Unchosen Champion

When Coop’s consciousness returned, the first thing he noticed was the gentle rumbling still in his chest. It was pleasant now. Comforting, even. When Coop opened his eyes he was greeted by the night. He was also greeted by Jett.

Jett was the black cat who lived in the lighthouse. She never left the lighthouse, but now she was laying on Coop’s chest staring at his face, purring. He was glad she was okay. He rubbed her cheeks and she closed her eyes, purring louder. Jett was the true lighthouse keeper, holding seniority over Coop. He didn’t mind. She meowed once but didn’t budge.

Since he was flat on his back, again, he gazed up at the stars. They seemed sharper than normal. He was no astronomer. He couldn’t properly identify more than two constellations, still, he found the sky weirdly unfamiliar. He took a minute to try and find the Big Dipper but he couldn’t do it. He had a twinge of regret at not paying more attention to the night sky since he started living on Rock Key. It was pretty spectacular given that the only light pollution was from the lighthouse, and even that relegated to one corner of the island on the south, facing the open sea.

He took a moment to assess himself. He wasn’t injured despite his proximity to the exploding lighthouse. Actually, he felt really good. Well-rested for some reason. It was definitely not how he expected to feel after his senses had been assaulted during the previous chaos.

He didn’t think being knocked unconscious was a good way to get rest but he did feel about as well as he ever did. His senses had returned to normal, thankfully, and he could once again hear the calming waves gently washing up on the beach and the breeze flowing through the palm fronds.

The palm trees were monstrous. Not all of them had experienced the same incredible growth, but a few of them boggled the mind with how they had changed. The unnatural alterations to the familiar tropical island made Coop uneasy.

Sitting up and helping Jett up onto his shoulder, he scratched her chin with one hand while he faced the lighthouse. It still stood strong, the only differences were that it looked like a giant had taken a car-sized bite out of its neck and the light was uncharacteristically off. Coop didn’t think it would be a good idea to stay in the lighthouse for shelter, he wasn’t sure if the structural integrity was compromised after catching a meteor, so he decided to play it safe. He would gather a few things and head to the fort. Perhaps that was the same conclusion Jett had reached when she ventured outside. He would defer to her judgment in that case. Hopefully, Jones was also alright.

Coop thought the date being 11/11 was supposed to be lucky, but he was reconsidering that little theory now. Tomorrow should have been ferry day which would come with fresh supplies. Was it still coming? He considered leaving with the ferry; assuming the meteors were an isolated event, it might be better to get away from ground zero. He walked along the path to the lighthouse while weighing his escape options.

He caught some movement in his periphery and glanced to his left, toward the edges of the eastern mangroves. The distance was too great to make out any details, but his eyes still picked up movement. Lots of movement. His first thought was some kind of mass crab migration like he’d seen in nature documentaries, but this island didn’t have any major events like that. The way the moonlight reflected off what he assumed were the carapaces reminded him of metallic plates. With that observation he decided he didn’t want to know, and hustled the rest of the way into the lighthouse.

The lighthouse was 5 floors of white stone, and a glass top floor where the lamp was housed. The first floor had been renovated to be something like a living room. If it wasn’t perfectly round it would seem like a regular house. A regular house without windows, he supposed. It was really dark without even the moonlight to brighten the interior. A set of curved iron stairs hugged the wall to the left of the front door leading further up.

The first floor walls housed the solar charged batteries that powered the building while underneath the floor was a massive 50,000 gallon water tank. There was a curved couch framed by old black and white photos opposite the staircase. The photos depicted parts of Ghost Reef from decades prior, including the lighthouse from various angles. His laptop sat on a coffee table in front of the couch, plugged in but without power. The first floor was undisturbed, but there was no electricity even though the batteries should have been fully charged by the solar panels. Coop grabbed his emergency sports bag off the floor on the side of the couch and took the stairs up two at a time, despite the darkness.

The second floor was a kitchen and dining area and the third floor was Coop’s bedroom. In the kitchen, Coop added food to his bag, specifically the stuff that would need to be eaten soon before it spoiled. The bag already contained emergency supplies but he still added to it. He also grabbed some of Jett’s food. She hadn’t left her perch on his shoulder even with him rummaging around inside her lighthouse.

On the third floor, Coop collected the book the park ranger had loaned him, he’d have to return it to her when he saw her again. He also took the flashlight he kept at his bedside. Embarrassingly, even the batteries in his flashlight had died, further eroding his image of preparedness. He sealed the hatch above his bedroom feeling like that was everything. He looked at Jett who was patiently waiting for him to continue.

Fully packed he tried to think of anything else he would need. He thought about the ridiculous growth of the trees and worried what that could mean for wildlife. He grabbed his pole spear, just in case. Not that it would do much, it was only a fiberglass stick with a steel tip, but at least he could poke things. But what if the crabs had grown as much as the palm trees? He shuddered at the thought of a grizzly bear sized land crab. Playing dead wouldn’t work with a crab, he was pretty sure they ate dead things.

The distances on the island were so small they were measured in acres instead of miles. Even though it would only take five minutes to return to the lighthouse to retrieve anything he forgot, he wasn’t sure he’d want to leave the security of the fort. If he could leave on the ferry he might never come back.

Then again, if those meteors weren’t isolated to this part of the ocean and were a global phenomenon, he might be stuck on Rock Key forever. He hoped Jones was getting updates over the radio.

After one more quick check, he left the lighthouse and headed straight north, to the fort. He tried not to linger, afraid of the movement he had seen in the mangroves earlier.

Thankfully, the light from the moon and the stars gave plenty of visibility outside. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness within the lighthouse, so the outdoors seemed bright in comparison.

Before he had gone 10 steps he glanced over the ocean toward where he had seen a meteor strike and realized that the ocean was draining into a massive hole where the crater should have been. It wasn’t actually lowering the level of the ocean, but it looked like a massive cavern must have been opened, causing waterfalls to appear all the way around. It was far enough away that he couldn’t hear the rushing water but he imagined it would be roaring. More than the usual amount of corals were peeking through the water at the edges as well.

But when the moonlight revealed a metallic reflection off what he had assumed were the corals, and he looked closer, he realized they weren’t remaining stationary like corals should. Whatever was in the mangroves was also in the ocean, but that revelation wasn’t even the worst of it. What truly disturbed him was further in the distance, northwest.

Beyond the new sinkhole was a mountain. A truly massive thing that was clearly beyond the horizon and yet was so tall Coop had to crane his neck to look at the top. From Coop’s vantage, the clouds around it looked woefully inadequate. It was gargantuan. It was so big just looking at it gave Coop anxiety, his heartbeat elevated and he could hear himself breathing like his fight or flight response was as confused as he was.

Something so large should have ended the planet right? It should have just cracked the whole thing in half. And that wasn’t even the only one he had seen in the sky! He looked at the stars again, they twinkled back, still a perfectly clear night. There was no dust cloud blocking out the sky like what killed the dinosaurs. He stared, mouth agape for a few more minutes before he continued his short trek with Jett on one shoulder, his pack over the other shoulder, and his spear gripped tight in both hands, feeling unsettled.

Coop passed the largest trees he had seen in his life. A few of the palm trees had grown to the size of redwoods and they probably would have made him more nervous if he hadn’t already spotted the mountain. The beach was still the pristine white sand that it had been before, the tiny black and white shells that dotted the beach and housed little hermit crabs were all normal sized, but the trip itself was taking longer than it should. If so many other things weren’t the expected size he’d assume he had shrunk. More than five minutes had gone by and he was only halfway to the fort, but at least he hadn’t seen any monsters.

He barely realized he was walking towards the meteor that had flown through the lighthouse. It had landed closer to the fort than the lighthouse, and lined up perfectly with the bridge. Strangely he couldn’t find the predicted crater. A weird crystalline stone almost seemed to have been gently placed on the trail. A far cry from the speeding object that had blasted through the lighthouse, but it must have been the very same. Coop thought he should give it a wide berth to avoid surprises like radiation or alien germs. He chose to go around on the beach side to avoid getting closer to any vegetation that had experienced the wild growth of the palm trees.

As he edged toward the water something splashed in the shallows behind him. He reacted instantly. He braced Jett and bravely sprinted the last portion of the trail, ran over the bridge, through the iron gate, and into the fort. He locked the gate behind him without even glancing at what splashed. Why take any chances? Coop entered a side door inside the fort wall that brought him to the mess hall where he expected to find Jones.

It was dark, lacking electricity just like the lighthouse, but the inner windows allowed enough moonlight to shine into the room, providing a comfortable illumination. The fort was mostly unused outside of tours, except for a handful of rooms that were situated near the entrance.

When entering from the front gate, the first room on the right was a mess hall used to introduce visitors to the island and where Jones hosted dinners for Coop or the park rangers. It had several benches and tables, an attached kitchen with a bar window, and stairs to the unused mezzanine that led to the second floor and beyond. The decor on the walls were mostly old photos and paintings of the island, like the lighthouse, with the addition of a few nautical maps.

On the opposite side from the entrance, the mess hall continued to a regular corridor that had bedrooms on either side before continuing to the next section of the outer fort wall. Jones used the first room. Coop left his pack, spear, and Jett in the mess hall and went to wake Jones, assuming he somehow fell asleep.

Coop knocked but didn’t get a response so he moved to check the radio, it had its own room across from Jones’s bedroom, but it was also not functioning. He wondered if maybe the meteors had caused an EMP that disabled all the electronics or something. He really had no idea, but he’d seen enough movies to believe that was a possibility.

He moved on to the next area to check the backup generator, confident that an EMP would not have affected it, but even that didn’t work. Was something wrong with it? Jones was meticulous with this sort of thing. Coop had accepted that he let his flashlight batteries die, but couldn’t imagine Jones allowing the backup generator to stop working. He needed to find Jones.

The inner courtyard of the fort was vast. It was essentially just a field of scrub grass with a few scattered palm trees. It was easy to imagine battalions of soldiers mustering in a different era. The entire courtyard was encircled by open galleries that were covered only by the top floor balconies of the fort. Coop was sure the interior galleries had a specific name but he thought of them as verandas. Jones utilized the gallery connected to the mess hall and had a small vegetable garden extending into the courtyard.

The first thing Coop noticed upon entering the courtyard was the gaping chasm that had formed across the middle of it. The normally uninterrupted fort walls had been split and the back half of the fort had separated from the front half. Water had filled the gap so that it looked like a planned feature, an extension of the moat. The split was so perfect that the walls didn’t even appear damaged, not a single stone had fallen out of place. Coop could see into the interior of each of the four floors within the fort walls. It reminded him of the picture books showing cross-sections of various things that his parents used to get him as a child.

He imagined a titan sized chef using a knife to split the fort in half and sliding the separate halves away from each other. But that wasn’t the only astonishment that the courtyard hosted, because Coop also spotted Jones next to his garden, suspended within a glowing orb of some kind of transparent blue energy a few feet off the ground.

Coop initially rushed to grab Jones and pull him out, but the energy of the orb vibrated and physically repelled his hands the way magnets with similar poles push themselves away. He tried yelling but Jones didn’t respond.

He didn’t know how to help Jones, so he waited, hoping Jones would be released. Strangely, Coop noted that he wasn’t hungry at all. Before all this craziness had begun he was on his way to have lunch with Jones, and he was hungry at the time. Meanwhile, the sky was already hinting at dawn and he hadn’t eaten anything. He didn’t really feel like eating.

He dismissed the thought, blaming his lack of appetite on the stress of the apocalypse. Jones was probably out by his garden in order to collect some herbs or vegetables for their planned lunch. He must have been captured by that orb when it all started. He tried poking the orb with a few different materials, sticks, a rake, a ball of dirt, but they were all repelled the same way he had been, so he went back inside to bide his time while petting Jett.

While Jett sat on the table and purred, Coop tried collecting his thoughts. He gave up on the meteors. But they were only the beginning. How could he explain the incredible growth of the vegetation on the island? Maybe alien radiation that didn’t affect the animals? Or maybe the animals had changed in a different way. He looked at the dozing cat.

“Hey Jett, you feeling okay?” Coop asked the cat who picked her head up and looked into his eyes before putting her head back down and closing them. She seemed fine. He hadn’t fed her last night, since he was unconscious, and she hadn’t complained. It was a bit strange, his experience with cats was that they had their routines and didn’t like it when it was interrupted. Actually, Jett even being outside the lighthouse at all was strange.

As he was musing about the personalities of cats the door swung open and Jones stood in the threshold silhouetted by moonlight. He glanced around the room before smiling.

“Coop! You’re here, that’s good.” Jones declared from the doorway. Coop was freaked out. Coop found Jones to somehow be both too calm and too excited for the situation.

“What the hell were you doing floating in an alien orb thing? Were you bodysnatched?” and then glancing around for something to quiz Jones with, “Quick, who’s this?” Coop asked while lifting up Jett.

Jones paused, then chuckled before answering, “That’s Jett, our senior lighthouse keeper. I’m surprised to see her out and about.” Coop wasn’t sure if that confirmed he was Jones or if Jett was more well-known than he expected.

Coop hesitated and put Jett back down. “I guess that’s good enough.” They both watched her settle back onto the table, unbothered by their attention.

“You look like you’ve been through the wringer. I guess you weren’t Chosen.” Jones noted, still a little too casually.

“Chosen? What?” Coop questioned. It was such a weird thing to say, he wasn’t sure how to respond.

Instead of answering, Jones offered an alternative, “Why don’t you go wash yourself and I’ll explain what I can.” He glanced at Coop’s arms before adding, “You’re covered in blood.”

Coop had forgotten about the bleeding from the ears bit of the apocalypse so he agreed to clean up. He figured a body snatchers scenario was unlikely anyway and Jones was behaving as though he knew more about what was going on than Coop did. He wondered what Jones was caught up in earlier. He didn’t seem any worse for the wear, unlike Coop.

He supposed he would find out soon enough.