Resilient - Evolution

Chapter 1: Coming Out

It had been a busy few weeks since the world fell apart. At least now, there was some semblance of hope. At first, it had just been people trying to find someplace where they had a chance to survive. They all wanted to feel like there was light at the end of the tunnel.

The whole thing with Covid, all those weird vaccine shots that people were taking, all the sprays, and all those other protections ... none of it was what they thought it was. Even now, they still hadn't gotten to the bottom of the rabbit hole. Every day was like one of those social media WTFs, and another brick was laid on the cairn of what used to be humanity.

They didn't realize yet that the light at the end of the tunnel was still another big freight train coming down the tracks. It wasn't over yet. It wasn't even close to being over. But there was hope now. They each had survived something that the majority of people had missed the boat on. Those who survived were stronger, faster, smarter ... and they were each able to do things now that were above and beyond anything that people were supposed to be able to do before.

Nina and Duke were in the warehouse where the ships were. It seemed to be a long expansive room that joined three more of the same in a giant cross where the center had a more rounded ceiling than the rest of the structure they were in.

Nina looked at Duke and asked him, "So, which one do you think you want to drive?"

"Do these things really fly?" he asked back. The ship he was looking over was a small cargo ship. It was just one in a double row of them in this section. It was sleek with subtle, almost invisible lines where the material it was made from joined together. There was a bubble on the top front where the pilot had a place to see everything they needed to, and even it joined almost seamlessly with the rest of the ship.

"Well, I've never seen one fly," Nina said, "but Ram says they do. Want to take it for a test drive?"

"Hell yeah," Duke said, chuckling in his wide-eyed excitement. "How do we get inside? I don't see a door anywhere."

"Ram, can you open this one up so we can check it out?" Nina asked the AI through her link. It was the first of the cargo-type ships they had come to. The rest looked identical to this one. Even the ones that were much larger still had basically the same shape, only larger.

Some of the ships were much larger than this one. The bigger ones could probably hold a half-dozen of these smaller ones inside their cargo area, and even this small one looked big enough to carry several cars and trucks inside it.

The belly of the small transport ship lowered on one end and formed into a ramp that was almost half the length of the ship. It was a slow upgrade that was easy to walk up, and it was wide enough that they could have driven a pick-up truck up into it if they wanted.

The ramp was made of the same flat-toned metallic material that the rest of the ship was made of. It wasn't steel or aluminum, but Duke put his hand on it as he passed the opening into the ship, and it felt smooth and slick while seeming to have a texture of subtle ripples and bumps at the same time ... weird.

There was just enough room on each side of the ramp for a walkway inside the ship, but the cargo space inside was only about a third of the width of the ship. It did seem to be almost as long as the ship was, though. Altogether, this one was about twenty-five feet wide and about fifty feet long. That made the big ones really big.

They hadn't gone outside or even checked to see if there was an outside when they came up in the elevator from the Hub, so Nina said, "Hey Ram, is this warehouse on the surface?"

Ram said, "The only thing that can be seen from the air is a building that's just big enough to let a ship the size of this one enter and exit. Most of the facilities like this are underground and shielded from detection. On the surface here, are the Ozark Mountains. They have fairly steep hills and ridges but are not that high in elevation. A farm up top has a series of greenhouses and smaller structures that make it look more like something you would see in a rural part of the country. The entrance hangar is part of the larger facade."