Save a Life

Heyna had entered the Dead Zone.

The landscape was barren and cracked, the soil so red, heavy with sulfuric compounds it would seemingly bleed when the rains, merciful as they were rare, hailed from the firmaments above. Heyna licked her blistered lips to taste the cinereal dust that coated her, her bike and everything that surrounded her near and far. The tip of her tongue stung sharply - Hexavalent Chromium and Cadmium alloys singed her nerve receptors.

She sighed out heavily, all the weight of precarious existence bearing down on her shoulders.

"Fuck.", she hissed.

She would need to seek out a soothsayer once she reached the colony, having been exposed to  hazardous levels of carcinogens. Again.

Heyna pulled out a filthy, sodden rag from a side pouch and dabbed her forehead, neck and the valley of her breasts to absorb the sweat exuding from her pores.

Waste nothing. That was the one and only commandment when scouring the wastelands. It often made the difference between life and death, even if it meant ingesting pollutants.

Twisting the cloth in her iron vice grip, she extracted the precious liquid and collected it in a glass vial. Once every droplet had oozed out of the tattered rag, she sucked on it to dampen her parched, ashen mouth.

Now she would explore the region.

Heyna edged closer to what was seemingly a rim, a border of sorts, blown out in the cracked, sterile earth. Rancid vapors bloated the skies, rising from the pit and rich with heavy metals and salts.

Reaching the perimeter of the rent, breached hole, sands slipping towards the succeeding darkness, her eyes widened at the sight before her. Water deriving from aquifers deep below the earth's surface had pooled at the very bottom of the vast solfatara that spiraled downwards like a Dantesque infernal circle. And it was bubbling, frothing, over-boiling with roiling heat. Men had already dug here and found the precious resource to be unfit for humans, hence abandoning the crater.

Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

She was careful in her steps, lest she lose her footing and slide down within the open chasm that would devour her like the gaping mouth that led straight to Gehenna.

Cinders were still burning within the charboiled crevices of the earth, pulsing with dying cadence. Burning winds of boiling sentience swept up from those forbidden depths and coiled about her frame, ripping at her woolen hood and clothing as if to taunt her into despair. But Heyna was no fool, she had come bloodied and screaming into this festering world and the Fates be damned if she would allow visions such as these to drown her in anguish.

Heyna was tough. Her skin was burned from overexposure to the sun, her grin was rakish. Heyna had been tempered in molten rock, cast in iron and forged in steel. She had witnessed the demise of humanity, watched the seas rise and swallow up nations, seen the sixth great mass extinction unfold before her. Nothing could scathe her branded heart.

Heart.

Her fingers subconsciously glided up to touch the gold pendant that hung around her neck, a heart-shaped locket, the last gift her Nana had bestowed upon her. The mannerism had become a part of her, it was as instinctual as breathing.

Heyna moved on. It was pointless to search for water in this hellscape.

The day came to a close as the sun's last rays caught her eyes, lighting them up in golden hues, the reflection upon the double glazed soldering goggles amplifying the brightness she held within herself. Heyna's gaze drank in the scene, her swollen lips softly parted and her sunburnt features now engulfed with orange, just before the sun dipped into the void. It was both beautiful and tragic.

The world veered off into pink and then blue began to wash over the skies in swathes. Eventide was upon her. The air out in these badlands was so rarefied that temperatures would soon drop to below zero and what little humidity there was would soon settle and crystallize.

Heyna could no longer ignore the impelling need to set up camp for the night. She would light no fires though, they were as treacherous as they were inviting.  Light out here in these plains could travel for kilometers on end and she knew full well the dangers that lurked in the shadows.

Drifters. Bandits. Ravagers. Miscreants constantly prowled the lands for easy meat.

"Tomorrow.", she rasped to herself as she huddled close to her bike, reveling in the heat radiating off the exhaust pipe, hoping nobody would seek her out.

Wrapping herself up in a thick woolen fleece, she cocked up her trusty rifle, finally allowing herself the liberty of closing her tired eyes.

Tomorrow was another day.

Heyna knelt down to examine the earth, dragging his fingertips over the surface, noting how it was more ash and dust than anything else.

Rubbing her thumb and forefinger, she just barely licked a finger tip. The dust was bitter to the taste. Coppery. Ferrous. It held traces of nitrogenous compounds, like Hydrogen Cyanide and residual radioactive particles.

Acting on impulse, she spat viciously in order to rid herself of the contaminants and she slid on her gas mask once more, watching bitterly as the greedy earth absorbed her saliva. It was an unfortunate sacrifice, but she had no other choice this time.

The earth here too was corrupted and polluted, raped and plundered. It stretched as far as the naked eye could see, past the horizon where the curvature of the Earth slid out of reach and dipped under that infinite line that demarcated the stark contrast between soil and sky.

Dead end.

Heyna's keen pupils contracted sharply. Off in the distance, dust devils danced in chaotic vortices, lifting up debris. Though they seemed harmless, they were an insidious portent.

To get caught in their wake meant certain death. They were powerful enough to rip the equipment off one's face. Once a human breathed in the fine ashes that befouled the lands, it was only a matter of time before the effects of those radioactive particles began to destroy the fine architecture of the internal organs.

If one was unfortunate, they would develop tumors in the soft spongy tissue of the lungs. Or blood vessels. It would be a slow, agonizing death as the excrescences gradually swelled within the body. Within hours, the tissues would begin to blister and burn. After roughly ten days, the lungs and internal organs would malfunction and collapse. Better a bullet to the head at that point.

But the dust-devils were far off, perhaps 6-7 kilometers give or take considering the atmospheric conditions. Hereyes lingered on their passage upon the Earth. Eyes so bright they reflected the heavenly vault above. Everything was dead out here, nothing survived.

Or almost.

A few contorted shrubs had managed to make this place their home. Cacti. Succulents. It was rare, but it was possible to encounter them along this grueling journey. It never ceased to amaze Heyna how nature managed to survive even in such brutal, inhospitable conditions. Though she was surrounded by bleakness, it gave her hope to know that nature still found a way to survive.

Tomorrow was another day.

The pools here were plentiful, but they were also laden with salts. She would need to take a sample to be examined back at the Colony. But Heyna was clearly not alone, someone else skulked these lagoons too in search of nutrients, a human dragging himself vainly towards the waters for a drink.

"Better take 'im out, just in case.", she grunted to herself.

Silently, she lay down upon the crystallized grounds in predatory portent, safe in the knowledge that light here bounced off of her like a mirror, disguising her completely.

Cocking up the weapon, she cracked open an eyelid and her surroundings became tinged with a hellish, hallucinatory green marked with a cross.

The disturbance suddenly hit her with clarity and she faltered. Sharp, dark shadows were cast from the blazing midday sun upon his tiny frame, highlighting the details. He was so thin. Thin to the point of severe malnutrition. Emaciation. The peaks of his hips were jaunty, jutting out violently under his sullied robes, his thighs hardly even the width of her arms.

But what caused her synapses to fault in distress, was that he was merely a boy. Ten. Maybe twelve at best. Someone must have abandoned him out here, possibly nomads, drifting endlessly from one settlement to another.

Slowly, she lowered her rifle, frowning, her qualms utterly failing her. To take him out would be a kindness, but she lacked the heart to do it.

Heart.

Idiosyncratic gesture.

Heyna touched the locket and it calmed her flailing nerves.

Swirling within the recesses of her mind, were memories rising powerful in force.

Nana's words...

Revving up her bike, the engine roared into life and she mounted without a second thought. She didn't want to think nor feel. Ashen faced, the boy watched her leave, his expressions broken.

The road to salvation stretching behind and before her never felt longer. Her Nana's words kept echoing in her mind, bouncing off the walls of her skull.

“Whoever saves one life saves the world entire, my child.”

Heyna shook her head angrily. Her rations and provisions were almost completely depleted. Water was worth more than gold and there were only so many times she could recycle her own piss to survive.

She was faced with a dilemma, a catch twenty-two. Go back on her tracks. Find the boy and do everything within her capabilities to bring him back to the safety of the Colony, conscious of the inherently high risk that they could easily both die. Or, allow her own soul to whither with the condemnation of having abandoned him to his inevitable destiny.

He's a dead weight, she told herself.

The winds whipped savagely at her face, taunting her as she sped over the great salt lakes.

Men die all the time out her, she tried to convince herself.

Boy. Not man, she corrected herself.

"Fuck it."-she spat savagely.

Downshifting on the gears, Heyna abruptly spun the bike around and followed the beaten track that led back to the lagoon.

The colossal industrial plant stood bleakly against the setting of the sun, vapor towers reaching for the crying skies tainted with bizarrely eccentric colors. The entire framework of the plant was on the brink of collapsing.

Heyna noticed discarded metal piping strewn here and there, corroding with rust, as her bike trundled along towards the carcass of the factory. She followed the myriad of salt saturated footsteps. The boy had taken refuge here and she had followed.

Reaching the gates of a side entry, she twisted the key of her bike and it smoothly died down, halting with a tired sigh. Stepping from the scrambler, lifting dust in her wake, she made her way to the fence, barbed wire glinting in the last light of the day.

An emblematic sign with the words Warning - Hazardous Chemicals upon it caused Heyna to hack out a dry, blighted laugh. Ironic, since the whole world was contaminated.

"See, there's Orion. Orion shines the brightest in spring."-she uttered softly, pointing up to the infinite velvet sky. It was truly something wondrous to bathe under starlight, gazing up into that boundless continuum traversed by the bright vastness of the spiral galaxy, hundreds of thousands of light years away - just barely visible at the horizon was the central bulge and halo, the mosaic drawn by billions of blazing suns and black holes and cosmic dust, all wrapped together, bound under the ultimate radial force of gravitation.

The boy lay huddled closely to her, searching for bodily warmth, stars mirrored in his inquisitive eyes, brow all furrowed, mouth parting in wonder at her words.

"What's your name?"-she asked gently, fidgeting with the locket.

"Jericho."