The sound of waves splashing up against the cold metal wall of the house startled me awake. The salty water was leaking through onto my small, dirty mattress on the floor. I shook the sleep out of my head and flattened the dark hair sticking up. I moved my feet onto the wet dirt floor, which had become mud, and stumbled my way towards the kitchen, where my mom was watching television and making breakfast. My sweatpants were covered with dirt, and the mud wasn’t helping with cleaning them off. My mother was leaning over a toaster, wearing a dirty pink dress that had white flowers on it. Her blond hair had streaks of grey in it, and was always tied up in a ponytail. I heard the toast spring out of the toaster, and my mom carefully grabbed the two pieces. I was watching the news, and the old, sweaty anchor was saying, “Today it is reported that the population of earth has reached 23 billion, and measures have been put in place to prevent the population from rising any more.”
My mother placed the cold metal tray in front of me, with a small piece of toast on top. The toast tasted like cardboard, and was chewy and rotten. Due to the high population, food was a serious issue; only the richest people in the world could even afford chicken. The government provided basic food for the poorer people like us, by providing us with one rotten loaf of bread every week. I looked out of the small hole what was left from a bullet from last week’s riot to see the green-brown sky, filled with dark clouds. “Be careful”, Mom said. “If it rains, remember what I told you: get inside as quickly as possible.”

Rain was one of the most dangerous things out there. The pollution from humans long ago turned the rain into acidic gel that could burn through your skin if it was on you for more than a minute. Out in the streets I could see hundreds of people, walking around, looking for anything that could provide food or shelter. I finished my toast and told my mom I was going to go get more food and check the water. She said, “Ok, just make sure not to talk to anyone.”

I stepped out of the front door and went around to the back of the house. The black water was splashing up against the metal walls of the small, makeshift house, which meant we would have to be moving closer to the inner city soon. Every day, people were forced to move their houses farther inland, with the water coming farther inland every day. I walked back to the front of the house and looked out to the city. The small settlement which was once the thriving city of Albuquerque was crowded, the air was thick with pollution and smelled of gasoline and human waste. Recently the ocean had been coming farther into the city every day, so the people were getting much more crowded together, and the poorest people were exiled from the city and sent out into the wild with about a day’s worth of food. I had heard a few homeless men talking about rebelling against the government, but they themselves were exiled before they had their chance to rebel.

Our house was on the west side of the city, where the Pacific Ocean was slowly eating away at the landscape. The sea level rose daily as the ice caps and snow melted. The water was frigid, despite the daily temperatures of around one hundred degrees. I checked in my pocket to make sure I had enough money to pay for dinner and then walked into the center of the town.

The center of the town was filled with people of all different classes. Poor people crawled in the dirt, looking for anything to eat; or money that people had dropped by accident. Dead bodies lined the sides of the street. Every afternoon large trucks would come and clean up the bodies. Nobody knew where they were taken, but everyone assumed that they were burned.

Other people who lurked around the center of town were the rich. They rode around on horses. No one in our settlement was allowed to have cars, due to the crowdedness, and the danger of running people over. The rich people still ran over the homeless with their horses, and laughed while they did it.

That day I was looking through the brown-tinted window at some bicycles, which I could never hope to afford, when I heard a loud shout behind me. A column of black smoke rose into the air in the distance, and the air smelled like burning flesh and smoke. A loud alarm started going off, and, suddenly, it seemed that the entire city was on fire. The small wooden shacks surrounding the center of the town started to catch fire, and the tall orange flames licked the sky. People were running in all directions, and was knocked to the ground, mud splattering into my face. I felt like I was drowning in a sea of people, and then everything went black as someone trampled over my head.

When I woke up the sun was setting, and the world smelled like burnt meat and smoke. I sat up, my head pounding, and could tell I had at least broken half of my ribs. Around me there were other people, who looked dead, and I could see the black skeleton of the bike shop I had been looking at just before everything went downhill. I kept looking around, only seeing the black remains of buildings. There wasn’t another living person in sight. I tried to stand up, but a slice of pain through my leg caused me to collapse back down onto the mud and soot. I decided I would need to crawl if I wanted to get home, praying that the fire hadn’t spread too far. Crawling took hours, and every time I moved, somewhere in my body there would be a jolt of pain. I saw more dead, trampled bodies than I had ever seen along the sides of the road.
Once I got past the center of the city I could truly see the destruction. The middle class area was abandoned, small shacks crumpled over on the ground. The black oily water carried pieces of metal out to sea. I crawled to the remains of a shack and found a small radio crackling, “The fire spread...half of the southern settlements...death count 50,000...100,000 still missing...survivors wait...rescue is coming-”

Then the radio sputtered out and died. I found a small, rusty metal stool, and sat up on it. The horizon was filled with smoke. I wasn’t sure what had started the fire, but it was still burning across the south. I took a look at the crumbling shacks around me and decided that I would have to find my house, even though the chances of my mom being there were very slim. I tried to stand up again, but once again I crumpled in pain down onto the mud. It took two hours to crawl to where my house had been, only to find two pieces of metal sheeting and half of a burned mattress.
I started to sob. I knew that my mother wasn’t alive, and her body was most likely nearby. I looked around and saw no signs of life. Nothing moved. The entire world was silent except for the sound of my own heart racing, and the oily waves lapping at the shore. I looked at the ground and saw my clock, the screen shattered, but still readable. It read: 9:24 PM - February 17. I had been knocked out for a week. Suddenly I remembered that my clock could get radio, so I turned it on to listen to what was being said. “The death count is rising every minute...the fire is expected to head north within the next week...anyone in the northern New Mexico area is advised to try to get to a Northern State...”

I placed the radio down in the mud where I used to live and looked up into the sky. To my surprise there were about three helicopters hovering over where the busiest part of the city was. I needed to get their attention. I grabbed as many small pieces of paper and wood as I could, and stacked them all up. I picked up the clock, smashed it on a small rock, and sparks flew out of the severed wires. I threw what remained of the clock into the pile of paper and wood, and a small flame caught on a newspaper article. The orange flames spread around the paper, and a tall cloud of smoke rose into the sky. I saw a helicopter turn and start flying towards my position. That was when the missiles started flying. I saw the metal cone, shooting flames out of the back, coming towards my position, and I jumped out of the way as it exploded only a few yards away. My leg burned with pain, but pure adrenaline forced me to run as fast as I could, before diving behind a small metal sheet. My heart pounded as I heard the helicopter spinning its rotors, and looked down at my leg to see a large gash with a piece of bone coming out. I wasn’t going to be running anywhere. Oily, black water splashed up on the shore near me, and I looked out into the sea to see the largest boat I had ever seen.

It had about one hundred jets landed on top of it and about three hundred cannons pointed at the shore. Thats when what had been said on the radio days ago at breakfast popped into my head: “Measures have been put in place to prevent the population from rising much more.” The government was wiping out cities to create more land for other people to live in, especially since people were being packed closer together every day. I looked out at the wasteland that used to be my home, and realized there was no point in fighting anymore. I crawled out from my shelter and looked up to where the helicopter was - only it wasn’t there. The helicopter had flown away, most likely thinking that I had been killed.
I placed my head down in the mud and started to laugh. The laugh intensified to a maniacal sob as I realized there was no hope left. I was in a ghost town, with a wound that I couldn’t tend to if I tried. I rolled over on the ground and looked out at the sea. The giant battleship was still floating out there, but two small, black rhib boats were speeding towards the shore, shooting black, oily mist into the air. There were three men on board each boat, carrying large firearms, scouting the shoreline.

The small rubber boats collided with the shore, and the six men trotted down towards my location. I grabbed a rock in case I needed to defend myself, and they started to yell, “PUT DOWN THE ROCK!”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“We’re from the army,” the tallest of the six men said. “We’re here to rescue any survivors of the fire.”

“I know it was you.,” I said. “I know it was you who did it.”

“Grab him,” The tall officer said, “We’ll take him back to the ship.”

Duct tape was stuck onto my mouth and my hands and feet were bound together with a coarse rope. I was laid down on the floor of the rhib boat, where there was a small puddle of water that burned the gash in my leg. “Don’t worry,” The tall man said, “We have great medical facilities on board the boat. You’ll be fine.”

After what he had done back on the shore, I knew that he was lying, and there was no way he would even try to help me. Two ropes were attached to the small boat on either end and we were slowly lifted up to the deck, where I saw about a thousand people, most of whom I recognized, sitting on the deck, wrapped in blankets. The tall man took off the mask covering his face, and I suddenly recognized him. He was the homeless man who had been exiled for talking about rebelling. He had scars covering his face, and wore an eyepatch. His long black hair hung around his shoulders, and he had black stubble covering his chin. “Welcome home, kid,” he said. “The People’s Army welcomes you.”

The duct tape was torn off of my mouth, and my hands and legs were unbound, and I was taken to the hospital ward, where my leg was patched up and I was given crutches. I walked to the best of my ability out to the main deck and saw the tall man looking out into the sea of people. “Excuse me, sir,” I said timidly to the man.“Do you have any idea where my mother might be?”

“Honestly,” he said, “I don’t know the names of ninety-nine percent of the people on my boat, and the only ones I know are my own family. I can’t help you. If you want to find her you’ll have to find her yourself.”

“Exactly how many people are on this boat?” I asked.

“If the count we took last night is correct,” he replied, “ten thousand.”

I looked out into the crowd of people and realized that there was a good chance that my mother was one of them. I limped away on my crutches and started going up and down the deck. Most of them looked the same, skinny, tired, crying, dirty. Even if I did find my mother I probably wouldn’t even recognize her. I had gone down the mile-long boat almost three times when I saw her. She was sitting with her legs crossed, looking at a small picture frame with cracked glass, containing a small drawing of me that she had made only two weeks earlier. I limped up in front of her and she looked up. Her hair and face were covered with dirt, and her dress had a huge bloodstain on the front. Her hands and legs were covered with small cuts and scratches. We both started to cry. For the past week she had thought that I was dead, and I had thought the same about her. Suddenly, destroying our emotional moment, a loud horn blasted above our heads, and we could hear the boats engines starting up.
The giant boat moved forward through the black water. The tears streamed down our face as we looked out into the open ocean, hoping that somewhere safe lay ahead of us.