The Pole Shift

Captain Grady

The military man was shaken. The Pole Shift had devastated the world as his superiors had suggested.  Destroyed it in a way they said it would, and where it would. It was almost as if they were reading from a script prepared by those that knew how it would turn out. Their bunkers high up in the Australian Divide had for the most part held. There were a few high plateaus that had gone, the angry waters climbing unusually high and gouging their people clear but within a week they had established communications with themselves - the chosen ones.  The elite minds of the military, the politicians, the scientists and the doctors, farmers and vets  - all the cream of the pre Post Shift world. They had cheered loudly for themselves, humanity would live on. They got down to work,  mapping the new archipelago of Islands that had once been a Mountain Range, eagerly planting crops, tending to livestock. Then something seemed to happen that sent them on a spiral downwards.

                It started with survivors. As the weeks passed it became evident there were groups of people that had either bunkered down at the base of the projected wash, or fluked survival in boats, or other means. They started to arrive on the new islands in little groups, twos, threes, once a group of fifty on an old cruise liner.

                "Where will we put them?" He had asked the Major who snapped:

                "To bed, the eternal sleep." Captain Grady was shocked. They had kept the people out with force prior to the Shift, but surely the survivors had a right, a God given right to receive help now? He did not voice his opinion, instead mentally cast his feelings with steel and the sound of gun fire.

                There were others who did voice outrage, and disappeared. It was as if they had had their humanity snatched away from them, and they wondered what it was all about.

                 Arriving survivors began to see human carcasses dead through human violence, rather than nature and got it, steering clear of the greater land, looking over their shoulders, their spirits hurt in a way nature could never match.

                As the weeks passed, the months gathered.  The souring continued. They had no contact with the rest of the world. This was a key expectation, a cooperation with other nations that would bind them all in necessity but there was silence.  Fearand doubt had bloomed and the Captain felt that there was no need for either and that  a new Eden was being snuffed out.

                The General found him brooding upon a granite block that was the shape of a flat head. He looked to the new seas, still turbulent and oily. "I am told there is still work to do, we must hunt them out you know."

                "Hunt?"

                "Illegal survivors"

                "Illegal? Is it like that?" The General sighed deeply, a rare glimpse of his own feelings.

                "Yes, until they tell me it's over."

                "Who's they?" Captain Grady felt like he was close to some kind of explanation.

                "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. See the pens over there, the sheep, the cows? What do you feel?"

                "We must husband them, they are key to our..." The Captain trailed off, having an epiphany. The General smiled almost sadly, he said:

                "We must broaden the search. They only number in the hundreds, a few here a few there, it won't take long. Or so I am told."