Adventure
Casey’s Run
Sneakers pounding on pavement and their own harsh breathing was all Casey could hear as they darted between back alleys. They knew that they had been seen, and it only took a few minutes for The Rozzers to respond to a theft, especially if it was an outsider like Casey. The Elites didn’t care about what was being taken from them, just that what they had stolen from the people was being taken back. Casey didn’t regret it though, because being shot and killed was better than starving to death anyway, in their opinion. They had seen what wasting away does to people, what it did to their mom. The weight of the canned food in their backpack meant little if they could stave off the hunger for just a few more days.
By Adrian Perkins5 years ago in Fiction
Dateline: BUREAU VERITAS Industrial Revolution Party (IRP) News Bulletin
It was to damn early in the morning to be this optimistic, after all, the world was falling apart. Or blowing up. Either way, the news reports were wrong – the earth was not okay. Just Party propaganda. Their version of events - I had to get the hell out of here.
By CURT TRUMAN5 years ago in Fiction
By Dawn
This trip is longer than the last one was. Or maybe I forgot how it was before. That was years ago. I thought we’d stay with the Kraft Tribe forever. I should have known someone would take us eventually, the way Fernan and the others took us from the Deltas. As with that journey, I cannot see to tell: shielded in this cart with its high plank walls. To protect us, they say. But to keep us in, too.
By Kate Phillips5 years ago in Fiction
We Are Awake
One of the giant, black towers comes up above the treeline, dark as a finger of coal and riding up to the clouds in the corner of the man’s eye—a phantom—but he focuses on the deer at the end of his ironsights. Right now there is a headwind, so the animal can’t smell him, and it can’t see him either because it is busy eating mushrooms.
By Logan Smith5 years ago in Fiction
Chapter 5: Arts, Crafts, and Illiteracy in the Modern Age
The red spray paint bled down the side of the barn. Nov 3. Heading S to Eden. Mommy loves y The can fizzled in my hand. I shook it hard; the ball inside rattled, tick-shp tick-shp, like a psychotic hitting his head against prison bars. I finished the "ou" as the last bit of paint dribbled out onto my finger. I threw the can down into the mud, furious. I was down to my last one.
By Gabe Cassala5 years ago in Fiction
The Walk
It was a hot summer day; Joe had just worked an 11-hour day and was on his way home. A week away from the one-year anniversary of his wife’s death, he was going to stop and get his 16-year-old daughter something. He had picked a couple photos and was thinking a locket.
By Matthew Lieburn5 years ago in Fiction
The Safe House
Emily stared at the waves lapping the shore. The rising tide inched closer, and she had to avoid contact with the toxic water. Soon the passageway would close, cutting her off the mainland. With no food and only a two litre bottle of clean water left, she had to leave the island where she had hid since the discovery of their safe house.
By R.S. Sillanpaa5 years ago in Fiction
The New Room
Two thousand and forty. There were no weeks nor days. The hours didn’t have the sun to count, and they were all locked within those walls. It was a virus, they said. A virus that killed all men, something about the chromosome that was fatally attacked by an airborne disease.
By Sofia Duarte5 years ago in Fiction
Out The Blue
"It’s not everyday that one jumps off a 30ft overpass." Dregs thought, as he took his backpack off, quickly dropping it in his right hand and grabbed the railing with his left at a full sprint and launched himself into the air. The Wetiko had him cornered, or so they thought. He was glad he had taken martial art classes back when they were available and knew how to land from a fall, because that asphalt below looked as forgiving as a drill sergeant. He looked just past his legs as he flew towards the ground, watching it come up to meet him. This would be a lot of fun if it wasn’t for that bitch gravity He considered. At the faintest contact of feet on asphalt he curled forward, tucked his head in, pivoted his shoulders to the left and pitched himself into a roll. He could feel the grainy rigidness of the asphalt through his shirt as his shoulder blade rolled over it and when he rolled up onto his feet and grinned gratefully. Grateful that he didn’t have to feel that same rigidity compacting his bones. "I am Hanuman, the god of agility." Dregs reflected, as he swung his backpack back on his back. He clutched at the heart-shaped locket around his neck to check if it was still there. Assured, Dregs leaned forward back into a sprint and continued to run away from the overpass. The asphalt he ran and hopped on was in the midst of some serious reclamation from Mother Nature. The asphalt was cracked and raised all over the place by growing trees and all the company they bring. The overpass and all below had been sufficient to provide some shelter for the local plants to flourish under. Dregs moved in a zig zag pattern ducking through the foliage and very uneven asphalt. Dregs was glad for that reclamation as it provided cover as he faunaed through the flora. He could hear the woosh as the Wetiko fired off their arrows after him, and the thunk as it hit the trees and the clatter as they bounced off the asphalt. An axe blurred past his head and bounced shaft over head off the asphalt. "The nerve of some people… Throwing axes. Haters gonna hate." Dregs affirmed, and was glad this batch of baddies didn’t have any guns. It was going to take them a while to catch up if they bothered to at all. The Wetiko are cannibals. Wetiko is a term the Cree Native Americans used for cannibal, Dregs wasn’t Cree, he just liked the word. Apparently, after law and order evaporates some people would rather just eat people than learn how to cultivate food. That’s what you get after decades of public school that taught moral relativism, a consumer lifestyle and not much sustainable farming or social skills. The resulting vacuum of power after the end had left many a band of roving bandits and goons with virtually creative and productive capacity. Cannibalism leads to neurosis Dregs remembered as he ran for his life. He had no interest in being food, so he booked it. After a while through the brush he slowed to a trot and then to a walk. His lungs and muscles were burning. He looked around him, nobody appeared to be pursuing him. Regardless it’d be stupid to remain here, and stupid to keep running. In times like these one had to conserve energy. He wondered to himself if they were pursuing him or not. Apparently, it wasn’t going to be sheer determination that saved Dregs today. No, it was laziness. The Wetiko were looking for a quick lick and after seeing how skinny Dregs was and how fast and agile he was they didn’t consider him worth the energy it would take to pursue him. The one called James of this outfit reluctantly went down the long way to retrieve the axe he threw in his excitement. Axes don’t just grow on trees. Dregs worked his way back to his hideout, a buried shipping container amidst the trees he had outfitted with some solar panels and batteries. It takes a person of mad skills and knowledge to still have electricity in these times. Dregs was that guy. For decades before the devastation many people had prepared for Doomsday, some even hoped for it. There were even reality television shows all the preppers back in the day. Dregs, seeing the horrible state of the society he was to inherit, had started preparing himself for the coming downfall of the consumer lifestyle at the age of 16. Unable to afford anything extravagant, he had buried a shipped container outfitted for survival in his parents' backyard when he turned 19. He had hoped the day would never come, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to be ready. Man how that had paid off. Dregs meandered through the woods that now swallowed his former neighborhood and crept up to the brush that obscured the small ramp that was the entrance to his hideaway. He lifted up the hatch and dropped down the ramp, careful to lower it back. He spun to the entrance and swung open the rickety metal door. Walking into his home he wiped off the dirt on his boots on his welcome mat and took them off, putting them on his bamboo shoe rack. Sometimes all we have is our rituals. Closing the door and flicking on the light switch he looked on in pride on his little station of paradise. He had a bed, a small shower stall, a kitchenette, a drafting table, and a couch. It wasn’t much, before it would’ve been considered a sad place to live, but in current standards where chaos reigns it was the lap of luxury. Despite the attempted murder, Dregs was feeling pretty good about the days events. Even before the sky fell, people trying him wasn’t all that new. Back when society was still functioning, as a solo graffiti artist working a minimum wage job he had to worry about gangs, police, busy bodies, rent ,taxes, and bill collectors. The only real difference between then and now is the monsters didn’t try to to pretend to be anything different. Although he missed all the ones he lost and the internet, it wasn’t all bad when everything fell down, he had more freedom than ever before. With risk being the constant whenever he went out he considered today’s prize to be well worth it. Dregs was an artist, and since the Apocalypse, ink had become quite the rarity. Dregs had recently run out of blue ink. His mission for the day was to obtain some blueberries to create some more. The end of civilization and its constant pollution had brought the war on nature to a halt and plants of every variety grew freely throughout the city, many of which bore fruit. He had scouted out a patch of blueberries and been out foraging them near that overpass. It was on his way back that he had run into the band of Wetiko. There seemed to be more and more of them in the area. Which Dregs knew was going to have to be dealt with sooner or later, but not for now. He’d call upon some of the locals about it later. But for now, he had work to do. He had created vinegar from some fermented apples for years now that he always kept in stock and now he could take his new batch of blueberries and boil them down, mix the juice with some salt and vinegar and boom! Blue ink. Now granted, not nearly as vibrant as the ink available in the times of commerce, but not too bad in the days of revelation. Dregs had heard that the best blue was made from Lapis Lazuli, a precious gemstone in Crested Butte of Colorado, but as he was currently in Lakewood, Colorado. It would take a while before he was prepared to make such a journey. Dregs sat down on his drafting table, looking at his maps, drawings and future plans, grinning in victory. Even at the world’s end, he was still dreaming and scheming.
By Sean Barragan5 years ago in Fiction
