Nicholas Smith: The Biomass Revolution

Time: 7:14 a.m. January 10, 2071

Location: The Dead Forest. Tisaia

Darkness always made Evandish uneasy. Even after spending most of his adult life scouting the tunnels for the resistance, he never became accustomed to it. He heard some of the younger scouts refer to the tunnels as their homes, but for him they were a place to hide, a place to survive.

Decades had passed since the nuclear fires rained down on the cities in the old world. The fires had consumed everything in their path; it was only by chance he’d survived, seeking refuge with his family in a subway station. The heat, darkness and fear of those first few days would never leave him, seared in his memory like a brand on his skin. There were other memories too, some so vivid they would still slip effortlessly into his mind at arbitrary times.

He recalled the first several months after the bombs dropped. Combing the catacombs of tunnels, looking for shelter and food with his family and the other survivors. Waiting for help his parents said would inevitably come.

The military will mobilize , they said. The Red Cross too, maybe even other countries would send help. As the months slowly passed, the survivors perished one by one. Help never came. Their food supplies dwindled. The remaining survivors became desperate, their last strands of dignity gone.

No child should remember their parents’ last moments the way he was forced to. His mother’s eyes, wild with fear, peeking out from behind his father’s back. His father waving a burning torch as three men, covered in dirt, ash and blood, devoid of their humanity approached them. Words were needless to reveal their intentions; the desperation in their eyes gave it away. They wanted what little food his family had left. The can of peaches, a liter of water and a half jar of peanut butter. It was all his parents’ lives ended up being worth. In the end, a single meal became worth a life.

A tear streaked down his face as he tried to shake the memories, the sharp cold of morning finally wiping them out of his fatigued mind. His eyes instantly searched for the garish fire that had kept him warm through the night. The warmth was gone; the light which had cast a vivid glow over his camp had disappeared. His eyes came to rest on the vanishing coals.

He shivered as an indiscriminate blast of frozen wind whipped against his face. The soldier threw his coat around his shoulders and hovered over the dying embers—blowing on them to revive them. He had been in the dead forest for over three days now, scouting out the trolley tracks. His mission was to sabotage the resupply line of the Biomass trolleys traveling to refuel the great city of Lunia.

The ash gray tint of the dead forest had already taken its toll on him. Being a scout he grew to know loneliness; to accept it, embrace it. And normally he would jump at the chance to spend time above ground, out of the darkness of the tunnels. But the forest reminded him of what the world had once been. Unlike many of the younger soldiers born after the bombs dropped, Evandish could remember life before the war, before the destruction. He could recall the bright green leaves sprouting off the limbs of trees reaching towards the vibrant crystal blue skies. He could remember the changing seasons and the rainbow of colors in the fall, when the green leaves would turn to red before the first snow fell.

Another flare of wind grazed his bare skin, bringing him back to the harsh reality of his world. He peered up at the never ending hazy sky, rays of sunlight desperately trying to peek through the thick poisoned clouds. He turned to see the skeletons of trees, long absent of the leaves now turned to ash on the ground below.

The snort of his horse finally distracted him. Evandish turned to make sure Ralli was okay, satisfied to see she was nibbling on some oats he had thrown down for her in the snow.

“How are you doing, girl?” he asked, patting her mane as she ate. They had been together for a year now, scouting the tracks on missions above ground. She was one of the last of her kind, captured by the resistance at the beginning of the war. The world was not a place for beasts anymore. She was a reminder of the innocence lost in decades of war and blood.

He turned his attention back to the fire, blowing slowly into the red ashes. Within minutes the coals glowed orange and he rushed to his knapsack for some kindling.

Ralli watched him kneel and scatter the small twigs onto the flames, before losing interest and turning back to her oats. In the distance, Evandish could hear a faint sound emerging over the intermittent wind. Ralli heard it too, her ears perking up as she sensed danger.

The wind picked up again, draining out the faint sound. He shrugged and diverted his attention back to the flames, his mind preoccupied with the warmth of the fire on his bare hands. Less than an hour of exposure was all it took to get frost bite, something he had no way of treating once it set in.

For a second the wind lapsed again and the mechanical groan of a train emerged in the distance. His head instantly shot up, forgetting the warmth of the flames on his hands.

“Oh no,” he said, quickly stomping on the fire.

He stiffened as the treacherous scream of a Biomass train broke through the howling wind.

“There isn’t supposed to be a train for another day,” he said, his voice raised but calm. He didn’t want to alert Ralli anymore than she already was.

He turned, watching as she paced back and forth nervously, pulling at the rope tied to the dead bark of an old oak tree. She could sense the danger.

Evandish searched desperately for an escape route, jumping from the tracks a few yards away to the trail leading from their camp into the forest.

Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run .

The soldier hopped to his feet, ignoring the smoke rising from the ashes. If there were Knights on the train, their infrared equipment had already picked up his location.

Quickly, he scrambled to gather his belongings, tucking them into a small pack on Ralli’s back. For a moment he caught her gaze, recognizing the undeniable fear in her dark brown eyes.

The sound of the train cut through the thick wind as he rushed to untie her from the tree. Within seconds they were racing through the frozen branches of the forest, tearing through snow covered bushes and over fallen logs. The lifeless branches snapped under the weight of her hooves as they continued through the graveyard of dead trees.

A cloud of breath exploded from her open mouth as she lumbered on through the forest, her hooves following a path not used for decades. Evandish kicked her convincingly in the ribs to keep her going. The train, which Evandish could now see out of the corner of his eye, was racing towards him, quickly gaining in speed.

The path lay on the edge of the dead forest, following the tracks for another quarter mile before diverting into a valley. They had no choice but to follow it as the forest was too dense to navigate. Their only chance of escape was to make it to the valley, away from the reaches of the Knights’ machine guns.

The horn of the train rang out again, causing Ralli to snort another cloud of breath into the air. His heartbeat, elevated, pounded on his ribcage as if it were trying to escape its white jail cell. It knew what his brain was trying to deny—within moments, the train would be on top of them.