The castle was enormous and the main hub around which all other things had once revolved. The bottom level was some kind of medieval fairy-tale themed ride. Spiral stairs and an elevator on one side led up to the second floor, which had what were once restaurants and a couple of gift shops. Trevor led me up the steps, past the main restaurant, and to another set of stairs. On the third floor were some hotel-type rooms and an office. A final staircase led to the tower, which seemed to be where we were going.
I couldn’t get over how weak and wobbly my limbs felt. It was starting to seriously concern me.
I pulled my hand out of his as we reached the final staircase. “Please, just tell me why you can’t take me to a hospital.”
I knew already. I just didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t know the details yet, but I knew. It was only morbid curiosity that kept me playing dumb.
He sighed. “I don’t know if there are any hospitals anymore. Definitely not any close.”
“What?” I was getting the hang of this dumb thing.
“Just come upstairs. If you really can’t remember anything, I think you need to be sitting for what I have to tell you.”
The tower was a fancy suite with a large living area and bedroom that were all one large circular room. There was a connected master bathroom off to one side. Or it had been fancy at one time. Now it was just as abandoned and broken down as everything else. Trevor gestured toward an overstuffed chair next to a window. I sat, unsure I wanted to hear this.
“You don’t remember anything?” he asked again as if still hoping this was all some game to me. I must be wacky that way.
“No.”
“But you remember what the world was like before, don’t you?” The word before held more gravity and weight than the rest of his sentence, more gravity than all the other words he’d spoken to me so far.
“Before what?”
“You know about the world in general?” he asked.
“I... I mean, I guess. Sort of. I think.”
Trevor seemed skeptical. He sat on the edge of the king-sized bed near my chair. It creaked and dipped under his weight with a great resigned moan of springs.
“Elodie, the world is gone. More or less.”
He’d only gotten the first sentence out and already I felt the tears burning behind my eyes. I might not remember my life, but the implications for anybody’s life were already surfacing.
“Do you know what a solar flare is?”
“Yes.” I didn’t know how I knew what a solar flare was, but it was in the box of scattered random awareness like pirate ships, theme parks, and ATMs.
“Okay, there was an enormous solar flare. The last time the world had solar flares this extreme was before such widespread reliance on electricity. This time it knocked out power grids nearly everywhere. Most technology halted. Just-in-time delivery failed.”
“What’s just-in-time delivery?”
“Almost everything was running in a way where everything that needed to be delivered to various places from fuel to food was shipped and delivered at close to the last minute, so nothing had to be stored long term. Supplies arrived just as the old ones were running out. With trucks and trains and planes, long term storage of staples and essentials seemed unnecessary to people, and it wasn’t cost effective. And with cities so large, it gets less and less practical anyway. The point is... stores started running out of things... Hospitals ran out of things. People started panicking and looting, and then people started dying. The economy collapsed practically overnight. It was so fast. You can’t believe how fast it was.”
I just stared at him, trying to process everything he was telling me. Hadn’t I immediately thought something terrible must have happened when I’d woken in a rusted-out pirate ship ride? I mean, that couldn’t be a good sign.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked.
“No.” What good would it do to keep things from me?
“Most of the nuclear plants were safely shut down, but a few weren’t. So there are some dangerous radiation zones out there. The ones that melted down near coasts and fault lines set off huge earthquakes, followed by tsunamis. The whole world was affected, so there was no one to send aid because everyone was struggling to survive. But with world economies collapsing, money wouldn’t have meant much anyway. There are pockets of survivors. We’ll be safer if we can find a bigger group, but for right now, we have supplies for a while. The park was well stocked with non-perishables, and even when we get through that, there’s enough wildlife around here to eat. The important part is that we have access to plenty of clean water here. That’s the trouble with moving on—what to do about water.”
“How long ago... when... when did this all happen?”
“A couple of years. Elodie, we’re going to be okay. We could stay here for another year or longer, and I’m already making plans on how we’ll get out and try to find another group of survivors. Don’t worry.”
“How did you know all this was here?”