The Sovereign

Uncivilized

I drove through the night, ignoring the Radios irritated by the light from the car.  The whole way, I kept thinking to myself I'm doing it for her.  She'll die if we don't get there fast.

I was pretty sure laws didn't comply anymore, but I definitely broke the speed limit.  By double.

It wasn't that bad, though.  We made it to Cape Canaveral by sunrise.  I stopped on the Tarmac that NASA launched rockets from for so many years.  The concrete was charred from burning rocket fuel.  I reclined the seat, watching to make sure not to disturb Jade, then allowed myself to fall into a deep, nightmarish land of dreams.

•••

I dreamt of the gang.  They came back from the fog, and screamed my name, trying to find me.  I wasn't there.

They turned to see a Radio bear charging at them. 

Then I saw Jade.  But it wasn't Jade.  She'd been bitten by a Radio.  She was slowly turning, turning into one of them.  A cannibalistic, zombie-like monster. 

Then I saw the gang again.  They'd been following me along my journey.  They, too, were infected.  I couldn't do anything but scream as Jade and the gang ripped me limb from limb.

•••

I woke up in a cold sweat.  I turned to see Jade, groggy, but looking in good spirits.  She smiled and said, "Good morning, sleepyhead."

I offered her a water bottle, which she politely grabbed and nearly inhaled.  I chuckled.  "Forgot to give you water before you slept...sorry 'bout that..."

She shook her head.  "No, you're fine. I'm just thirsty."

I smiled and hopped out of the car. Helping Jade out, I said, "We've got to get going. There's four floors, probably a hundred acres on each floor, and we've got to loot as much of each floor as we can."

I helped her as she limped towards the office building. Composed mainly of metal and glass, the building had practically no walls. All the windows were shatters inwards, which worried me. If me or Jade slipped, we'd immediately be impaled by glass shards.

The inside of the building could be explained no better than ruined. Books strewn around the floor, tables and chairs upended. Blueprints and calculators were all over the place. Bending over and picking a blueprint up, I read the heading.

"Project Cometbreak"

It looked like the death ray from the Death Star. I gasped and figured that it must have been a plan to blow the comet up. Obviously, the Cometbreaker was never finished. There wouldn't have been time.

I explained the theory to Jade, who made an angry face. "They knew the whole time. They knew and they didn't warn us until it was too late! They just had to 'protect the public' from the knowledge of an apocalypse! We could have done something! They could have done something!"

I calmed her down. She didn't need her heart rate up with the injuries she'd sustained.  It would only make her bleed worse.

She frowned.  "It's unfair." She said, regaining a level of calmness.  "They knew long before they told us."

"Seven months..." I said.  I'd heard about this on the television.  "One of nineteen surviving NASA employees came forward eight years after the Ends and said that they'd known seven months before they told anyone outside of their organization."

She slammed her fist to a table--one which had miraculously stayed upright.

I walked through the long center aisle, peaking into cubicles for anything useful.  Not much.  I walked into one cubicle to see if the computer would work. 

It was an outdated client, but it turned on.  I moved the dust mouse to Google, and searched for a map of Florida.  Hoping there was a printer in the building that worked, I pressed control-P. 

I heard clanking and whirring upstairs in response.  I turned to see where Jade had wandered, but found her staring out and open window. 

"I can't walk like this, Des." She said, feeling my stare.  "I have one leg.  I can barely move at all without help."  I walked up beside her and stared out in the same direction. 

It was in ruins, but it was beautiful.  The building was overlooking the ocean, and a solitary oak tree lay among broken glass and metal scraps.  The sun was casting a pleasing haze over the horizon.  

I hopped out the window, my shoes crunching on glass shards.  I hesitated, questioning my own thought, but walked to the oak.

Climbing to the first branch up, I raised my voice.  "Come over here, I've got an idea.  Pleas be careful on the gla--" I began to warn her, but she was already leaping down from the two foot slab high base to the building.

I sighed and suspended my entire body weight from one branch, about as wide as my arm and about five feet long.  Pulling my self up slowly then letting myself fall quickly again, I worked the branch until it broke off the tree. 

"Stay here," I told Jade.  She nodded and sat down in an open patch in the grass, overlooking the ocean.

I jogged back to the van.  Grabbing her knife and running back to her, I flipped the knife out and smiled.  "Did you know I was a whittler?"

"It's the apocalypse...and you decide to take up whittling?" She smirked.  "No, I didn't know."

"Yeah, not something I usually bring up when I first meet someone..." I admitted.

"Hi, I'm Des Kayn, and I like to whittle.  Nice to meet you too." She mocked.  I shook my head and cut the branch down a foot or so.  I cut small out-sticking twigs and smoothed an obtuse gap where the branch split in two.

As I worked, I told Jade about how I'd gotten to her gas station.  She frowned.  "I never really ran into Radios often.  I came from The Keys."

"Really?  How'd you cross the water?" 

"I swam it.  'Course, I had all four limbs back then.  It was a whole lot easier."

"That's amazing!  How many miles off-coast were you?"

"Dude, I didn't swim it.  I'm not sure if you could tell, but that was sarcasm.  Me and my parent came in a small motorboat."

"Oh..." I chuckled.  "Here.  It's not exactly beautiful or anything, but it'll help you walk alone.  Maybe there'll be a wheelchair or a prosthetic in here.  Maybe God doesn't hate us that much."