SecondWorld

by Jeremy Robinson

  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.

  He knew it was odd to be smiling, but his life expectancy had just gone up. He also was no longer bound to staying on the ocean, or near the scuba shops that lined the shore.

  He switched his air tank out for the rebreather, and was happily surprised to find a full-sized face mask. Not only could he breathe freely without a regulator in his mouth, he could also breathe through his nose.

  Recharged by his small victory, Miller turned his attention back to the body he had stepped over. The one that hadn’t asphyxiated. The one that didn’t die in a pool of its own vomit, but in its own blood.

  The man’s body was round, perhaps from overeating, perhaps from gas built up inside. Miller wasn’t sure which and didn’t want to find out. He focused on the single wound—a gunshot to the man’s head. The exit wound was a baseball-sized hole on the top of his skull. The gray eyes were wide and unblinking, looking up at the ceiling as though hoping for salvation. His mouth was frozen open, lips turned down in disgust at what he was about to do.

  Miller reached out and touched the man’s arm. The skin wasn’t as warm as a living person’s, but it lacked the lifeless chill of a long-dead cadaver. The man had killed himself within the last few hours.

  The gun, a 9mm Parabellum, commonly recommended for home defense, lay on the floor five feet away from the body, beyond the pool of blood. A half-used air tank lay next to it.

  He’d seen enough dead bodies over the past few days, and in his lifetime, that the old man’s corpse didn’t bother him, even though it was fresh. But it did seem a shame the man hadn’t held on just a few hours longer. He could have escaped this mess with his life, as Miller intended to.

  Miller stepped over the body and picked up the gun. He checked the clip, slapped it back in, chambered a round, and tucked it into his pocket. A city of dead people wouldn’t be much of a threat, but the weapon made him feel more prepared to handle whatever lay ahead, whether it be a paranoid survivor, a stubborn lock, or someone sporting a circled lightning bolt insignia.

  12

  After finding another bike and pilfering a map of Miami from the Scuba Emporium, Miller set off in search of the nearest hospital. According to the map, that was Mount Sinai Medical Center. If there were any survivors, he believed they would be there. Hospitals carried lots of oxygen, had backup power sources, and would be the natural place for other survivors to congregate. And if not, he had no doubt that there would be plenty of oxygen tanks that would work with his rebreather. He might find enough for months, though he hoped he wouldn’t be breathing bottled air that long.

  Wind had cleared away and piled up the rust against buildings and in alleys, making pedaling easier than it had been in Key Largo. The bodies remained a problem, though. In some places he had to get off the bike and carry it over what had once been a mob. The other new challenge was that the rebreather’s mask had been made for underwater use and blocked his peripheral vision. He had to move his head fully from side to side to see what was around him and it made dodging the dead tricky business. He knew reducing the bodies’ status to that of simple obstacles was a cold thing to do, but to give them any more attention would distract him from his own survival.

  There was no way to know how far he might have to go to escape the affected area, or if the attacks had already spread to the rest of the world.

  He cut between neighborhoods composed mainly of tall, high-rent apartment buildings, some of which had caught fire. If not for the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere, those fires might still be burning.

  Soon the right side of the road opened up into a massive parking lot. A line of palm trees swayed up ahead, and beyond them, something odd rose up from the ground, like a tree, but not.

  Miller slowed as he approached the palm trees. The oddity appeared to be a statue of some kind. He pedaled harder and the rest of it came into view. It was a massive hand, its bottom seemingly torn apart. A red
-tinged, lily-filled reflection pool surrounded the scene, and in the courtyard lay bodies; perhaps a hundred of them. Some were reaching up.

  Alive!

  Miller jumped off the bike and ran for the courtyard. “Hey!” he shouted. “Are you okay? I have air!”

  His mask fogged over as he waded through the lily pond. Clouds of rust billowed around his feet. Reaching the other side, he removed the mask and looked at the people, wondering why they didn’t respond. Then he realized the truth.

  They weren’t dead.

  But they had never been alive.

  Statues.

  “Damn,” he muttered before returning the mask to his face. As he turned, he noticed that the distortion from his curved mask, coupled with the statues’ lifelike poses, created the illusion of life.

  He spun around, taking in the scene. The bodies in the courtyard reached out for the giant hand. Intertwined bodies made up the base of the statue. The people looked tormented. Emaciated. Anguished.

  Miller turned to the black wall of granite that encircled a portion of the round courtyard. The highly polished surface reflected the late-day sun struggling to shine through the haze of falling red flakes. He shaded his eyes to see the wall more clearly. “Son of a bitch,” he said when his eyes focused.

  There on the wall, spray painted in white, was the symbol from the news report—the lightning bolt encased by a crosslike circle. Beneath the symbol was a message, applied thick, with rivulets of white paint that had dripped down to the ground. It read:

  Welcome to SecondWorld!

  Miller realized that this wasn’t just graffiti. A quick walk to the granite wall confirmed it. The first panel told a story dated 1933. What followed for two more panels was a complete history of what the Jewish people had endured during World War II.

  This was a Holocaust memorial.

  The target of this symbol and its message revealed a deep hatred, one straight out of history. His head snapped away from the wall as though struck. The symbol, in this context, became clear to him. The lightning bolt—no, the thunderbolt—was the Nazi symbol for the Schutzstaffel, Hitler’s elite military unit known as the SS. They were the overseers of the Nazi death camps. The two S-shaped bolts, typically next to each other, had been combined.

  Anger welled within Miller. He wasn’t a believer in God, but his great-grandfather had been, and he’d been killed by the SS in Auschwitz along with millions of other Jews across Europe. Thinking of Nazis, he recognized the rest of the symbol as a Celtic cross, which had been adopted by American white supremacist groups. The combination of the two symbols seemed to suggest that these were modern, American Schutzstaffel. The muscles on his back bunched with tension.

  Whether they were still in the area, surviving from air tank to air tank like him, or holed up in a bunker, had yet to be seen, but they were prepared. And they had already named their post-genocidal world, SecondWorld.

  This isn’t over, Miller thought. If they haven’t attacked the rest of the world yet, they will soon.

  When he tore his eyes from the wall, he realized he’d been gripping the handgun in his pocket. A part of him hoped that whoever painted this symbol would show up. Give him an outlet for his anger. But nothing moved, other than the endless red flakes. Whoever painted this was long gone.

  After returning to his bike, Miller cut through a large golf course free of bodies. Apparently, no one wanted to golf during the apocalypse. The open space increased his speed, but he felt exposed—watched. Leaving the golf course behind, he took to the sidewalks, preferring to stay in the buildings’ shadows. He could be easily spotted in the stillness of the city, but he didn’t like the idea of making himself an open target, just in case someone out there felt like taking a potshot.

  He reached Mount Sinai Medical Center ten minutes later. The hospital was large and nicer than most he’d visited. In fact, with its light brown exterior and surrounding palm trees, the place looked more like a hotel than a hospital. As he approached the building, the doors to the emergency room slid silently open.

  Emergency power must still be working, he thought, but forgot all about the door when he looked beyond it.

  Miller jumped back. Bodies filled the emergency room—piles of them. Vomit covered several, as well as a dusting of rust. Strangely, almost all of the victims were covered in blood. Something awful—something terribly violent—had happened here. Did the people turn on one another, desperate enough for medical attention to kill off any competitors?

  A little girl’s face caught his eye. She was buried beneath three adults, her eyes closed. Peaceful. As though she had simply fallen asleep there. But Miller knew she hadn’t. The death she had experienced would likely have been anything but peaceful.

  Swallowing hard, he stepped back, out of the building.

  The doors closed behind him.

  He found the main entrance on the other side of the hospital and entered the lobby, steeling himself for a repeat of the emergency room scene. But there were only a few bodies here. He forced himself not to look as he moved past them, focusing instead on a wall-mounted map and directory off to his right. Reaching it, he ran his finger over each department as he read the list. He made a note of every place he thought might have oxygen tanks, then paused. His finger lay on the BURN WARD label. Fourth floor.

  He knew that people with severe burns were sometimes put in oxygen tents. Could he spend the night in one? Breathing freely? He hadn’t really slept since leaving Aquarius. As he assessed his need for sleep, he felt his legs grow shaky. His vision blurred. It was almost as though his body, knowing that sleep was near, began shutting down in preparation.

  He knew he could sleep in the rebreather without issue. It was good for another twelve hours and he had two spare oxygen tanks strapped to his belt, not to mention a hospital filled with them. But to sleep freely, on a bed … well, that sounded like heaven. He headed for the elevators and pushed the button. The doors opened immediately.

  Emergency power is definitely still running.

  The elevator rose quickly. With a ding, the doors opened to a stark white hallway. A dead nurse lay on the floor, crumpled up into the fetal position. He stepped out and the doors shut behind him. In the silence that followed, Miller thought he heard the wind. He held his breath and listened.

  It wasn’t the wind.

  It was a child.

  Weeping.

  13

  Miller spun around, trying to discern the cry’s source. He moved beyond the empty nurses’ station, stopped, and listened again. The sound was faint, rising and falling in volume, but never loud. He moved down the hallway, passing open doors. Some rooms held corpses, some were empty, beds still made.

  A shadow shifted in the room at the end of the hallway.

  He ran toward it.

  His chest pounding from excitement, he slowed as he approached the door, caught his breath, cleared his mind, and entered. The corner room had two walls of windows, one looking out to the north, up the coast, and the other back to downtown Miami, which was aglow with orange light from the setting sun.

  An opaque sheet of plastic hung from the ceiling and descended over the room’s bed like a tent.

  A small body, obscured by the plastic sheet, lay on the bed. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought the person was looking at him. The weeping stopped, followed by some sniffling.

  “Are you here to rescue me?” a sweet voice asked. It was a child. A girl.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I am.”

  “You can come under. It’s okay to breathe in here.”

  Miller looked beyond the tent. Next to the bed was an array of equipment including large tanks of oxygen and air. An oxygen tent. Was this girl…?

  He removed his mask so she wouldn’t be afraid, knelt down, and lifted the plastic from the floor. He quickly pulled it over his head and let it fall again.

  The girl, dressed in a hospital gown, smiled at him, but the smile only lasted a moment. Her lips were swollen and
split in several spots. The skin on her left arm looked like it had melted. It was red, swollen, and in some places, cracked and oozing.

  She noted his attention. “The bandages hurt when they dried out. I took them off.” Her voice was weak. Frail. “There are other burns on my stomach and legs, all on the left side. Not as bad as my arm, though. The hospital gown hurts a little, but I didn’t want to be naked. Just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “In case you came.”

  “Me?”

  “Or anyone else.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m thirsty.”

  He was sure she couldn’t drink through those lips, though maybe a straw would work. “I’ll be right back.”

  He slid out from under the sheet, donned his mask, and found her IV bag. Empty. She’d been dehydrating to death. Alone.

  “I’m Lincoln Miller. You can call me Linc if you’d like. What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Arwen.”

  “Nice name.”

  “It’s from Tolkien.”

  Tolkien? “How old are you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Listen, Arwen. I’m going to go get some supplies. Stuff to help you feel better. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “’Kay.”

  “Be right back,” he repeated as he left the room. He searched the hallways for a supply room, ignoring the bodies and his rising emotions. His focus was on Arwen now. He found a door with a brass label that read MEDICAL SUPPLIES. He tried the handle. Locked. After stepping back, he kicked the door three times, right below the knob. On the third kick, the door crashed open.

  Cabinets and closets lined the walls of the room. Each was filled with impeccably organized and labeled medical supplies. He opened and closed five doors before finding a cabinet that held nearly twenty IV bags labeled SALINE—0.9% SODIUM CHLORIDE SOLUTION. He took five and left.