Breaking Point

BREAKING POINT

By Douglas Gurske

Part I

For eighteen years I have lived in this world, and for eighteen years this world has been a giant toaster oven. Sometimes I would get told stories by the older folk about how beautiful the sun was and how amazing it's warmth could be, but the younger ones told different stories, horror stories of how it would roast you, cook you until your blood began to literally boil, and you'd die a horrible, agonizing death.

No one knows why the sun did what it did; all we do know is that it happened, and that the surface was no longer capable of supporting life. I survived because not long after I was born my parents managed to put me into an underground shelter. It was of a modest size, consisting of around seventy people. It had power generators to provide electricity, and dehydrators to keep the area more comfortable and to easily get us drinking water from the damp air.

We had a problem, and a big one. The food supplies ran out. We were going to starve soon. When the shelter was first set up, some kind of shipping mistake meant that while we had equipment to grow our own food, we only got massive amounts of canned process foods. Now that I was eighteen, I was going to get the pleasure of venturing outside the shelter for the first time in my life in an attempt to keep my community from starving.

When I stepped out of my apartment that day I felt like I was naked. Instead of dressing normally, I had to prepare for the heat of the outside world, which meant that I had to go with the least amount of clothing as possible. Only the bare essentials: a mask to cover my mouth, some goggles to protect my eyes, light footwear, and some shorts. There had been some debate over whether covering up more skin would be a better idea, so as to keep the sun's rays from getting into direct contact with it, but we had decided against it.

As I walked through our community I kept to myself. Many of the albino skinned residents didn't even look at me. I never got along with them. My parents died in the process of getting me into the shelter, and I never fit in well with everyone else, except for one exception.

"Michael!" I was greeted by a lovely face, one I was more than happy to see. Lexie, wearing the same get-up as I was with the exception of an extra piece to cover her top, ran up to me and we hugged. We had been best friends for most of our lives and we had been a couple since our teens. Considering she, Dan, and I were the only ones around my age in this small community we were extremely lucky to have each other. She had the most beautiful smile, as well as straight brown hair as opposed to my brown mess. Like everyone else in the community lately she's lost some weight, serving as a reminder to how important our efforts today would be.

"Well today is the big day, isn't it?" She said.

I couldn't think of a response other then a simple "Yeah."

She gave me a concerned look, "Hey, don't worry about it, we'll be fine. Dan knows his way around outside, we all know our way around guns, and we know not to go too far out." She then got out her old pistol and handed it to me. It was old and worn, and the metal had grown dull. A pitiful little object, you almost wouldn't expect how easy it would be to take a life with it. I couldn't help cringing a bit as I took it. "I know it bothers you, but if something happens and you've got to use it, you've got to use it. Okay?" She said.

"I'm not going to use it." I reflexively responded, which was clearly not the right choice of words.

Lexie grabbed me and looked straight into my eyes, "Don't tell me that, if you have to, you will. It's not just yourself you need to think about, what if Dan gets in danger, what about me?"

"You can handle yourself."

"What if I can't?"

She meant it. Could I protect her? Could I do what was necessary if it came down to it? I'm a pacifist. I've vowed to never harm another living being. After all, how could we afford to harm others when the world was in its current state? Pain was something I would never wish upon anyone.

Before I could respond with a comment about how we didn't even know of any life out there, let alone any that could pose a threat, Dan walked over to us and spoke. He was several years older then me and was much taller, standing at what must have been seven feet. He also had messy black hair, a rough beard, small nose, and was rather lanky.

"You two ready? Survival kits? Gun?" I showed him the pistol Lexie gave me, as well as my survival kit. The survival kit was basically a small pack that we could carry over our shoulders with some bare essentials: bandages, painkillers, two water bottles, and the like. Lexie also showed him her survival kit and her gun. While I got a pistol she had an SMG. It was really, really old, and originally was used by the Germans in World War II, which was over one hundred years ago now. Dan nodded in approval, "Good. So when are we leaving?"

Lexie then spoke up, "We can leave right away, after I've said goodbye to my mom. Just wait here a second." She gave me a kiss, and then hurried off.

"Listen Mike," Dan said to me once Lexie was gone. "I know we've had a bad history, but none of that matters right now. What really matters, what's really important, is that we get back before the sun roasts all of us. I know I've been a bit of a bully when we were younger, I understand why you've avoided me. I'm sorry for what I did."

This was a pleasant surprise of attitude from him. "Apology accepted." I told him.

He smiled and continued. "I want to promise you one thing: I will get both of you back home safe, okay? We've already lost four scouts, and neither you nor Lexie will get added to that list."

"Lexie can take care of herself."

"She's not the one I'm concerned about."

Before I could come up with a response to that, Lexie returned and cut in. "Okay, let's do this."

Part II

The large metal door screeched as Dan pushed it open. The brightness of the world outside was blinding, and when my eyes adjusted I could see... absolutely nothing. Just a lot of sand with some cacti, all illuminated by a light from the sky I assumed was coming from the mythical beast known as the sun.

"Brace yourselves!" Daniel said as he put on his goggles and raised his mask over his mouth. "This isn't going to be fun."

Lexie and I put on our goggles and face masks, and followed Dan outside. We both yelped the moment the sun's hellish rays hit our skin. The pain, oh God the pain... It burned so intensely, I started to sweat, my eyes started to water, and my breathing got much heavier. The wind then started to pick up and I found my lower half pelted with a barrage of sand, each piece feeling like the prick of a rusty needle. "Told you it wouldn't be fun! Remember, walk, don't run, but walk fast. We can't survive out here forever."

So we travelled out into the desert of horrible pain and misery. Some time went by, and other then the twisted shells of rotted buildings off far, far into the distance, nothing could be found other then more hills. The pain from the sun didn't let up; it wasn't like a hot bath where you got used to it, or cold where you went numb. My skin simply kept searing with pain. I looked over to Lexie and I could see how bruised her legs were becoming from the inconsistent and erratic barrage of sand, which also brought further attention to my own legs, which were suffering the same fate.

After taking a generous swig from my water bottle, I tried striking up a conversation with her to get my mind off of the pain. "So Lexie, when we get back triumphantly with the food, how do you think we should celebrate?"

She barely looked towards me as she responded, "Assuming we actually do find any..."

Daniel then spoke up. "Don't talk like that! Remember that our shelter isn't the only one. There is sure to be another one out here that probably has been producing its own food just like we should have been." He took a drink from his water bottle. "We just need to share food with them and get some seeds." His words seemed to calm Lexie down considerably.

I waited for a bit longer then pressed Lexie with the same question, trying to lighten the mood. She smiled a bit, and gave me a rather different response from what I was expecting. "Well... perhaps we could... you know... have a little fun?" I knew what she really wanted.

"No, we can't raise a kid. Not in a world like this. What kind of life would we be putting it through? For what reason?" We lived in a small community after all, most of which was getting to be rather elderly.

She quickly responded with, "Well I thought we turned out alright." I could detect the hurt in her voice and felt horrible. We had turned out alright, hadn't we?

Just before I managed to tell her that I would be willing to discuss it further when we were back at home, I was startled when I heard Daniel shout with joy. "Oh my God, we're not alone!" He pointed to a distant hill. I had to try and smear the sweat off of my goggles to make out what he was pointing at. I could see a small black speck, which must have been it. Daniel ran forward waving his arms. "Hey! Over here! Thank God we found you! I knew we wouldn't be alone out he-"

I bent over in pain as I heard an obscenely loud bang and a massive gash appeared in my arm. I didn't know what it was, but something small went through it horizontally. I got my answer when I looked up and saw Dan. His body was lying back in the sand, the relieved expression still etched in his face with a bullet hole right between his eyes. The black speck was a sniper, and the object that went through my arm was a bullet.

I jumped down to the ground to make myself a harder target as Lexie got out her MP-40, switched it to semi-auto and let off four shots in the sniper's direction. I quickly grabbed my survival kit and took out a large bandage which I wrapped around my wound to help stop the blood from continuing to pour out. It would require medical attention, and fast.

"I think I got him!" Lexie breathed out with a sigh of relief. Her smile quickly faded, as did mine when we heard the screams. The dead sniper found itself replaced with a large mob of others, all screaming obscenities at us, and all armed.

"Get down!" I yelled as I grabbed her arm and pulled her down to the ground with me.

"We can't just stay here!" She said, pulling herself back up.

I looked at my pistol still in its holster. Eight shots, please God don't make me use them...

She set her weapon to full-auto and emptied the rest of the magazine the hostiles' way, and threw the gun to the ground as soon as she heard the click of an empty magazine.

"Run!" she yelled as she pulled me up by my ripped open arm. We sprinted as fast as we could back towards where we came. The horrific pain I was experiencing, now intensified by my wound, was pure torture, but that couldn't stop me. No, what stopped me was my poor footing as soon as our path went downward. I tripped and fell, bringing Lexie down with me. We both rolled down the sandy slope, desperately trying to stop our momentum. I thankfully just managed to stop myself just short of a head-on collision with a saguaro cactus. My survival kit was wrecked, but my God-forsaken handgun survived the tumble.

I gasped in pain as I once again found Lexie pulling my arm, this time dragging me over to a circular piece of rusted metal in the ground. "I think we'll be safe through here! God I hope we'll be safe through here..." She gasped out. I helped her to the best of my abilities to remove the cylinder, grunting in pain. We both then grabbed onto a ladder inside and climbed down, Lexie taking care to replace the cover after us.

Part III

The moment the cover was closed, I closed my eyes and smiled, whispering "Thank God," to be out of the sun's hellish rays. Then I opened them to find that I may as well have kept them shut. There was no light at all.

I heard a rustling, "Lexie, that's you right?" I asked as I struggled to get up and get proper footing.

"Yup." She grunted as she got up herself and then proceeded to turn on a flash light. We were in a massive tunnel, with a river of some kind of yellowish-brown liquid. The smell was horrid, and the walls were covered in a fungal growth.

I then heard a sharp hissing sound, and looked to find a giant creature, brandishing its menacing claws at us. It was massive and stood over the corpse of some other kind of animal. Its skin looked almost identical to the mold covered walls, and shape matched illustrations I saw of things known as scorpions, except for one detail. It had two massive tails. One of them looked like a normal stinger, but the other one... "Look out!" Lexie yelled. She pushed me aside as a black bubbling acid shot out of the second tail towards us and barely missed.

I considered using my pistol, but no, I couldn't. One solution then: "We've got to run."

Lexie and I both once again ran for our lives, now with the creature giving chase. I prayed that I wouldn't slip and fall on the grimy floor. Why did the world hate us so much? We then came to a large heavy door. Lexie pushed it open as fast as she could and we both got inside, closing the door just in time to avoid another spray of black acid from the monster's tail.

I panted and started to finally sit down in order to rest my legs, but Lexie grabbed my arm (of course the wounded one again) and said with excitement, "Oh my God, look!" I looked, and couldn't believe what I was seeing. Miraculously, the middle of the room was filled with rows and rows of canned food. After all that we had just went through, we actually found it! There might even be something such as seeds farther back on the shelves so my community could grow their own if we were really lucky. We both laughed as I hugged her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Dan's death wouldn't be in vain. We were going to be alright...

Then the man holding a pistol stepped out from behind the shelves and spoke. "Get... out... now..."

I immediately whipped out my pistol and aimed it back at him, my expression of joy turning to terror. I didn't want this to end in more bloodshed, especially not at my hands. "Hey, we can just talk about this, no need to shoot. What's your name?" I asked.

"Eric," he grumbled, keeping his finger on the trigger and his hateful eyes on me, unblinking. He was surprisingly a lot like me, just slightly taller and with blonde hair, wearing a very similar get-up. We even had slightly similar face structures. Someone could have mistaken us for brothers.

"Eric... Okay Eric, good to meet you, I'm Michael, this is Lexie. Our people are starving and-"

"So are mine." He cut me off.

"We could negotiate here, Eric. We could share!" I tried to reason.

"No! My people haven't eaten in weeks, my son already starved to death! There are no negotiations to be made, I'm taking this food and you and your lady friend are going to forget you ever saw this place."

"Eric, we just went through hell to get here. We lost a good friend. Some of us are starving too and I won't let his death be in vain."

I saw his grip on the trigger grow tighter as he beared his teeth like some kind of animal. "You think you are the only one who has gone through hell!? Who's lost a friend!? I wasn't alone, my best friend accompanied me, too! You know what happened to him?"

I simply responded "No, no I don't-"

"He was eaten," Eric yelled. "By a giant fucking spider! Came right out of the ground and grabbed him. I had to watch him scream an agony holding onto a cactus as that thing dug its pincers deep into his legs! He tried to hold on, but the thing pulled him in and I got the treat of listening to my best friend get devoured by some freak of nature! You think your friend was special? Well so was mine."

"Eric please, put the gun down. Let's be reasonable here." Lexie spoke. She was worried I couldn't pull the trigger. Could I? I gasped as Eric responded to Lexie by pointing his gun towards her instead.

"Eric, come on. You don't have to do this..."

"You have to leave!"

"I can't do that!" I yelled. Eric was silent, keeping the gun pointed at Lexie. "Eric, put the gun down." I said, calmly.

"No."

"Eric put the gun down!"

"No."

"Eric put the gun down!"

Then it happened: I felt my finger squeeze the trigger. One shot, right into his arm, but I was too late. I watched as Lexie, a bullet hole through her head, fell back against the wall, and slumped to the ground... lifeless. Eric yelled out in pain, gripping his bloody shoulder and I just stood there, shocked.

No... no... no... no... no... NO...

My breathing intensified, my grip on my pistol got tighter as my left hand clenched into a fist. I ran to Eric, who started to sob, and put the barrel of my gun right next to his head and screamed, "DAMN YOU, ERIC!" As he let out one last pained gasp, I pulled the trigger. The second bullet was ejected into his skull, silencing his cries, but I wasn't done. A third shot, four, five... I kept screaming, my vision started to go red, and I kept going. "DAMN YOU TO HELL!" Six, seven, eight, click.

I wasn't done. I threw the empty gun across the room and kicked. I kicked his mutilated remains of a face, and I kicked them hard, screaming, sobbing, cursing. Large portions of his head flew right off and dark crimson blood flooded out into the room. I kept on kicking and screaming and kicking and screaming, and all I could see was Lexie's beautiful face, smiling and telling me everything would be all right...

This went on for what felt like hours but must have only been five minutes. When I couldn't kick anymore, I doubled-back, put my back against the wall, and slid down next to who was the most wonderful person in the world, who now stared off to the back of the room with lifeless eyes.

I removed my goggles and my face mask, and sat there, crying. My vision was blurred, my ears were still ringing, and the room around me seemed to warp and twist, covered in blood and misery instead of salvation and happiness. I could have saved her... Why couldn't I have saved her!?

I watched as Eric's blood washed out over the cans of food that weren't on the shelves, staining their paper labels. I also noticed some were labeled to contain the seeds we would need to grow our food. I've saved my people, but condemned Eric's.

Lexie was all I had... What truly made life worth fighting for. Now both she and Dan were gone. "I'm alone..." I whispered out repeatedly between sobs. "I'm alone..."