This chapter has been proof-read by: AnthonyL

-------------------

Knock* Knock* Knock* “Nate? You will need to come out of your room eventually. We know you miss Rambo but you can't stay locked up in your room like that, you'll get sick.” Said Camille's gentle voice from the other side of my door. I could barely hear her voice over the heavy metal music being played through my computer.

I was lying on my couch in my underwear, sipping on a bottle of German schnapps. Ignoring the people knocking at my door, I brought the bottle up to my mouth for one more sip, but realized that it was already empty. Annoyed, I threw it on a pile of similar empty bottles on the ground then tried to get up to fetch a new one.

After struggling for a while, I finally managed to stand up and staggered around the room. Being too drunk to stand straight, I eventually collapsed and fell face first on the ground. I was drunk out of my mind, unable to think clearly, so why couldn't I forget Rambo? He who had abandoned me a few days ago. Having started two weeks ago, something really weird had begun to happen with the dragons.

It all began after encountering a few flocks of migrating dragons flying across the sky, heading north. There were hundreds of unknown dragons constantly flying overhead, some of which ended up joining the local group living in our town. Among these new dragons were fully grown adults as well as juveniles. I first thought that I had started a dangerous chain reaction where all the dragons in the world would end up joining us, but I was completely wrong.

Everyday, we would see flocks of dragons heading north and for some reason, Rambo had begun to act restless after witnessing them. He would complain about pain in his wings and also mention how he felt compelled to fly north with them. What was even more strange was the fact that each giant flock of dragons flying overhead seemed to be led by small dragons looking similar to Rambo.

Seeing this, I had guessed that dragons were a migratory type of creatures and suspected Rambo to be from a species able to guide other dragons on the proper migratory path. This would have explained why he felt this urge to leave north with them. Of course, I told him that as long as he stayed with me, migrating wasn't necessary for him, but he kept frantically practising to fly anyway. Then one morning, as we were preparing to go on another plane ride, all the dragons in town gathered around us and stared in silence.

Before I had time to understand what was going on, Rambo had already taken off, followed by all the dragons that had gathered in town thus far. Without even saying goodbye, my baby boy Rambo and all the other dragons left and headed north without even looking back once. I could have understood if he really felt the need to go with them, but he could have at least said goodbye before leaving. Since then, I remained locked up in my room and was even considering moving back to my bunker.

If my son was capable of abandoning his father that easily, then what about the other survivors? They would probably throw me away at the first opportunity they got. Even as drunk as I was, Rambo was the only thing on my mind. Seemed like getting wasted wasn't gonna help me forget him, and all I was accomplishing was to slowly destroy myself. Having reached a level of intoxication way higher than what's considered safe, I passed out with my face pressed against the cold and dirty concrete floor.

When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed on the second floor. Inspecting my surroundings, I noticed the voluptuous Emanuela sleeping on a chair next to my bed. Sensing an incoming scolding, I silently rose up from my bed, ripped the intravenous thingy off of my arm and staggered back to my room while being careful to avoid everyone.

Seemed like they had broken through my door to get to me. I had clearly made them worry about me. Sigh* I needed to get a grip and get back to business. There was no need to cry over spilled milk now, Rambo was gone and it was his own choice. I had helped him as a baby, but it seemed like he needed to live his adult life on his own.

Still hungover, I sat at my computer and silently continued to draw the map of the region with photoshop. These last two weeks had been spent flying one of the two planes all over the area, in hopes of finding more information about our location. I used to consider the possibility of staying in this world before, but without Rambo with me, I no longer had any reasons to stay here and intended to work on leaving as soon as possible.

During my scouting flights, I had successfully identified a recently formed circle, only a few miles north east from our location that we would need to explore to gather more information. There were still many things I was unsure about like, shouldn't there be some circles appearing on earth as well? What was now at the area where our town used to be back on earth?

It should be a 5 km circle of nothing but dead plants and stuff. So why had we never heard about them on the news? Town or pieces of lands suddenly disappearing without a trace should be something worthy to be on the news or at least the internet. Was it a government cover-up or something else?

My next discovery was a very dense vortex south east from town that seemed as if it would reach its critical point at any time. Our next objectives would be to explore the recently formed circle and make sure it contained plants from earth, then if it was indeed connected to earth, begin to move south with our mobile shelter toward the critical vortex.

Robert and Emanuela were busy analyzing the captured camera footage, looking for anything worth investigating while Marc and Léopaul were making some modification to one of the airplane's fuel tanks. They were trying to install a secondary fuel tank to increase the range of one of the planes, and they were doing that for a very good reason.

When I first flew east a few days back, I had noticed something very interesting. I had already reached the 500 miles limit and needed to turn around, when I saw what looked like a giant human made structure on the horizon. It was too far away to know for sure, but what I had seen looked like a giant stone wall.

Maybe it was a simple natural rock formation, or maybe it really was a man-made wall. There was no way to know for sure unless I flew closer to it, which was why I had ended up asking Marc to increase the size of the fuel tank.

As I was drawing the map, something began to bother me. I had mapped the entire area within the plane's range except for one spot. I had voluntarily avoided an area south from here, and that was because it was a giant body of water. When I saw water for as far as my eyes could see, I got cold feet and turned around even though the plane could have kept going further.

Because of that, I wasn't sure whether it was an ocean, a sea or even a giant lake. If I managed to overcome my fear of being stranded at sea, I could possibly try to fly across this giant mass of water and know for sure if there were lands nearby to the other side or not.

Many of us were speculating that maybe the reason we hadn't seen any signs of humans around was because they lived on the other side of this giant body of water. Looking at my map, this area was the only one left to explore until Marc and Léopaul finalized the long range plane, which would allow me to explore 'the wall' to the east.

As I was applying the last details to the map, the sound of footsteps running this way made me roll my eyes in annoyance. “NATE! There you are! Don't just disappear without a word like that! Do you know how much we worried about you?” Urgg. Emanuela's high pitch voice entered my ears and scratched my eardrums like a cat on a new leather couch.

“Shhhhhhhh* Can you please lower your voice? My head is killing me.” I quickly interrupted. Tss, saying they worried about me and all that... I could now see through it all. They worried about me only because they needed me. As soon as I stop being useful to them, they'll throw me aside just like Rambo did.

“Can you ask Marc to prepare the plane? I'll go explore the ocean today, so tell him to make sure to double check that everything is in working order. If the plane stops working while over the ocean, I'm dead.” Not that I even cared at this point. Life on earth sucked, and life in this new world also sucked.

I thought I was a defective human being. It was probably not the world's fault, but mine. In the end, I was simply unable to adapt and become a normal person. I thought for a while that maybe I could, but I guessed it was all a delusion after all. Call it a DNA defect or not, fact remained that there was something profoundly wrong with me since I couldn't manage to be like the rest of them.

I would go back to earth, become very rich and live the rest of my life in solitude in the Canadian Rockies. Maybe this was the only hope for me. “Are you listening to me?” Emanuela's voice then broke my daydreams like a hammer through a window. “Like I said, why not wait for Marc and old pop to finish the long range plane before exploring this area? It's just plain reckless!”

Sigh* What she just said was true but I wanted to be alone. I had grown fond of piloting the plane and seeing the world from above. It had a very calming effect on me and I felt like this was what I needed at the moment. It was a very good way to relax and empty your mind of anything you didn't want to think about. “Can you just, tell Marc please...” I repeated with a displeased expression on my face.

I was not in a mood to be hammered on constantly like that why can't women see when a man needs some alone time? For most men, talking about what's frustrating them doesn't help at all, so I was really hoping she could understand and leave me alone. “I don't think you should drive a plane while feeling like that.” She added with an annoyingly scolding tone.

I didn't really know why, maybe the built up stress, or the swirling pool of emotions boiling up inside of me, but hearing her say that made something inside of me snap. “Feeling like what eh? How do you even pretend to know how I feel? And it's PILOTING a plane! Not driving..... You think a woman who dropped her man like a dirty rag and immediately went for another can come and give me lessons about anything?”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt disgusted with myself. I quickly turned back to apologize but she had already run away in tears. “I'm the worst...” I said to myself while punching my leg, somehow hoping to punish myself for what I had just said. Now feeling even worse than before, I began to gather my equipment and put on my body armour.

I made sure everything was in my backpack, gun and katana tied up to it, and checked all the bells and whistles that needed to be checked. Sigh, I needed to go apologize to Emanuela before leaving though. She hadn't deserved me snapping at her like that. I grabbed my backpack and made my way up to the area where the others lived.

Surprisingly, everybody seemed gone except Alice who was still in her room, working on something unnecessary as usual. “Hey there drunkard. Looking for something?” Asked the rude lady. “Yea, have you seen where Manu went?” I asked, worried that she might have run away of even done something stupid.

“Errrrrr she must be outside with the others. There's a lot of work left to be done on that movable house crap...” She said before getting back to what she was previously doing. “Alright, thank you.” Feeling as if I was disturbing her, I left the room and headed out to where we were building the shelter, in front of my garage door.

“Heyyy there! Feeling better?” Asked Robert with a compassionate look in his eyes. “You almost died of alcohol poisoning you fool! Don't you dare do that again, or I'll destroy all the bottles of alcohol I can find in this town!” Added a very angry looking Camille who was currently learning how to weld.

Feeling awkward, I rubbed the back of my head and apologized, then asked if they knew where Emanuela was. Camille simply pointed toward the plane hangars where Marc and Léopaul should also be. So in the end, she had went to ask Marc to prepare the plane like I had asked her. This made me feel even more guilty.

Seeing me fully geared up, Camille inquired. “You're flying today?” Robert also seemed curious about it. After all, they all thought I had explored everywhere. “Yes, I decided to do a full range flight south this time.” Robert curiosity seemed aroused by the idea of finding out what was on the other side of that water. “Be careful and bring nice pictures.” Added the surgeon before turning his attention back to his work.

Still feeling as guilty as I could, I made my way over to the hangars with my head hanging low in shame. When Emanuela noticed me, she rapidly looked down and avoided eye contacts. She then said her goodbye to Marc and Léopaul before trying to scurry away, but I ended up intercepting her as she tried to run past me.

“C-can I speak with you for a second?” I asked her, feeling unworthy of looking at her in the eyes. Or was it because of the shame I felt? I was expecting her to be very mad at me and ignore my request but she seemed like she was about to cry instead. Worried and apologetic, I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away to a quiet place.

There, I let go of her arm and gathered my courage to apologize for what I had done. “I-I am really sorry for what I said, I had no right to be such an ass-hole to you back then. Even though I know this is not an excuse, but losing Rambo has- Never-mind that.. I want to sincerely apologize for everything.”

I lowered my head and waited for her to verbally attack me as it was usually the norm with normal humans like her, but it never came. When I looked back up to her, I was in shock. She was silently crying while staring at me in the eyes. Tears were flowing so intensely that I worried about her possibly dehydrating herself because of it.