“Another band of rebels launched an attack on the citizens of Durham today at fourteen hundred hours, seventeen minutes. The casualties were great, few survivors–”

Jolene reached over and shut off the radio transceiver. She let out a long sigh, pulling her legs to her chest and burying her head in her folded arms to ward off the early morning cold. She tried to shut her aching eyes, but one thought, a thought that had never given her peace, continued to circle through her mind.

“All that exists now is darkness and pain. The world is crumbling apart.” Her elder brother had hissed this to her the night they had escaped.

Jolene remembered that fateful night well… too well.

The surging water, cold as death, filling their third-story apartment. The heart-stopping noise of the militia firing machine guns at citizens. The screams echoing through the air laden with smoke. They were, and always would be, painful memories, burned in her mind and leaving a permanent scar.

She raised her head, hastily wiping away a brief tear. From the hilltop, she could see the collapsed skyscrapers silhouetted against the rising sun, some resembling the stumps of broken trees, others barely visible above the black waterline that covered the entire city. Damaged car parts, electric lines and poles, tree limbs, and more remains of the city’s previous life floated through the skyscrapers’ smashed windows and swirled down the flooded streets.

Streets flooded by fifteen feet of river water.

Jolene glanced up at the sound of booted feet treading on the crisp grass. Her brother, Damon, collapsed next to her, out of breath from running through the surrounding woods.
“They’ve finally done it,” he gasped, an expression of horror and disgust flickering across his face. “The rebels…they’ve flooded Cary.”