SecondWorld

by Jeremy Robinson

  “I’m back,” he said upon return to Arwen’s room. He moved straight for her IV, checked the label to make sure he’d taken the right kind, and then switched them out. The liquid drip began immediately. Only then did he notice that Arwen had yet to respond to his entry.

  Miller pulled up the plastic, climbed beneath, and found the girl lying still, her eyes closed. He pulled his mask from his face and knelt down next to her. He didn’t dare check for a pulse for fear her red, swollen skin would crack open. Instead he held the back of his hand beneath her nose and watched her small chest.

  He sighed as he felt air move across his hand and saw the subtle rise and fall each breath brought to her chest. She was still alive and she had moved over on the bed. Before, she’d been on her back at the center of the bed, now she lay on her unburned side at the edge.

  She’d made room for him.

  He shook his head, wondering who was taking care of whom. That small gesture of companionship, he realized, had rallied his fighting spirit. He slipped out of his gear, placing the rebreather, handgun, water bottle, and several protein bars on the floor next to the bed. The exhaustion, chased away by the adrenaline of finding Arwen, returned with a vengeance.

  He climbed onto the other side of the bed, careful not to bump her little body with his. The bed was firm, but comfortable. The air smelled of burnt flesh and hair. He looked at the back of her head. Her blond hair had burned from the shoulders down, but the hair on top revealed the child she had once been.

  He ran his fingers through her hair and wondered if she’d been in one of the apartment fires he’d seen on the way to the hospital. Or perhaps her burns had happened before the catastrophe hit. There was no way to know, not now, anyway.

  As he stroked her hair he wondered what his life would have been like if he’d taken a different path. Could he settle down? Have kids? Could he put a little girl to sleep on a nightly basis? He wasn’t sure and had no real frame of reference. Kids never really took to him. What he felt positive about was that he was damn glad to have found Arwen alive. On his own, he might get depressed, or distracted by the horrible setting. But with a child to protect, he’d be at the top of his game. He wouldn’t let the kid die. Not this time.

  * * *

  He dreamed of the desert. Of her—nameless and beautiful—dark curly hair cut just below the ears to make her look like a boy. More memory than dream, the nightmare had plagued him for years. The girl was no more than ten years old. Her dark brown eyes tore into him across the distance and through the binoculars. He left the safety of his position and ran for the girl. She stood at the edge of the target zone—an Iraqi radar station—but without cover, she’d be cut down. Ten miles away, the BGM-109 Tomahawk missile called in by his team switched from a solid propellant to its low-heat turbofan engine, finalizing its descent. That’s when she saw him coming … and ran the other way.

  * * *

  When he woke in the morning, he sat up straight, confused by the shield of white surrounding him. But then he remembered where he was and who he was with. He leaned over Arwen’s little body and watched her chest. She was still breathing. It seemed, for the time being, that he had managed to save this child.

  Stiff and sore, he climbed out of the bed. After donning his gear and switching out Arwen’s IV bag he unwrapped a protein bar, lifted his mask, and took a bite. Ugh, he thought, looking at the label. Chocolate Cherry Nut. Tastes like shit.

  Wandering over to the windows, he stared out at the world below. Orange light spilled over the city, reflecting off the high-rises and setting piles of red dust aglow. The sun rose over Miami, glinting off a distant billboard. The giant sign featured two sports cars, one red, the other silver. The logo read TESLA MOTORS.

  Tesla Motors.

  A grin formed on his face. He’d just discovered his first bit of good luck. Tesla cars ran completely on electricity. They didn’t use combustion. They didn’t require oxygen!

  Miller squinted as he read the address given on the billboard. He quickly found it on his map, marked the location, and said, “Arwen.” When the girl didn’t respond, he repeated her name more loudly. She groaned as she awoke.

  “You snore,” she said.

  Miller smiled. “Sorry, but listen—”

  “I’m hungry. And thirsty. Weren’t you supposed to get me something to drink?”

  His smile broadened. He unwrapped a protein bar and slid it inside the oxygen tent. A bottle of water with a straw went next.

  He watched the girl’s silhouette move within the tent as she took a bite. “Gross,” she said. “Tastes like shit.”

  Miller laughed loudly. “That’s what I thought. But it’ll keep you strong.”

  “Strong for what? I’m just lying here.”

  “Not for long,” he said. “I found a way out.”

  14

  “I can’t see anything under here,” Arwen said from beneath the white tarp of her oxygen tent.

  “You’re not missing anything,” Miller replied as he angled the modified gurney around the parched body of a woman facedown on the pavement. He’d rigged a white tent over the gurney and managed to attach two O tanks and a saline drip. The end result was a crude but functional mobile oxygen tent.

  He’d debated taking Arwen out at all, but when he’d mentioned the car dealership she refused to let him leave without her. Hearing the fear in her voice, he realized that leaving her behind would be cruel, even if there were people in the city gunning for survivors. If they killed him, maybe her blond hair and blue eyes would save her?

  Not that it helped all the other white people living in South Florida.

  The gurney bounced with a jolt that made Arwen groan in pain.

  “Sorry,” Miller said. He’d run over the dead woman’s hand, which had apparently been separated from her body. Must have been hit by a car, he thought, and then lied, “Pothole.”

  “There aren’t any potholes in Miami.”

  “There are now,” he said in a tone that told her not to argue.

  As he walked, Miller scanned for signs of life—both friendly and unfriendly. But with so many places to hide, and so many distractions for his eyes, he doubted he’d see anything. But the large red and white Tesla Motors sign was impossible to miss. He quickened his pace. They still needed to find a car and return to the scuba shop for his supplies before his air ran out—which would happen in just over an hour. Once all that was done, they could finally get the hell out of Dodge.

  At least he hoped they could. Dodge could be the entire planet by now.

  “Why are we going faster?” Arwen asked.

  “Almost there.”

  “Go Percy. Go Percy! Go Percy, go, go!” she cheered.

  Miller smiled. “Who’s Percy?”

  “It’s from a cartoon of Cat in the Hat. Percy the Penguin races a seagull. I used to say it with my little brother, Sam, when we raced.”

  Miller sensed a dramatic shift in the girl’s demeanor, which had remained stalwart and in good humor thus far. He slowed his charge toward the car dealership.

  “He pronounced it ‘Poucey.’” She sniffed back tears. “They’re dead, right? My parents?”

  Miller slowed almost to a stop. He wanted nothing more than to lift up the tarp and hug the girl. But the quickly-rigged tent would likely lose most of its air, she might see one of the many bodies around them, time was short, and even if he could get to her, he doubted he could hug her without causing extreme pain.

  “I … I don’t know.”

  He saw her lean up in bed.

  “I could hear people dying. I saw the red snow. You don’t need to lie to me.”

  Miller stopped moving and let out a deep breath that fogged the inside of his face mask. When it cleared, he said, “They probably didn’t make it. So far it’s just you and me.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She lay down again. “Let’s go.”

  Without another word shared between the two, Miller pushed the gurney toward th
e dealership, happy to see the street ahead of them free of bodies. He stopped beneath the Tesla Motors sign five minutes later. Palm trees encircled the boxy gray building, which would have looked almost drab if you ignored the large glass windows revealing the rich, red interior. The red walls may have once invoked a feeling of power and superiority, but with most of the world presently coated in a red film, it just looked cliché.

  If not for the sleek silver Model S electric car in the front window, he might not have given the building a second glance. But now he revered the sight like it was Jesus Christ himself returned to the Earth. The car represented salvation.

  If he could get it started.

  “We’re there,” he said, rolling the gurney to the front door. He tried it. “Damnit.”

  “Locked?”

  “Yup.” He pulled the gurney away from the door.

  “What are you doing? One locked door and you’re giving up? We’re doomed.”

  Miller smiled, relieved to hear Arwen’s spunk returning.

  “Can you cover your ears?” he asked. “This is going to be loud.”

  Miller drew the 9mm and aimed it at the door. He was about to pull the trigger when he noticed that the showroom window was level with the sidewalk. Not sure if the garage doors could be opened without electricity, he turned the gun toward the window and fired.

  “Too loud!” Arwen shouted.

  But Miller barely heard her as he fired again. Cracks spidered across the window.

  “Too loud!” she shouted again. “They’re going to hear you!”

  The third shot shattered the window and the glass fell away. It was only then that Arwen’s last sentence sank in. They’re going to hear you. He ran back to her. “Who is going to hear me?”

  “The bad men.”

  “What bad men?”

  “From the hospital. I could hear them talking, even after everyone else died. Talked about killing people. Laughed a lot. Like the world ending was a party.”

  From the hospital? Miller’s mind retraced their journey, searching for anything out of the ordinary. While everything was out of the ordinary, he hadn’t seen or heard anything suspicious since they left the hospital. And the gunshots would echo off the city’s empty buildings, disguising the direction of their source.

  Then a chill ran up his spine. He’d been on the lookout for people all the way from the hospital, but hadn’t once looked behind them. He slowly turned in the direction they’d come. What he saw quickened his breath and pulse.

  “What is it?” Arwen asked in a whisper. “Is it them?”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking at a group of nearly fifty men, perhaps two football-field lengths away. They stood in the street, not moving under his gaze. They were dressed like casual Miami beachgoers—cargo shorts and tank tops in a variety of colors. But they all had shaved heads and every last one of them was white. Worse, they all wore identical black rebreathers, which implied preparation and foreknowledge about the impending attack.

  Welcome to SecondWorld.

  One of the men stepped forward and raised a hand in greeting. It was friendly enough, but when the group stepped toward him as one he felt like a wounded deer facing down a wolf pack. If they reached him, he was a dead man. And even if they spared Arwen, what kind of life would she live among men such as these?

  Miller offered a wave back to keep the mob moving slowly. They’d probably been trained to not exert themselves and waste air. “Arwen, we need to move fast, okay?”

  “It’s going to hurt?”

  “Probably for a few minutes, yeah.”

  “We in trouble?”

  “Yup.”

  “’Kay.”

  Miller grabbed the gurney and slowly moved it toward the broken window. He kept an eye on the group of men as they watched him. The mutual suspicion quickly became apparent and more than the lead man could bear. He broke into a run and the rest followed.

  Miller shoved the gurney inside the dealership, yanked open the rear door of the silver four-door sedan. He placed the unused oxygen tank on the backseat, twisted the valve open, and slammed the door shut. After opening the passenger’s door, he scooped Arwen up, tent and all. She let out a cry, but held on tight. He placed her in the front seat and said, “Stay there, I need to find the keys.”

  He jumped over the vomit-covered body of a gray-haired man in a suit and made for the service desk. He hadn’t yet reached it when he heard what sounded like an engine starting, but far more quiet. Remembering the car was electric, he spun around and saw the rear lights glowing red. The front window rolled down and Arwen shouted, “I had my foot on the brake, and pushed a button, and it started!”

  The window rose again as Miller made for the car. He remembered seeing a car that could be started by a push button as long as the key—a small transmitter—was within a certain radius. He stopped at the dead body, patted him down, and found a small device bearing the Tesla logo. He snatched it up, afraid the car would stop if it got too far away, and dove for the driver’s side door.

  After throwing himself into the front seat and slamming the door, Miller threw the car into drive and said, “Hold on!”

  The lead man of the mob reached the front of the store. He held a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, a compact, deadly weapon no civilian had any reason to own, and began raising it toward the car.

  15

  The Model S had surprising kick. Glass flung from beneath its squealing tires, peppering the Tesla storefront. With the glass clear, the tires caught the slick linoleum floor and left twin streaks of black as the car rocketed out of the dealership and directly toward the man wielding a submachine gun.

  As luck would have it, the gun-toting man had neither heard the nearly silent engine start nor recognized the Telsa brand. His eyes popped wide as Miller directed the silver missile toward him. The weapon lowered as he dove to the side.

  Beyond the man, the mob, which was in no danger of being run over, began raising an assortment of weapons. Miller glanced ahead. The dealership sat across from a T intersection. If they could make it to the straightaway directly across from them, they might just make it. But the death squad to their left was about to open fire. And unfortunately, car doors are not as impenetrable as the movies portray. Most bullets, especially the high-caliber variety this bunch carried, could rip right through a car door. Though he was directly in their sights, Miller didn’t duck or swerve. He simply pushed the Auto-down button on his window. While it lowered he took aim with his handgun and hoped the rest of the crew was as inexperienced and jumpy as their apparent leader. He squeezed off five rounds toward the group, not caring if he hit anyone or not. Miller watched as the group hit the pavement like his bullets had struck each and every one of them.

  As Miller put the window up, the car tore across the intersection and shot down the side street, reaching sixty miles per hour in five point six seconds—the same amount of time it took the window to go back up. Miller glanced in the rearview and saw the mob rushing into the dealership. They’d have vehicles soon, too.

  Miller turned left and pulled over. He turned to Arwen. “You okay?”

  She looked small and frail in the seat. She had her seat belt on over the white tent tarp, which was wrapped around her like a blanket. When she gave him a small smile he realized she could breathe.

  She noted his attention and said, “The air is okay. You opened the valve on the tank, remember?”

  Miller removed his face mask, leaned forward, and shook out of his clunky rebreather apparatus, which had pitched him forward in the seat. He twisted the air supply valves to Off and put the whole thing in the back. The air inside the car smelled strange, but it was breathable. The car had become a mobile oxygen tent.

  “We’re going to have to do some more fast driving. Might get bumpy.”

  She grimaced.

  Miller realized he should have taken some painkillers from the hospital. They’d probably been giving her morphine. He made a mental note to get
something for the pain if they escaped the city in one piece.

  Miller pulled away from the curb and wove his way through the city, avoiding bodies and the occasional abandoned vehicle as best he could. “We need to find the highway. Head north. Do you know your way around the city?”

  She looked at him with squinty eyes. “You know I’m twelve, right? I usually read while my parents drive.”

  “Right. I think I need to—”

  “What was that?” Arwen said, her voice tinged with fear.

  Miller glanced at her as he rounded a body. She was looking beyond him, out the driver’s side window. “What did you see?”

  “Something red. Two intersections down. Thought it was moving.”

  Miller picked up speed, steering past obstacles like the street was a slalom course. He had no doubt that the red she’d seen was one of the two red Tesla Roadsters that had been on display at the dealership. They were two-seat sports cars and no doubt faster than his four-door sedan.

  He turned right at the next intersection, hoping to put some distance between them and the red car. He glanced in the rearview after making the turn. The Roadster was cruising up behind them. One man drove, a second stood in the passenger’s seat, weapon at the ready.

  Miller pinned the gas pedal and shot forward. He did his best to avoid the bodies in the road, but knowing the bullets would hurt Arwen a lot more than bumps, he clipped a few arms and legs to maintain speed. He felt the tires spin whenever they hit a patch of rust flakes, like driving through sand, and adapted his driving to the conditions.

  As they passed through the next intersection a streak of red to his left caught his attention. He turned to find the second Roadster aiming to T-bone them. He had no time to think about how insane the act was—the morons in the Roadster would almost certainly die. He acted on instinct, twisting the sedan toward the oncoming car and throwing on the parking brake. The Model S spun quickly through the red dust, kicking up a cloud. Miller saw the surprised look on the face of the Roadster’s driver as the two cars came parallel to each other.