Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

We reach an exposed stall draped in a black plastic tarp. An old woman swathed in layers of dark fabric huddles underneath. Her face is pebbled on one side, the result of poorly healed burns. Even though the Dome keeps us under a constant shadow, it’s dangerous to be outside all day, and I feel sorry for her. But few people can afford the high rent for an indoor shop.

“Two purification tablets, please.” I hold out the coins stamped with a crude number three on both sides.

She takes the currency in her gloved hand and gives me two pink tablets. They don’t look like much, but they’ll turn the black water running through the pipes a safer shade of gray. Before our father died, he told us stories about the world before the Burn. A time when water was clear and you could drink it straight from the faucet, and walk outside to stand in the sun without layers of protective clothing. That was before his mind deteriorated and I couldn’t tell if his stories were memories or delusions.

A siren eclipses the sounds around us and an automated voice issues a directive. “Alert: the atmosphere inside the Dome has reached Level 2. Please put on your goggles and return to your domiciles immediately. Alert: the atmosphere inside the Dome—”

“Hurry home,” the old woman says, collapsing the tarp around her like a tent.

My sister looks up at me, blue eyes wide. “I’m scared, Phoenix.”

“Put on your goggles.” I dig in my pocket for mine.

She unfolds the wraparound eyewear that makes everything look bright green, a color you never see inside the Dome.

“Run,” I yell, pulling her along behind me.

A man pushes Sky, and she stumbles. He glances at her and starts to turn away without offering help or an apology. Tears run down my sister’s face.

I shove him as hard as I can, and grab my sister’s hand. She runs behind me until we reach our building, a twenty-story domicile divided into single rooms. The Dome is so crowded that there’s nowhere left to build but up, even though it’s more dangerous on the higher floors.

Our room is on the eighteenth floor.

I unlock the door and push Sky inside. “Get in the shelter.”

She scrambles for the makeshift tent in the center of the room. It’s made from Firestall, an engineered material that absorbs heat and UV rays.

The Dome is supposed to protect us from the holes in the ozone layer—holes that turned more than two-thirds of the world to ash twenty years ago. But the sun’s invisible hand can still reach into the Dome. The burns people suffer on a daily basis are proof of that. Most of us have been victims at least once, our skin curling like the edges of burning paper.

Some people believe you’re more likely to get burned in the buildings without reflective panels like this one. I don’t know if it’s true, but I can’t take chances with my sister. Sky’s skin is perfectly smooth. She’s never felt the savage itching and heat of a burn, and I’m not going to let her feel it now.

We huddle together in the darkness, and Sky chokes back tears. “I’m scared.”

“Don’t worry.” I pull her closer and listen to the alert repeating over and over until I fall asleep, more worried than ever.

In the morning, I look out the small window and see people wandering through the streets. The alert must be over, though many are still wearing their protective goggles. My father told me this city was called New York before the Burn. The buildings were even taller than the ones beyond the alleys, so tall they seemed to touch the clouds. He said you could see the clouds too—white streaks in a blue sky. A sky filled with beauty instead of destruction.

The Burn happened suddenly, although scientists had predicted it years before. The sky turned red and the temperature rose dangerously. No one could step outside without suffering third-degree burns. Within weeks, the heat was melting steel and plastic. My father said hundreds of thousands died after inhaling the toxic fumes from their disintegrating homes.

For years, people lived in the sewers or underground shelters until scientists developed a compound strong enough to withstand the temperatures in the areas where the atmosphere was still intact.

People traveled hundreds of miles underground until they reached a safe zone—a place without a hole in the sky above it. They built the Dome and named our city Burn 3 because it was the third city in the world to turn to ash.

From where I stand looking down on the black coats rushing through the gray streets, the city still looks like it’s made of ash.

I drop the purification tablets into two black cups of water and watch the liquid turn a less lethal shade of charcoal. I choke mine down and leave Sky’s on the counter. She’s still asleep, blond hair peeking out from beneath the ratty blanket. I can’t stand to wake her. The world of her dreams is so much better than the one we live in.

I leave her a note instead.

An hour later, I climb the eighteen flights of stairs with two food packets tucked in my pocket. Noodles with spicy red sauce, Sky’s favorite. Orange doors line both sides of the hallways and I can see ours from the landing.

It’s wide open.

My pulse quickens, and I bolt up the stairs. Sky would never open the door for anyone. She knows better. “Sky?”

I glance around the room. She’s not here, but someone else was. Blankets are strewn all over the floor, and the shelter is shredded.

“Sky!” I know she won’t answer, but I keep calling her name. This can’t be happening. Children have been disappearing from the streets, not from the domiciles.

I run for the door and trip over the shredded strips of Firestall. My face hits the cement floor hard, and for a second, the room sways. I push up onto my knees, and something glints under the black strips of material.

A glass bottle the size of my thumb. It has a silver cap with a hole in the top, but the bottle is empty. A white label is peeling off the front. I’ve never seen anything like it in the stores along the alleyways.

I hit the stairs and notice the open door a floor below me. Clothes and personal items are strewn across the floor. Sky might not be the only kid missing.

I’m back in the streets, running down the alley under the neon signs. “Sky?”

I check the shops she frequents, like the one with hand-sewn dolls that cost more than we spend on a week’s worth of food packets. Or the store several blocks away where they sell tea made from roots and the salve that heals burns.

I stop a woman selling bread packets on the street. “Have you seen a little girl with blond hair?” It’s Sky’s most recognizable feature.

Almost no one has blond hair or blue eyes anymore. My father said they made people more vulnerable to the sun, a vicious sort of natural selection. It’s the reason I rarely take Sky outside during the day, and keep every inch of her skin covered when I do.

The woman shakes her head. “Haven’t seen no blond hair.”

I stand in the middle of the street, the black doors stretching out in front of me, the vid screens above me.

She’s not here.

I think about my sister’s smile and the way she never complains when we don’t have enough to eat. I can see her blue eyes, bright and curious. My mother named her Sky because of her eyes. She said the real sky was just as blue once. I look up at the Dome and the red sky beyond it.

I would trade a real blue sky in a second to find her.

Faces flash across the gigantic vid screens one by one.

Sky’s will be up there tomorrow.

I’ve never been inside the Protectorate. Protectorate officers are dangerous—as quick to draw their guns as the criminals they hunt. And Burn 3 is full of criminals, men with nothing left to lose who will cut your throat over a few coins or a food packet. I try not to imagine Sky in their hands.