Here's a thread for my various original fiction short stories that I may choose to upload here. Enjoy!
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Tomorrow
A three foot piece of sharpened steel perforated his stomach.
It rummaged through his organs, tearing them and splitting skin, leaving his stomach a brutal mess. His attacker pulled back, wrenching her sword out of him. When he looked up at her with merely an irritated grimace, she charged at him once more.
This attempt was clumsy and poorly thought out.
Resisting the pain that he had become far too used to, the ragged man grabbed the blade the scrawny girl held - more like a pipe of sharpened steel - and twisted the weapon around in her hand. The two combatants could barely see each other in this dank, resonant underground, a place lit only by an old light on the wall that illuminated the stone construction of their battleground. The girl was thin and spindly; the light illuminated the pox on her face and arms, and her black, stringy strands of hair glistened. She reminded the man of himself, in a way, but more feral, more lost to the old ways of the world.
As she lunged in wildly trying to free herself, her scent, like the rot of open, gangrenous wounds overcame him, and he saw the yellow sheen in her eyes; the only emotion he knew existed in her was hate; hate and instinct. He recoiled his face from her, repulsed, and tried to fight back against this thing that could barely be called human. A sick thing.
Still holding her makeshift sword, he pulled himself toward her and used his ungainly momentum to augment a fist heading for her unprotected face. She reeled from the pain, tearing her weapon from her would-be victim's hand, and wailing in anger, not shock.
Shaking the pain from his hands, and with no weapons, the man opted to flee, running up a short flight of nearby stairs at full speed out of the lightless subterranean place. It was an abandoned underground transport system, he thought. Something from prior to the great war.
From behind he heard a primal shout in no recognizable language, just the howl of an animal. He ignored it and carried on, trembling.
Above ground, he was met with a blasted, desert-like landscape. All plants were dead, except for tufts of yellow grass and thorny bushes. The sparse few trees were almost all a blackened brown, and all without any life or greenery upon their thin limbs. Broken down buildings and worn away foundations lay all about, and shattered sections of road were visible under layers of dust and dirt.
The sky was bright, yet bleak, and the sun shone mockingly down on this lone survivor. It was a world after a nuclear apocalypse. And such was life in the wasteland.
It was humanity that caused this, dropping the atom bombs and unleashing their hellish new experiments in a vain attempt to prevent their inevitable end. Ultimately, they only prolonged it; the succour of science had twisted, not created. But, no one now knew just what had been before, and only hollow ruins lay showing images of what glory may once have been.
And so, two hundred years after it should have ended, humanity eked out a primitive new life in this lawless new world of their own creation.
A calm wind blew. The cool breeze made the haggard man's rag clothing flutter slightly, making him realize the unflattering state of his once-pristine suit, not mottled with blood and burnt away. His eyes darted around, and spied a corner store across what used to be a busy street, and checked inside.
The state of the interior was hardly better than that of the outside.
The old contents of the shelves: detergents, candies, magazines, and other useless objects from the old world were stocked on the shelves, some of which had fallen over and spilled their contents on the dusty floor. What he wanted was food. He knew, at least, that people from before the war had ways of keeping food fresh in cans for even centuries. But in this world, such things were a rare necessity.
An old blues song flowed from a radio somewhere within, its melancholy rhythm matching the somber mood of the time. The music wasn’t loud enough, however, to obscure the all too familiar sound of heavy, desperate breathing amongst the rustles of the wind.
Behind the cashier’s counter, a sickly, unnaturally thin man was fumbling with a tin can of beans, its blue and white label torn and faded to reveal rusted metal underneath. He beat it on the ground savagely, and wrapped his bony digits around one end, tearing at it with an expression of primitive rage on his pale, hollow looking face, patchwork strands of hair hanging down in front of his face down to his stained lips.
This wretched figure glared at the survivor from the underground when he came near, and held his metal catch to his chest like an animal defending its kill. He even began to snarl and spit when the intruder adopted a rough fighting stance and made a plain attempt at snatching the food, which failed. Still holding the can, he coiled up, his joints cracking as his legs bent further and further. He burst forward at the person trying to take his meal, dived and knocked him down onto the cold, hard tile floor. The other man, still energized with adrenaline from his fight underground, punched the sick creature in the face, lashing out as hard as he could as it wrapped its foul hands around his neck.
The pale savage tightened his grip, but the choking had no effect on the intruder. A callous fist continued to smash into his face, bashing in his nose, bruising him and splattering blood on both combatants; the only reaction was a grunt, and a heaving retch.
The two lay there pathetically, both trying to beat the other to death, and neither showing any chance of giving up. Cold hands tried to tear cold necks, but to no avail.
It was an unending brawl on the filthy tiles inside the corner store, with two men trying to kill the other as if they had no other purpose in life. The aluminum can of beans sat uncaring on the sidelines, not vouching for either side. But still, these two beat each other mindlessly, nearly unconsciously, trying to gain temporary ownership of a can of centuries old sustenance meant for purchase and consumption by war-weary soldiers, or idle housewives' husbands.
The man being throttled relentlessly stared at his attacker, glassy unsighted eyes burning red.
As the claw-like fingernails of his attacker gouged into his neck, the man from the underground simply repeated his previous assault, the two not altering their attack patterns. One punched viciously, and the other tried to strangle the life out of him. Soon the two had devolved to roaring like wild animals as they fought, their faces both covered with each others blood.
The face of the more savage, pale man was barely recognizable at this point. His victim’s throat made sounds like it was caving in, and it was obvious he was having trouble breathing.
It was then that the man being choked made the decisive blow in the fight: He steadied his shuddering, blood soaked fists, and opened them. The thing above him didn’t pay his actions any heed, and continued to crush his throat. Gasping for breath, he brought both hands up to the others face, coiled in his fingers and extended his thumbs, and pressed them against his enemy’s eyes, applying heavy pressure and jabbing his thumbs into those bony eye sockets.
The pale man screamed in pain as his eyes were mashed into his skull, causing sanguine fluid to spurt out repulsively, leaving deep red stains on his foe’s thumbs, and leaving his eyes broken and squashed inside his skull. He brought his numb hands to his face, desperately feeling around his features.
He grabbed and twisted the other man’s fingers, and he touched where his eyes used to be. The sensation of him underneath was gone, and he looked around blindly, swinging his thinly haired head like a madman.
A heavy thud hit his skull, and his nerves jolted. Then another thud. Another. And then he lost all feeling and control, and collapsed, dead.
His killer stood above him, the now dented can of beans in one hand, a corner bloodied. He looked down at the thin, skeletal man, who was covered with thick layers of his own gore all over his face and neck. The uniform he was wearing, presumably looted from the corpse of a pre-war employee of this store. The clothes were clean and wearable compared to what he currently wore; a pinstripe suit that no longer looked like a pinstripe suit due to blood, burns, mud and numerous tears that made it just a set of rags adorning his filthy body.
“Will-m” read the aged name tag; the man sounded it out. “Will-m will do as a name.” The poorly dressed man stripped himself and took the uniform from the savage that he killed, hastily donning it and grasping the tin can once more.
He smashed it solidly on the side of a shelf, opening it with one precise blow. He poured the cold brown beans into his mouth, scooping the rest out with his dirt- and blood-encrusted hands, and licked the food off of them eagerly. The can was empty in less than half a minute, and he tossed it aside, making a clanging noise that echoed through the open building.
The radio elsewhere in the store was now playing a faster paced jazz song, a melody that did not fit the atmosphere of this place or situation at all as it floated alongside the ragged survivor.
Will-m ducked behind the counter to where he had first seen the pale man crouched down, opening the can. It was time for him to investigate something that truly bothered him, and had been for some time since he could remember first waking up to his life.
He lifted up the shirt portion of the uniform, making sure not to rip the fabric. The damage done to his stomach had healed completely and, prodding the area with his finger, he felt no pain from any kind of internal wounds. All that was left was a jagged, almost star shaped scar. His hands and fingers had no reminder of the instance where they gripped the female creature's sword in the subway tunnel, as if it had never happened.
Even more curious now, he picked up a shard of glass from a long-broken window that was lying shattered on the floor. He pulled up one sleeve of the uniform, exposing his arm, which had large, unhealed burns blemishing his skin. He gripped the glass tightly with his index finger and thumb, and cut a small incision along his arm, down from his wrist to the middle of his forearm. The cut was not deep, and the skin stitched itself back together as he dragged the glass across his arm. A faint indication was left on his skin, barely visible even in this light.
Next, he brought the razor edge of the glass to his wrist once more. He jabbed it directly into one of the coarse veins almost protruding from under his skin, and ripped it lengthwise, dissecting the bottom of his forearm, making an incision exactly thirty centimetres long.
Blood spurted forth from the mottled red line, and it streamed down and dripped off of his arm as he raised it up, looking at it with a look of sickened dissatisfaction on his face, his lips contorted into a grimacing half-smile, half-frown.
He pressed his other arm bluntly to his mouth, stopping the surge of vomit from rising up and splattering all over the floor and his self-inflicted wound. And soon, his expression morphed steadily into one not of disgust, but of sheer exuberance as the reddish laceration reconstructed itself before his eyes. He clenched his teeth to mitigate the pain, pain that gradually became more and more bearable... even enjoyable.
Deciding to go further, he brought one finger, trembling slightly, to the open gash, and prodded it eagerly. He gasped in distress, and jerked his whole finger, hand, and arm back, whipping the glass shard out of his grip. It soared over the shelves and clinked against the wall behind him, making another small noise when it struck the ground.
But then, the hot, bleeding meat stitched itself back together. Will-m watched with a curious glimmer in his eyes. Blood seeped slowly back into precisely incised veins which were welded back together at an equal pace. Muscles reattached with each other, making a quiet, slick, squishing kind of sound, as if his body wanted him to be sick watching his own inflictions just mend themselves without pause and without error. There was an old, forgotten burn on his deeply tanned arm that now had a newer, paler streak of skin running through it like an arrow of flesh.
It was like seeing the deep cut being made in reverse, as if time itself was reversed. An elegant and brutal process.
The regeneration now complete, Will-m remained there, crouching, contemplating this wonderful, disturbing ability that he had.
“So… I can’t die. Every single time I was riddled with bullets it didn't end my life, and just now I’ve looked at why.” Will-m whispered this to himself. He couldn’t decide if this was a blessing or a curse, given the utter, strange agony he had to be subject to. How did it make him feel?
He stared down at the floor, now pasted with a thin layer of blood spattered across the accumulated dust. He brushed his hand around in the filth nonchalantly, pushing away old fliers and mixing the dirt with his own blood, and felt a small, unusual bump in a depression in an otherwise unassuming tile. Flipping the light tile out of the way, he looked closer and saw a lock, along with the faded black safe it was attached to, revealed through years of weathering. He brought his ear to the ground and his fingers to the round lock.
His fingers made small, deliberate movements, carefully rotating the knob to find the correct combination. His preternatural hearing focused on the falling tumblers and blocked out the music and slight crackle of the unseen radio.
From inside the safe he could hear muffled ticks as his fingertips moved the lock around with sedate precision. The tumblers fell exactly as he thought they would. Within minutes, the lock made a click and opened smoothly. Will-m slid it off, and placed it lightly to the side.
The door of the safe was heavy for its size, about ten by ten inches. Will-m swung it out of the way –not without a clumsy clang as it hit the floor- and squinted and looked inside the dark box.
One hand rifled through the safe. Upon closer inspection, he could see a wrinkled pair of fifty dollar bills on one side, with the face of some man Will-m couldn’t recognize in the centre of both. He brushed them aside, along with a number of silver coins that were liberally sprinkled through the safe along with ancient packs of gum, concealing the rest of the contents of the safe. Underneath that meaningless garbage was an object Will-m deemed far superior: a gun.
It was not the standard fare. Whoever owned this must have been rich, or a thief. An off-white inscription on the side stated “Glock Model 1000-C, Laser” and a printed slip on top of it in the safe said it was “the best civilian firearm money can buy.”
Rectangular and bulky with a strange diagonal grip, it was bigger than most gunpowder based handguns Will-m had experienced before, but was a staple of its time. A few spare energy cells, to be loaded into a bay on top of the pistol, were spread around in packs of four. William took all of these out, and saw a peculiar envelope below.
It was plain white, or at least it used to be, and was completely unmarked, but well kept. Putting the laser pistol aside, Will-m hastily tore open the paper and looked at its contents with eager eyes. He found two things: an old monochrome photo, and a wrinkled, folded up flier.
The photograph was of the face of a middle-aged man with an honest smile, light creases in his face and an optimistic sheen to his eyes. Will-m reverently tucked it into his shirt pocket, and took a closer look at the sheet of centuries-old folded up paper. It advertised a parade in Toronto celebrating the tenth anniversary of the conquest and acquisition of South Ontario by the United States of America. In the centre was a well drawn piece of art, mostly intact and clear, of numerous “patriotic” -as the poster stated- people marching alongside giant floats with jets screaming overhead, the trails behind them forming the iconic colours of the American flag. A contrastingly simple handwritten note was scrawled in one corner:
“bombs at 2 pm.”
He put the article in his pocket as he did with the photo. He wanted to preserve these pre-war artifacts from those who would desecrate them. It was the least he could do for this destroyed world: to keep the memory of the past.
Gripping the new-found pistol, he flicked open the hatch on top and jammed in one pack of energy cells, enough for hundreds of shots if what the manual paper said was right. Will-m gazed warily over the waist-high counter for anyone who might be near, or anyone who might be just like that wretched old man lying bloodied, beaten and dead in the corner.
To his relief and dismay, the streets were as deserted as they were when he had entered the store. He feared that someone might be hiding in the shadows of the dead buildings, but knew he was ready for a fight. He breathed out, vaulted faultlessly over the counter, and ran crouching out of the small corner store.
The song had changed once again. It featured one woman singing, a voice he thought he had heard in some other songs that had played. It wasn’t upbeat, but it wasn’t quite melancholy. It seemed fitting, almost.
Few structures were still standing, as most had been ruined by warfare and nuclear attacks, as well as two centuries of ageing. It was a wasteland all around, and just outside this small town was a landscape just shy of being a rocky desert, not at all reflecting the fertile land that once existed here. Will-m chuckled tiredly at his situation. Hundreds of miles of open land all around him, and nowhere to go.
Remembering the piece of paper he had scavenged, Will-m decided to head south west, towards this “Toronto.” It would probably be a long trip, but who cared? In this world, nothing really had any meaning. It was all pointless, he thought. But the idea of saving just a few more pieces of the old world, even it meant nothing, motivated him to press onward.
And so, he limped on and began his long journey to Toronto, one of the few major cities still standing from pre-war times. Gun in hand and strange healing powers still barely understood, he sighed and trudged down the broken down road.
“Hmph. It’s better than nothing. Damn, I really need some food again.” His stomach growled at him, demanding sustenance. The recent events had drained him more than he had expected. Will-m hoped that there would be some kind of supermarket or food store or anything of the sort in the vicinity where he could rummage through the storerooms and take what canned goods would likely be there. He inspected his surroundings, and saw the corner store he was just in as the most viable option.
“I'm so alone.” He muttered forlornly.
Will-m stepped back inside the old building and heard a sound behind him and felt something strange, suddenly: a peculiar sensation on his skull.
The noise was gone as soon as he had noticed it, drowned out by a sharp ringing that echoed in his ears. He inexplicably found that the vision in his left eye was completely gone, and that he couldn’t operate the muscles of that side of his face.
The sensation was of slight stinging, like a giant wasp had stung him on his head. The pain grew exponentially within seconds, and time seemed to be still as ice. He absentmindedly noticed that the shelf in front of him had blotches of a distantly familiar dark substance on it.
It felt like he had lost a part of himself, in a physical and philosophical sense. His heart ached at the loss he did not comprehend, that he could not comprehend.
The vision in his right eye was now clouding over. A similar feeling of stinging assailed his chest, starting in his back and spreading forward. He started to lose all feeling in his legs, then his arms, and then he began to lose his balance.
Unable to react, he crumpled backward into a pathetic heap.
He could no longer hear the ringing or the drifting music, or even the ever present whine of the wind. Everything was just silent. He merely looked up at the bright, somewhat tinted, sky with one eye, as clouds passed peacefully by. As his sight began to fade, he saw a man that he thought that he knew, or had some connection to, standing over him. From his view, he seemed to be upside down.
He tried to chuckle, but only spurted out blood and a hint of air, the last oxygen that would grace his system. The man above him brought the barrel of a gun into his decreasing frame of view. Will-m looked with a dissonant, pleasant attitude into the finely rifled barrel of the weapon. He thought that he saw the person move his lips, speaking to him or someone else or even just himself. Will-m didn’t care. He wanted to speak himself, but couldn’t force out the words, no matter how hard he tried with his nebulous sense of being. So he simply thought,
'Oh. It seems... I’m dead. It seems I can die after all.'
He had no room for remorse as his vital functions began to cease, and the bright light of a gun being shot clouded his minimal sight. He accepted the bullet, and everything went dark, contrasting the flash from the muzzle of the gun. He was gone.
Such was life in the wasteland.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
“That’s another one down, Frank. Did you see it? Man, what rads do to people. I don’t think I’ve seen a healer like that since we left Ottawa! Guess I’ll just make sure he’s dead, then…” The man said casually to his friend standing a few meters behind him. The two humans stood, well-armed, outside of the corner store from which the mutant had come.
The creature on the ground was in the shape of any ordinary human, but had dark radiation burns on his skin, and had two bullets in its skull and four more in its chest. Three quarters of its face was covered in its own blood, and it was wearing a faded white uniform with an equally tarnished green apron, it too was bloodied. The human-like figure had somewhat deformed ears and bony limbs that were just slightly too long. Aside from the burns, it looked just like any other person to most, unless given direct, close up scrutiny, scrutiny that sooner came in the form of a bullet than a visual inspection.
Frank, now beside his friend, held up his arm to stop him; he was tall enough that his arm had to be lowered to not smack into his friend's face. His own face was marked with a dozen scars, and he glanced in some kind of understanding at the mutant, but his own situation was more positive: a black fedora to hide his sparse, burnt hair, dark, toughened leather armour reinforced with varied steel plates, his pants and boots were from an army uniform, fixed up and dirtied from use but still looking better than the pathetic heap of a creature at his feet.
His eyes reflected the hot midday sun, and he began to speak in a untimely aged and gravelly tone.
“Wait, boss. He ain’t twitchin’. Might be a trap. I’ll take care of it.” With that, Frank stepped ahead and aimed his shotgun at the mutant’s skull, looking it over as he did so.
“Huh. Seems his name’s William. Just like you, huh?” Frank laughed dryly before he blasted the downed thing’s face, mangling it beyond recognition, removing its strangely civilized expression forever.
William, standing with his rifle readied on its sling, moved in to check the pockets of his fresh kill.
“That’s the thing with these muties. You have to shoot them in the head, or else the regenerators’ll get back up and kill ya. Don't destroy the brain, the things don’t give up, like animals. We’ve got to take out every one we see, to save civilized folk like us from running into them.” William explained as he searched the mutant thoroughly.
Frank scoffed. “Yeah, yeah. I know, boss. I know damn well better than you, that’s f’sure.”
In the front shirt pocket of the uniform, William found a neatly folded old photograph and a small poster advertising the anniversary celebration of America’s capture of South Ontario. William tossed that aside, and examined the photograph more closely.
“Hey, Frank. Look at this. It’s in great condition.” He gestured for his friend, who was warily scanning the nearby ruins, to check the picture. “Probably his father, or something. Maybe this bastard was a little smarter than the rest, you think?” He kicked a small tin can aside.
“Ah, who cares? Just another irradiated freak. We probably couldn’t sell this picture for much anyways.” William haphazardly threw the black and white photograph onto the corpse before him. The soft breeze slowly lapped against the bloodied body, eventually blowing the old picture out into the dusty street.
William continued to check the body. “Wait, what’s this?” He held up a rectangular, grey piece of steel with glowing orange stripes near one end. “Hey, this is a real laser pistol! How the hell did this mutie have one of these? We could sell this for, what, a thousand bucks?”
“Five thousand.” Frank corrected him, his voice taking on a tone of what sounded almost like wonder, or even somewhat greedy joy.
Examining the pistol just a little more, William soon put the safety on and tucked it gently into his backpack, with an expression of wonder on his face. Of course, the wonder was of what he could buy with a whole five thousand dollars. The sum was nearly immeasurable to him. Not wanting to get too caught up with the pistol and let his guard down, he turned his attention back to the deserted town.
The cityscape was like most the two had seen in their journeys. Not a large place, yet not especially small, but the amount of old houses and building that had been flattened and worn away over the years made this place, like others, seem like but a tiny pockmark on the hot desert wastes of southern Ontario.
From a radio, an old prewar tune reached their ears, filling the air again and settling the atmosphere. It was a classic number from the forties or fifties, a song William and Frank had heard countless times before. It felt somewhat nostalgic, despite the melody predating them by at least two centuries. It was a reminder of what the world used to be like, a carefree light in the cavernous nightmare that was reality.
But Frank and William knew no reality beyond this one. The daily life of a scavenging traveller was all that they had ever known. Anything else, anything better, was foreign to them, like some kind of distant utopia. However, they were content. The advantage to not knowing any existence better than this was that even the worst could barely faze them. It was the irony of the wasteland.
Frank hummed along to the archaic song. “So, off to Toronto still, boss?”
“Yep.” William nodded typically, and trotted off back onto the street, heading in the general direction of Toronto. Such was their goal: to get to any kind of civilization. Toronto was naturally the best place to look for anything like that. Scavenging was a hellish profession, but it made ends meet. An organized group of people would provide an opportunity to trade and recuperate, just what this pair of transients needed.
William took off down the road at a hasty, determined pace. His brown hair, though cut short in a once-popular style, was wild and almost stringy, and barely blew about even in stronger winds. He had a dishevelled, faded red plaid shirt with rolled up, stained sleeves and buttons, and a hint of a black bulletproof vest underneath. His travel-worn work boots had been modified to allow more leg and foot manoeuvrability when running. Unlike Frank, his face was mostly clean, and but a few untimely wrinkles and scars marred his face. But, as he often would say, each nick and scratch on him had its own tale.
The life of a scavenger, a “scavver”, was rarely a dull one, and rarely a long one.
The road progressed on into the cracked, sandy dirt. Soon there was barely a road at all, just scant skeletons of houses in once-organized rows. Sharp brown and sometimes slightly green bushes, dead, yellow grass, dead trees and even cacti populated the expansive, invasive wasteland. Any kind of green, other than the sickly grayish green of the water, was almost all gone, no matter the season. The landscape was reminiscent of an American desert of the old, wild southwest, and the wildlife reflected that. The cries of hawks could be heard from way up in the sky, and the hissing of snakes and yelping of wolves was not uncommon. And now, a howl pierced through the cool wasteland air.
“Eleven o’clock, boss! There’s another feral. We’re getting’ a lot of these today, huh?” Frank growled, shouldering his semi-automatic.
What looked most like a cougar if anything raced out from a cluster of bushes alongside the road. It ran and pounced at William, who sidestepped the attack he was alerted to, letting Frank send a solid lead slug into the animal’s skull.
The beast was struck mid-stride, causing it to crash back to earth, bloodied, and perform a heavy, inelegant roll in the dust as it died, coming to a stop in the middle of the road. William was upon as soon as it was confirmed dead, hacking and skinning the cat with his big hunting knife. He performed this task with ease, and nodded to Frank, holding up his bloodied hands, his knife gripped tightly in one.
After the skin had been given a cursory cleaning and the meat readied and packed, they hung these useful remains of their latest kill on their desert-camouflaged backpacks. They could not afford to needlessly waste any parts of an animal that they could somehow utilize. Between the laser pistol and this adult cougar skin, William and Frank were looking forward to the days ahead.
“We headin’ to Pickering, boss?” William heard Frank’s gruff voice behind him. “Plenty a mutants there, as I understand.”
William waved his hand in the air nonchalantly. “Nah, it’s a bit too… radioactive.” He laughed. “Well, maybe. I hear they get real hot blooded about ferals and freaks around Toronto. Imagine what they’ll think of what we’re doin’ here!”
His eyes took on a steely, harsh look. “Y’know, there are some pretty rich places around there, too. Old National Guard stations. I hear that’s a problem, too.”
Frank scoffed. “Thinkin’ of raidin’ another military depot? Hell of a risk, boss. Just like old times, huh?” Frank shifted his eyes, staring around at the horizon.
“There’s another thing.” William continued, his voice getting lower, more deliberate. “I hear they’ve got working tech there. Tanks, and all that.” He gave a knowing nod. No scavenger could give up a bounty like that, not for all the water in the desert.
“There’s no way some place like that hasn’t been taken over already.” Frank had a frown on his face already; he wasn't the idealistic type.
“Up for it, Frank?” Turning to his companion behind him, William smirked eagerly, expressing his emotion obviously, as usual.
Frank gave a rare, quick smile. “Damn right. Let’s do it, boss.”
Their plan had changed only slightly, as they marched down the rough dirt road. First to civilization, second to riches. Were they different from any others who could have been in their place that one hot, dusty day? The wasteland would never reveal that secret, just as it held so many others. Just like the ruins of a bygone era, some things were seen but not understood, rumoured but never found, kept as yet more secrets of the lawless, ancient wastes.
“Civilization” was something that could no longer be defined, existing in some world of its own; the scavengers hardly saw themselves as a civilization: they were explorers, and the old shopping malls and subway stations were their pyramids and their lost temples. Water was their gold, and tins of baked beans were their furs and jewelry.
Such was life in the wasteland.
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This is actually a particularly well-crafted piece that I wrote about a year and a half ago. I did quite a bit of editing to polish it up, but overall the bulk of the story is the same as it was back then. I'm quite proud of it.
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Originally Posted by Spinach
