Locke awoke in a large, white sheeted bed. Comfortable, extremely comfortable for a hospital bed. In the seconds after the explosion, Locke thought that he would be killed. Here he was, safe and sound in a medical bed. He smelled the air: tropical. Perhaps they had reached Hawai'i? No, this smell was that of Florida. Had they been forced to turn back? Had the government fallen, had Florida been declared the only safe-zone?
But Locke realized that this was no hospital bed, and his surroundings weren't that of a medical institution. This place was familiar. No, more than just familiar. This place was the place of most of his good memories. This was his home. But this couldn't be correct. Just seconds ago, Locke was half a continent away. Even if the government had fallen, there would be no reason that they had returned to his Florida, and especially his home. Questions began to fill his head. And then, he remembered the explosion. Could it have killed him? Could this be the afterlife? Locke quickly ran his hands over his face, but felt no shrapnel or open wounds. He did the same to the rest of his body, reaching under his shirt, feeling down to the end of his arms and legs, and again, he realized that his body was perfectly fine. He had no trouble breathing, no soreness, no pain. How long could he have been in this bed? How long had it been since the explosion?
"Where am I?" thought Locke, as he gripped the side of the bed and raised himself into a sitting position.
He looked next to him, where ruffled sheets indicated that someone had recently slept next to him. He began to hear intermittent mumbling coming from down the hallway.
"But, this isn't possible" said Locke, and after he stood off the bed and began to walk toward the door, he reached into the top of his dresser, above the highest drawer, and removed the 9mm Beretta that sat in a pile of dust. After removing the ammo cartridge that sat next to the gun from its original position, he loaded the weapon and cocked it, and while aiming into the hall, pulled the cracked door open with his foot.
This was undoubtedly Locke's house. Pictures of his family dotted the hallways. His parents, and their grandparents. His brother's family. And then, above the door that led into his family room, he saw it. The picture of his wife, his children. He with that goofy grin on his face from a lifetime of innocence. It was the last family photograph, taken just a month and a half before the outbreak. Locke shuddered, and then turned to his left and began to quietly step down the stairs. Halfway down, he realized that the mumbling was that of characters on the television in the kitchen.
"Seinfeld?" thought Locke, still moving slowly and quietly down the stairs.
No, the voices he recognized weren't of Seinfeld. He distinctly heard the voices of both Steve Carell and Rainn Wilson, and immediately realized that the television was tuned into "The Office". But as he reached the bottom step of the stairs, he realized more voices were emanating from the kitchen. The voices were more familiar. The voice of someone who was supposed to be there, who was always supposed to be there. The voices were intelligent, not voices like the voice-like moans that zombies sometimes made. No, these were definitely voices of living, breathing humans. Locke laid the gun down on the table next to him, and keeping it in safe reach if it was needed, stepped forward into the doorway of the kitchen. And then he saw, her. Beautiful, blonde hair and blue eyes. Petite. It was Sara. His wife. He ran and embraced her, surprising her to where she accidentally dropped the knife that she was using to chop onions.
"John, you're usually not this chipper in the morning! What's the occasion?" said Sara, as if life was as usual.
"Sara, Sara, Sara" cried John, tears streaming down his face as he held her tighter. And in the distance through the dining room windows, his eyes once again unleashed a new flood of tears, as he saw his two children playing with the family dog, a large golden retriever named Aristotle.
"John, what's wrong? Why are you crying?"
"Sara, what day is it?"
"The what? What day is it? It's Thursday."
"No, no, my love. The date, what is the date" John uttered, fearful of the answer and still refusing to release Sara from the embrace.
"Oh, it's May the twenty-ninth" answered Sara.
"May the twenty-ninth, of what year" asked John.
"John, what's wrong? Are you okay?"
"Yes, love, but I must know the year" asked John once again, nervous and sweating, but still refusing to release Sara.
"Why, it's 2010, and if you're needing to know the year, maybe you did get in too late last night" joked Sara. "And look at you! These onions are making you sob!"
John released Sara from the embrace, and turned to walk away, before turning back once more and giving her a long kiss. As he stepped back and turned toward the doorway back into the living room, Sara smiled widely and returned to chopping onions.
John removed the gun from the table, quickly ran upstairs, and after unloading it, returned it to its place on top of the dresser. Sitting back down on the bed, he opened his bedside table's top drawer and found his pocket calendar, fumbling with the pages as he attempted to get to May. May the twenty-eighth was the last day crossed off. It must have been, as Sara had said, May the twenty-ninth.
"But that cannot be" John muttered. Those weeks couldn't have been a dream, there is no way. And this, couldn't have been a dream. Well, at least he didn't think that it could've been a dream. It felt just as real as anything else did. Was he dead?
John again looked at his pocket calendar, and began to flip through the pages. Inconsequential events filled the calendar, and John skipped over all until he reached June fourteenth. In large red lettering, he recognized his own handwriting, in which he had scrawled "ZPI worldwide distribution conference. Sara speaking. Formal attire. 7pm, ZPI main offices, DC"
John remembered attending the conference. Sara was one of the head scientists on the new military stimulant which was being unveiled for worldwide commercial distribution, and she spoke for a solid hour on facts that went over his head, and the heads of probably ninety-five percent of the other people in the conference. And then, the next day, the packages were shipped. A week later, reports began coming in that China was experiencing an epidemic while caused uncontrollable rage among subjects that had taken the stimulant. The testing had passed with flying colors in the United States. John remembered that just before the United States had fallen and the government had fled, scientists began to theorize that the drug had mutated during its shipments, and the trials hadn't been able to discover possible mutations. Before anything could be done, it was too late. John continued to stare at the date, and then dropped the book, immediately ran out the bedroom door, down the stairs, and out the front door.