The Incident

You would think by now I would be used to the routine.

The stealth like maneuvers to conceal ourselves, timed down nearly to the second. The painfully slow navigations we took to find the safe and hidden spots to rest, knowing fully well that we would only have a short time to allow our eyes to remain closed. The constant need for movement was evident, as if we were the actual blood within our own veins, pumping endlessly to keep the very core of our ourselves going.

The means of survival were emblazoned into our brains to such a degree, a moment without them on the forefront of thought felt impossible now.

Things are different, so different than before, and yet, I almost cannot even remember that time. The Incident practically compelled us to forget and adapt within hours, not days or weeks. Goodbyes to loved ones quickly became mandatory and those of us who made it through the initial fallout knew right away that everything was shifting.

Now, the search objective is the only thing for us. We need to find the necklace, we have to find the necklace. It is the only hope we have.

My family and I were separated on day one. When the sky began raining fire, I was out, blissfully driving off to get ice cream of all the things. I had such a sweet tooth back then.

But the flames came, slowly at first, and mesmerizing, as if we were watching a painting nearing its completion. A mere five minutes after the drizzle of orange flashes had appeared, the atmosphere revealed its true nature and released the floodgates of hell. The small blazes rapidly transitioned to form one large inferno, scattered across the heavens.

By the time I made it back to the home I shared with my family, there was nothing more than a hole in the ground, as if the earth had swallowed them up whole with no plans to ever release them. Collapsing in front of the destruction, I had wailed and cried and cursed. My impromptu bereavement session was cut short when I had suddenly been pulled away by foreign arms grasping my body from the middle, with a voice shouting about how we had to keep moving before another wave hit. I had promptly followed the orders that the stranger barked, all while my vision became more and more obscured. The visitor grasped my hand to lead the way, his mere presence a glimmer of hope amongst the smoke and ash.

We had run for miles it felt like, through what were once backyards, over torn down fences and under awnings that just an hour prior had been several feet in the air. When we had found the abandoned car still running, there had been no hesitation from either of us - we jumped in and steered away from the chaos, towards the highway.

As we allowed our thoughts to catch up, one thing had became abundantly clear: the accepting and processing of emotions would no longer be a luxury available to us.

We drove for hours, silently observing the destruction The Incident had caused. It was evident that a breach of some kind had begun and the human toll would be in the hundreds of thousands, if not well beyond that. We stopped only once that first day, as soon as we felt protected from any dangers, at a gas station fifty miles outside the city limits. We spent less than five minutes filling several canisters with fuel and raiding the food supply available inside before taking off again.

It was four days later when the radio first informed us how a seemingly simple locket in the shape of a heart was the key, the answer to the end of this. The military said their highest ranking official had digitally transferred the codes to open the portals to the necessary weapons onto some form of high tech gold, heart shaped pendant that he had given to his young daughter. For safe keeping, they said. Now the locket was missing, along with the official and his daughter, somewhere in the vast landscape that used to be the Midwest.

That was nearly a year ago. Others have been able to narrow the location to Chicago, but beyond that, not much was known. The search had become exhausting for everyone who remained, and we were continually being overrun by the invaders. Food was another matter entirely. Though the stranger and I had stuck together, we quickly learned that cars were the new currency. By week two we agreed to change out vehicles as often as needed in our efforts to not alert the apparent intelligent life that had taken over of our presence. The minivan we currently occupied was at least our fortieth car; I had stopped counting after we were forced to give up the Jeep of my dreams.

We made it to Chicago via Milwaukee less than a week before the anniversary of The Incident. I felt myself missing my family rather heavily as we drove silently, but I knew that my agony could never distract us from the task we so desperately wanted to see complete. We maneuvered cautiously through the streets, the stranger as my look out and myself as the driver. This arrangement was one we typically adhered to within city limits - he had always preferred driving on the simple country roads, while I had mastered the city streets in my early twenties.

Our last radio transmission for information indicated something could be found at the Public Library in Logan Square. What the something was, we weren’t sure, and it was silly to believe that locket itself would be there, but we had to try. Trying was all we had now. Trying to find the locket, trying to survive, trying to still comprehend why any of this had even occurred.

The stranger silently handed me a granola bar, our wordless exchange somehow containing a thousand understandings. We could easily make it to the library, and even stay the night if we felt it safe enough, but after that, we would need a new vehicle and an early morning departure. The odds of anything being there were sure to be slim, but again, we knew we had to see it through. Try, try, try. It was all we had.

I tapped the gauge on the dashboard to show we were coasting on empty fumes and he nodded with recognition. My worry was not the available gas in this minivan, rather the dwindling amount of containers we had after this to see us through once we were on the other side of whatever this stop was.

My navigation saw us reach the library front entrance twenty minutes later. As I shifted into park, the stranger rapidly gathered what little belongings we had, including our last two remaining fuel canisters. Since it now took days to properly refuel the pump depots in the secret and silence of night, gas stations with actual fuel available were becoming increasingly few and far between.

We silently pulled everything into our arms, aware of the drill in these big cities: we’d have less than ninety seconds until one of them was sure to want to investigate the sound of an engine cutting itself off. Working our way toward the front doors of the building, our biggest need at this exact moment was that they would be unlocked and allow us in. The stranger let out a small sound of relief when they opened, and we quickly gathered ourselves in to the front entrance, away from the windows and out of sight in the darkness.

Within a few seconds the shrill sound of their vocal cords became apparent. They wanted to taste, smell, feel whatever this new thing was that had not previously been there. We knew they would not be smart enough to know where we’d gone to, just that something had shifted within that immediate space. I turned to back even deeper into the library, the stranger close behind me as we let the sounds of their odd form of communication fade into the background.

We were moving cautiously and had only made it into the second room when we heard it. Not the shrieking from the invaders, not their movements outside on the concrete sidewalk, but something beyond that, something that caused both our bodies to instinctively tense.

It was something human, and it was coming from inside the very room we were in.

My eyes strained in the dark, desperate to see what it was we were potentially facing. Was it friend? Foe? A hallucination we both heard?

The silence was then broken.

“Why are you here?” It was a mans voice, and not my strangers.

“We mean no harm, just looking for something,” the stranger replied steadily, as I moved my hand to my crude weapon in case it was needed.

“You are here for the locket,” the reply stated matter of factly. “You are here for her.”

The stranger reached out to squeeze my shoulder and I sucked in a breath of air. Was it really just like that? Had we truly finally found the military man and his daughter? After all this time? It couldn’t be.

“Not her, just the locket. You know what it can do, you know it is the key,” my stranger replied.

“You don’t get it. She is the locket. She is the key.”

The military man came into view from the shadows, a gun in his hand by his side, and a girl not yet in her double digits hiding behind his person. She was by no means small but still clearly a child, a child whose face could not help but reflect all she had endured in her short life.

“What do you mean?” I asked, my hand recoiling from my pipe, locking eyes with my stranger as he took a step forward with me.

“She is the key,” the military man repeated. “The locket does exist, but the code itself only works with a secondary cipher.”

“And she is the only one with this secondary cipher?”

“Yes. It is embedded within her memory. It is why they are here.”

Within that space of time, the stranger and I understood why our world had originally shifted and how it had just done so again. His daughter was the one who would either save us or kill us all, though neither would be intentionally her fault. She held the only key to everyones survival, whatever that key was.

In less than thirty seconds, our objective from the last year of running and searching had changed. We would protect her, save her, sacrifice ourselves if needed, for her. We were now responsible for more than our own destinies. It was our choice, our decision and making the right one was crucial.

Her face was so pure and true, and she deserved to see more skies that were full of blue and oceans full of water. She deserved a life where she was never hunted.

We turned to face our two new companions, knowing our new path now.

“How can we help?” I asked, my voice full of anticipation. Both of them slowly calmed their stances, relaxing into our presence. With a newly energetic and appreciative position, the military man sheathed his weapon and walked forward to us.

“We fight. Together.”