I knew we were going to die.

The looks on the teacher's faces. The hot sun on my bare shoulders as I walked in through the school doors that morning. How it seemed like there wasn't enough air to breathe as I was barely able to even mount the stairs to get to class.

The world was dying.

I could see it in every single face I passed, too.

It'd been this way for a while already, with the oxygen running out as plants died, global warming reaching a new scale. Overpopulation had set off the chain reaction leading us all to our inevitable death. There hadn't been enough room left for everyone and the only solution was to destroy more wildlife. That's exactly what we did.

And in the end, we had too much room.

But now, sitting in a sweltering classroom trying to suck in another breath, then another, and another...all I could focus on was the air. All I could see was  the scorched ground outside the window as the sun beat down through the glass and onto my hair.

I focused my attention back on the teacher.

She was talking about something of great importance...our future? What job we were going to have? I couldn't tell. My mind was finding it difficult to concentrate on her words and put them together to understand her sentences. I just wanted to close my eyes and sleep. 

It was so hot and my stomach rumbled...it would be so nice to fall asleep right now.

Except I couldn't. I recognized this feeling so well after all of the years I'd already been living in this broken world. My parents had only ever survived in their deteriorating environment by always pushing through and fighting whenever things seemed to get too difficult. They nailed their beliefs into my head. When things get hard, you keep going. There's no surrender. And as the world outside became harder and harder to deal with, that phrase was spoken more often.

But now, it was just my mom and I. It used to be my dad too, a strong family of three, ready to take on the world and its attempts to destroy the human race. He didn't die - he actually left to see what he could do to help. The government had put out a notice to everyone, asking for volunteers. They needed people to work on producing new plants that could withstand the harsh environment of our world. My parents had disputed it for a while, which one of them should leave. They both wanted to. They wanted to do anything they could to help, but they knew that one of them would have to stay behind for me, their small daughter of just ten years who still was being force fed hope that her education would end up meaning something. But even back then, six years ago, I knew that I probably wouldn't make it past twenty.

My mom was a teacher at the local preschool, and that was what ended up settling the argument. They needed her here. My dad packed up his things and, late at night, he left. That was the last time I'd seen him.

Since then, not much had changed -- things had only gotten worse. The heat had become nearly unbearable that most people just didn't bother anymore. There was little water, little food, and little of anything to keep us living very long.

Sometimes, I felt like an animal in a zoo where the zoo keeper had given up on caring for our exhibit.

"Hey, Tara. Psst....," a voice whispered directly into my ear. The person was so close I could feel every hot, difficult breath against my neck.

I turned my head around to face the boy that was sitting behind me. It was Harris, pretty much the only friend I had in our grade. "Yea...?" I mouthed back in his direction, wondering what he would say next. He was the type of person to make stupid jokes in bad situations just to try and cheer people up. I was more anxious today than usual because of the atmosphere, and especially glad that he sat behind me. 

He leaned closer to me, his tanned arms turning slightly paler as they pressed against the desk. "Do you think she'd notice if I got up and walked out of class?" he asked, acting as if it were something he genuinely didn't know the answer to.

I shook my head at his stupid question. "I'm going to take a wild guess that the answer to that is yes," I replied, keeping my voice down so the teacher wouldn't suspect anything. My body turned back to the front so that it looked less suspicious, and as I waited for his answer I stared outside, my eyes tracing the dark cracks in the dry, rocky ground.

"I might just do it anyway. You know-"

It happened all of a sudden.

His sentence never finished. He cut off, staring instead towards the front where the teacher had been teaching.

Thud.

She hit the ground. Fainted and didn't stand back up. My mouth dropped open and I tried to breathe, but it suddenly felt like it was all too much. My own vision had begun going black.

Breathing was hard enough without my heart rocketing out of my chest in panic.

Too hot.

Too hungry.

Too much.

Not enough air.

Like a vacuum had appeared somewhere in the corner of the room and sucked all of the air out, I couldn't breathe. I felt my lungs working to pull in oxygen. Air went in and out of my mouth , but I couldn't feel any difference. It felt like I was drowning on it.

Panicking on it.

I wasn't alone.

I wasn't certain what happened next. All I remembered was someone yelling about the windows being closed, then someone else screaming to open them. Somehow I ended up getting out of my seat, struggling to even comprehend what was going on. This had happened before. I had to reassure myself. These sorts of episodes happened often -- people passed out in public, everyone tried to get help. Open windows, get fresh air as if there was anything left to breathe. People used to wear masks but gave up when they realized we were doomed no matter what.

It happened a lot more than it should've... and usually it only had been happening to the very young and very old, the ones who didn't get up again, who's bodies simply could no longer handle the impossibly harsh environment.

I could barely handle it.

They'd mentioned today being a new heat high that had never been seen before. I hadn't believed it could ever get hotter. That there could possibly be a heat wave worse than what we'd already experienced.

Everyone was panicking.

My feet were stumbling across tiled hallway...then a doorway, that I almost tripped over...and then dirt. Deathly yellow dirt. Dirt that seemed to know that we were all falling, and soon it would make friends with all of us. My palms were against the dirt, my vision blurry as I tried to get my confused thoughts in order. What was happening? Was there somewhere I was supposed to be at the moment?

Something was far worse than usual.

The heat. The heat. Oxygen. Water.

My thoughts were pushed to the side again as my body yearned for breath like a drug addict. The ground burned my back, and it felt like my lungs were on fire. Black spots descended upon my vision as weird sounds filled the air, both calming and intimidating at the same time. It sounded like the revving of an engine...a gigantic engine...an airplane engine.

Hands were on my elbows, pulling me up off the ground. I swore I heard someone yelling at me to hurry up, but I wasn't completely sure. My feet dragged against the dead ground, as my head sagged to the side. This was it. This was death. I couldn't care anymore. I didn't even care that I was being pulled around like a doll. Nothing mattered. Nothing in this Earth really mattered anymore, now that the human race was going extinct.

It was a nice thought.

But a couple seconds later, I was dragged along a metallic surface just before a blast of freezing air slammed into my face, waking me up in less than a second. It felt like somebody had just dumped my entire body in an ice bath and every small detail that had been so easily looked over and forgotten seconds before came back in sharp focus. My chest contracted...then released as air began to move in and out of my body. I was breathing.

I was alive.

My vision began to restore itself, my body still burning where it had made contact with the unforgiving ground.

I was facing the ceiling. Where in the world was I? How was there air conditioning...fresh air? It was the nicest air I'd breathed in...well...since I was born I was quite sure. I'd been seconds away from dying...but now I was here. Wherever this was. Of course, suggesting I wasn't already dead.

Dark blue eyes and hair the color of the sandy earth outside greeted me. A pale-skinned figure was leaning over my body, hands on his knees, before he quickly stood up. "We need to get moving," the boy said, talking to someone behind me.

I sat up slowly, trying to ignore the black dots that began sparking in front of me once more.

About twenty to thirty people stood in a large metallic room with chairs lining the sides, each person varying in size. Just glancing at them, I could tell that they all had gone through the same process I had, each of them just as surprised and uncomfortable as I was. But as I began looking closer I noticed what should've been obvious from the start. They all went to the school I'd just been in. They all were around my age. And there weren't any teachers or anyone else in sight.

Where was Harris? Shouldn't he also be here?

I felt a surge of fear and turned to the boy who'd been leaning over me. He seemed to know more than I did.

"Why?" I blurted out, responding belatedly to the boy's question from a minute or so before. It had taken me that long to really think through what he was telling me.

The boy seemed genuinely surprised I was talking to him. He probably thought I was half dead. "Why what?"

"Why are we...why do we need to get moving?"

The boy met my gaze and slowly turned away without a word. He stood up and instead walked to one of the open chairs lining the wall. "Trust me," was what he left me with before sitting down and closing his eyes as if I didn't even exist.

I stood up and turned.  Behind me there was a large metal door, which looked newly polished. But my eyes focused in on the window in the center of it. Outside the window was our Earth, the yellow sand, and the school that I'd just been in. It would've seemed normal if it weren't for the bodies strewn across the dirt, forming a zigzagging line to where I was now, trapped in a metal...something. I stood up, my eyes wide in horror as I moved towards the mirror. I didn't want to think about what that meant.

They were just passed out right? Just passed out as I'd almost been...just...

My mouth formed a wide O, as I looked closer and it hit me.

Everyone outside was dead.

I knew it for a fact.

Our civilization, up near the north of what had once been Canada, was one of the only civilizations left. Everywhere else had been destroyed. A lack of crops had led to food shortages, which led to angry people taking down governments. We didn't know for sure if there were even any remaining civilizations.

But our ragtag government did its best to keep us alive. It provided us with what food we were allowed to consume, it kept our small schools surviving. But they'd always said...they'd said that there was a limit. There would be a day in which everything became too much, in which food ran out and in which the heat became too much.

I'd known we were approaching that limit for a while. My last meal had been three days ago. I'd known. We all had. Food was scarce and energy was scarcer. But...I'd always seen that limit, that day, as much farther out than it was now.

Everybody outside was dead, or nearing death. The heat was far too much for any human body to handle.

My thoughts went to my parents. They couldn't have made it. How could they? When the world outside was like this? When exposure had killed everyone else?

I wanted to cry, but I couldn't waste what little water remained in my body.

I choked on a sob.

Before I could stop myself, I began slamming my fists into the glass window, screaming something. I couldn't leave my parents behind in the hot, arid, desert-like Earth. They should be with me.

Arms grabbed me again, this time forcefully, pulling my body away from the window. I wanted to keep screaming my objection. I wanted to tell whoever had pulled me in there that there were people out there who needed to be saved...even though I'd seen their drained bodies littering the dead ground.

"Jesus...," came the same voice from before. It was the sandy-haired boy. He apparently didn't appreciate my tantrum very much, and after desperately trying to claw myself out of his arms, he finally gave up and let go of me.

I shoved his arms away from me and turned to glare at him. "Why?!" I repeated, now referring not only to the part about leaving...where...? But also about the people outside. About why we were in this box. About why we were alive.

He seemed exasperated and sad. For a second, I genuinely wondered if he actually knew anything or if he was in the same position I was. "I don't know! That's just what they told me when I got here. I was one of the first to reach this...ship that they brought down. It came down behind the school as we were all struggling to get out...some guy in a black suit told me to get inside."

"So you did?" came an irritated voice from the back. It was a tall, dark-skinned boy who looked like he still was trying to understand what had just happened. We all were.

"Yes. He said that we needed to get as many people in here as possible and then once everyone sat down...the ship would help us."

"How do you know?" came a high pitched voice from the back. Slowly, a girl walked forward, arms crossed. Just based on her face alone, it was obvious she was much younger than most of the people here.

The boy just looked exasperated. I took in his facial features, trying to match his face with someone from our school. I'd seen him before, just like I'd seen everyone, but I didn't know him well.

"Because...," he seemed like he was reluctant to say something. Then he let out a frustrated sigh. "Because my dad works for the government...I overheard him talking on the phone. This was their plan. This...this is a spaceship. Somehow. I don't know how they brought it here. I don't know why they brought it here. But they can save us...that's all I know. They can save what's left..." He trailed off, not wanting to complete that statement.

I looked over at the dark seats lining the walls. I urged to run, to escape back into the dead Earth. I wanted to find my parents and drag them here with me.

But I couldn't get out. Even if I wanted to, I'd risk killing everyone else that had made it here.

I shook my head slowly. My parents were alive, they had to be. They had to be because otherwise, I didn't know what I'd do with myself. And they were resourceful, they knew how to survive. My dad was in the government, obviously they'd find a way to live. Obviously this wasn't truly the end.

Plus, I had to keep my composure. I had to calm down. Everything would be okay, everything was fine. There were younger kids here. I somehow was able to think enough to know that I shouldn't be falling apart in front of them. They looked scared enough as it was. I wiped my eyes, and took a deep breath. Then, I looked up at everyone else from where I stood, nearly completely isolated from the rest of the group with the exception of the sandy-haired boy. 

"Then I guess we should strap in."