Our Dying Breath

Chapter 1

The landscape flying by the train's window was alien. A massive inhospitable desert with no natural life, complete with scorching heat, towering mountain ranges, unbelievably deep valleys and volcanic activity. I’d never seen it before...no one had. But I had to get through it. I had to find him.

It happened 150 years ago. The Event they called it. Nobody knows why it happened, and if anybody used to know, they were all gone now. Earth’s magnetic field went haywire and began to disappear. Over time a lot of the atmosphere stripped away, the oxygen percentage dropped, life started dying off, and with nothing to hold it in, the oceans began to disappear. Imagine that, the thing that has always been synonymous with the earth...made our little blue marble special and quite frankly the only reason we’re here…just gone.

Anyway, what happened to us? You guessed it, the same thing that always happened in every fantastical Hollywood yarn we watched and every far fetched sci-fi novel we read; shit hit the fan and society crumbled. Honestly there’s no way we could have avoided it. Mass extinction, governments fell, law and order gone, anyone that made it through that fighting everyday to survive. And survive they did, albeit, in giant glass domes few and far between spread across the globe. Estimates put the population of the earth now at just 20 million. The domed cities are where we primarily set up shop, but there is still air out there...just not much of it. When we do venture outside, we need oxygen with us. And it doesn’t come cheap or plentiful.

Fast forward back to the present. You’re probably wondering who I am, and how I ended up in a train riding through what sounds like an alien planet. My name's Vero. At least that’s what I go by now. It’s somewhere I used to live. I was 8 years old when my dad left. He’s an agricultural engineer. A profession that became immensely important when most of the habitable land on your planet suddenly becomes unusable. There was an underwater high speed train that went across what used to be the Atlantic Ocean. My dad was one of the last people who used it before it was destroyed as a result of the mostly missing ocean it used to be suspended in. It was always just me and my dad, my mother had died years ago when I was too young to remember. When he was called away to help one of the other domed cities in Europe, he left me with some family friends, and he gave me something. Something to comfort me, and remind me he’s still there and he still loves me, and that he’s always with me. Something that was now the only link I had to him. We couldn’t communicate across the Atlantic desert. Whatever means of communication there used to be that spanned the distance between continents had also been lost. What he gave me was a locket. Heart shaped, silver that has since lost its luster but still beautiful at least to me, and a small photo inside. It was a photo of him. He kept the same locket with a picture of me in it. There was an engraving inside the lid.

“There is no fear in love…”

One of his favorite quotes; it came from his old bible that was one of the few possessions I still had. It was his way of telling me I didn’t have to be afraid. And as long as he loved me and I loved him, and as long as he had his locket too, I didn’t have to be afraid. Of course I was scared, but I tried not to let fear dictate my life. I couldn’t afford to. It has been my hope. It’s been 6 years since he left. This last gift that he gave his little girl...has kept me going.

The situation he left me in lasted only a couple of years, and left me fending for myself on the streets. Law and order was hard to come by in the poorer districts of the cities. Here I am, 6 years later, having survived long enough to make enough coin to purchase a spot in the very dangerous trek across the Atlantic. And it was by no means a guarantee that anyone would indeed make it. They say most attempts end in failure; that only a few people have been able to make the journey. It’s not just the unpredictable landscape. There are a few stops along the way...barely functioning, and forgotten stations for the train to stop and re-supply. But these places were the wild west, violence ran rampant, and many people simply don’t have what's required to make it through these places. And if the train left you there...there was no going back.

Yet, here I was sitting on the train to nowhere, alone, not a friend in sight, trekking through hell to find my long lost father. There were probably a couple dozen people on the train. As I looked around I saw people alone, people in groups, young, old and everything in between. Some looked wealthy and some looked downright poor and desperate. I guess I was in that latter group. The train was about five cars in length and there was a small supply store in the first car where of course they charged two arms and a leg for everything there. I decided to head up there and see what they had.

I approached the counter as I was looking around. As I’d suspected, any item I looked at was easily 5 times the price it should have been. As my forlorn expression passed across the rough looking woman’s gaze behind the counter I thought I’d poke the bear.

“Any chance I can get outta here without giving you all of my limbs?” I casually commented.

All I got in return was a low growl from the woman. At least she set the bar pretty low on the friendly meter. Anybody else would have to be more personable I thought to myself attempting to raise my spirits.

I heard a chime across the loudspeakers, they were about to make an announcement. I knew we should be coming up on our first stop of the journey. It was in someplace that used to be a tropical island called the Bahamas. People used to go there on vacation. Now it was only a stop along the way, and no more tropical than the desert wasteland below and around it. It’s ok, there were supposed to be quite a few stops on the long journey.

“Attention travelers, we are approaching our first port on this trip. Please gather your belongings and prepare to disembark.” a robotic voice informed us.

I figured I would just wait for the people to offload and others to possibly get on and continue on my way. I went back up to the woman behind the counter since I didn’t seem to see anybody else official looking around.

“Ma’am, how long is this stop and how long until we get to the next port?” I asked.

The woman stared at me with a dead look in her eyes before responding. With a laugh of all things.

“Haven’t ya heard? There’s no more stops. This is the end of the line. The tracks were destroyed some time ago about 50 miles ahead somewhere ‘round Devils Pit.

It hit me like a punch to the gut. It couldn’t be. It was impossible, wasn’t it?

I wandered off the train and took in my surroundings. A much smaller city dome than where I’d come from. I could see beyond it, right down Main Street, and through the glass. I ran to the end of the road and tentatively placed my shaky hands on the glass and gazed out into the wasteland beyond.