dystopianapocalypse  ... April Contest ... Prompt: What's it like to live in the last city on earth? ... (500-1000 max.)

Heavy.

Dark.

Suffocating.

Rattled through my thoughts. I hadn't even opened my eyes yet, but I was already weighed down. Exhausted.

Like all the other survivors of the Great Reckoning, my blood ran thick and slow through my veins. The red and white blood cells slogging into one another like inebriated racers in a pool of cold molasses. The blood flow was too slow and so too was my breathing.

Each breath was laboured. My lungs expanded like arthritic joints, haltingly and painfully, as each cavity was filled with dense polluted air despite the Enviro Mask I wore even in sleep. It was meant to filter out the worst elements in the little bit of O2 there was left to inhale, but it did a poor job. It wasn't designed to deal with half the pollutants that were now in the air. Gone were the days when phrases like light as air meant anything.

I stumbled out of my bunk as if I were a paralytic who had just received the use of her legs. This morning I caught myself on the cold cement wall before I could tumble to the floor. Pressing my forehead to the cool cinder block, I shut my eyes momentarily while waiting for the pounding in my head to recede. My symptoms were getting more severe by the day.

"Meeka?" a muffled voice called.

"Go back to sleep," I cooed. There was no need for anyone else to get up right now.

"I'll help you," I heard her offer.

Sighing, I let it go. I needed the help these days. Moving my lead limbs in the morning took all my limited strength and determination. Forward motion was the most difficult to achieve, but, once I got a rhythm going, my movements more closely mimicked the living than the dead. It just took longer to get to that point now.

Tsu grabbed me by the arm and lead me to the wash basin that she and I shared with eight other female bunk-mates.

"Meeka," she asked, "are you on the perimeter today?"

I just nodded. Talking was too much effort. I'd already broke into a cold sweat just crossing the room and my bunk was the closest to the basin.

Tsu helped me undress, wash and climb into my yellow hazmat suit and black rubber boots. When did it start to take two people to dress me? I wanted to laugh but laughing stole my breath and killed my lungs.

As I stepped through the door, Tsu half sang out, "Come back alive."

I frowned. It was a thoughtless farewell.

Going Topside meant facing a hostile environment with unknown air-born dangers. The Great Reckoning had brought down the Artificial Ozone that once blanketed the entire globe. When the AO was gone, ground-level ozone grew swiftly to toxic levels as the sun scorched the earth.

It took nearly ten years before survivors understood how dangerous the air was becoming. Yet, it wasn't until the air turned so dark it was like living in a dry, hot fog, day in and day out, that people became ill. By the time the poisonous smog blocked out the sun permanently, survivors began dropping dead without warning.

People sought refuge thousands of meters underground in old lead lined bunkers that were a throw back to an age long past. They called this new home Bunker City. And it was there that the survivors tapped into a cold water supply that ran between the lithosphere and asthenosphere a hundred kilometers below the earth's surface. They used Geo-thermal technology to power Bunker City and quickly developed methods to appropriate clean oxygen from the mantle-deep water.

Only, they couldn't extract enough to purify the existing air circulating in Bunker City. This meant survivors still had to wear their EMs day and night.

But, the air Topside was 10 times more lethal than underground. Anyone who went on Perimeter Duty risked not coming back. If the conditions were right and the toxicity levels were high enough, well, a slag like me could just drop dead.

                                                               *****

My partners, Scab and Deacon, met me at the lift. There were a dozen other survivors in hazmat suits of varying colours on the industrial elevator. The colours represented designations. Yellow was for the grunt crew. There were fewer and fewer of us these days.

When we exited the lift and headed for our gear lockers, Scab draped his arm casually over my shoulder and said, "Glad to see you could make it, Meeka."

Deacon huffed out a disgruntled "You're late."

I just nodded at them both. I was too tired to do anything more.

On went our instrument belts and our rucksacks, which were full of useless enviro-tools used for testing air quality, soil quality, levels of moisture in the air and soil, and any number of other things.

The testing was pointless. Even if we knew exactly what was in the air and soil, we were powerless to fix the problem. Bunker City was all that was left of the human race and there weren't enough labourers, technicians, and scientists between us to solve this environmental disaster.

Still, everyone pretended our work meant something. The people of Bunker City were eager to embraced the lie that there was hope. I might have scoffed at them but I needed the consistent work to get myself moving in the mornings. Without the routine, I would just become another living stiff lying on a cot 3000 meters below, who was just bidding her time until she eventually succumbed to asphyxiation.

"Ready?" Deacon asked me with just a hint of concern.

I gave a curt nod.

Scab grinned at us both in his cheerful way and pushed open a heavy mental door that led us directly into the dark greenish atmosphere typical of Topside.

The atmosphere today was excessively heavy.

Dark.

Suffocating.

My monitors went haywire. This used to freak me out. It didn't anymore.

(993)