World in Tatters (Prologue)

**I wrote a book. I think I'll be publishing chapters on here every few days to a week. If you're interested, please leave comments and critiques. Let me know what you think.**

Hi. My name is Steven. Steven Tucker.

You don’t really know me yet, but if you read on, you will.

I guess the best way to start is some…context.

The year is 2482. August, I think. About three hundred years ago, over-taxation of natural resources led to a massive food shortage. With food being scarce, the populations of the poorest countries began to diminish. Major economies tried desperately to cling to their consumerist dogma. Lack of food led to a lack of labor. Lack of labor led to a diminished supply of oil and a further degradation of food industries. Without the manpower, large corporations fell. Their distribution networks crumbled. The food that did still exist couldn’t be transported to where it was needed. Income taxes steadily rose as fewer and fewer people were able to work for their living. Inflation spiked. The demand on the militaries to provide aid became astronomical.

The gluttonous lifestyles of the rich and powerful couldn’t be sustained, and global panic ensued. Riots broke out in dozens of countries worldwide. Citizens marched on their governments, militaries crumbled as many of the officers opted to join local militias in their rebellions against the governments. About twenty years after the riots started, countries started to crumble. The first countries to fall were Greece, all Central and South American countries, Mexico, Spain, France, most of the Middle East. After that, the United Kingdom, China, Japan and Russia. The last to fall, out of sheer stubbornness, spite, and zealotry, was the United States in 2276.

The United States survived for a while after the others, but only because they had several decades of experience dealing with these same issues before the initial collapse and didn’t hesitate to send in military force to quell riots. In the early 2020’s, some sort of global pandemic swiped through the country. First came civil unrest. Then horrifying policy changes. Then more civil unrest. However, Over the next decade, the country finally…slowly… started working for the people. Major reforms swept through the nation. Social programs expanded to assist those in poverty. Healthcare became a rallying cry for the oppressed. Under a new regime and a new generation, the country prospered. For a time. However, once the support from the other nations dried up, it didn’t take long for them to start feeling the effects.

The only major government left standing after the dust settled was Canada. They found a way to become self-sufficient: cutting out the nonessentials, growing their own food, producing their own supplies. But it was like the rest of the world entered a second Dark Age.

The United States was ultimately divided up into small city-states run by local militias and warlords. For almost a century, there were constant wars and skirmishes. There was always one group or another trying to absorb the others to control more territory. Nowadays, most of the country is settled. Atlanta Alliance controls the Southeast. Texarkana Union controls almost everything south of Kansas City from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. Northeast is broken up among half a dozen factions. The west coast is split between the California Coalition and a group calling themselves the Oregon Trail. Much of the northern Midwest was annexed by Canada after the fall, and they keep their borders locked up tight.

Of course, there are a smattering of smaller independent city-states, but they tend to be hotbeds for lawlessness and unchecked despotism.

The Slave trade is a booming enterprise, especially in the indie states. Warlords lure in unsuspecting travelers with promises of food, water, shelter. The only thing that waits for them on the other side of those city walls is a living death. Those poor souls are stripped of any possessions, sprayed down, and auctioned off to the highest bidder. They’re forced to work in the fields and factories for those who still have wealth and power. In this world, power rests in the hands of those with the food. Because paper money is almost nonexistent outside the major states, most transactions are in the form of bartering. The most valuable things for trade are food, horses, flour, salt, and any form of livestock.

Rachel—my sister— and I live wherever we can find shelter, moving around from city-state to city-state, staying as far away the watchful eyes as we can. Jason Richards, an old friend of our parents, has been with us as long as I can remember. He’s a great help. He keeps an eye on Rachel while I am out searching for food. Rachel always wants to come with me. It’s far too dangerous, so I have Jason make sure she doesn’t follow. He’s not bad with a gun, but he’s pretty squeamish when it comes to the hard choices. Kill or be killed. That’s the rule of this world, but Jason can never bring himself to pull the trigger when it comes to fighting other people. So, I only bring him along when hunting game, which isn’t often. Game is scarce. Many of the forests are overhunted, protected by armed guards, or have been burned to the ground in wildfires.

It used to be different, when our parents were with us. We still travelled consistently, but we didn’t live like fugitives. My father was a professor and researcher. He was respected in the bigger cities like Atlanta and Houston. We had standing travelling papers and passports that guaranteed safe passage into and out of almost anywhere. In the bigger states, he had access to the libraries belonging to the different leadership. When I was just a kid, my dad would take me to the stacks and read the classic stories, plays, and poetry of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and anything from Edgar Alan Poe to H. P. Lovecraft. When I was a little older, he taught me how to read for myself and began teaching me mathematics, science, and history out of the textbooks he found. Once I started, I couldn’t get enough. I read anything I could get my hands on.

I read everything from the Christian Bible to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, from William Shakespeare to Steven King and Rick Riordan, and any form of philosophy I could find. I was fascinated with the written word. I was especially enamored with the fantasy genre. They showed worlds of magic, love, and hope; some things that are in short supply in my world. To this day, I collect any books I find while scavenging. I don’t find much. Most of the books that survived the aftermath of the riots were collected by warlords as a means of controlling knowledge. Very few of the smaller city-states allow their citizens to read. Even fewer allow the printing and production of new books. Even the larger states limit reading education. Only a select few cities scattered across the continent have any form of printing press.

My mother was a medic. She lent her services to clinics anywhere we went. She helped stop several viral and bacterial outbreaks from becoming epidemics. To me, she was a hero. My mother was the one who taught Rachel and me how to shoot a gun. Her father taught her when she was young, and she taught us.

Oddly enough, though, what I remember most about her is her musical talent. As I got older, it was one of the few things that brought her noticeable joy. I don’t know where she learned it, but she could sit there for hours playing whatever came into her head, haunting melodies that would stick with me for days. Once, my father found some sheet music to a Mozartian concerto. She immediately took it to the piano and played it flawlessly. Well, as far as I knew anyway. It sounded pretty.

Unfortunately, our parents died a few years back. Our mother was murdered over a can of beans on a scavenging mission with my dad and Jason. Or at least, that’s what Rachel and I were told. We had been on the road for weeks travelling from Seattle back to Atlanta. We were running out of food, and we were in slave-trader territory. They had no other choice. It was find food and water, or we all starve before we make it onto friendly soil. They built a small, camouflaged shelter in a cave in the woods and told Rachel and me to stay put. We did. All three of them went out that night, but only two made it back alive. They couldn’t even bring back her body.

After that, our father went crazy with grief; he wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, all he could think about was hunting down the people who killed our mother. It got to the point that he became utterly useless. He pored over maps and charts tracking and calculating where her murderers could have gone, who they might be. It got so bad that one night, after not having slept in almost two weeks, he attacked me, thinking that I was one of them. In self-defense, without even thinking about it, I pulled the combat knife he gave me for my birthday that year and ran it through his heart. Pure instinct.

Rachel doesn’t know, can never know, that I killed him.

Jason ran in right after it happened. He told me to wash my hands and the knife. Jason dragged the body out into the woods and blamed the death on a pack of dogs. Sounds pretty cold, right? Well, that night has sat with me all this time. How could it not? But I have more important things to think about now. I have Rachel to think about.

It’s been five years since that day. I’m twenty years old now. Rachel just made sixteen last month. We have been on the road for a week straight, travelling only at night, carrying everything we can, from guns and ammo to the canned turnips we found last week. We stay on foot mostly, but we recently came to possess three nice sturdy horses from a camp just off the main road. We stay off the heavily traveled roads as much as possible. We found an uninhabited neighborhood north of Picayune, now under control of the Hattiesburg Consortium.