Free After Earth by Christine Peymani Page A

breathing fluid,” my dad insisted.
    As another coughing fit threatened to overtake me, I realized that he was right—I was already struggling to breathe. But I wasn’t going to let him see the trouble I was in, not if I could help it. “I’m good, Dad. I don’t need it right now.”
    If I could hold out just a little bit longer with each vial, maybe I could stretch them out enough to make it to the ship’s tail. There were probably med kits there, where I could get more breathing fluid for the trip back. I tried not to think about how much worse the crash had probably been for the tail section of the ship, how there might not be any usable med kits left.
    I expected my dad to argue, but he just said, “Okay.”
    It felt like my chest was being crushed, and I kind of wished he would yell at me to take the next vial until I had no other choice. Then it wouldn’t be my fault if I ran out before completing my mission.
    Except that it would be, of course, since I was the one who had somehow shattered the vials. And I would die just as surely if I ran out of oxygen a little farther down the road as I would if I did it right now. I struggled to draw in a breath, coughing and wheezing as I did. The coughs built, racking my whole body.
    I understood why they said Earth could no longer support human life. We couldn’t breathe here without supplementing the oxygen supply. All these plants and animals had somehow adapted, but it seemed like a fair bet that humans would have just died out when our air supply tanked before we ever had a chance to evolve. I had never thought about breathing before—who does, when we do it automatically, every moment of our lives? But now it was all I could think about, and despite my efforts to conceal my pain, I doubled over. I stared at the vials, knowing that I could end my suffering now, but the thought that these few extra moments might make a difference in whether or not I survived kept me from doing it.
    Finally, I couldn’t hold out any longer. I pulled out the second vial of breathing fluid and inhaled it. Soon my labored breathing eased enough for me to say, “Second dose of breathing fluid complete.”
    â€œCount off remaining so you can keep track.” Maybe I imagined it, but I thought he sounded satisfied. As if he sat there, quiet, to teach me some kind of lesson. I couldn’t tell him that I was low on breathing fluid. He would never let me keep going, and I knew I couldn’t stop.
    So I choked out a lie. “Four vials remain, sir.” He didn’t call me on it.
    I ducked into the musty hollow of a rotting tree, wanting to hide from a cluster of strange creatures. It was a good thing too, because I’d only just taken cover when the sky burst open, pouring down the hardest rain I’d ever seen. The tree offered some shelter, but not enough to completely protect me from the rain’s stray splashes and spatters.
    Shivering and exhausted, I looked up at the giant leaves above me and saw a bee caught in a spiderweb. It tried to escape, making the gossamer thread that held it tremble. A spider bigger than my fist rushed down the web and started further entangling its prey.
    I wasn’t scared of much, but I was scared of spiders, and I almost looked away right then. But the bee was still fighting, and I hoped it would win.
    When the bee stopped struggling, the spider seemed unable to find it, blind as an Ursa without fear to guide it. I watched as the spider went in for the kill, its venomous fangs bared—but then the bee snapped to life once more, stinging the spider again and again. It was wild, and savage—and amazing. The spider made its sluggish way to the center of its web to die, while the bee, still tethered by the web, gave up trying to escape and died too. Maybe it was just because I was tired and lonely, but the whole thing struck me as such a tragic waste. Was that what we were doing as