The Burn (7 page)

But where now? The topographical map says there is
nowhere else to go. I lean forward to peer up through the glass. I
smile. There is a sub dock right above me.

When I open the top hatch, light streams into my
eyes. Not strong light, just enough to illuminate everything around
me. I’m in a small room filled with shelves of supplies—tins and
pouches of food, first-aid supplies, folded clothes in neat stacks,
shoes, tools, and other random odds and ends. An air filter chugs
in one corner, its intake tubes reaching up and burrowing through
the rock ceiling. There must be some kind of natural air pocket up
there.

There is a door up ahead, the heavy kind that is on
one of the larger subs. It’s mounted to the rock wall. Light
streams through the chinks between rock and door. Not the wild
lights of the dance, or the pallid, white lights all around the
colony, but warm yellowish lights that almost feel like sunshine if
they had just been warmer. I hear voices on the other side—a jumble
of voices that changes every few seconds. Men, women, children all
talking over each other in muted tones. Who is on the other side of
that door?

I creep forward, ignoring the scritch-scratch my
shoes make on the rock. Gaea might be expecting me, but I still
don’t know what to expect from her, and I don’t want her surprising
me.

Before I heft the door open, I want a clue of what
I’m up against. I look around the door and see a gap between it and
the rock just wide enough for me to peek through. I lean my cheek
against the damp rock and peer through.

My eyes adjust for a second. The lights are brilliant
and warm. I blink. The wall to the left of the door is completely
devoted to a bank of probably thirty different monitors, all
showing different images. That is where the voices come from. The
people on those monitors talk to each other or to no one in
particular. All the images are from the same angle—just barely off
from directly overhead. Some of the monitors show image after image
changing in rapid succession, and others stay focused for minutes
at a time. Sitting on a simple metal folding chair in front of the
monitors is a woman with black hair streaked with gray that reaches
out in wild waves all the way down her back. She hunches over to
see some of the lower monitors, so from where I am, she looks like
an indistinct lump. Then she turns to the door and stares hard at
it with sharp, green eyes. I jump back.

“Don’t just stand there staring. Come in.”

I heave the door open. It scrapes along a groove worn
into the rock from the door being pulled open and closed time and
time again.

Gaea stands when I come in, and the indistinct shape
falls from her to reveal a tall, slender woman. She wears a long
colorful skirt, scuffed boots, and a loose shirt with long sleeves.
A head band keeps her unruly hair from her face and makes the hair
around the crown of her head look like a black and gray halo. Huge
earrings in the shape of elephants weigh down her earlobes. She has
smooth, copper skin with furrowed wrinkles at her eyes and around
her mouth. She smiles at me, and the smile is a dare to go through
with what I have been contemplating for I don’t know how long.

“So, Terra.”

Gaea gestures to a chair in a corner of the room.
I’ve never seen a chair like it before. It’s woven out of some kind
of wood. I run my fingers over it.

“Wicker.” Gaea has a mocking smirk on her mouth.
“Used to be a popular kind of furniture on the Burn.”

It creaks at me as I sit down. I rub my palms on the
arm rests.

“How did you get it?” I ask, the question I have for
just about everything I see around me.

“I brought it here,” she says, shrugging her
shoulders. She goes over to the other corner of the room. There’s a
bed there—a mattress shoved into a recess of rock—and a dresser. A
photo stands on one end of the dresser, but she turns it over
before I can see it and tucks it under her pillow. Then she grabs a
whistling tea pot off a burner.

“Coffee?”

“Real coffee, the kind with caffeine?” Has Mr. Klein
been here to have real coffee?

Gaea takes two mugs from a drawer and pours a packet
of dark crystals into each one. “The only kind of coffee. That
garbage in the colony shouldn’t be called coffee. Rint loves this.
He requests it every time he comes to see me.”

I have the feeling she is the kind of person I
shouldn’t ask too many questions of, but I can’t help myself.

“Does he come here a lot?”

She hands me a cup and sits down on the folding
chair. I’m about to take a sip when she stops me.

“Careful, you’ll burn your tongue clean off.” An odd
glint comes into her eyes, but she tempers it and looks back at me
with a shrug. “No temperature regulators.”

I watch as she blows into her cup. “And yes, Rint
comes when he can. Though his visits have been fewer lately. He and
I were anticipating you.”

“What do you mean?” Her presence is…I can’t find a
word for it. Almost ominous, like a bad omen. Of course that stuff
is all bogus Burn superstition, but I feel like it applies
perfectly to her.

I blow on my coffee, watching the small ripples float
across the surface and then hit the edge of the cup. I take a sip
and make a face. It is strong and bitter. I’ve never had
coffee—even in thcolony—and I wonder what all the fuss is about.
Gaea laughs, a short rasping sound in her throat.

“We wondered when you would finally want to escape
badly enough. So we limited our contact with each other. We didn’t
want anyone getting suspicious and stopping you.”

“Um, that was good of you.” I shift my weight
uncomfortably. How many other people noticed I was itching to
leave?

Gaea leans forward and puts a cold hand on my
arm.

“Don’t worry, all three of us have done our jobs
well. I don’t believe anyone knows you’re here.” She smiles, her
pink lips parting over white teeth.

“But they’ll know I’m gone soon.”

“Of course,” Gaea says, straightening up and the
smile ebbing. “And they’ll be searching the territory once they see
you’re no longer in the colony, and that will make getting to the
Burn very difficult.”

She sets down her mug and turns to the monitors. She
pulls a computer keyboard off one of them and sets it on her lap.
She clacks a few keys and the images on the screens begin to
change.

“Where’re you going?”

“The United States somewhere, I guess.” I watch the
monitors and try to see some pattern to the images there. Gaea
looks at one and shakes her head, types a few words and the image
changes. She does this over and over.

“Not what it’s now called, of course. But New America
may be a wise choice, given the current global climate.”

“The current climate?”

She smiles that unnerving, smirking smile. “Not
weather, of course. Politically. New America is the most stable
nation at the moment. Though that’s nothing to brag about, given
the way they’re enforcing the stability. Their citizens are
required to live in designated cities. Anyone found outside is
incarcerated in a labor camp. So many other nations broke out into
civil war after the Event and war with each other as well. I
suppose the relative peace in New America is admirable, but I
wouldn’t ask its citizens about it. You’d think something like this
would have brought everyone together, but sadly it didn’t. Too much
finger pointing, too much ‘I told you so’.”

“How long have you been down here?”

Gaea’s eyes flash to mine, something suddenly
shrouding the bitterness that sits so openly there. She looks back
to the monitors.

“A good while.”

There’s something she doesn’t want to tell me. She
turns her back, physically blocking any more questions. The images
on the monitors slow as she seems to be happy with what she’s
seeing.

“Where do these pictures come from?” I ask, waving my
hand at the monitors.

“Satellite images. Quite a few countries put up
satellites for several years before the Event. And you thought the
colony was the only one capable of invading people’s privacy? Bah!
The Burn isn’t the bliss you’ve conjured up in that head of yours,
Terra. They used these satellites as a way to watch people, track
movements, try to subdue terrorism and other dangerous activity.
And now I’m using them to keep tabs on what goes on up there. I
have twenty-eight monitors, but there’s probably two thousand or
more satellites floating around in space. But these are the only
monitors I could get.”

“Mr. Klein?”

Gaea is remiss to divulge all her secrets to me, but
she answers. “Yes, when those wasteful self-righteous...never mind.
When there’s extras, he tries to get them for me.”

“No wonder he knows so much about the Burn.” I gaze
at the images on the screens. Five of the screens focus on various
angles of rocky beach with brown-green water pounding the shore.
Skeletons of buildings huddle under the sky. It is raining at this
place, and a gray mist settles over the rocks. I’ve been longing
for the sun, but even this looks magical.

“The Washington coast.” Gaea gestures at the
monitors. “I was thinking perhaps Arizona, but someone soft from
the colony wouldn’t last two days this time of year. Washington was
one of the United States. Now there is only the federal government
and all states have been dissolved, and they’re calling themselves
New America. This may be a good place to start. Bigger coast cities
like Los Angeles and San Francisco were heavily targeted by the
bombs and obliterated, and I haven’t been able to see many
survivors. But there seems to be more in this area. There will be
shelter among the trees, and lots of wildlife.”

I snap my head up. “Wildlife?”

I hadn’t thought about the animals that may be out
there. There will be animals that could kill me if they wanted
to.

The corner of Gaea’s mouth raises up. “Yes, wildlife,
but what is that to a daughter of a man? Shouldn’t man subdue all
the beasts? But not to worry. I’ll give you a few weapons. And if
you’re smart, you’ll find a group of survivors quickly and figure
out a way to make them trust you. It’s summer, so they should be
out instead of hunkered down to outlast the winter.”

My stomach clenches up. What am I getting myself
into? But Gaea doesn’t give me much time for introspection. She
pulls a map off of a shelf and spreads it out on the floor.

“This is Washington. You see the way the ocean cuts
into the land here?”

I nod.

“You’ll follow that and then down here to what’s
called the Puget Sound. You can land anywhere along here. I don’t
know if I’d go for the city of Seattle right away. It’s a
designated city for the citizens and you need to get a feel for the
area and any hostilities.”

“Hostilities? Is it still a war zone?” I am more
nervous with every minute of this conversation.

“Were you expecting all sunshine and daisies? I think
you’ll find that most people will be hostile toward a stranger. And
you are a stranger. We’ve been down here for a hundred years, and
things will be very different for you up there. And there’s general
anger and distrust of things that are unknown.”

“Do they know about the colonies? Is that why?” I
rock back on my heels and wrap my arms around my legs. Despite the
warmth from the lights, I start to feel cold.

Gaea’s eyes glimmer with shards of light. “Yes, they
know. They realized what was going on just before the Event. I
don’t blame them for being angry that all the best minds abandoned
them—more or less left them with little hope of sorting things out
on their own. That was one of the things that escalated the
conflict. Though you won’t find your father ever telling anyone
that.”

She spits the word
father
with such vehemence
that I shudder. Once again her eyes cloud over. She continues as if
nothing happened.

“They hate us for it.”

“Oh.” I want to escape the colony for a world where I
may be eaten by an animal and everyone will most likely hate me.
Gaea notices my sudden quiet and reaches out a long, slender hand
on my own. Her skin is dark on my white. Just like Jessa’s skin.
The sudden reminder of my sister brings tears.

“It’s okay, I was just thinking about my sister. Can
I ever come back?”

“Out of the question. I’ll program your sub to return
here after you land. It would be too dangerous for everyone down
here for people up there to come. They’re too angry. Right now
there isn’t a way for the people on the Burn to find us, but there
will be some day and I think it’s best not to speed that up, but to
let it happen by itself.”

Why does she want to protect the colonies? Gaea
stands up, brushing off her skirt. She motions me up. She turns on
a burner like we use in chemistry and puts something metal on
it.

“Which reminds me. There’s one promise you have to
make.”

“Promise?” I remember what she said on the computer.
Sacrifice.

“You can never speak of the colonies to anyone up
there. Ever.”

“Where do I tell them I come from?”

“You’ll have to make something up, something
believable. But if you love your sister and want to protect her,
you can’t ever speak of us. There hasn’t been enough time between
the Event and the present. Emotions are still too raw. If they knew
there was a colonist among them, knew that you could somehow take
them here, things will be so much worse for you and for us. Do you
understand?”

Never speak of this life to anyone? Never even
mention Jessa? Those are the memories I prize most—memories with
her, doing nothing, talking, singing, laughing. The only fun I ever
managed to have in the colony was with her. Because of her. And now
that part of me will be buried forever.

“Terra, do you understand?”

Gaea has a look of knowing in her eyes, and my temper
flares. How can she know what I feel?