The Burn

by Annie Oldham

  Chapter Seven

  I don’t notice the absence of my tongue in the sub. There’s no one to talk to, and I’m not going to pick up Dad’s habit of talking to someone who isn’t there. I look at the coordinates Gaea programmed into my sub. It will take two days to reach the Washington coast and then just a few hours to maneuver through the waters into the Puget Sound.

  Two days to myself aboard a claustrophobic sub. The thoughts of loneliness press like fingers into my brain. I close my eyes and breathe deeply to keep myself from screaming.

  The sub follows the trench north through the system of canyons that are used for navigating this territory. At the precise latitude, it will ascend and go straight east toward Washington. After gazing through the window at nothing and studying the monitors until my eyes are fuzzy and dry, my body aches with tiredness. I’m hunched over the controls, tracking each mile of endless progress, and feel like my mind is on the verge of shutting off.

  I need sleep. I didn’t sleep well the night before, and now it’s five o’clock in the morning. I lie down on the bunk that lines one side of the sub but my eyes feel wired open. I force them shut, and behind my lids all I see are forests, rain, rocky beaches. Over and over these images flash, faster and faster as they count down to a future that just might explode in my face.

  The Burn. Most often I picture the desolation the colony has fed me—deserts, crumbling buildings, the blazing sun. But I saw beauty on Gaea’s monitors. Maybe I will belong up there and it won’t just be this childish fantasy I always dream of. It will be real, and I can touch it and feel it.

  I fall asleep after my mind stops racing along faster than my body can keep up with. I wake up when the computer announces, “Now leaving the Northwest Pacific Territory. Entering the Northeast Pacific Territory.”

  I look at the clock. 18:00. I slept for thirteen hours. I again sit in the controller’s seat. Just a few more miles and I’ll pass Hawaii. That is the half-way point between my old life and my new.

  Just as I pass it, the monitor blips at me, indicating a message is waiting for me. Surely Gaea wouldn’t risk transmitting a message. Mr. Klein? But he can’t let anyone know he knows where I am.

  It is from Jessa. Should I even be tempted by this? I need to entomb this part of me to have a chance of happiness on the Burn. But my heart aches for one last piece of her. I press a button. Jessa’s face appears on the monitor.

  “Look, Terra, I know you’ve left for the Burn. I’ve known for a while you weren’t happy here.”

  She sits in our room. She manually locked the door, not just relying on the computer locks that can be overridden. She brushes tears off her cheeks.

  “I just wish you would have told me so that I could understand. I want to understand. Listen, I haven’t told Dad yet that I know, but he’s trying to sort through all the archives right now to figure out where you’ve gone. So wherever you are, please hurry and be safe. So you can get where you want to go without any of us stopping you.”

  There’s a knock at the door. Jessa’s head whips around. “Just wait a minute, Dad!”

  “I’ve got to go. I think Dad’s almost caught up. Listen, I love you. I know you were trying to tell me that all day yesterday. Be safe.” Her face freezes on that moment, and my eyes burn. The screen goes black except for one line: Print text of message?

  My finger hovers over the keys. Can I keep one reminder of her? One that I can actually touch? I too am crying. Then I press Yes.

  The paper prints slowly. I find a waterproof cover and carefully slide the sheet in place, then fold it and lay it perfectly parallel to the edge of the bunk.

  Needing something to cling to, my hands grab the folds of my dress. I look down. I need to change into the clothes Gaea gave me. The fabric is rough and dull colored, like brush-cleaning water. How often in painting class, one of the regular enrichment curriculums, we would paint a landscape. That is what the old masters painted. But the teachers never gave us a photo to paint from. Always the images in our heads. We weren’t to be misled by what the Burn looked like before the Event. It would undoubtedly be a bastion of death and decay now, and those images were too violent, too corrupting to be allowed into the curriculum.

  Now I will see it all. And it will be more magnificent than the images on Gaea’s monitors. If it can look as beautiful as it did sent from a satellite to an outdated monitor several miles under the ocean’s bulk, it will be astonishing in real life. It has to be.

  I strip out of the dress. The Burn clothes are too big, but they’ll do. I pull on the hiking boots, and my feet feel a hundred pounds heavier. All the shoes in the colony are feather light and small. These are clunky, but maybe you need something like this for walking on rocks.

  I toss the dress in the bottom of the pack, put the clothes and other supplies on top, then fold Jessa’s message twice more and slip it into a zippered pouch on the front.

  I’m hungry finally, after the memory of swallowing blood has faded, so I search the sub’s supply bins. A few energy bars, and a first-aid kit with a sedative. Just what I need to sleep until Washington.

  When I wake up, my head feels heavy like a bucket of water. I don’t feel rested, and my stomach cramps from eating too many energy bars. When the computer says, “Three miles to the New America coast,” I vomit into the empty supply bin.

  I gargle some water and wipe my mouth clean and force myself to breathe deeply. Then I notice the water through the window. It’s still murky, but less oppressive and more open, and I feel like the floating metal tank I sit in is weightless in that half-light. The depth gauge reads 200 feet. I have never been this close to the surface before. The euphoria shrieks through my veins. I’ve seen this much light—just a shadow, really—and I ache to go higher.

  I pull my trembling fingers from the controls. I need to follow the plan. I sit on my hands and lean back in the seat, watching the computer take us just high enough to skim along the ocean floor. The vague outline of the sloping ground, almost the same color as the water with the sand churning in the currents, hovers in front of the window. Is it stormy up there? The monitors show a pattern of swirling clouds and heavy rain. I don’t have a poncho in the pack. After living for sixteen years in a metal shell, I didn’t think about something like rain.

  Is there any plastic sheeting in the sub? Sometimes the researchers use it to lay their specimens on. Yes, there in a cubby. It is a small sheet, maybe three feet square, but it’s better than anything else at hand.

  “One mile to the Puget Sound.”

  The sub slows even more, and the water turns brown. Bits of plant life roils through the currents. It must be really bad up there, and I have the first real, solid doubt I’ve had this whole trip. Can I weather even a storm? And if not a storm, how can I weather the people? I clutch my head and lean into the control panel, rocking myself to the sway of the sub as it buffets along through the turgid water.

  The sub does its best to plow through, but it rocks back and forth, and I feel sick again. I lose track of time. But after what feels like hours later, the computer beeps at me, and we bank violently off course.

  “Water patterns unstable. Suggest immediate docking.”

  Where? I check the topographical map. I’m well within the Puget Sound. There’s Seattle, across the water, only five miles away. Gaea warned me about the cities. There’s a jutting of land to the west; that will have to be as good as any other place to dock, and the stretch of water separates me from the city. With the way the sub lurches, I don’t think I’ll make it much farther as the land starts choking in on me and there’s less room to navigate.

  The bottom of the sub scrapes along the rocks, and I feel like they will pierce through the metal and scrape along the soles of my feet as well. But the sub shudders to a stop and sighs as the air locks around the hatch open.

  The air outside hisses at me, and the rain beats a regular rhythm on every surface of the sub. I wrap the plastic sheeting around me best as I can and step
outside. My shoes squeal on the wet rocks.

  Then I hear shouting and a sound I’ve only heard one other time. A sound I heard when I watched the high-def footage of the Event. Gunfire. I duck to the ground. I don’t know where the shots come from or if they’re aimed at me. I look back to the sub. I want to crawl in and hide until the pops around me fade. But the sub already slips into the water, swimming for home.

  I lie on the ground with my hands over my head, but the shouts and the gunfire don’t stop. I look up, and the rain pours in my eyes. A hundred yards down the rocky beach, four figures waver in the rain. Three of them have long guns—rifles, I think—pointed out toward the water. The fourth rushes a boat into the water, jumps in, and starts the motor.

  I lose some of the words against the rain and surf, but I hear bits of the shouting.

  “Don’t do it!”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Cover me!”

  On the water, a boat bobs farther out. Five or six men fire back at the people on the beach. They’re too far away and all I can hear is the noise of their yells. Beyond them, I see faint wisps of light across the sound. Seattle. Is that where these men came from? Something tells me to be scared, to run. But my brain is numb and I’m paralyzed to the ground.

  The small boat races out across the water. The man in it lies low as he steers, and the other three people on the beach aim at the larger boat.

  “Stupid boy! Get out of the way! I don’t want to blow your head off!”

  The boat skips across the water, closer to the larger boat. The rain pelts down on him, but the man inside sits up and fires two shots at the boat. The first causes one of the men in the large boat to slump, and the others duck down. The second blows a hole in the boat close to the water. The men in the boat no longer care about the people on the shore. They scramble to where the water floods in.

  The man in the small boat turns away quickly and aims for shore. But one of the men behind him stands up, aims his gun, and the motor explodes in smoke. The shot rocks the boat and the man inside falls into the water. His friends on shore can’t see this—they think he’s still in the boat. But I squint and he’s floating in the water, held in place by the straps of his pack snagged on the boat. He tries to slip his arms out, but the wind whips the boat around and it bashes him on the head.

  I’m racing toward the water and pulling my boots off before I even stop to think that I might not be able to swim in the roiling surf. The water shivers me from head to toe as soon as I dive in. I pull arm over arm through the foamy water toward the boat. My first act on the Burn will be to save someone from drowning. What if this person wants to kill me afterward? What then? Ten minutes on the Burn and that will be the end. My arms ache with each stroke. I’m a proficient swimmer during daily exercises, but that’s in a calm pool, not stormy waters. The shouts from shore fade into the waves.

  Finally I reach the boat and haul myself into it. I slop into water, and I can hardly see through the rain streaming into my eyes. The boat is a third filled with ocean water from a gaping hole on one end. The man dangles from the boat, and his gun strap is tangled in his hands. I don’t want to touch the gun. I don’t want to be anywhere near it. I pull the strap from his hands, and the gun brushes my skin. It is cold as ice and jolts me to the shoulder. I drop it in the water.

  Then I see the hook the man’s pack is caught on, and I pull the knife from the sheath at my waist. I slice through a strap and he is free. Now I need to get him to shore. The boat sinks from under me, and we’re both in the water. My legs churn feverishly, trying to keep us both afloat.

  I thread his arms through the other strap so his pack is hitched up on his chest. His blond hair hangs in his face, and I can’t see if he’s conscious. He bobs for a moment then slips beneath the water. I dive after him, wrap my arms around his chest, and lay his head on my shoulder and kick toward shore.

  The rain pelts my upturned face, stinging my eyes. I fasten my clenched fingers in the plaid shirt he wears and gasp as the coming waves slither over my face and into my nose. I choke and sputter, but still I kick. He moans up to the sky. He is alive. That knowledge buoys me almost to floating above the water. I kick until my lungs pound like feet stomping on my chest. I kick until I feel the gravely brush of shore beneath my heels.

  I grab him under the armpits and drag him out of the water. I turn him on his side and thump his back, pounding the water out of him. The water gushes out of him less and less as I continue to hit him, until finally he coughs and retches into the rocks, and then breathes deeply. I turn him onto his back and brush the hair away from his face.

  But is he ever beautiful. His skin is tanned golden brown, and his chapped lips are rough along the center of the bottom lip. His eyes are still closed, which worries me, but he is alive. His heavy, blonde eyebrows furrow, leaving two deep vertical lines between them.

  I touch his cheeks rough with several days of unshaven beard. Past the stubble, sun-worn face, and sea salt crusted into his skin, I am surprised at how young he is—probably a couple years older than me. I touch his cheeks and hands. They’re cold. I rub his hands. He moans again and moves his legs. He suddenly clenches my hand in his, and the touch burns my skin. His eyes flutter open, and then I hear voices on the beach. I take one last drink of him and he focuses on me briefly before closing his eyes again, and then I skitter behind a large sheet of scrap metal embedded in the rocks.

  Three people make their way across the beach, two tall and one short, probably my height. They are phantom shadows through the drizzle of rain until they’re about two hundred feet off, and then I can tell two are men and one is a woman. The woman and one of the men is about the same age as the young man I saved, and the other is older. The girl’s brown hair escapes her poncho, running dark lines down her pale face. Her clothes are similar to mine. At least I won’t look too out of place. Each of them carry a rifle.

  “David!” The older man cups his hands around his mouth. The other two swivel their heads back and forth, combing the beach and the surf. They stop when they see him lying on the rocks.

  “Dave!” The girl runs to him, flinging her gun to the ground. I flinch as it clanks among the rocks.

  “Mary, don’t throw that gun again. I’ve told you how dangerous it is.” The older man bends down to pick up the rifle and stands guard over them. He strokes his red and gray beard with one hand.

  She kneels by Dave and raises his head to rest on her knees. “Jack?” she says with a tremor.

  Jack kneels next to them and runs his hands over Dave’s body, then listens to his heart and breathing. He sighs.

  “He’s still alive. He’ll be fine. A little water-logged, but fine.”

  Mary closes her eyes, and two tears stream down her cheeks, but it could have been the rain. I sigh in relief. I want to go to him, to see for myself, but then she caresses his face. At her touch, his eyes open again.

  “Mary?”

  Her face beams.

  “Did you save me?” His voice is incredulous. I smile at his doubt. He remembers me after all.

  Mary ignores the question and gently places his pack under his head. She’s embarrassed that she threw herself to him.

  “Someone saved me. I remember. I was in the boat.” He tries to sit up, but Jack pushes him down again.

  “Easy there, Dave.”

  “No, someone saved me. I was in the boat and when the raiders blew up the engine I knocked my head. Must’ve passed out. But I remember someone dragging me to shore. She left me here.”

  “She?” Mary raises an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, she,” he says angrily. He props himself up on an elbow. “She was like you, but not.” He looks across the beach. “She must be here somewhere.”

  Mary rolls her eyes. “Right, Dave, right. Mystery women jumping in the water to save strangers and then disappearing into thin air. Maybe she was an agent, too. Or maybe you knocked your head harder than you think.”

  He glares at her. Then h
e turns and stares at the piece of metal I hide behind, and I swear he can see me. His eyes bore into mine through the miniscule gap I watch them through. I gasp and whip my hand over my mouth. There is no way he can see me here. My chest burns.

  He stares hard one second more, then looks to Mary, and his eyes finally focus on her. “You’re probably right.”

  The older man offers Dave his hand. “You up for walking, boy?”

  Dave grasps the hand and pulls himself up. “Well, Red, I’d better be. We should get out of this rain.” His hands sink to his knees for a moment as he gathers himself. I want to tell him to lay down and rest, but I can’t move.

  “They gone?” Red says.

  Dave nods, looking at the water. “There were five on that boat. Scouting, maybe.”

  “Government headhunters?”

  “No, raiders.”

  “They won’t tell anyone we’re here?” Red asks, clasping Dave’s arm and helping him lurch ahead.

  “No. I shot one and the others went down with the boat.”

  Jack falls in line behind them. “We’ll have to close up early tonight, just to be sure.”

  Dave nods.

  Red looks across the water where the motor boat drifts further from shore.

  “You think it’s salvageable?” Jack says.

  “Nah.” Red pulls on his beard. “It was in sorry shape to begin with and even worse now. Come on, Jack, help David along. Let’s get back to the settlement before it gets too dark.”

  Dave puts an arm around Jack’s shoulders and the four follow the paved road between old houses. My feet twitch. Should I follow them? I can’t call out to them. All they would hear is a gagged moaning on the rain-slicked wind. They’ll be repulsed. But I can’t watch them disappear forever behind the ruined houses.

  I sling my pack on my back and rustle the plastic sheeting around my head. At least I won’t get rain in my eyes. My shoes slap the ground as I run after them, and I duck behind debris to stay carefully out of sight.