— Chloe V., Mayor of St. Petersburg, 2034
Garret backed off. He didn’t know the depot had been dry for a week. But he saw the key. He saw the chain of command. For one more day, the city was still a city, not a corpse. wwz key to the city documents
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. — Chloe V
“You’re not the mayor,” she said. “There’s no city council. No taxes. No election. You’re just a guy with a key.” But he saw the key
He looked confused. He scanned a database on his wrist. “Sir, the last recorded mayor of St. Petersburg fled to Georgia on D+12 and died of sepsis on D+19. There is no legal government here.”
The key was a formality. A tradition. “To the city,” the City Clerk had said over a crackling radio, “in case you need to unlock something.” We both laughed. The dead were already in Shore Acres. They were washing up on the Vinoy Basin. What was there to unlock?