5.1 Survivors

MAYHEM ON EARTH

Drake stepped outside his house, onto the front porch, with his mother.

“So, why’d you join the Military?” Drake’s mother asked him.

“Huh?”

They stepped down into the front yard.

“You said that you joined the Military. Why? It’s dangerous. But I’m sure your father didn’t even try to stop you.” She rolled her eyes.

“Ah, right. That… I joined it to get revenge.”

“Revenge? That’s it? You’re risking your life for that?

“And when will your revenge be over?”

“When it will be over?”

“Yeah. When will you stop fighting for revenge?”

Drake stopped. He hadn’t thought about the question much. “I’m not sure… When I feel satisfied, I guess.”

“There are much better things you can do instead—more important things. If you really want to risk your life, at least have a good reason.”

Drake hadn’t thought much about what else he could do or what he would do after his vengeful mood was satiated.

“Watch out!” his mother suddenly yelled.

She pushed him aside. He fell to the ground. He turned back to see that his mother was caught in the beak of an all-too-familiar Raven.

“Run!” his mother said with her dying words.

Drake gulped, trying to process what had happened.

“Drake, RUN!”

Despite having seen this scene several times before, it was just as painful to watch. Drake screamed as the Raven gulped down his mother. He’d had enough of this monster ruining his life and killing those precious to him. He ran at it and attacked. He subconsciously knew he shouldn’t be throwing away the life that his mother had sacrificed herself to give him, but in his rage, he didn’t know what else to do. He was tired of running away from his enemies. He wanted to fight, even if it was futile.

Drake closed his eyes and cried and yelled, sadness mixed with anger, as he punched his foe before him.

“Woah, Woah, what’s this for?”

Drake heard a familiar voice.

“It’s not our training time, is it?”

He looked up to see General Arthur in front of him.

“Arthur…” he said, surprised. He wiped his tears. He was somewhat comforted now, but the pain remained in his heart. There was a sort of bittersweet feel to this encounter.

“Drake, I’ll be going somewhere for a while. I’ll leave the Defense Force in yours and Steve’s hands. I entrust you to lead it well, and work for the greater good of each and every citizen of Rencia—of humanity.” He smiled.

“No,” Drake said as Arthur started walking away. “Don’t leave! I’ll miss you. The Defense Force needs a good leader. I don’t have anyone else to train with…” he gave excuses—reasons for Arthur to stay.

Arthur turned back and smiled, wrinkles forming on his old face.

“What are you talking about? You have plenty of other friends.”

* * *

Drake woke up in a sweat. He got up and then tried to slow down his breath. His recent nightmares were so much different from his usual escapist fantasies. His first thoughts were memories of what had last happened—of Arthur dying and him running to his death and pointlessly attacking the Raven in rage. He was no longer mad. Bereft of two important figures in his life, he felt only sorrow now.

He then looked at his surroundings. He was inside of a building, in the central area of a large, indoor mall. It was broken down and weathered quite a bit, but it looked safe. There were many people inside with him. Some were soldiers of the Defense Force. Others looked like civilians; he didn’t recognize them. Drake had been sleeping on a mattress on the floor. There were three people sitting in front of him.

“Drake! You’re finally awake!” Steve said. “Thank goodness.”

“It’s about time,” Jord said. “He’s been out for almost a day.”

“Where am I?” Drake asked. “What happened?”

“Let me explain,” Steve said. “You were struck by lightning as you were at the Raven’s feet. You passed out. Commander Rein came and rescued the both of us afterward.”

“So then, the Raven…?”

“We don’t know what happened to it. Whether it’s alive or not. But something weird happened: After the lightning struck, the Raven started attacking nearby Mayhems, and those Mayhems fought back.”

Mayhems normally ignored each other and the damage inflicted upon them. Knowing about their wounds was useless for hunting down humans, and they could regenerate after eating them.

“I see…” Drake faced downward. It bothered him that his enemy was possibly still alive and out there, but for now, he was glad that he and his remaining friends were alive.

“Afterward, the General’s plan succeeded and we got away from the group of Mayhems with minimal injuries. We traveled in the dark of night to Cyll, where we met a group of survivors.”

“Survivors?” Drake looked at the third person, a young man.

“Aye,” the person said. “My name’s Tom Dudley.” He had a British accent stronger than Steve’s. “I’m part of this Mall Base of the Cyll’s Survivors of the Apocalypse, call it what you will. I wasn’t there in the original group, but apparently, Steve, here, formed it.”

Drake looked at Steve questioningly. Steve scratched the back of his head and looked at him modestly. “Remember the helicopter in the square where over a hundred people were fighting to get seats?”

Drake remembered. He’d wondered how Steve had gotten the two of them aboard it.

“Well, at the time,” Steve continued, “I realized there was no way everyone could survive if they kept fighting for seats like that. The Mayhems were approaching and the soldiers couldn’t fend them off forever. So I got everyone’s attention and we discussed how to survive. I came up with the plan to group everyone into a building the Mayhems couldn’t enter; it should have food, supplies, and other requirements. They could wait there until other humans came to rescue them. I took the seats on the helicopter as a sort of reward for coming up with the plan.”

Woah, Drake thought, so that’s what happened… It’s amazing that he was able to get everyone to discuss group survival in a situation like that. Everyone was panicking. As I thought, he’s good at understanding people.

“That’s the story of how we started,” Tom took it from there.

“Some time afterward, the group of a hundred or so people who survived by living in this Mall realized that no one would come to help them. They then went out with weapons they made. They had to learn by themselves how to go out and collect food for the rest of them. They also found other survivors like me and allowed us to join their group.” Tom looked down, shuddering thinking about bad memories. “Before they found me, it was so hard to survive in that basement… No food… I… had to do things to survive… we all did: things we’re not proud of…” His voice quaked. He shook his head and put his hands on it, trying to get rid of the thoughts. He became quiet.

“Anyway, the group expanded into several hundred survivors, and we set up many bases across the city.” A new person approached the group of four. “Last night, while we were patrolling, we came upon you lot of soldiers. We were surprised to find that Steve had come back to us, and also that there’s a walled city with a major population of humans left.”

“This is the leader of the Mall base of the Cyll Survivors, Trevor Pharrell,” Steve introduced.

Drake hoped that the survivors wouldn’t get their hopes up. Rencia was full and couldn’t take any more people in. That meant the survivors weren’t saved or anything. They would have to continue their lives here.

This information showed Drake that he had made an incorrect assumption subconsciously. He’d thought, as the government of Rencia’s propaganda had led him to believe, that there were no human survivors of the Apocalypse outside of Rencia. But in reality, there could be plenty of groups, like this one, of humans who are trying to survive together in various places across the world. It was just that Rencia was the largest and safest one, as well as the only one with the capabilities to be self-sufficient and fight back against the Mayhems.

“Thanks, guys, for catching me up to the situation.

“Also, Jord, Steve, this may seem a bit random, but thanks for being my friends.”

Steve put on a confused look, and Jord simply said: “No prob.”

Another realization that Drake had was of the value of his friends and family. When the Raven had eaten the General, Drake remembered that it had also eaten his mother, and, combining the hatred from both the deaths, he lost his rationality in the spur of the moment. It was because both of them were dear to him that he was so enraged at their murders. Until now, he had been focused on getting revenge over what precious people were lost to him, but now, he’d realized that he still had plenty of people that he valued and needed to protect. A few months ago, after the Gorilla incident, Drake had realized that he had friends who worried about him, but now, he realized that they weren’t just things that he needed to keep from getting worried about him. They were valuable and helpful to him. They were important in his life.

And with this realization, it was becoming difficult to continue to pursue his revenge. He had previously gone from recklessly attacking Mayhems to focusing on killing them safely, but now, he felt he should have more focus on the people and things that he had, over what he’d lost.

Drake didn’t like how he was slowly being forced away from his revenge by responsibilities. He wasn’t nearly satisfied yet. His thirst for revenge was unsatiated, like a hole in his chest. The killing wasn’t enough.

Drake reached for his necklace but found that it wasn’t there around his neck. He immediately instinctively panicked, looking around.

“Ah, about your necklace,” Steve said carefully. Drake watched him retrieve it. It was broken: the chain was broken and the jewel at the center seemed burnt and a dull shade of the color it had once been. “It broke,” Steve stated the obvious. “The lightning must have done it somehow…” It was the only logical explanation, but no one there could tell if it was normal for jewels to change color when exposed to electricity.

Drake was sad as he took it. The necklace was quite precious to him, having been a sentimental connection to his father while he had been away during business trips. He remembered his father telling him to take good care of it. Steve looked down. He knew how much Drake cared about it, often clutching it under distress as if its presence calmed his anxiety.

Drake thought about it for some time and then shook his head. He tossed it over his shoulder. “Meh.” It fell under someone’s foot as they were walking. They stepped on it, accidentally crushing it.

“Eh!?!” Steve exclaimed. “I thought that was super important to you!”

“It’s fine. It’s just a necklace. I’m just glad you all are okay.” He put on a quick smile.

“That attitude is great to see,” Jord commented. Steve was still in shock.

“By the way, where’s Commander Rein?” Drake asked. Drake thought he ought to thank him for rescuing him both during the Gorilla incident and the previous night.

“He’s somewhere outside. After everyone got here and settled, he mysteriously left the Mall without telling the reason. He’s been gone the whole day,” Jord replied.

This is still a pretty new, undetermined situation we’re in. We need to settle, assess our losses, and think of our next course of action. Where could the Commander have gone to at a time like this? Couldn’t he have done it later? Drake thought.

Drake got up and looked around the central hall of the former Shopping Mall. There were injured soldiers resting on the floor. The Cyll Survivors were bringing first aid and other medical facilities to help them. The wounds weren’t just physical, though. There was an atmosphere of gloom similar to that in Rencia after the Apocalypse. The soldiers were not in good spirits. And who could blame them? They were injured, exhausted from continuous battle, lost some comrades and the General, and their current leader wasn’t there to guide them.

“Ah, as for the damage,” Steve explained, “we lost the General. He was the leader of the Defense Force and this mission, so losing such an important and symbolic figure gave a blow to morale, along with the hours of battle and fleeing last night. It’s best to give them some time.”

Drake could understand how the soldiers felt right now, but he didn’t like the way they expressed it.

“Further,” Steve continued, “since we abandoned our buggies at the site of the battle, we don’t have fuel, weapons, and other resources. It’s a miracle that we found these survivors and they have medical equipment and some canned food, but it will be difficult for us from here on out. We just have transportation.” If they had just fled from the beginning, they wouldn’t even have had that, not that they knew these Survivors existed and could help them. “Maybe once we get better, we can travel back to the site, and, if it’s not still infested with Mayhems, we can retrieve our stuff, but going out is pretty dangerous as we are. For now, we’ll have to put a pause to our Expedition. We also don’t have a map or any way of communicating with Rencia: no satellite phones.”

Thinking about it, it amazed Drake how dependent humans were on tools, especially in this Apocalypse. Without weapons and jetpacks, the Defense Force wouldn’t be able to fight Mayhems. Without communication, they were isolated from any technical help from Rencia. Without transportation or maps, they wouldn’t have been able to travel this far. Without these buildings, medical supplies, and processed, long-lasting food, these Survivors and now the soldiers wouldn’t have been able to survive without venturing out.

“Hmmm…” Drake thought. “We can communicate from the SORS, right?”

“Yes, it can connect to long-range communication devices like those in Rencia, but we can forget about going to the SORS Radar station anytime soon.”

“No. We should go soon.” Drake spoke loudly for all the soldiers in the room to hear. “It’s during times like these, when we’re down that we must get up and prove to ourselves that we can still fight.”

He’s doing it again, Steve thought.

Soldiers turned their attention to Drake.

“I understand that most of you must be scared right now,” Drake continued. “In that battle, we lost Arth-… I mean our General and some friends and were forced to run away like cowards. I feel bad about it also. But that battle wasn’t a defeat. We lasted for nearly an hour, killing many Mayhems. This was the first time we have done something like this.

“Think about it. Until now, we were training, but now, in our first actual battle with our lives on the line killing Mayhems, we killed so many of them. We can feel proud of this great accomplishment, for we are warriors who joined the Defense Force on humanity’s behalf to fight back against the terrifying force that is the Mayhems. While they tried to exterminate us, we survived in places like these and even fought back.” Drake tried to remember Arthur’s speeches and replicate their invigorating and inspiring style. “We may have lost some things, but this battle was not the end of our fight. We will use this experience to grow. We will continue to fight the Mayhems. We will get our revenge for all that they have taken from us. We will, until the day we die, fight for humanity.”

The soldiers looked to be in a better mood.

“Let us not hold our heads down in defeat. Let us not forget the purpose of our mission now. Even if our return to Rencia is uncertain for now, we have to stand up and reach the SORS. We have to find out the information about what happened the night of the Apocalypse so that we can get one step closer to defeating the Mayhems.”

The soldiers cheered. The Cyll Survivors and Steve were amazed.

Good, Drake thought. He didn’t like watching the vanguard of humanity’s attack against the Mayhems be all depressed. He hated lamenting when he could instead get up and fight the source of his problems. Mayhems could indeed be terrifying, but he wasn’t asking to charge straight at them. Rather than going back to the site of the battle and scavenging any remains that weren’t destroyed by the storm or Mayhems, he wanted to focus on going to the SORS. It would surely make everyone feel much better once their mission was complete and they will have found something useful to Rencia’s fight. The drawback, however, was that in the case that there wasn’t any useful information there, everyone would feel even worse, all their work being for nothing. Drake wanted to take the risk, though. They didn’t come all the way here just to adopt the mindset of a loser.

The day passed, and it was now evening. Drake spent his time talking to the Cyll Survivors about the Defense Force’s experiences and cheering up his fellow soldiers. He was fatigued, but this was a critical moment, as Arthur had told him, for humanity’s future.

Eventually, Commander Rein arrived at the base, and an annoyed Drake had questions to ask of him.