Impetus Read Free

mouth. The bandanna, a rag whose faded silver fleur-de-lis pattern was still somewhat noticeable against the thin blue cloth, did not stop all the dust from getting in his mouth. But it stopped enough to matter. In this new world sometimes a little bit meant a lot.
    The remains of the old MIT building came into view as Mick exited the grove of splinter trees. Situated at a relatively safe distance outside the city’s limits, the structure resided at the base of the far side of the hill that Mick had sat atop only moments before. It was hidden from view within a natural horseshoe of rocks. An idyllic setting when it had been built. This was his home now. It held what was absolutely most precious to him.
    The building’s rows of pane glass had long been broken. Some by the global rioting that had spread like wildfire after Colossus, when society unknowingly stood on the precipice of its own demise and the thieves’ feeble minds still believed what they stole would somehow hold value in a world where no value remained. The rest of the glass had shattered when the enormous natural gas tank on the side of Interstate 93 exploded and sent a rippling shock wave for miles.
    “ All clear, Mick?” sounded the deep baritone voice from three stories above as he neared to within thirty feet of the building.
    Mick looked up from beneath the curved brim of his cap and toward the roof. He realized a small headache had snuck into his head. He’d kill for a couple aspirin. “All clear,” he said, nodding to Greg. It was the same as yesterday and the countless days before that. That was a good thing in its own mundane way.
    Greg gave him a thumbs-up and leaned back on his chair.
    Mick had found Greg wandering the streets of Boston still dressed in his police department blues two months after Impact. Seeing as Greg was an officer of the law, or had been back when laws were still a thing, Mick had figured he would be best suited to watch over “the herd”: the name he had subconsciously given to the seven other people he’d shared the building with. Greg’s sworn duty before Impact was to protect and serve, something he still admirably embraced.
    Mick walked up the cracked concrete walkway and over the broken glass that seemed to always be underfoot. He passed the charred remains of an old MIT shuttle bus and through what remained of the building’s front entrance. Inside was no different than outside: dusty and barren, a shell of what it had once been. However, this part of the building was unimportant. The structure below was what had kept them alive all these years.
    The building had been in the process of being repurposed as a bleeding-edge medical wing of MIT, or so Mick surmised from the paperwork left behind by the workers. When he’d first entered the building after Impact, he had come upon a room stuffed with ten large cages of somehow still shiny steel. Within those cages rotted the carcasses of ten decomposing monkeys. The rankness that hung in the air was like nothing he had ever had the displeasure of smelling before or since. And that was saying a lot. The monkeys must have died of starvation after their captors had fled, which, all things considered, was not the worst way to go. He had seen worse ways. Much worse.
    Mick was m idway into the building when he noticed it: a red box lying on the ground, one with the word open written across the top. He smiled. What a nice surprise. He must have missed it on the way out of the shelter that morning, when the dim light had been even dimmer. The kids hadn’t left him a treasure box in quite some time, years probably. This one was larger than the others they used to leave for him. He’d figured the children had outgrown such things. They were, after all, teenagers now.
    He turned the box around in his hand, looking at the vibrant red paint that coated the exterior and feeling something shift against the sides. The paint job was thorough, much more so than the scribbles of