Hopeful

A short story based on a writing prompt about a woman having to make a decision for an entire population in an emergency situation.

The accident wasn't her fault. She hadn't even been there when it happened, yet still she felt the guilt oiling its way through her body. She told herself she didn't know what he had planned, she couldn't have known. No one could have. But she knew she was only lying to herself. No one knew him better than she had known him. She had chosen not to see the evidence in front of her because she had wanted to believe that things were different.

Clearly, it was time to wake up. It was an unfortunate side effect caused by the aftermath of the incident, she now had to make some serious decisions. It was as if the doomsday scenarios had jumped out of the pages of that dusty old manual straight into her immediate reality. She had a sinking feeling that she would only prove how ill equipped she was to handle this situation. Taking deep slow breaths, she calmed her nerves and thought out her options. He hadn't left her many.

After allowing herself to wallow in her self doubt for a few more moments she exhaled and leaned back into the institutional seat, her shoulder blades uncomfortable from the lifeless moulding of the now meaningless seat. It's once prized symbolism now choked her with its stark reality and she felt sickened by the thought that she had once striven to achieve its empty status. How naive she had been in her careless dreaming. She had had no moral qualms back then about the agenda that it represented. To her it had been nothing but a concept, words that were easily accepted with a blasé attitude and an endless supply of faith. What a fool she had once been.

She took a breath conscious of the slowly emptying air supply and reached forward to flip the inconspicuous scratched plastic lid back from the console. She had no more time to delay. He had seen to that by destroying their scrubbers in his final act. Each second was a second closer to death for them all. She lifted her arm, thrown off balance by its apparent lightness in this action and she watched her fingers find the red button. Closing her eyes she pleaded that all would be well as the button sunk beneath her actions.

The door opened to the outside world and she was both elated and terrorized by the fate of humanity that she had held in her hands.