The Vigil

Emaciated and increasingly desperate, Sergeant Renee Burgess fears she may be one of the last human beings to survive nuclear armageddon. For more than four years she has lived in an underground bunker, only occasionally ascending to the surface in her radiation suit to survey the vast, lifeless wasteland around her.

But salvation may be at hand. In the skies high above, an operational space station continues to orbit earth. Her only hope: make contact with the station so she can somehow find a way back to the remains of human civilization, if such a thing still exists.

Vivid, tense, and moving, "The Vigil" is a story of a woman's relentless instinct to survive in a world of desolation as endless as the black of space.

*This story is included in TROUBLES, a collection of short stories by Chris W. Martinez.