Genres: Dystopia
Escape Pod 830: Rena in the Desert
Rena in the Desert
by Lia Swope Mitchell
It had to be a trick, Rena knew it. Even as she hit the brakes, stopped cold in the middle of cracked and empty Highway 50 and twisted around to check. Trick of the eye, trick of the mind, trick of some hidden enemy with evil agenda—the question was which. Rena hoped for the last. At least then the swimming pool would be real.
After ten hot days on waterless roads, though, she could be seeing things. The Solaire should’ve zipped across the Basin in eight hours, no problem. She’d expected to arrive at the Refugee Center in Tahoe by dinnertime, maybe talk to Jack that very night. But fifty miles out of Provo the battery ran down—that was as long as it could hold a charge. After a couple hours soaking up the sun it got going again, but now a scary shake vibrated the whole chassis whenever the speed nudged past thirty. Two thousand dollars she’d paid for this junker, to some creepy religious objector whose thou-shalt-nots apparently didn’t say shit about selling her a lemon. And here she was, creeping across the desert in fits and starts.