Jacqueline Druga
SALVATION
RECAP
In one of five cryo labs, eight people wake from stasis. One of which is the president of the United States. They are the only ones out of a hundred who survive. They recall very little and have no idea how they got there. All they know is that they are in a lab and a clock on a door appears to be counting down.
Little by little their memories return and they recall all being in the same place at the time of the explosion. The president informs them that in order to cull population a virus was being released. Those in stasis were given an antidote and chosen to be preserved so they could ensure the continuity of mankind. Each poses a unique skill or ability. They were in one of five labs in the US. Their families were also to be given a vaccine. Originally they were to be sleeping for seven months, but things went awry and someone hit the rest button.
After the clock on the door countdowns, and an elevator opens, they ascend into a barren world. The president disappears and the seven others decide to split up, look for their families, find out what has happened and meet at a designated place. They travel by way of a solar buggy.
The length of time that they have been frozen is at first an unsolvable mystery. Some cities are buried by trees, others look completely normal.
They learn that not only have they been asleep for thirty years, but the virus was seasonal and every year it wiped out more and more of the population. No cure. No stopping it.
The government, in order to protect those who survive, construct a walled city where only those immune could reside. The city is called, Salvation. For fifteen years two million have lived there while the rest of the world wasted away.
THE CHARACTERS AND THEIR JOURNEYS
Nora and Jason paired off because both of their families lived in the Midwest. Nora, a comedic entertainer by trade is a mother of two and married. Her capture and stasis was a case of mistaken identity. She wasn’t supposed to be there and they believed her to be someone else. Jason is a television preacher and famous. He is also a married musician with a baby.
They discover an empty world and that Nashville was ground zero. Jason learns that his wife had remarried, but she and the baby died in a later wave of the virus. His home and housing plan had been a survivor camp for some time. When they make it to Nora’s home in Cleveland, it been is long since over abandoned and grown over. She learns her oldest daughter died, but her husband and youngest daughter were alive and well and living in Salvation.
Meredith is a professor of theology, no spouse, no children. John is a famous novelist. It was at his award ceremony that everyone was taken into stasis. He is a father and husband. Grant is an unmarried musician. The three of them join up to search because all of them live in the North East.
En route they pass the remains of an aid station. There they gather information about the virus. They never are able to reach their families, because the entire northeast is a nuclear wasteland. The outcome of a war that broke out during the virus.
While in the wasteland, the trio encounters a violent group called the Wreckers. Offspring of those who lived in a radiated land. The wreckers are violent and slightly mutated. While John is sleeping, Grant and Meredith are snatched from their campsite by Wreckers. John wakes to hear Meredith screaming and he grabs a gun. He chases the screams and discovered that Grant has been murdered and Meredith was being violently raped. In an attempt to save her, John manages to kill several Wreckers, but not before they overcome him. He is sodomized and beaten.
He and Meredith awake in a home. An older man named Rusty found them on the road and brought them home to help. He tells them the story of the virus, Salvation and the Wreckers.
Malcolm is a computer genius and inventor. He fixed the solar buggies. At the time that he was taken to Stasis he was running a new security camera at John’s award. Amy is a solar weather expert, a mother and wife.
Both he and she head west to their respective homes. Not long into the journey, they run across a mentally unstable woman who kills Amy. Malcolm is forced to make the long journey alone. He needs to find his wife and children. Especially his oldest son, whom he fought with the day he disappeared. On his way, while moving a road block, Malcolm cuts his arm. The cut becomes infected and he increasingly grows ill. Eventually, Malcolm makes it to his home. It is in perfect condition, the large property is a farm.
He goes inside and there he find his oldest son Trey, who is the sole survivor of the family. Trey is older than Malcolm. He is glad to see his father and tells him all about what has happened and how many years have gone by. Trey tells his father that he works for Salvation and will take him there to get help.
ONE – REFRESH
Day Five AR
There wasn’t much reason to stay. Rather, there was no way to stay at her house. Aside from the fact that it was dangerous, there was nothing left except that letter.
Nothing.
Her husband Rick had taken anything of sentimental value. She wondered though if the last of her clothing and items were thrown away years before. After all, the date of the letter was fifteen years after she was placed into cryogenic preservation.
That was the date Salvation opened. Rick and Lilly, her youngest, had been accepted and gone there.
Problem was, Nora and Jason had no clue how many more years had passed.
“It’s apparently more,” Jason said with his thick southern accent. “I mean, if they just left, how did it get so overgrown?”
“Your place wasn’t.” Nora said.
“Not like this. Then again, it looked like my housing plan was a compound, survival place, or something.”
“So… my home, my town was abandoned longer than yours, and so far nothing was abandoned as far as Nashville?”
“We have to meet the others in Champagne. We have some time. Feel like looking for answers now that we found them out about our families?”
“Maybe the answers will tell us where Salvation is.”
“That would help. Who knows maybe the others know more than we do.”
Nora hoped that was a possibility. All those who survived the stasis process, split up to find information about their families. Each going different ways. All of them agreeing to meet in a small town in Illinois, three weeks from the date they left the center.
Nora and Jason found out about their families. With so much time passing, hope was fading fast.
They traveled by means of solar buggy, courtesy of a long gone NASA and their new technically brilliant friend, Malcolm who got the buggies moving. They had enough juice to keep going, or they could stay put.
Nora and Jason’s focus was on finding out about their families. They didn’t take into consideration much else. Now that their goal had been achieved they realized how uncertain the world was.
They needed a plan and a safe place to stay. While the sun was still bright in the sky they headed south back to Jason’s old home in Kentucky.
John was six hundred miles away from the place he called home, and thirty years removed. That was how long he and the others had been in preservation. From the time he woke up until he learned the truth every piece of the puzzle added more mystery. At first it was a mere seven months. Seven months for the deliberately released virus to claim the percentage of population it needed to, in order to help preserve life. Unless of course, like the message said, things went awry, in that case a reset button was used.