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Grandmother's Stories

The Before

By Katie L. Oswald (BookDragon)Published 3 years ago 7 min read
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The rumble of the clouds sent panic crashing through Alexa, to be caught in the rain would be death. She would never make it back to the cave before the storm broke. She stood in a forest full of contaminated trees grey, rubbery, and grotesque. Her grandmother had been alive in the Before and she had told her that trees had once been brown and green and not at all gross looking. Her grandmother was full of stories, but Alexa wasn’t sure she believed all of them.

Alexa left the poisoned forest and headed towards the ruins of the wild. She saw what had been a house that was falling apart and vast fields of black oily seeming earth that was once brown. There were a few other buildings in various states of ruin. Alexa wasn’t alive in the Before, but if her grandmother was to be believed this place must have been a farm, where they grew food. Alexa went to sleep many nights listening to her grandmother as she talked about how people grew fields and fields of food, Alexa wondered if that were really true. It was hard to grow anything now, her grandmother had said that the soil wasn’t rich enough- whatever the hell that meant. Still the caves have crops but not as much as they need. Which is why there were people like Alexa who searched the ruins for supplies.

The remnants of the old world stretched before Alexa and the rumbling of the sky hastened her steps. There was a cement foundation littered with wood and glass, she could sift through it and see if the place had a basement, but Alexa wasn’t that crazy. Anything could be in there, and she wasn’t interested in tangling with a radrat or something worse. Plus, with the rain coming she would be stuck down there. There was a building off to the left, it was partially destroyed but the roof looked ok. That would have to do. It was a weird shape, Alexa had seen houses before, there weren’t many still intact, but this building was different. It was made from wood, but the roof was some sort of metal that’s why it was still standing. The peeling paint was red, though most of it had been beaten off by the weather and the years. The building must have been sturdy because it was still there. Some of the wood was rotting away but that wasn’t surprising. It was long and tall and there was a large opening leading into the structure, there was probably a door at some point, but it wasn’t there anymore. The opening was larger than other doors she had seen. There didn’t seem to be any windows except for one at the top of the building. The sign on the building said, “Robinson Barn.” What was a Robinson Barn, Alexa wondered idly?

She reached into her pack and pulled out a small black cylinder that had a clear plastic top. The seller had called it a lightflash. She clicked it on, and surprisingly bright light spilled from the tiny cylinder. She used the beam of light to look into the strange building. The thing had been expensive as hell, and she had to put batters into it to make it work. Batters were some sort of Before power source and they were expensive and hard to come by. However, she was one of the communities’ scroungers and she found batters often. Alexa couldn’t figure out what the hell batters were made of she had cut one open once and it had burning liquid inside, only a little and once she had washed it off it had been ok… whatever they were they couldn’t make them anymore, that was for sure. They must have been really important though, because Alexa found them in all the stores she scavenged, even the little ones with those weird pumps in the front.

The light showed a mostly open space but there were stalls against one wall with troughs in them. There was some sort of vehicle that had seen better days in one corner, it was smaller than the rusted and bent cars left on the roads. There was also random trash and debris in the space, but not much else. Someone else must have cleared out anything useful long ago. There was a little platform at the top of the building where the window was, there was a ladder propped against it, the ladder was made of metal and stilled looked sturdy enough. High ground was safer, but that large window was open to the platform and Alexa didn’t want to risk the rain. Alexa went into a stall across the room from the window and where the roof was intact. She set up her bedroll on the floor and used some of the wood that was left of the other barn stalls to start a small fire. Since the rain hadn’t come yet, Alexa went out and started looking for tracks.

Alexa followed some tracks and when she found her query, she knocked her arrow aiming at a long-eared creature with lethal long claws; her grandmother had told her that these beasts had come from animals called rabbits that were cute little animals that people even kept as pets. They were no tame creatures now though, the contaminations had turned them into something new. Fortunately, the poison was secreted onto the claws and if one were careful in skinning the meat was alright to eat. The arrow loosed and the little beast shrieked its anger at Alexa, but the arrow was true, and the shrieking ended suddenly.

Carrying her catch, Alexa returned to her camp in the Robinson Barn. She skinned the creature, careful not to let the claws scratch her and to miss the poison sack with her knife. She studied the creature. It was shaggy and brown and about a foot long and a half a foot wide, it had long stringy ears that hung down from its face with paws that ended in 8-inch claws. Alexa shook her head, how could this thing have come from a tame soft creature that people kept as pets? Sometimes Alexa had a hard time believing the stories her grandmother told her about the Before. Whatever the world had used to be, it had become a contaminated ruined place with people trying to survive anyway they could.

That was the way of the world now- a contaminated waste land that was a harsh and dangerous world for what was left of the human race. No one knew what had happened, but it started with the water. Drinking it made people sick and then the rain began to make people ill too. It happened so fast that half the world was dead before a solution could be made. At first, the water just got people sick but as the contamination became worse and worse the water that sustained human life became its death.

Alexa lived in a cave system with a group of survivors, there was a spring there that pulled water from deep into the earth. So far, there was no contamination in the spring, but it was tested often, and many believed that it was only a matter of time before that became poisoned too. She was never contented staying safe and snug in the cave and had been searching the ruins since she was young which is how she had found herself in this rotting building with death falling from the sky around her.

Alexa lay down thinking about her grandmother’s stories and listening to the rain. The stories of the Before had always fascinated her, had there really been stores where you could buy food without having catch it? Had there been planes in the sky that people could ride across the ocean? Had there been machines that showed moving pictures? Safe as she could be out in the wilds Alexa let herself drift into sleep. As she fell asleep, she couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like to live in a world that wasn’t full of contamination and danger. What was the Before really like?

Sci Fi
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About the Creator

Katie L. Oswald (BookDragon)

I am not a book worm, I am a book dragon. I love comics, books, photography and all things creative. I have always been drawn to the stories of life and have been writing for as long as I can remember. Twitter: @BookDragonklo

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