Kristi Helvig: Burn Out

300 years from now

SIX 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.

I took care to avoid the massive, knifelike spines of the plants, and inspected the line. A small portion of the outer metal tubing was removed. The inner tube looked as though an animal had chewed through it, thus cutting off the life-saving air to the shelter. I couldn’t believe a creature existed that could withstand this environment. Most of the animals had died soon after the plants. Only the giant hyper-evolved cactus had survived—thrived even, and it was the sole oxygen-producing life left in this burned world.

Feeling hotter by the second, I dug through my bag for what I needed. I laughed when I found it, which elicited a coughing fit as I inhaled more of the swirling dust. Of all the advanced technology that allowed my continued survival, what I needed in this case was duct tape. Metallic, heat-resistant duct tape.

I attempted to tear off some tape, but my gloves were too bulky. I checked my wrist gauge—the oxygen tank was ninety-six percent full, and the heat indicator showed I had less than a minute of exposure before bare skin would fry. I stripped off the gloves, then wrapped and double-wrapped the tape around the tubing, before pressing it firmly in place. A searing pain in my right hand startled me, and a large blister popped out on the back of it. I grabbed a coated thermoplastic clamp from the bag, clasped it around the repaired tubing, and ran.

As I sprinted back to the door, two more angry blisters popped up on the back of the same hand. I didn’t want to pull the glove back on over my large blister, and now I had three to deal with because of it. Crackling pain shot through my hand. Please don’t let me catch fire . I yanked at the door but quickly snatched my hand away from the burning hot handle. “Goddammit!”

My father often reminded me to wear gloves when opening the door since the protective, heat-resistant coating on the handle had thinned. Fixing it had been his next project, but getting murdered had caused a major interruption of his to-do list. The door lay flat on the ground, as if only dirt, not a glorified bomb shelter, lay underneath. That was how my father designed it—part of his master survival plan.

I shoved my unburned hand into a glove, jerked the door upward, and scrambled down into the dim light. The door slammed shut behind me and I tripped, tumbling the rest of the way down the ladder. I lay on my back where I fell and stared up at the ceiling. At least I was out of the harsh sunlight. My right hand blazed with pain. When I dared peek at it, a raw, burning mess greeted me. I hoped it would heal quickly. If infection set in, I’d have to dip into my limited supply of antibiotics, because there was no way I’d make it as a lefty.