Extinction dream

The giant arc shuddered and swerved.  Eighteen storeys of passengers clung to their seats, the adults unnaturally quiet, only the children screaming or crying.  We hit something.  A sandbar.  The ship tilted like a skyscraper going down and then magically righted itself and was still.

We'd had 72 hours of calm sailing, and now the artificial normalcy of travel  - the routine of meals and naps, of toilet lines, and pacing the perimeter of the sealed decks - was suddenly gone.  I sat, still in my safety belt, grieving.  All the people not on the ship.  My family.  My friends.  My lovers. 

Within minutes it was clear that other ships had grounded nearby.  A lot of other ships.  A few of the able-bodied and single were sent out to recon.  Stepping from the cool gun metal interior, blinking on the sand, in the sun, we entered a war zone.  Adults running, children lost and crying, men on motorcycles or on foot pointing guns and yelling.  We had traveled on an aircraft carrier, retrofitted hastily for civilian transport, so the few entrances were well armored, but many small yachts were being looted and destroyed. 

Bullets.  Someone was firing.  More than one someone.  My small group dove for cover in all different directions and I was pushed hundreds of yards down the beach, separated from the strangers who were my newest family, separated from the safety of the battleship. 

I ran blindly for minutes then crouched in the shelter of a long sleek grey vessel.  A hatch opened and I was pulled into sudden quiet.  Fluorescent white bounced off gleaming surfaces.  A long stretching hallway branched into nooks of equipment and computers that could have been anywhere in Research America.

Only five other beings occupied this enormous space - a husband and wife who studied oceanography, a technician, the captain, the couple's eight-year-old son, and I wondered first why I had failed to leverage my research connections into this bomb shelter luxury and then why I had been chosen, from the masses outside, to be saved, if I somehow still gave off a scientist vibe detectable only to others of my kind.  Most likely it was this: a woman alone, still clean and nourished. 

I longed to stay but the hermetic safety felt like a trap.  They had food for a few weeks, maybe a month, and then what.  The world outside would still be in shambles, probably worse, and I had a panicky instinct that if I was going to survive I had to face that reality.   I accepted a snack, some water, then left, heading back to the ship, using shadows and the intermittent withered shrubs for cover.