Kingdom Gone

CITY TRAPPED IN TIME

3 Days Until Rapture

It's beautiful in a eerily creepy way.

We climb up the steps from an old subway station onto the main road, and the sight is just. . .

"Wow." Sam said, gazing at the silent monuments all around us.

Except they weren't monuments. They were buildings. Tall and grey, with texture like sand. They look like they'd disintegrate with one touch.

"Guys." Nijah said, kneeling down beside a pile of grey rock on the road. When we walk over to her, we all gasp.

It's a person. A woman, probably mid thirties from the proportions, laying down on the sidewalk, with a small child in her arms. But she isn't alive, but in some cruel process, not dead either. She and her baby are somehow solid rock, the emotion on the woman's face is frozen on her, the same emotion she had when this happened to her.

They were trapped in time. The whole city was.

"How did this happen, Sam."

I could see a tear crawl down her cheek. "Some form of petrification. The atomic bomb could've kicked up enough sediment and ash to blanket hundreds of miles. And after twenty years trapped with no oxygen, the decaying process-" Her voice cracks and she falls into my arms, sobbing. I hug her tight, rubbing her back as she gets it all out. "It's okay, Cyborg Sam. We're going to make sure no one can ever do this again. But we have to keep moving, okay?"

Sam pulls away, nodding and wiping her face.

"I downloaded a few maps online while we were back in the Fourth Kingdom. Thanks to some cross referencing and what I read from the file from that secret lab, I was able to locate Posterum's old server facilities." I point to a circled location in the north west part of the kingdom. "I think we came out of a tunnel just north of the initial explosion. So if get a move on, we should able to make it to the servers by sundown. Let's hope there's a working car on the way there."

They all nod, and soon we're north along the main road, avoiding looking at the dozens of petrified citizens on the road.