Ebovid World

The sky was its usual overcast dull gray with the smallest hint of blue around the edges. Sure someplace out there beyond the walls of what people called civilization there could possibly be a blue sky and an open field. Who knows? I sure didn’t. I was born in this horrid place that we called home. It once was the United States. Now it was a bunch of individual sovereigns, each with its’ own egomaniac that controlled it.

The inner cities were no more than broken down buildings, covered in rust, slime and dust. Most of the buildings that were in use were so run down that on good days you weren’t sure if they’d stay standing and on bad days, you hoped you didn’t get buried in one.

I had long ago moved to the outskirts of our sovereign area, as close to the border wall as I could get. I had found an old house, falling in upon itself from the weight of a vine that looked like it could be hazardous to touch, or even go near. In my world some plants could eat you. I had gotten a little to close to this one and managed to jump out of it’s reach at the last minute. My dog, one of the few surviving that did not have missing limbs or extra eyes, never went near them and that was how I learned about most things harmful here. Somehow Rayn new what wasn’t safe. He has picked this place. The vines didn’t like the slime that covered almost every building in our sovereign. Some said it was from the pollution from the factories and waste run of. I wasn’t sure, but all I had to do to keep the vines away from my entrance way and windows was spread some slime around them every now and then. The vines kept predators away. More than once I had awoken to screams and peered through the metal shudders I had built and found a person being dragged into the vines. I never did know what happened to them, and I never went out to watch.

My house had an old metal building hidden in its’ basement, inside that building there were all kinds of things that I had never seen before. There was a bed, or at least that is what I believe they were called. It was so comfortable far better then recycled wood board that we all had to use now. A place to sit and eat at, running water, a cooking machine that warmed food, a weird looking box that kept things cold, a wall covered in what I realized were actual books. I had been taught how to read by my parents before the virus that had demolished most of the animals and humanity called Ebovid took them from me. It also had another room that was packed full of weird bags of dry stuff that was edible and huge containers of food. I kept it all hidden and ate sparse meals since food was very hard to come by here. Most people died of starvation, especially during the frigid season.

Everyday we were forced to get up and scrounge the ruins of our sovereign for anything that could be recycled and used for food or power. What little power any of us were allowed to have. The Poteet, a name our so-called ruler gave to himself because he liked the way it sounded, had plants all over his area that burned up anything dead or old to make power, or if remotely edible cooked down into a paste that was our primary food source. We worked long hard hours to get a bowl or two of this gray swill that was clumpy and full of things I dare not think on too long. It was horrible tasting and none of us really wanted to know what we ate.

We were all supposed to hand in everything that we found, but most of us kept out good finds for ourselves. Those finds were getting harder to come by, and daily there were fights over what little was found. Usually resulting in a death. Then the sweepers would pounce and that person would be stripped of all of their belongings, This were always taken to the Poteet’s tower, where he would determine if they were recycled or kept by him. He always got the best stuff.

There were still some businesses in the area, but they were small and made what they could with very little to work with. A button dealer here, a thread spooler there. As soon as one got up and running someone greedy for a better way of life would kill them and take it over and the sovereign would eventually take them over. The vicious cycle of kill and be killed never ended. I thought sometimes that the rust on the buildings was the bleeding of the ruins.

I had wandered into one of the recycling plants one time. I had thought maybe working there would be better then scrounging for survival, as soon as I made it through the door a guard stopped me. He was someone I had known my whole life and he told me that it was not a place for me, to leave and never come back. The haunted look in his eyes and the sunken cheeks made me listen. I have never gone back. If you were lucky enough to work in one of the plants you got extra food. I often wondered why they never seemed to want it, and most of them after awhile of working in the recycling plant all seemed to stop eating.

The other plants that you could work in were the filtration plant, for what could be called water that ran to the territory. Mostly inside what I had learned was called a city. It was brown and green and on a good day ran like normal rain water, on a bad like sludge thick with slime. We would never drink it. Even though the filtration plant was supposed to clean it for us, the Poteet always said that we didn’t have the resources to clean it up. Funny he never looked covered and slime and dust like we did.

The next type of plant that we had was called the industrial plant and it was where our limited power came from. On good days when there was enough to burn, or the sun actually came through the polluted cloud coverage we would have steady electricity, on bad days we were lucky if we could see at all.

Scavengers crowded our streets, digging through cast offs, killing for anything you had that looked nice or edible. I can’t tell you how many scars I have from protecting my dog from them. I found Rayn in a pile of garbage, thrown away for dead and heading to a recycling plant. His head hung limp on his small little frame. His eyes weren’t even open, but I saw his chest move and had to save him. The rain that day covered up my taking him, and for once in my miserable existence I didn’t feel alone when I scooped him up. I had to be careful because you weren’t allowed to take from the Poteet’s recycling, but I snuck him under my coat and ran through the rain home. It was one of the few times that the rain didn’t come down like sludge, and felt good on the skin. I decided that was a sign that he was met to survive.

At home I found a container labeled milk, added some water to it and in one of my books it showed a picture of a way to feed the animals or babies called a bottle. I made a bottle for him and fed him like the book told me to. He has been my best friend ever since. We have gotten through some very dark hours. A few weeks after finding him I was scrounging in the remains of the house and I found a box that looked like it was once finally decorated, with flowers carved into it and drawers that opened. Inside one of the drawers I found perfectly preserved the most beautiful heart shaped locket that I had ever seen. In such a dark bleak world that this had survived amazed me. It had a diamond and ruby gems on the outside, at least that is what my book said they were, not sure if they are real or not and I do not care. The locket had the initials R C on it. It was perfect Rayn for my dog and C for me.

The locket is safely hidden inside the thick fur around Rayn’s neck where he will not let anyone near it, and every time I find something horrifying in this world of ours. I sit and rub his neck near the locket. It’s a small thing, but I feel a little safer for some reason. Someday we will get beyond the boundary wall to a better place. For now, we have each other and our hidden home.