The year was 2522. I had arrived, it was the middle of the night but my surroundings were lit clearly by torches and flares lit by fellow survivors. It had only been nine hours since the government revealed the location of four out of five safety bunkers, each of which can hold twenty thousand people for up to fifteen years. Although twenty thousand might seem like a lot, there must have been five times that present, waiting, pushing to get in. It was a dire scene and an even more dire situation. As I looked around I saw the separation of families, the beating of strangers and puddles created from the tears of those who had given up. I have to admit, as time rolled on I too started to give up, so much so that at one point I sat down on a nearby rock and pondered why I was in this situation. I thought the end was near, and can you blame me? There was a looming bomb threat and I was alone, hopelessly alone waiting for a miracle.

Then at around two in the morning a large plane projected a message on the mountain side. It read “The bunker will be opening shortly, please queue in an orderly fashion.” It instantly turned to chaos with people now struggling and fighting more than ever to get closest to the gate. I looked ahead to see what I had to do to get to safety and all I could see was a colossal cliff side, steep as the stairs to hell. Funnily enough, I had heard a story about this cliff side. Apparently hundreds of years ago a grand and beautiful waterfall used to rest on the cliff side and it was known all over Scotland for its beauty. None of that mattered anymore as the world was now descending into chaos and global warming had scorched most of the planet’s green pastures and fields. Thinking of stories of the past made me snap back to reality and realise that there could be a future for me and all of my people. So I stood up and decided to make a final push for survival. Despite it being in the early hours of the morning I could feel the unbearable heat and humidity of the atmosphere and the closely knit people against my burnt and worn skin. As the minutes passed I started making ground, safety was within my grasp. I could now see the strong, sturdy steel gates which were going to deny so many people survival and despite my overwhelming sense of sadness -sadness that most of the people around me were going to die- I felt a spark of hope. I eventually reached the front of the crowd and I knew I was going to survive but I was distraught, deep down I was disappointed in myself. The reason being that I was taking the spot of a child on this ark of hope, in the bunker. So for a minute time froze and I pondered my choices but before I could come to a conclusion I was grabbed by one of the soldiers and pulled to the other side of the gate. In a way, I’m glad that the decision was made for me but it doesn’t take the weight of my shoulders that I took the spot of a child, that I survived and a child didn’t.

Jude Arias