wet rug, stepped over the old man’s body, and made for the back of the store. He quickly found a full air tank and switched it out. He took stock of the other tanks. Only ten.

Why so few for such a big shop? he wondered. And with such wealthy patrons.

Closed cabinets lined the back wall above the rack of scuba tanks. Miller smiled as he realized the answer to his question. Because the people who shopped here could afford better.

Miller flung open the cabinets. Yes! Inside were four black closed-circuit rebreather units, CCRs for short. A rebreather, as opposed to a standard scuba set, combines straight oxygen with exhaled air. The end result is smaller tanks, less weight to carry, and seventy-five percent more time per refill. Even better, he felt confident he could take any standard oxygen tank and adapt it for use with the rebreather. He would just need to make sure he had air or trimix on hand. Closed-circuit rebreathers required a diluting gas, in addition to oxygen, but the gas was recycled as he breathed and needed to be changed less frequently.