— Chloe V., Mayor of St. Petersburg, 2034
They gave me the key on a Tuesday. The first one, I mean. The real one, made of brass, the size of a child’s hand. The City Council was long gone—fled to a FEMA camp in Georgia that probably doesn’t exist anymore. I was the only one left in the municipal building because the Coast Guard cutter had room for exactly three more people, and my wife was already on it.
“They asked for the key when they rebuilt the city hall. I gave them a copy. The real one is buried with Elias under the banyan tree at North Shore Park. He didn’t save the buildings. He saved the idea of a lock. That’s all a city ever was.” wwz key to the city documents
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “It’s the only thing keeping us civil.”
I put it in my breast pocket. I took the city’s last remaining assets: a 9mm pistol, three bottles of water, and a key to nothing. — Chloe V
Things got quiet. The zombies froze. We buried our dead in the botanical gardens because the ground was too hard for a proper cemetery. Maury the librarian found a trove of canned goods in the basement of the Museum of Fine Arts.
A photograph attached to the archive. A tarnished brass key, its bow engraved with the city seal—a pelican, wings spread. Below it, in fading letters: St. Petersburg, Florida. Mayor. Not transferable. The real one, made of brass, the size of a child’s hand
The UN came. The “Great Panic” was over. They had a vaccine, or a cure, or at least a way to make the dead stay dead. The helicopters landed on the roof of the parking garage we’d turned into a hospital.