Doomsday Diary

What did you expect?

By: Cody A. Bradley

James sat pensively at the table in the dining room. From there, he could see across the street. The house was positioned at the end of a cul-de-sac, where James could observe a quarter-mile down this community's straight, flat road. The heat of the Phoenix sun made the world seem different. In greener lands, the sun is a companion, illuminating the beauty of nature by contrasting fields of lush trees, blue skies and lakes. Here, in the water-deprived remnants of the city, the sun plays a different role, plants shrivel and cower at the sight of the gas giant. While some plants "thrive" in this environment, the meticulously mowed lawns of the past are a far cry from their prime.

This community is no longer a community, just a husk. The perpetual drought of the last 20 years has left the city in mother nature’s grasp, as the dry heat and sand reclaims the abandoned structures one street at a time.

James didn't know what to think when people started to abandon Phoenix and the surrounding metropolitan areas. The severe multi-decade drought forced the state of Colorado to start rationing the amount of water they had previously allowed to flow out of the state. The drought affected New Mexico and Utah some, but destroyed Arizona. The current state of the world James knew is not derived from a mass killing or anything so pleasantly simple. After the water began to dry up, people migrated out of these cities, as they always have throughout history, ever since the Rift Valley. The departure of an extra 7.2 million individuals to the surrounding states left the economy in shambles. Not a single city or state could absorb the number of displaced; there were simply not enough jobs, homes, or a desire to help. There was nothing that could be done; climate change might have been manageable if access to freshwater had stayed relatively the same, but not in this part of the world. From Flagstaff to the Rio Grande, communities began to disappear regardless of efforts made by the federal government. While others migrated, James capitalized on the abandonment of this major U.S. city.

James is a retriever. He gets paid to bring back items or information from the various decrepit cities in Arizona and the surrounding areas. The government contracts retrievers to scout areas around the state to see how they might be repurposed or to keep taps on the drug cartels that have appropriated cities to conduct their illicit operations.

James' had just recently picked up a new government contract. The main objective was to scout Sky Harbor Airport and report on cartel activity, specifically if they were using the abandoned warehouses as a staging site. A secondary objective was to find manufactured prescription drugs. This kind of job was not uncommon. Many drug manufacturers switched to only producing "bare essentials" after health insurance companies refused to pay for experimental drugs. James' didn't really care why the manufacturers did it; it created an opportunity for him to make a better life for his kid, Layla. At the thought of his daughter, James instinctively reached for the gold-painted chain on his neck; he pushed his fingers along the length of the chain and pulled his daughter’s treasured locket from under his shirt and tactical vest. It was nothing particularly valuable, just a cheap gold-painted locket with a picture of him on one side and Diya and Layla on the other. Whenever James left for a mission, Layla always pressed him to take the locket with him, even if he was just leaving home overnight. It was his responsibility to bring it back to her no matter what. A promise made in an effort to soothe his daughter’s fears.

He glanced at the picture just long enough to quietly acknowledge his duty to his daughter. He then cleared his mind of his family to focus on the mission at hand. Whenever he entered the city, he would repeat the same ritual. He would find an empty house and settle into the quiet. He allowed his ears to adapt to the silence of the deserted town, and the radiating heat from the ground and the sky to warm his body. His eyes sought the vultures overhead, and any other desert critters scampering through the uninhabited streets. Once acclimated, James would reach for the locket. The locket allowed thoughts of his family to fade into the background.

…

The trek is five miles through urban sprawl, not the nice condensed buildings of Manhattan, where someone could hide between buildings and around corners. Phoenix had seemingly been constructed without consideration to geography. Most parts of the city were lined with straight streets and alleyways, where an enemy observer could see him from miles away. James always left his car in a previously rich neighborhood, where the winding roads and alleys ensured he could escape from pursuers.

Now, out on straight streets, James needed to ensure he was not exposed for too long, not only to a potential enemy but to the relentless, eternal oppressor in the sky, the scorching sun. James checked his watch, it was only 7 am. He knew the heat was elevating over the high 90s already. Lugging around one hundred pounds of gear didn’t make the situation any better. Still, he forged ahead, taking his planned route of short linear paths, a quarter-mile down an alley here, a sprint down a side road there.

Back in his service days, James routinely completed a marathon-long ruck march carrying a similar weight. However, during real-world situations, it was always different. Five miles in training was less than an hour and a half, but five miles through the streets of a hostile environment would take 5 hours or more. James slowed his march to a crawl as he reached the last 200 meters to the building he planned to use as an observation post. Careful not to alert anyone or anything nearby, he moved silently. James removed his pack from his shoulders after peeking around the last corners of his journey. He quietly laid against the wall that divided the building he would use and the alley in which he currently stood.

He gripped the top of the wall and slowly hoisted himself up, so only the top of his head was exposed on the other side. He took a few seconds to scan the ground floor entrances and the big windows above. Satisfied that no other human would be dumb enough to still be around this area, he tossed his bag over the wall. He swiftly deployed a line of paracord rope to lower it down the other side to prevent it from crashing to the ground with a loud thud. Over he went, quickly taking cover behind a dumpster and doing another check. At this point, something went wrong. Amateurs get excited after completing the first leg of a mission, speeding up when approaching their objective, but James knew better and slowed his pace.

Replacing the bag on his back, James made his way across the parking lot to the building and stopped short of the entrance. Hopefully, the building had no surviving solar cells on top to allow for the internal security alarm to sound when he opened the door. He tried the glass security door, and it budged slightly. The cooler air inside had created a vacuum when the scorching air outside rushed in. James braced the door frame with his foot and heaved with both hands to finally get the door open enough for him to enter. The door slammed behind him, emitting a sound he had wanted to avoid. James made his way through the three-story building, taking the stairs and scanning each floor to ensure no unwelcome surprises awaited him. Fifteen minutes had passed once he arrived at the third floor. After a quick check, James sat down.

He couldn’t crawl to the observation point yet, the afternoon sun had started to roll in and would be blocking his vision. The sun would create a glint off his monocular telescope which would alert any snipers in the area to his exact location. He knew he must wait until sundown. After securing what was once the break room on this floor, James placed his bag in the corner and removed his tactical vest. A sudden cooling sensation of the half-gallon of sweat on his body settled in. He placed the locket in his hand and allowed it to remain there as he drifted to sleep, awaiting the darkness.

….

A dull, distant roar of engines rattled at top speed awakening James. With his practiced reflexes, he grabbed his rifle, and situated himself behind cover, and listened. He could tell the vehicles were coming closer to his location, which may mean nothing; the building was adjacent to a road. He grabbed his gear, the locket slipped from his non-attentive fingers, as he maneuvered around the back half of the cubicles to view the street below. From just a sliver of a view, James watched as three blacked-out SUVs came to a physics-defying halt at the base of the building.

Sh*t.

He could see the tail vehicle as several men poured out and presumably slammed themselves against the building to force the door open. James felt like a trapped rat. James had noticed their aggressive, practiced driving style, and the weapons and gear they carried. They were private military contractors, not the pseudo kind like he was, but actual PMCs, obviously highly trained and most likely battle-tested.

Sh*t.

His government contact had given him the worst possible intel. James heard the windows on the first-floor shatter, which confirmed the PMCs had entered the building. They must know where he was, and they were coming straight for him.

Sh*t.

James broke down the staircase door and started to sprint up to the rooftop; he only had one option left, really. He began his ascent up the ladder on the highest landing. If he was lucky, he would have enough time. If….

…

As the PMCs finished clearing the building, Layla’s locket remained haphazardly tossed beside the breakroom counter, abandoned and waiting for the desert to reclaim it.