A dead world

I woke up to ashes falling on me like snow.

How long have I been laying here?

The ringing in my ears made it difficult to remember why I was laying there, but not impossible. I remembered taking the cloth off of my face to take a drink from my canteen. I remembered thinking I was shot, and falling to the ground onto the glass from the shattered windows above me. They never really took aim. They just kind of... Shot. Which is pretty fucking stupid if you ask me, not like they're making any more bullets.

'They' were Ragers. Total shit-disturbers, even in a world made of disturbed shit. These were the guys that when the world ended, saw nothing else to do but contribute to ending the world. I met a more jovial one once. Drunk and rambling in the street, dry-firing his gun at anyone within eyesight.

"It's all gone to shit, sweetheart," he said as he leaned into me with his nasty ass moonshine breath. "Might as well have some fuckin' fun!"

He kept dry-firing his handgun into the air. I don't know what kind, you think I'd have learned a bit in the several years since the world ended. I had used one more than once, but I didn't really concern myself with what kind of gun I was firing... More so whether I could figure out how to use it.

Come to think of it, I don't even know if he knew he was dry-firing. That bathtub 'shine makes people see things if they have enough of it. I don't ever remember my parents getting like that when they were drunk.

Ugh... I haven't thought of them in a while. Kind of had to stop. I miss them, you know? They were really good people. Just typical farming folk. Their parents were farmers, and their parents were farmers, etc. I was supposed to be a farmer too. And frankly, I was totally cool with that. I loved taking care of all the horses and the cows and the goats and the chickens... Pops even taught me to drive the combine when I was 8.

They both died of the Dust. Then my older sister got it and died, then my younger brother got it and died... I have no idea why I didn't get it and die. I wish I did get it and die. I wish that a lot.

Things went to shit so fast after that, I'm still not sure what exactly happened. Everyone thought The Dust was a virus because we couldn't imagine what else it could be. Then after we lost about half the population in two weeks, they discovered it was actually a bunch of tiny nanobots consuming your insides and reproducing until you'd succumb to internal bleeding. Or your heart would just stop because it was half-eaten. Or on a more rare occasion, you might just be so full of nanobots that you basically explode. Either way - Not a comfortable way to die.

Once the government determined that it wasn't a virus dismantling its citizens, they decided it must be an attack. It all became a bit of a blur after that. They attacked a couple of countries, then those countries attacked us in return. Allies of ours joined the fight, and there was bomb after bomb after bomb all over the world until eventually an electromagnetic pulse decimated anything electronic on the hemisphere. On the bright side, it killed the nanobots. On the not-so-bright side, it also killed everything else. The one last weapon we had was a nuke, because we just had to throw the last punch.

I've heard true Nuclear Winter didn't set in because the soot didn't make it past the Troposphere. But it's still fucking cold. Both in temperature and emotional desolation. There aren't a lot of us left, and most of those who are left become Ragers. I guess it's hard not to empathize when the world is mostly dead, but destruction just never really did it for me. What's the point in further destroying the shit heaps. I just keep to myself and try to avoid trouble.

Before my current spot, I hadn't slept in the same place for more than a few nights in... Well, years, but my new hide-out was pretty sweet. A high-rise broke apart into a makeshift lean-to, right on the water. I would have missed it if I was on this side of the canal, but I was out scavenging on the other side. The way the building fell was perfect - right up against the concrete border around the canal. I had to do some sketchy acrobatics to even get in, and almost fell into the acid bath that the canal had become. (Ok maybe not acid bath. But... Certainly not ideal for recreation.) It was a cozy and secluded spot, overlooking the water. I mean, hey - a view is a view. Even when everything is grey.

So there I was checking out my new neighborhood when I stopped to take a drink. All of a sudden, I hear shots. Big, loud, large-calibre-from-an-automatic-weapon shots. They're usually firing into the air, but sometimes they're not. I always run either way. Not really because I want to stay alive, I just don't think it would be fun to slowly bleed out from a gunshot wound. Or worse, have the Ragers find me - Dead or alive.

Anyways, I'm running away and then MORE shots start coming from a different direction. I turned and ran, looking for cover. Bullets sprayed above me, hitting an old brick wall leftover from a building torn asunder. Dust and chunks of brick fell all around me. I felt the hot thud of something hitting my shoulder.

Had to be a bullet, I decided. I hit the ground hard, with all the momentum I'd gained while sprinting away from... Was it two groups or just one? It didn't matter. They got me. I looked up and saw my hide-out not 300 feet away through the cloud of ash that had been tossed up into the air. I spent my last few seconds of consciousness kicking my own ass about how I let them get me.

Now I'm going to die out in the open, and have my body become party to... Whatever the hell they'll do to it. Terrific.

As I faded out, I clutched the little heart-shaped locket my mom and dad gave me for my 10th birthday. It was the only thing I still had from the old days. I didn't even have the chain anymore, just a long string to hide it under my clothes. I'd traded the chain for some clean water, long before I learned not to trust anyone.

I don't know how long I was out. I was really surprised to wake up at all. The gunshots had stopped, and I didn't hear anyone yelling. Ragers aren't that stealthy. They don't need to be.

My ears rang so loud that it made my head feel like it was vibrating. Which also felt like it had a knife in it, especially as I coughed up probably a whole brick's worth of dust and ash. My beaten body throbbed as I involuntarily expelled the foreign particulate. I reached up to touch where that searing pain was radiating out from on the top of my head. It was wet.

"Fucking super," I moaned sarcastically to myself.

After a few seconds, I pushed myself up off the ground and onto my knees. I wasn't ready to stand, at least until I stopped coughing. As I got up, pain reminded me that I'd been shot in the shoulder, so I reached back to investigate. There was no bullet hole, but there was definitely blood. I figured I probably had a piece of brick fall on me or something. I didn't hear anything - or more importantly, anyone - but still I wanted to get the hell home. I leaned forward so I was on all fours and tried to push myself up into a standing position. It did not work. I fell and smashed the shit out of my knee on a pile of broken cement and bricks. Turns out that leg wasn't working all that well.

I looked around for something to pull myself up on and found a broken edge of the brick wall. I heaved on it until I was upright (or some semblance of upright, anyways) and began limping awkwardly to my hovel. I'd spent the better part of the last two days tunneling a more reasonable entrance than scaling around and almost falling into the canal, as I'd been doing for... I don't know, however long I'd been there. At least a week. Hard to keep track of time without marking the days on something, and that just depresses me so I don't do it anymore. As I dragged my bloody self towards home, I stopped a few times to check for Ragers but heard nothing. The ashes that had been tossed back up in the air fluttered about as they settled, making this horribly bleak landscape look almost peaceful.

I hit the deck as soon as I got inside. Whether I passed out from pain or exhaustion, I'll never know. When I woke up, I was dizzy. I found my canteen and drank as much as I could in one go. Which was probably dumb, as I didn't have enough to clean my wounds. I seemed to remember I had some moonshine somewhere. I started going through my pile of things and found a small mason jar of veritable rocket fuel. I delicately dipped the cleanest shirt I could find into the fuming liquid, careful not to be wasteful. Then I clenched my teeth and held my breath, and slowly brought it to my headwound. As soon as it touched, my vision went white and I fainted once again.

Miraculously, the shirt was still on my head when I woke up. I mopped it against the wound a bit before wringing the blood and booze out of it. I poured a bit more 'shine on the shirt and reached over to touch it to my shoulder. I think I was a bit more prepared this time because I didn't pass out, but holy fuck it hurt. It hurt so much I couldn't even cry, or scream, or anything. My mouth opened wide like I was going to scream but nothing came out. I did the same with my knee, with a similar result. Maybe I was just getting used to the pain, who knows.

I braced myself before taking a swig from the jar. Just swallow it before you taste it, I told myself. Easier said than done. As soon as the foul brine hit my mouth, my whole body seized and revolted. I coughed harder than I did when I was expelling the brick dust, which I was still sore from doing. My mouth burned like I just swished hydrochloric acid. I don't think any actually made it down my throat, but I still felt a bit floaty. It was probably just light-headedness from everything that had just happened, but I took it. I wanted to sleep, but was probably concussed. I sat and weighed the pros and cons of this decision and concluded that I still didn't really care if I died, and that I was pretty well-hidden from the Ragers.

Night was falling, and I didn't have the strength to build a fire. I tore the shirt into bandages and dressed my wounds as best as I could before settling into bed. I started my usual "mental tour" of the farm to help me fall asleep. Starting down the laneway, around the house to the chicken coop, past the sheep pen to the horse stables... By the time I hit the cow pasture, my snores were softly reverberating off the acid bath canal.