The Lost Locket

Lockets were banned. Ever since the war that had destroyed so many places. The government as we knew it, had fallen at the hands of a wayward general. A locket had been the cause of the war. Or so the rumors went. The apocalypse had come and none of us had been prepared. The story went something along the lines of…

The general had gone on a rampage trying to find a locket that had belonged to his daughter. Inside the locket was a picture of his wife and daughter. His daughter had been wearing it when she and her mother had been kidnapped by the leader of a small country the general had attacked. He was only following orders but the leader went insane and blamed the general alone for the destruction of his country and almost its entire army. The insane leader had been overthrown. He went into hiding for two years. They left no stone unturned in their search for the insane leader. Or so they thought.

The general was home on leave. His wife left to take his daughter to school. She was supposed to come straight home. This is what she herself had told the general. She never came home. The school secretary had called the general to find out why his daughter hadn’t come into school that day. As it were, unbeknownst to the general, they’d been being watched for months. Their routine being tracked by the insane leader. His wife and daughter had made it to the school but while his wife was getting the daughter out of the car to walk her into school, men wearing masks had grabbed the wife and then the daughter, hoods thrown over their heads and thrown in the back of a nondescript van. No one was there to witness this act because the wife and daughter had been running late; school had already started.

The insane leader had sent the general video of his family being tortured. The general had gone to the government he had spent years fighting for and protecting, for help. They had told him there was nothing they could do to help him. He could not use government resources to find his family. He would have to find them the same way any other people would. Local police would be who he needed to call first. He tried to go about it the right way, then he received another video. This time he watched his wife and daughter being killed. The locket around his daughter’s neck was ripped off. The general went mad. All rational thought left his head. He had gotten some of his men together and went on a rampage. He started killing off the government officials. He blew up The White House while the president and his family were inside. He blew up all of the important government buildings. He declared himself Leader of the new regime; he banned all lockets until his daughter’s was found.

He declared war on any nation that allowed the insane leader to reside in their country. The general destroyed everything in his path to locate the man who killed his family. In turn, the insane leader killed anyone that helped the general. The war that ensued between the general and the insane leader left entire nations destroyed. They didn’t care who they harmed. Those that were left alive, struggled to survive, they hid from both sides. The men that made up their armies were ruthless. They burned homes with whole families inside. They tortured people just for the fun of it. People who had nothing to do with this war. The general had made it quite clear he would not stop until he found the insane leader. He’d known the insane leader wore his daughter’s locket as a way to taunt him.

People believed the apocalypse was upon us. Cities had tried to build blockades to keep these armies out. This had done no good in stopping them. Whole cities had warned their inhabitants to prepare to fight back or be seized; then they shut down. My family ran from the aftermath of the horrific battle that took place within our city. It was easy to see that nothing would be left in the end. These two men who had lost their minds did not care that they were destroying the world. And that is exactly what was happening. The General had gathered every locket he could find in jewelry stores, on his victims, in the homes they raided, and he even had set up stations where people were required to turn in every locket they owned to be melted down and turned into ammunition and other weapons.

My mother had refused to give hers up, even though she’d seen what had happened to the people who refused. They had been very publicly executed by decapitation. The General had personally sliced their heads off with a katana he’d stolen from some museum somewhere. He’d wanted to make an example of all of them. Some people had formed a resistance and had called for anyone who was tired of the war between the general and the insane leader to join them. This was where we ran to. They had found a refuge and made it their base. Somehow they’d found a place that neither tyrant had come across. So my mother and father had decided that we were going to join the resistance. We were going to fight. We’d all decided to end this war. We’d wanted our world back and we were going to do whatever necessary to get it. That was five years ago.

All that was left now was a world that had been destroyed in a war that should never have happened. It could have been prevented had the government let The general use their resources to find his family. Those of us who make up the resistance have done all that we can to stop The General and The Insane Leader. We have killed much of their armies. They have killed much of ours. We move to attack The Insane Leader. We’d received intel that he was close by and had few guards with him. Not a smart move on his part. He never even saw us coming. He’d visited a lake nearby and for some strange reason did not want too many guards with him. We had the advantage of knowing this land, every hiding spot and high ground. Our sniper took the high ground with the perfect view of the entire lake. On my signal he pulled the trigger of his silenced rifle. His aim was impeccable. He shot The Insane Leader right between the eyes. The men he’d had guarding him drew their weapons, searching for the shooter. The sniper picked them off one by one. After all had been killed, we went to search The Insane Leader’s body for the locket that he wore around his neck. We hoped that he hadn’t hidden it somewhere. I found the locket hanging from his neck as if it wanted to be found. I opened it to make sure that the picture was still in the locket. It was.

I told my comrades that I had found the locket and was heading back to the base. I had to send a message that would get to The General. Finding this locket and killing The Insane Leader, could be the end of this war that has lasted far too long. My father had been killed two years before. My mother had been completely shattered. My brother and sister had been killed a short time after; my mother had ended up killing herself. All that is left of my family is me. We have fought to survive. I am going to take back our world. I sent the message and waited. I didn’t have to wait long.

The General didn’t even warn anyone he was coming. He came to the location we had sent him, alone. He found me and demanded the locket. I gave it to him willingly. He immediately opened the heart shaped locket and began to cry. I’ve never seen a grown man cry before. He dropped to his knees and began thanking all of the Gods he could think of for returning his daughter’s locket to him.

I told him that now was the time to end this war. The Insane Leader was dead and he had what he had been looking for. They’d left the world destroyed. It had cost me my family. It had cost many of us our families and friends. We were left with barren wastelands where once grand buildings had stood. The buildings that were left had been turned into fortresses for those trying to hide from the psychotic men who had taken control of the world. The governments that had fought back against them had mostly all fallen. It was strange how these two tyrannical men had been able to fell wholes nations and still survive. Perhaps the day The Insane Leader had killed The General’s wife and daughter, it really had been the start of an apocalypse. The world as we knew it was dead. Many, many people had fallen. Wasn’t that basically the same thing as the apocalypse?

The General ended up calling off what was left of his army. He stepped down as “Leader of the new Regime” and went into hiding. We had no government; we had no leaders to unite us as one nation any longer. If anything, those of us who’d been left standing were nothing more than tribes scattered throughout what had once been a great nation. It was like this all over the world from what we had heard. We were left with peace but how long would that last? How long would these tribes remain at peace before someone decided they wanted to control all of us? We decided to try to rebuild what we could while there was no fighting and no war. We prayed this time of harmony would last. But really, hadn’t the world before, the world as we knew it, been created from conquests and war? Is it really possible to rebuild a world without war and conquest?