I shook my head. “No,” I said. “It’s the only thing keeping us civil.”
“What’s this?” he asked.
— Chloe V., Mayor of St. Petersburg, 2034 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.
I stood on the dock, holding that brass key. It felt heavy. I realized the City Clerk hadn’t been joking. The key was a symbol, but symbols are just lies we agree to tell each other. If I gave up the docks, I was giving up the city. I was handing St. Petersburg to a warlord. I shook my head
I pointed to the two hundred and eight survivors lined up on the dock—fishing, building, crying, laughing. “Tell them that,” I said.
I didn’t use the key to unlock a door. I used it to lock one. I pointed to the old fuel depot. “That’s city property,” I shouted. “And I’m the mayor. You take one step closer, and I will blow it sky high. I have the key to the ignition. That’s what this is.” — Chloe V
She wasn’t wrong. But I pulled out the brass key. I held it up. “This says otherwise,” I said. “A key isn’t about locks. It’s about access. You want to start a new city council? Fine. But I’m holding the only copy of the master key to the water treatment plant. You want to drink, we talk.”
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.
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.