Nightmare

The last thing he saw was the locket.

It was always the last thing he saw.

* * *

David woke up, soaked in sweat. He threw the covers off, shivering when his wet skin met the cool air of his dark bedroom.

He’d had that dream again.

A dead world, no hope, nothing but panic, panic, panic—

And the locket. There was always the locket.

David turned on the TV, needing something to take his mind off the dream. He flipped through the channels, landing on the news. He watched reports of deaths from the latest heat wave, coastal cities being flooded, another war breaking out in a distant country over scarce resources.

No wonder he was having dystopian nightmares.

He switched the channel to some action movie. He’d seen it before. Fun but mindless. He could use a bit of mindlessness right about now. He watched it, letting his mind escape for a little while. He’d always loved a little escapism, his mind wandering to other worlds, getting to live another life inside his head, a better life…

The image of the locket flashed before him.

David jumped. He must have started falling asleep. He shook himself awake, focusing on the movie. Absently, he rubbed his chest.

* * *

David startled awake, knocking his keyboard to the floor. He darted his gaze around, panicked. He was at the office, in his cubicle. He must have dozed off at his desk. Luckily, no one seemed to have noticed.

He rubbed his chest, over his pounding heart. He hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep until the dream started. That damn dream had kept him from getting a full night’s sleep for the past week, so he wasn’t surprised he’d slipped into an accidental nap at work. But it was disconcerting how easily it had happened. One moment he’d been processing an invoice, then the next he was walking down the cracked pavement of an abandoned interstate. Burnt-out cars lined the way, charred bodies he avoided looking at trapped forever behind the wheels. He was heading north, the busted GPS monitor still around his neck. He had to make it to the border…

David gripped his desk tightly, the edges digging into the palms of his hands. No, no, he wasn’t going to relive that dream again. Not now, not so soon.

“David, are you feeling all right?”

David jumped then spun around in his chair. Susie, his supervisor, stood at the opening to his cubicle.

“Oh, yeah, I’m just a little tired,” David said. “It’s no big deal.”

“Are you sure? Do you need to take a sick day? You look so pale…”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” David smiled, trying to offer proof of his words. “It’s nothing, really.”

“Well, okay. If you’re sure…” Susie walked away with a doubting smile, but at least she walked away. David didn’t want to explain.

It was just a dream.

* * *

David woke up again with a shout, clutching at his chest. His bedroom was pitch black. He glanced at the alarm clock: 2:04 am. Shaking, he turned on the lamp and made his unsteady way to the bathroom. Glancing in the mirror above the sink, he saw how pale he looked. Like he’d been drained of blood. He rubbed at his chest over his slowing pulse, still trembling from what he’d seen.

He’d been walking down that road again. He was always walking down that road.

He was older. Ten years at least. There was gray in his unkempt beard, his thinning hair.

He was walking over the sunbaked pavement, his shoes inadequate for the long hike. They didn’t need thick soles in the City, not where they shuffled over smooth concrete or tile in cheap, thin shoes, the same ones handed out to everyone of Tier 5 or lower, the Tiers deemed “surplus.” Just the worker drones, the ordinary people, crammed into the confines of the enclosed City so that they didn’t take what belonged to those more important—the wealthy, the useful, the free. The ones who got to see the sky, the stars.

He’d escaped, him and a dozen others. They’d run from the City—the Facility as some of the more radical ones called it, the same ones who said the bombings had been done by their own government, to rid the country of as many of the surplus population as possible, hitting the major roadways during rush hour for maximum effect. David had been home sick that day, he’d avoided the bombing, but then he’d been rounded up like the rest, rounded up like cattle. He hadn’t seen daylight, felt the warmth of the sun, in years. It had been so long, he’d forgotten how blue the sky was.

It was blue above him now, the sun high and hot, so much hotter than he’d remembered. The land around the road was scorched, dead, as far as he could see. It looked impossible that somewhere nearby lay farmland, full of the crops that fed the workers of the City, and further out still were the crops that fed the upper Tiers, the ones who the surplus sacrificed everything for, so that they could live lives of comfort, as if the world weren’t dying.

David walked over the crumbling pavement, the soles of his shoes flaking off with each step, blisters forming on the bottom of his feet. He was alone now, the others having either been caught, killed, or separated from him. He’d been the one to figure out how to destroy the GPS trackers they were all forced to wear, but none of them had been able to figure out how to remove them. The sweat sluicing down his neck slid over the collar, making him itch.

The sun…had it always been this hot? He’d remembered summers at the beach beneath its burning eye, but it had never felt this intense. Was he simply no longer used to it, his skin having grown pale as milk within the walls of the City? Or was the heat getting worse than they had been led to believe? The daily news announcements at breakfast had said global warming had been stalled, but what if that were a lie? If the temperature was increasing even more…

Was there even an oasis across the border? Or would he reach the end of this road to find nothing more than a continuation of the wasteland around him?

David tried not to think about it. He tried to distract himself, let his mind wander, escape, like he’d done back when the world was whole. He thought about cool, flowing rivers, fresh apples ready to be picked from the tree, the night sky…

It had been too long since he’d seen the stars…

David shouted out. He slammed his fist into the glass—the glass?

He was in his bathroom, staring at his pale reflection in the now cracked mirror, one hand bloody, the other rubbing at his hammering heart.

He was not walking down a broken road, the pavement burning his feet through the holes in his shoes.

He was home. He was awake.

So why did he still feel like he was dreaming?

* * *

David almost didn’t hear Susie say hello as he stared blankly at the computer screen. He couldn’t remember what he’d been doing, or how long he’d been staring.

“David, are you sure you’re all right?” Susie asked. “I think maybe you should take the day off.”

“I’m fine,” David said, but even to his own ears it sounded hollow.

Susie gave him a pitying look. “Dave, go home. Get some rest.”

“I told you, I’m fi—”

Something glinted around Susie’s neck. David stood suddenly, making her back up, her eyes growing wide.

“David?” she said, uncertain. Afraid.

“Where did you get that necklace?” he asked.

Susie clutched at her locket. Golden, heart-shaped, glinting in the overhead light.

“I’ve had this since I was a little girl,” she said, taking another step back.

David couldn’t take his eyes off it. The locket…

“I think you need to go now,” Susie said, her voice firm but her eyes still wide with panic.

David didn’t feel like arguing. He wanted to reach out and grab the locket, yank it off her neck, but he pushed down that instinct. He gathered his things and went home. He wasn’t sure if he’d have a job to go to the next day, but somehow that was the least of his problems.

His heart pounded in fear, panic. It was panic, just like what he’d seen in Susie’s eyes, the panic of a prey animal facing a possible predator, the same thing he felt as he walked down that desolate road, winding his way through Armageddon. Panic that he was being followed, that he wouldn’t be able to find food and drink, that he wouldn’t reach the border. Panic that maybe there was no promised land waiting up north, that it was just as dead and decayed as the land around him. Did they have Tiers up there? Did they have Cities, huge complexes like concrete purgatories for those deemed ancillary? He didn’t know, and his heart pounded at the idea that he was leaving one broken land for another, but he had to try. He had to.

He heard the whine, like a bee buzzing in the distance, and he knew what it was without even seeing it. David ran, his shoes disintegrating, flying off in chunks, his feet burning on the rough road.

They’d found him. They were coming.

He no longer felt panic, only abject fear. His heart pounded faster as he ran, the terror and the exertion mixing, spiraling to new heights. The whine grew louder behind him. He couldn’t outrun them.

He never even saw them. The whine had grown to a tremor in his eardrums, an earthquake of noise. Then he felt something like fire lance him, all the way through his torso. David stumbled, clutching at his chest. His hand came away bloody.

The khaki-colored uniform of Tier 5 quickly turned to red, flowing out from his rapidly beating heart. He stared down at the hole in his shirt, the hole in his chest. He grabbed at it, as if he could catch his blood, push it back in.

He fell forward, his face scraping against the burning, fractured pavement. Clutching his chest, he moved his head slightly. He wanted to see the sky one last time.

But he couldn’t turn that far. All he saw was a gold, heart-shaped locket lying on the pavement. Long abandoned, it was smudged, covered in dirt and char, but it still shone bright in the sun. Like a winking star.

He felt the life beat out of him, the locket glinting at him. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to be here.

He just wanted to escape.

He wanted to be back at home, back before all this had happened, before the bombing, the City, the Tiers. He wanted to wake up, like it had been nothing more than a nightmare.

Staring at the glinting locket, he told himself: It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.

In his last few moments, he imagined himself waking up, back in his dark bedroom. He would brush it off, watch some TV, go to work the next day.

It was all just a dream.