Found at Lost

No time to think what do I take?

It didn’t happen the way everyone thought it would, some earth-shattering projectile hurling from space. A World War would have been more predictable. It was a slap in the face of humanity, seeing that it was caused by our need to defend the planet after Asteroid Janis224’s near miss of the moon’s dark side. That asteroid had a profound effect on humanity as a whole. Millions watched for weeks as news agencies covered Janis224 around the clock until it changed course 3 days before it was supposed to make contact. The whole world rejoiced! This also brought the world’s greatest minds together who developed a space defense system. All that brain power and they settled on . . . Space Force. Boy, if President Trump was alive to see that day. All nations pulled together when it seemed like life was on the verge of extinction, Christians were seen worshipping with Muslims, North Korea joined the United Nations, and Israel and the Palestinians set differences aside and drafted border lines that all agreed to. The world watched as piece by piece, the defense system was manufactured, sent off into space, and assembled on the moon. As the world celebrated this major accomplishment, unforeseen events millions of miles away changed life on Earth in a drastic way.

The defense system was named the Universal Tracking Defense System or UTDS. The system was actually 17 miles of weaponized lasers designed to break up and redirect any foreign objects hurling towards the moon or earth. On June 20, 2089, a five mile stretch of the defense system imploded, due to a clogged moon dust filtration system, leaving a 7-mile-deep crater close to the Grimaldi crater where base camp of operations was located. Four days later, fisherman in the Mediterranean Sea sent an SOS. Fish had died by the millions and were blocking the vessel from moving forward. A week later all the seas stopped moving and the clouds lowered to 30 ft. above ground level across the entire world. Next came the solar flares. These flares disabled the UTDS and 2 months after the implosion, 76 members of the team died when solar flares knocked out the computer controlling the UTDS air supply.

It didn’t take long for the world to dive into chaos. Nations pointed fingers as communications across the world failed. Airline travel had stopped since 4 planes went down in the same day. One by one all of the world's systems failed. Most of the world had retreated to indoors because looters and criminals made venturing outdoors unsafe. Most of the people in my apartment building worked together and shared resources which is how we were able to make it this long. Even after all that, we still hoped.

When the seas stopped moving, along with the loss of marine life, the Tectonic plates began to shift. Hawaii was the first place affected. The 10.5 magnitude quake sank all but two of the small islands into the Pacific Ocean. It spread to Japan heading east and spread as far as New York City. Reports out of New York City were horrifying because people couldn’t see the buildings falling due to the heavy cloud cover.

I woke up to the familiar sound of the AC vibrating. I lay there for a moment listening, thinking how refreshing it was to have .....Wait!!! There's no power!! As I sat up trying to listen, the low vibration grew louder. The building is shaking! I yelled, “EARTHQUAAAAAAAAAAKE!!!!!” I started to run for the door and I realized I was only in my boxers. I could hear appliances crashing and windows breaking in the apartments around me. as I turned back to grab some pants, my flat-screen TV fell over and I saw it.

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Stupid heart shaped locket. It stopped me in my tracks. I lost it about 4 yrs. ago, 3 days after my, then, wife gave it to me. She made a big deal because, yeah, she just bought it, but because she had our kids' names etched in. I musta looked or that thing for...... A loud booming crash came from the apartment above me and it scared me back to reality. I looked towards the room and back at the locket. No time to think what do I take? BOTH! I grab my shorts and head towards the door. As I reached the locket, I felt the floor ........

After the great quakes of 2089, most of life had changed, major cities were avoided due to the amount of debris from the fallen skyscrapers, the lack of any sort of laws, the smell from the decayed bodies, but most surprising thing was the large number of house cats in major cities that survived the quakes. About 6 months after the quakes, PETA sent a team of 25 college volunteers into Boston to collect as many of the fluffy pets as they could and transport them to the Patriot Campsite, which used to be the Brookline suburb, but for some reason was spared major damage to the city and was used as a new hub. It was one of the few places where communications systems were somewhat functional. The excursion started off well, they wandered into Boston’s west side and lasted only 20 minutes before a pack of American Shorthairs cornered them and attacked. 6 of the 25 volunteers returned. All but one of the survivors had deep scratch marks around their eyes, simply because he ran with his arm covering his eyes. The extent of his injuries included a broken tailbone, which he suffered when he fell on a group of kittens attacking his ankles. “Gougers” as we came to call them, flushed the rat population out of the cities and attacked any humans trying to enter the city.

I never liked the term “Scav”, well I never liked being a scavenger either, but there aren't too many ways of earning a living in Post-Quake America. My first-time scavving , our guide led us into a den of nursing gougers with newborn kittens, hundreds of them at the bottom of an elevator shaft of a fallen office building. I never ran so fast in my life. Three of us ended up in an abandoned Prius surrounded by cats. The sound they made all together as they tried to get in the car was so creepingly spooky, just thinking about it makes me question is this really worth it.

It was in that Prius that we discovered how to work around the gougers. It was one of the older models...It still had three wheels. I remember walking past it on the way to the building because you mainly only see these in the country in rural areas. Running from those cats was terrifying AND exciting and when we locked the doors of the Pruis we all burst out laughing. Oh, we were in that car, it seemed like forever. The sound of the cat cries went from scary to annoying, really quick. Imagine the sound of hundreds of babies wailing at the same time.......in slow motion. but after hearing it for about 10 minutes, it just sounded like we were in a field of angry goats. The condition the car was in told us it was probably brought here recently by some scavs from the country and abandoned. Without the owner, the biometric scanner prevented us from operating anything aside from the web streamer. The internet went down during a solar flare storm, but there was nothing else to do but surf. We typed in random web pages; no images popped up, but a weird sound started playing from the speakers. “Click click clickity click”, fast then slow, over and over like something was slowly trying to rev up but kept failing. Gougers started going crazy. One by one they started clawing at their own ears and scattering off. we all grabbed our recorders and recorded as much as our memory sticks could hold, Then we headed back replaying that sound safely out of the city.

We did well after that. I made sure when I went out I had an extra three batteries for my recorder. Most of us worked in groups of 5, 2 lookouts and 3 diggers. But today there was just 3 of us, 1 lookout and 2 diggers. We were going back to a site we struck good on yesterday but had to leave before it got dark. Recorder or not, the city is not the place to be after dusk. IN and OUT! We found a collapsed building where the side of it had fallen, exposing the apartments like some tragic Barbie Dream House. The back side was still intact except for the front hall area, which was missing a huge chunk from the top to the bottom. Yesterday we made it through the apartments but didn’t get to the front hall area. I found three gold necklaces and two dinner plates still intact. It was a good day and this morning I woke up eager to get back.

John’s battery failed about halfway through the top floor pile. Our lookout, Carlon, brought an extra one but didn’t want to let it go. I agreed because he was the lookout and I gave John one of mine. My first battery died when we broke through the ceiling level and could see a pocket opening. I shined my light and waved it though the darkness. The hole was too small and it took us nearly an hour to clear away debris large enough to fit through. Carlon called over to us he had 40 minutes battery left. John had 25 minutes left and I told him to turn his off in case we needed it on the way back out of the city. We just had to stay together. My battery was on 5%, but it was plenty of time to hop in and scav real quick. Plus I didn’t want to have done all this work and come home empty. I shined my light through this time and scanned it through the space. It was a mess but there may be something of value. The hole was tight. I handed John my Recorder and squeezed through the opening. I looked around slowly for gougers, scanning the light left to right. I saw something shining near the back part of the hallway. When I reached it, it was partially covered by some old shorts. I tried to pick it up but it was snagged on something. I set the light down near it and pulled with both hands. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I realized I had been grabbing at a heart shaped locket which was twisted around the skeletal remains of a finger. Something moved to the left of my peripheral. I called out to John as I tugged on the locket. It broke free and I fell back. I accidently kicked the flashlight when I fell back and it rolled for a few seconds before it stopped facing a gray mangled fur tabby in a Christmas sweater. I reached for my recorder. JOHN HAS IT!! As the cat started to slowly walk toward me. I saw it.....NO EARS.....