Journal of a Wanderer

OCTOBER 17th, 2278

Existence invites Conflict.

It’s the determinate factor of evolution. Without Conflict, life would cease to develop along a natural course – for better or worse. It would stall and stagnate. It’s a harsh reality, but it’s a candid reality nonetheless. It’s always been here with us; Conflict, I mean. Since we learned to walk upright, he’s walked next to us, shaping us.

Millennia ago, Conflict came into human lives via mammoth hunts, spurred on by the need to feed and stay warm in harsh winter climates. Later, he would come in the form of territorial wars and expansion-driven crusades. The point of Conflict, if there is any; is to determine who survives – who succeeds. The lucky, the skilled, the apex. And from them; their children. Stronger in some slight way than those who came before. Over hundreds or thousands of years, change finally becomes noticeable to the human eye. An appendix, for example. In the modern world, they served no purpose. Thus many people would have them removed. But I digress.

You see, back then, when the world was vast and humans had too much time on their hands, people began to wonder how the world would end. Some thought it would be a swarm of the living dead cannibalising their neighbours, or an alien invasion. Nuclear annihilation was a popular prediction, as I understand it.

But, no. There were no explosions. Buildings were left standing, cars stayed on the roads. The streets weren’t infested by the walking dead and 'little green men' from a distant star didn’t conquer our planet either. Everything was exactly how it should have been, not a thing out of place. Except, so many of the people were just… gone. The only survivors were the doomsday preppers, the ones that society had called ‘crazy’. Underground government facilities also existed, built as a final safeguard in case of some unforeseeable apocalypse. But only the most exclusive were able to stay in those places. Allegedly, my ancestors were some of the lucky ones. Over the two centuries that followed the collapse of society, the world was reclaimed by nature. One day, buildings will crumble into nothing and life will start again.

I hope they do better than we did.

In the bunker I grew up in, records existed of the way the world ended. And stories were passed down through the generations. That’s how I know roughly what happened. Years ago, in the early to middle era of the twenty-first century, science thought it could trump the nature of existence. The final hurdle humanity faced before they could focus their efforts of stepping foot on other planets and seeding life. They sought to conquer Conflict. The last and most evil kind of his children they knew of; a disease called cancer. For decades, efforts by medical scientists were often focused on a way of making enough of an advancement to wipe out the plague that modern mankind had yet to shirk off.

If nothing else, their intentions were noble. I’ll give them that. But Fate is a fickle bitch. And the cure that was eventually synthesised after so much toil was finally within reach.

But then Conflict reared his ugly head again.

Thousands of news reports and videos were about the virus, unleashed on the world by the very same scientists developing the cure for cancer, of all things. Apparently, some kind of biochemical reaction had backfired. Turned it into some kind of neuro-toxin that attacked every cell of the body. It became airborne, and anyone unlucky enough to breathe it in was dead in less than sixty seconds. People panicked, as they always do, and in the chaos the virus spread like wildfire. Over the years, the virus slowly poisoned our atmosphere. These days, anyone who isn’t wearing a mask is dead, and anyone who is is sentenced to a special kind of Hell on earth.

OCTOBER 20th, 2278

I was born in an underground facility, four kilometres below the Earth’s crust. When I turned twenty-five, I left. That’s all you need to know. I don’t like to think of the place I was born in. There’s nothing left for me there. Now I’m headed to where it all started. Ground Zero – the facility where the virus was created. I don’t know what I’ll find there. I don’t know what I’m expecting to discover. Answers, hopefully. If I were a better man, I might say that I’m hoping to find some way to cure it all. Maybe I’ll find some miracle vial of fluid that I can replicate with the technology I find there and be a hero among men.

But I’m not a better man. I’m a realist. And I know I’m only going there out of a morbid sense of fascination. I want to see it with my own eyes. That’s it.

I don’t have to do this, of course. I don’t have to go there. I could go to one of the ‘safe zones’. But somehow, I don’t find it all that appealing. All of them are tightly controlled regimes, commanded by iron fists and strict ‘governments’. Anyone who doesn’t fall in line in places like those tends to disappear, only to reappear months later as a different person. All thanks to the selfless efforts of the Thought Police.

I’ll pass. Somehow, out here seems better.

I’ve been walking for three years, and I haven’t seen another person in eight months and seventeen days. Still, it doesn’t hurt to be careful. People are difficult to predict, whereas nature is easy. You learn how to survive nature after enough time. You learn which plants are edible, and which plants aren’t. You learn to sleep in tree-tops; otherwise the mutants will find you during the night. You learn to keep a weapon close at hand, in case of encountering a pack of rabid animals.

But people?

People are... unlearnable, simply for the fact that you can’t predict their actions or motives. Will they want to trade, then kill me and take all I have? Will they want to eat me, or simply want another pair of eyes to watch their back? Whatever they want, it’s never simple. In my experience, it’s easier to just shoot them as soon as you see them, take what they have, and leave what remains for the mutants.

Like I said before; I’m a realist.

OCTOBER 24th, 2278

Sometimes I’ll walk through a ghost town. Some dead settlement from before. Maybe a village, maybe a town. I’ll go into wrecked houses, and root around for any supplies I can find. But then, I’ll just look around and watch. And just... imagine. What that dead home looked like before everything went wrong. The life it would’ve held within it. Families, perhaps. Old married couples. I’ll sit on moth-eaten couches and imagine being one of them. Care-free and happy. It must’ve been nice, back then. I try to leave them undisturbed, apart from what I take for supplies. My father told me about ghosts; about how people linger between worlds if they have unfinished business on earth. I imagine, because of the virus, there are plenty of ghosts around. Sixty seconds isn’t a lot of time to conclude your life, after all. And I don’t want to upset those ghosts by going through their things. I’ve got enough on my plate without having to worry about incurring the wrath of those who came before.

I did take one thing though. A long time ago.

A locket, in the shape of a heart. I still have it. I wear it around my neck. It has a picture of a woman within, cradling a child in her arms. She looks so happy, so blissfully unaware of the horrors to come. I don’t know why I kept it. Maybe I hoped that her happiness would transfer to me through some miracle of osmosis. It’s stupid, I know. But every man has his private fantasies. Leave me to mine, and do not judge me for them. It’s ironic in a way, to carry the locket. Its shape is the same as the one thing I lack.

A heart is useless in the world today. Just like an appendix was before. Emotion impairs judgement, makes you stumble around in morality. Doing the right thing isn’t healthy. Neither is being a hero. That’s the worst part about being a good guy. They have to do the ‘right thing’. And sooner or later, that’s only going to get you killed. Sooner or later, doing ‘the right thing’ is going to break every bone in your body.

October 27th, 2278

I travel along train-tracks and roads, mostly. They’re there for a reason, and they all lead somewhere. So if they head in the direction I’m going, why not use them to guide me? Some of the stations even have maps. I follow their directions as best I can. But it’s not like Ground Zero is on every road sign and every ‘You Are Here’ map. Life isn’t that easy for anyone, unfortunately. Hell, I’m probably going to die on this journey, but I don’t care anymore. I’m running out of food, so, I’d probably just shoot myself anyway. But since I got it into my head to go where it all started, I’ve considered that to be my business to finish before I end it all. I don’t want to end up as a ghost, stuck where I don’t want to be. I can’t think of anything worse than perpetually roaming around the same four corners - forever and ever.

Sometimes, I wonder if someone else will save me the trouble. I wonder if they’re watching me down the barrel of a rifle, thinking if I’m worth the bullet, thinking if I would hurt them. I would. I’d have to, just to survive. Because that’s what the end of the world did to us; it made us killers, it made us liars and cheats and scoundrels. But most of all? It just made us... afraid. All of us. Afraid of each other and the air we breathe. Even ourselves.

That’s why I’m keeping this journal and chronicling my journey to a place that I’m not even certain actually exists. It’s in case of someone shooting me for what I might have in my pack. And if you are reading this because you’ve done just that; don’t worry. I understand. I would have done the same if I saw you first. It’s just luck. And if you’re reading this; it means that mine ran out.

But if you are reading this, then that means I’m dead. And if I didn’t make it to Ground Zero, then I ask you to carry on for me. Take this journal and the locket. Take whatever else you need from my corpse. But please, don’t leave my business unfinished.

I don’t want to become a ghost.