Read Online The Burn by Annie Oldham - Free Book Online

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.