Stasis: Recouping Earth

The solid weight of my new M4 Carbine rifle felt odd in my hands. I traversed it back and forth getting use to its heft. – I had acquired it from an abandoned military installation somewhere in southern California. – I had become sentimental about the firearm over the past few weeks, it was an anachronism like me. Its raw, plastic and metal composite was so unlike the self-enclosed carbon fiber bodies of modern weapons. And besides that, I was infinitely more intimate with it than with a neutrino beam rifle. Sure I had to worry about ammunition, but there's plenty of that to go around in post-humanity Earth.

I had decided right after I got out of stasis, that I'd make my way to the forests of northern California. Back then it didn't matter that I was deep inside a stasis bunker in Washington D.C., all that mattered then was getting topside. Something about knowing that I was living under 350 feet of earth, and 10 feet of re-enforced concrete had me spooked. (What I remembered about concrete strengthening over time was of little re-assurance to me at that point.) How I busted out of that euphemism of a tomb I'm still not entirely sure. It did involve a copious amount of Semtex and shear determination – I was forced to use a hand crank to ascend up an elevator shaft. Two and a half days of furious and constant winding was the true key to my escape. My right arm is still a helluva lot larger than my left and its been almost a year since then.