Free The Burn by Annie Oldham Page B

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