Saviour

Chapter 3

Cuba it is then

          My thoughts were a little hazy as I Flew through the air. I didn't really recall setting off. It was like when I used to drive my car and being half way through the journey—then wondering how the hell I got there in the first place. I had to remain low because I was using landmarks to navigate. It would be quite a few hours before I got to Cuba and I was apprehensive at the idea. I felt like my heart couldn't deal with any more disappointment and I worried that Cuba would have as many people as Colombia.

          Hours later and I had to land in Jamaica, my poor ride was having issues: Oil pressure had dropped, and I feared if I risked flying the rest of the way to Cuba my plane may crash in the ocean leaving me stranded with no chance of rescue. The radio was still silent as I reached land, I could see a commercial jet had crashed into the beach below me and was now partly covered in sand. I wondered as I passed if it had passengers aboard when it struck the beach. I quickly put that thought out of my mind, I knew how bad aviation accidents could be and the trauma suffered by people present, so instead directed my thoughts to my problem instead.

          My plane was making some awful sounds and the landing was rough to say the least. I stepped off with my legs trembling and faced with the same grim reality—there were no people. My poor heart was bouncing in my chest, like a caged animal trying to force its way out. I stumbled toward the airport, tears blurred my sight as I moved forward. I was choked up with fear and I wanted nothing more than to be home with my mom and dad in Missouri. I needed to hug them and to know they were okay. Even my brother! Wyatt and I had parted company poorly when we last spoke. He had expressed his opinion about me going to the amazon and it wasn't in a favourable light. He wanted me to help with the farm like him, but I wasn't a farmer. The hours were excessive and the work hard. If I had to be honest though, right now I regretted that decision and I would give anything to be back. Panic took hold of me far worse than it had done previously, I could barely breath as the door to the airport opened—I fell through it onto the floor, God knows why I crawled, but I did. I crawled toward the wall and rested my back against it lifting my legs to my chest and wept. I cried like a little baby wallowing in my own self-pity. The world was so quiet, and I think it was the lack of sound that was killing me. I'd expected to walk back into the real world and be met with all the sounds and distractions that came with it, but instead I was met with this mute zone of perpetual terror. Suddenly I began to laugh, why was I scared, I'd survived ten years in the amazon all by myself, sleeping with creepy crawlies so big you'd have bad dreams for a lifetime. "WHY?" I shouted, I deserved an answer. "Take me—PLEASE!" I began to get angry. What had I done? Why was I left behind? "What if I'm dead?" I mulled that thought over for a moment. "Occam's Razor!" The words came to my mouth as if by themselves. "The simplest solution is probably the answer." I calmed my mind. "What are the 6 characteristics of life" I found myself asking. "They are made of cells, they grow, they reproduce, they respond to their environment and they self-regulate." I found solace in the words as they spilled from my mouth. Granted I hadn't facilitated one of those characteristics, but it wasn't because I was incapable. Although currently I lacked a damned mate.

          I dusted myself down and stood up, I wanted to know if the people here vanished around the same time or if they had been taken sooner or later. I decided then to use my deductive reasoning skills to figure this out, I needed to know. And it gave me something else to concentrate on. I found the odd paper laying around and a spliff, it was hidden in a denim coat that was on the floor. If nothing else, I planned on getting stoned while I read the paper.

        8th of March 2017 From what I gleaned from the front cover people had been going missing far sooner than even the 8th There were references to the first people vanishing as early as February 2017. The first bunch were on a cruise ship. Authorities had lost contact with the QE2 and when it was found it was empty, not a soul was aboard. As I read on, I learned that it didn't stop there, in fact it got worse - small communities would vanish within hours of each other. The world had declared a state of emergency by the end of February and by the 5th of March over a quarter of the world's population had gone into the ether. Even military bases had been cleared of personal. I think the scariest thing in the paper was the UN relief squads disappearing faster than the UN could send them out. My mind raced, and I wondered if they had figured it out. If South America had been left because there weren't enough people to inhabit it. I wondered if there were plans to reclaim the infrastructure here in the future once the population had started to grow again. I believed that the west especially the US would have come up with a solution. I was thinking from the information I'd garnered that we had been invaded by aliens, that the people and the larger animals had been taken, for protein or something and had hoped that the US and her allies had fought them off. It was hard to remain optimistic but what choice did I have? For the moment I had two choices; I could fly to the US namely Florida and see if we had survived this or end it all here and jump head first from the control tower that I had somehow found myself in. I contemplated suicide for a while as I looked out of the window, all sorts of crazy thoughts went through my head. Like what if I didn't die and just injured myself really badly? I am a coward and I don't like pain, I for one did not fancy laying on the tarmac below waiting to die because I had jumped from up here. Not only that, but I was curious; there was a part of me that wanted to know if we had beaten off our invaders, or if we even were invaded. There was an excited trepidation about me as I descended the stairs, I was going to see this through—even if I was the last man on earth!

         The hangers at this airport were interesting and it wasn't long before I found a replacement plane. It was a little bigger than the one I had arrived here with and was capable of a greater distance. The interior was reasonably luxurious if not a little dusty, but that didn't take long to sort out. I didn't bother cleaning off the passenger seats, it wasn't like I was expecting company anyway. Like my old plane this too had a dead battery—I was a little vexed at that, but I did notice that nearby was a charging terminal that had power? I was curious, so went and inspected the outlet and for a while I was buzzing with excitement, if there was power then maybe Jamaica still had Jamaicans. Electricity came from power station's so presumably speaking, the local power station was still in operation.

          With hope growing in my mind I connected the charger to the plane and waited a for a few minutes. I was impressed, the plane's engine started then hummed out its rhythm, I had a feeling that today would be a good day, with the exception of my aching right leg. I tried the radio, expecting it to be alive with chatter, and after I had switched through every channel my mind began to fill with dismay again. Why aren't people using radio's? I asked myself angrily. I rolled my plane out of the hanger and looked back. On the roof were banks of what I assumed were solar panels, they looked similar to those found on Calculators when I was a kid just much larger. I guessed then that the power fed into the hanger was coming from those panels and not a power station.

         Dashed! There went my hopes of potential survivors here in Jamaica. Fear invaded my thoughts again. I pushed them away,  I needed to remain optimistic. I had to believe that my kin back home were alive and well, I would do anything right now just to play football with my brother. Hell! I'd even help bring in the harvest. My plane took to the skies and again I was on my way. This new craft had a computer on the dash. It appeared to be something similar to radar, I still flew reasonably low, but I wanted to be high enough for the US air force to ping me on their radar system.