The Flare

All they'd left her with was a locket, heart-shaped and now rusted by the dusty terracotta sun. As she kicked up the dirt that covered the cratered landscape before her, the familiar sting of anger rose from her stomach.

Orphaned but with two living parents. Abandoned for another planet. Left behind in a scorched wasteland, with nothing but a piece of metal to show that anyone had ever, maybe, possibly, loved her.

Sure, she hadn't been an easy ride as a teenager, and the disappearing act just before The Flare could be considered a routine part of her MO. But nothing had been routine about those Final Days. The panic, the holographic light that seeped through every crack in their blinds. The sound of passenger rockets burning holes through the sky every hour. Her legs had told her to run before her mind could even get a look in.

The scientists had known a major solar event would arrive for decades, they just didn't know how soon that 'would' would be. Governments had been prepping interplanetary evacuation protocols for even longer; everyone said they'd known exactly when that 'would' would be. After all, why expedite an assembly line of civilian rockets if the danger isn't real and imminent?

Ali had felt the searing heat seeping into each and every one of her pores as she smoked pot behind a dumpster with Dylan. He was her family fugitive in arms - whenever the urge took her to run, he'd lace up his shoes and follow suit. Usually they spent their time wandering the malls aimlessly like a facsimile of every other teenager in their town, but as The Flare drew closer, their paltry playground had shrunk to the few corner shops and the big blue dumpster where they'd get high.

The population had begun to be expatriated to Mars a month before The Flare would wreak its havoc. First, those considered a priority to the continuation of the human species: politicians. It was laughable that these grey-haired, mothballed old men were put on pedestal above doctors and children, but when you're on the inside you'll always get the first seat.

Ali's family had been amongst the last scheduled to leave. It turns out accountants and supermarket clerks weren't in high demand on the red planet - go figure. It was amongst the chaos of boxes, heatstroke, and their remaining rations, that Ali had decided to escape. She'd always felt invisible as the middle child of five, and now, she had practically vaporised in the 140 degree panic of moving a family to Mars.

She'd always planned to get home before their designated departure. She'd imagined her parents erratic recriminations as she sauntered through the door, and they rushed to push her onto the shuttle bus to Launchpad 14. One of her siblings would invariably be crying, Lucas, the eldest of the five, would kick a door or two, but eventually they'd all make it on the bus and out of dodge.

But that day, there were only four out of five siblings strapped into their mass-produced spacesuits. Marie would roll her eyes as her parents sobbed on the inside of their fish-bowl helmets - Ali was always a burden, but she was a scrappy one. Knowing her, she'd be on the next launch with Dylan, too high to care that her family thought her lost to the onslaught of a 600 degree solar flare. She'd be fine.

What Ali hadn't banked on, however, was Dylan getting sloppy with his dope supply. She'd felt the odd tingle as they slouched against the wall and began to smoke, but she'd figured that was just high hunger pangs. But then her eyes began to droop. Her joint became heavy in her hands, and she could hear herself slur as she asked Dylan what exactly she was smoking. When silence came as as a response, Ali glanced over and saw Dylan passed out with the concrete as his pillow. Something was wrong.

It was the burning she felt first. As she slowly came to, through the fringe of her eyelashes she could see red, blistered skin. Everything hurt. Her throat throbbed with each dusty, dry swallow, and her eyes stung as she tried to reorient herself. How long had she been out? Where was Dylan? The questions came quick and fast as she gazed through the morphing shimmer of light that surrounded her. She scrambled for her phone and tapped the screen, almost burning her hands on the metal. Tuesday 24th May, 15:00. She'd been out cold for 48 hours. Her family's departure time was Tuesday 24th May, 13:00. Two hours ago.

Ali's mother had screamed at the wardens to let her wait for her daughter. It was 14.30, the launchpad was 15 minutes away. She'd begged for 10 more minutes to wait for her child to come home. How could she leave her on a planet destined for destruction? But there had been no reprieve from the men in their protective solar suits. Each one had grabbed her and her family by their sweating arms, and pulled them onto the shuttle bus. This is a mandate, they said, there is no choice. Abstainers faced extermination. They had to get on the bus. With one final look over her shoulder, Ali's mother yanked the chain around her neck, and threw the locket behind her.

Ali had dragged herself home through the heat, each part of her skin burning more which every step she took. Surely they'd all still be there, pacing the hallway waiting for her to return. They'd just get on the next launch, and Ali wouldn't hear the end of it until they reached Mars. What a fun month that would be. She could already feel the burning glare from her father on her sun-singed skin.

The front door was ajar as she finally collapsed into her house. Why was it so quiet? Where was the shouting? Where was the mountain of boxes and rolling empty ration cans?

The realisation hit her slowly.

They'd gone. Her family had abandoned her on the face of a ticking time bomb, from which there was no escape. No note. No directions. No escape plan. Just a rusty locket left on the sideboard which Ali pocketed with her slippery hands without thinking. She'd been right all along - she truly was invisible. An expendable limb jutting out awkwardly from the trunk of her family. A necessary sacrifice to get to freedom.

The heat was rising by the minute, causing the air the bend and waver in luminescent strips before her eyes. If she stayed above ground any longer she'd fry - The Flare was on the horizon. Ali grabbed the bottle of now hot water water discarded on the kitchen floor, and the last burning can of rations, and headed down into the basement that was now a bunker. Every house had had one installed 40 feet into the ground in case of failed launches of passenger ships, or, in this case, being abandoned by your entire family.

The cool eased over her as she stepped down into the dark, and she nervously thumbed the locket in her damp palm. She'd be down here for days, she knew that much. No one was certain exactly how long The Flare would last, but scientists said it would burn itself out within 48-50 hours. What would be left of the Earth afterwards was another matter entirely.

So Ali waited it out in the dank confines of the basement. She could hear the Earth cracking 40 feet above her, obliterated by the angry waves emanating from the Sun. The walls around her dripped as if anxious that they were next for incineration. She too felt wave after wave of water run down her face, no longer sure if they were sweat or tears. She was truly alone.

When sleep had finally taken her from her waking nightmare into the one in her head, she awoke with the incessant beeping of the temperature gauge hanging on the wall above her. The Flare was over. Each bunker had been built equipped with an above-ground thermometer, signalling to those hunkering down below that the worst was over, that is was time to emerge and see what damage had been done. Ali hesitated. Stepping out from this basement meant stepping into reality. She could be the only person left on the planet. There could be nothing left of this planet at all. There was only one way to find out.

Every part of the house was covered in orange dust. The light burned her eyes as she stepped through the now foreign landscape before her and towards the front door. For all she knew, she'd been transplanted onto Mars without her knowledge. All the lay before her was a desert, dotted with craters and the charred remains of trees. Decimated. Desolate. The houses were rubble, the cars morphed into pools of hardened, once melted, metal. Ali was alone.

Emotions swirled like bile in her stomach as she took the rusted locket from her jeans. The only thing linking her to other human life was heart-shaped, as if mocking her and her complete solitude. Her Vans kicked at the dust swirling around her feet, and she threw the locket down between them. She had nothing. No one. As the metal began to crack against the remaining heat rising from the ground, Ali stamped down on the heart, breaking it just as her family had done her own. It was as worthless as she felt.

With one final crack, the Earth began to shake. Of course, an earthquake to add tremors on top of total destruction, she thought. The tragedy was almost farcical. As Ali looked around, waiting for the cloud of red dust to envelope her, she realised that it wasn't the ground beneath her that was shaking, it was her. Her whole body had begun to twitch and convulse, sending vibrations down her spine and through her bones. Panic poured through her chest, as she struggled to keep her eyelids open. Her consciousness was fading, her surroundings becoming hazy, when one final clear image appeared.

The hologram shot out from the crushed locket in vibrant green and yellow stripes, with words that were almost incomprehensible through the shaking. As Ali strained to see through the struggle, the final thing she saw that day glowed bright onto her retinas:

'EMERGENCY EVACUATION PROTOCOL ACTIVATED. INTERPLANETARY PORTATION UNDERWAY.'