Descent.
As I descend into darkness, my mind returns to my youth.
I was older than I was when I left the waterless wastes. I think I must have been 10. I had hovered around the City of Ash. I had squatted mostly they're trying to determine where to go. Scavenging in the ruins. The only living creatures I had encountered in the streets were rats and a few things I later determined to be cats (they had faired a lot worse than the rats. There were insects, there were always insects but the lack of food sources made the rats and cats on an equal footing of hunter and prey. More than a few times I would come across a cat about to be dinner for the rats- and the next time it would be the rat's turn.
In the end, I stopped caring who won since I quickly figured out I had the size and brutality to eat the victor of these exchanges. I learned how to make a fire not long before I discovered the palatability of cooked meat and the joys of basic cooking. Squatting in a burnt out tower far enough above and out in the light to avoid becoming a meal for the other scavengers that roamed the streets. I had found books even then, scraping enough basic knowledge together to not only find the materials I needed to cook but figuring out that cooking would give the advantage of diet my neighbors did not have.
Then came the day when my tower shook too much in the wind and I knew it was time for me to go. Also, the cat/rat population had decreased sharply - mostly to my need for a variety of cooked meals.
I drifted away from the City of Ash into the surrounding landscape, finding dust and the remains of death. I spent the rest of the year winding my way up and down, walking from one shelter to the next looking, always looking for food and a place to hide from the winds and storms. The winds were bad, with a lot of detritus and debris flying around in them, but the storms were worse, the rain hot and stinging leaving traces of heat whenever it would contact the skin.
It was during a really heavy rain storm I saw my first living human since I had last seen my kit 3 years before. I had narrowly made it to the shelter of a collapsed building (that I would later learn had been a colonial style barn) I looked out over the dirt and mud to see a lone figure running for all his worth towards me. He never made it. The lightning crackled in the sky and there was the red flash and the rains came down in a rush and then the sound of drums as the water hit the dirt all around me. Then I heard his screaming as the water struck him, he went down thrashing as if every bare place on his skin was on fire, I half expected to see smoke. Instead, he screamed until he lacked the breath, his body slumped as the rain continued. After a while, he began to crawl through the mud towards my hiding spot, I watched him labor in the mud knowing he would never make it.
I never felt the desire to go get him. I had concluded that I lacked the protection from the deadly rain and going out would mean my death as well. I sat there and watched him die. After an hour, he stopped moving. Then the rains stopped. I never went to check his body. Part of me was sure, that somehow he was still alive despite the evidence. To this day, I can still imagine he could see me squatting in the shadow of the barn watching him burn up in the radioactive waters.
Fortunately, the Rad Storms, as I would learn the word later, only came every 40 to 50 days. They weren't everywhere and were rarely fatal. Mostly, foolish people who got caught in them would receive minor burn wounds from the radiation exposure (I would learn later that it was like getting very bad sunburn). Those who got hit once almost never experienced it twice. You would see a dark cloud in the sky and you found shelter- thick high shelter if at all possible.
I searched every non-fiction book I found before I figured out you could locate enough material to make a raincoat that would stop the waters from reaching you exposed skin, but even then it was unwise to stay out in it for longer than a few minutes.
"Use all your senses, undue haste makes waste." FM 21-76 Survival Guide, US Mobile Infantry Division 6. Army of the Carolinas.
I have found a strange building out in the middle of what was a road once, there are makeshift barriers around it. the tattered remains of people surround and fill it. The building is small- only 2 compartments. It is unlike any structure, I have seen yet. After much scavenging, I locate some reading material. The structure provides excellent protection from the rain and wind. As I read in the waning light I determine that my housing was once a military mobile command station called the HEL MD17. its crew had called it Mother Hubbard's Shoe. It had survived the firestorm of the third wave of the final world war although its crew had not outlived the initial fallout or starved to death. the logs are tattered and the computers are dead. What I did learn from the survival guide is that the final world war use thermo hydrogen based warheads that would scourge the world but not poison it with the fallout. A smalreliefif after the, and I quote, "radiation shitstorm those idiots used in the first exchange."
Here I sit, a ten year old boy trying to understand the fatalistic log of an imbittered major who knows that he has been sent out to maintain order and die in the resulting fallout from a 25 year old dirty war and ends up getting incenerated by an insane president/emperor in a clean firestorm war for his loyal efforts. I understand, at that moment, sitting in the strewn ashes of these doomed men, that their leaders were collossal assholes.
I stay in the Mother Hubbard's Shoe for almost a year, before I encounter my second group of human beings who have survived the madness of their forefather's. I wisely remain hidden as they come in and take over my base of operations, destroying my living quearters and destroying the survival guide and operations manual along with some other reading materials in an effort to stay warm by burning all of it the first night in a bonfire.
There are nine of them, I think they are all men, although I am not sure about 2 of them as they are slighter and more skittish then their compatriots. I watch them from my hiding space in the forward compartment. They celebrate their find by drinking several bottles of a dark liquid that I know will kill them, They clearly believe is alcohol and indeed 2 of the 6 bottle are alcohol. but it is apparent none of them can read. I watch as they begin to choke and foam at the mouth, clawing at their fthroats as they flail around and die, several at a time, some catatonic, some bleeding from the eyes and nose. I feel nothing for them. A few of them speak in a tongue I recognize, a few words set them apart from the rats and cats of the City of Ash. I consider, that one or two might not have killed me, if they had found me before they had done this stupid thing.
Afterwards, I creep out and check each of them. They are all dead. I looked at the medical ethenols and 100+ proof alchol, peroxides, and similar chemicals and wonder how any had survived before this. One of them is still alive as I go through their pockets. It is a woman, one of the skittish ones, she pleads with me as I sit with her. She has drunk the hydrogen peroxide, her vomit, and blood, she breathes rapidly, tears on her face, she tries to speak and fails, I look to the ashes of what might have saved her and shrug helplessly as the light goes out in her eyes.
I leave the HEL after that. I have a survival knife, some matches, a gold locket from the woman, a new jacket, a rain coat that proves to be made from a resistant form of plastic and rubber, shoes from a young man- the other skittish one. some dried meat and a canteen or two foraged from the HEL, I also have a pistol but no ammunition, and a hammer.
I can remember standing there looking back at the HEL wondering why I had not warned them of the death they were about to drink.
Now I stand in the darkness and know that why.
There is no place for mercy in the wastelands.
As I descend into darkness, my mind returns to my youth.
I was older than I was when I left the waterless wastes. I think I must have been 10. I had hovered around the City of Ash. I had squatted mostly they're trying to determine where to go. Scavenging in the ruins. The only living creatures I had encountered in the streets were rats and a few things I later determined to be cats (they had faired a lot worse than the rats. There were insects, there were always insects but the lack of food sources made the rats and cats on an equal footing of hunter and prey. More than a few times I would come across a cat about to be dinner for the rats- and the next time it would be the rat's turn.
In the end, I stopped caring who won since I quickly figured out I had the size and brutality to eat the victor of these exchanges. I learned how to make a fire not long before I discovered the palatability of cooked meat and the joys of basic cooking. Squatting in a burnt out tower far enough above and out in the light to avoid becoming a meal for the other scavengers that roamed the streets. I had found books even then, scraping enough basic knowledge together to not only find the materials I needed to cook but figuring out that cooking would give the advantage of diet my neighbors did not have.
Then came the day when my tower shook too much in the wind and I knew it was time for me to go. Also, the cat/rat population had decreased sharply - mostly to my need for a variety of cooked meals.
I drifted away from the City of Ash into the surrounding landscape, finding dust and the remains of death. I spent the rest of the year winding my way up and down, walking from one shelter to the next looking, always looking for food and a place to hide from the winds and storms. The winds were bad, with a lot of detritus and debris flying around in them, but the storms were worse, the rain hot and stinging leaving traces of heat whenever it would contact the skin.
It was during a really heavy rain storm I saw my first living human since I had last seen my kit 3 years before. I had narrowly made it to the shelter of a collapsed building (that I would later learn had been a colonial style barn) I looked out over the dirt and mud to see a lone figure running for all his worth towards me. He never made it. The lightning crackled in the sky and there was the red flash and the rains came down in a rush and then the sound of drums as the water hit the dirt all around me. Then I heard his screaming as the water struck him, he went down thrashing as if every bare place on his skin was on fire, I half expected to see smoke. Instead, he screamed until he lacked the breath, his body slumped as the rain continued. After a while, he began to crawl through the mud towards my hiding spot, I watched him labor in the mud knowing he would never make it.
I never felt the desire to go get him. I had concluded that I lacked the protection from the deadly rain and going out would mean my death as well. I sat there and watched him die. After an hour, he stopped moving. Then the rains stopped. I never went to check his body. Part of me was sure, that somehow he was still alive despite the evidence. To this day, I can still imagine he could see me squatting in the shadow of the barn watching him burn up in the radioactive waters.
Fortunately, the Rad Storms, as I would learn the word later, only came every 40 to 50 days. They weren't everywhere and were rarely fatal. Mostly, foolish people who got caught in them would receive minor burn wounds from the radiation exposure (I would learn later that it was like getting very bad sunburn). Those who got hit once almost never experienced it twice. You would see a dark cloud in the sky and you found shelter- thick high shelter if at all possible.
I searched every non-fiction book I found before I figured out you could locate enough material to make a raincoat that would stop the waters from reaching you exposed skin, but even then it was unwise to stay out in it for longer than a few minutes.
"Use all your senses, undue haste makes waste." FM 21-76 Survival Guide, US Mobile Infantry Division 6. Army of the Carolinas.
I have found a strange building out in the middle of what was a road once, there are makeshift barriers around it. the tattered remains of people surround and fill it. The building is small- only 2 compartments. It is unlike any structure, I have seen yet. After much scavenging, I locate some reading material. The structure provides excellent protection from the rain and wind. As I read in the waning light I determine that my housing was once a military mobile command station called the HEL MD17. its crew had called it Mother Hubbard's Shoe. It had survived the firestorm of the third wave of the final world war although its crew had not outlived the initial fallout or starved to death. the logs are tattered and the computers are dead. What I did learn from the survival guide is that the final world war use thermo hydrogen based warheads that would scourge the world but not poison it with the fallout. A smalreliefif after the, and I quote, "radiation shitstorm those idiots used in the first exchange."
Here I sit, a ten year old boy trying to understand the fatalistic log of an imbittered major who knows that he has been sent out to maintain order and die in the resulting fallout from a 25 year old dirty war and ends up getting incenerated by an insane president/emperor in a clean firestorm war for his loyal efforts. I understand, at that moment, sitting in the strewn ashes of these doomed men, that their leaders were collossal assholes.
I stay in the Mother Hubbard's Shoe for almost a year, before I encounter my second group of human beings who have survived the madness of their forefather's. I wisely remain hidden as they come in and take over my base of operations, destroying my living quearters and destroying the survival guide and operations manual along with some other reading materials in an effort to stay warm by burning all of it the first night in a bonfire.
There are nine of them, I think they are all men, although I am not sure about 2 of them as they are slighter and more skittish then their compatriots. I watch them from my hiding space in the forward compartment. They celebrate their find by drinking several bottles of a dark liquid that I know will kill them, They clearly believe is alcohol and indeed 2 of the 6 bottle are alcohol. but it is apparent none of them can read. I watch as they begin to choke and foam at the mouth, clawing at their fthroats as they flail around and die, several at a time, some catatonic, some bleeding from the eyes and nose. I feel nothing for them. A few of them speak in a tongue I recognize, a few words set them apart from the rats and cats of the City of Ash. I consider, that one or two might not have killed me, if they had found me before they had done this stupid thing.
Afterwards, I creep out and check each of them. They are all dead. I looked at the medical ethenols and 100+ proof alchol, peroxides, and similar chemicals and wonder how any had survived before this. One of them is still alive as I go through their pockets. It is a woman, one of the skittish ones, she pleads with me as I sit with her. She has drunk the hydrogen peroxide, her vomit, and blood, she breathes rapidly, tears on her face, she tries to speak and fails, I look to the ashes of what might have saved her and shrug helplessly as the light goes out in her eyes.
I leave the HEL after that. I have a survival knife, some matches, a gold locket from the woman, a new jacket, a rain coat that proves to be made from a resistant form of plastic and rubber, shoes from a young man- the other skittish one. some dried meat and a canteen or two foraged from the HEL, I also have a pistol but no ammunition, and a hammer.
I can remember standing there looking back at the HEL wondering why I had not warned them of the death they were about to drink.
Now I stand in the darkness and know that why.
There is no place for mercy in the wastelands.
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