Crash, Bang.

People die every day. That's life. 

People die in the strangest ways. Food has always been tight. Watching people waste away to nothing... well, that's what happens. 

Sometimes I wonder if there had ever been enough food. 

That's how Gran went. No-one realised she was slipping her rations to me and my brother. I was too young to realise, and honestly, just too damn hungry. 

I'm not angry about her death. She'd lived. She told me that. She said it was my turn, too. 

But people die in other ways. A lot of people aren't just contempt to waste away. They fight, they steal, they become desperate. I saw a man have his throat slit just last week. Right after the feast. Neither of them were right in the head to begin with. Security took the killer and... well that's another way to die. Happens all the time.

But no matter how used to it you get, when it's someone close to you, who's time hasn't yet come, it still knocks the wind out of you. It makes your blood boil and your toes dig into the sand. You find yourself standing with clenched fists and a need to intervene, even though you know you're already too late. That pain, that need, they turn people rotten. 

And that's another way to die. 

I'm a little fuzzy on the details of how I got here, but I guess opportunity knocked. It knocked real hard. It knocked me over. 

Two days ago I was sharing congee with my father and now he's dead. Of all the death I've seen, his was the strangest. The most out of place. The most... wrong. 

He always told me "Food and family, that's all you need. If The Crash taught us anything, it's food and family."

He told me stories of before The Crash. Rumors, maybe. But as a child they were fantastic. His father, gone before I was born, told them to him. Tales of horror and wealth and food that grew in the ground. 

I was there when he died. It was yesterday. It already feels like years. He took me to see security coming back from the Junk. They'd been out there for weeks! They had a working truck and there were twelve of them. My father was so happy. For people to be able to go out and come back and bring with them all the strange and vital things that were lost out there gave everybody hope. They lost people, of course, but that's life.

Anyway, my father was so happy. He was cheering, and waving his hat. He had this big smile on his face and as they walked past us he slapped one of them on the shoulder and said "You're a hero, mate. You'll save us all."

I'll never forget those words, they were the last he ever said. The man said back to him "Don't talk to me, scum," and shot him there and then. Spat on the ground and marched on. And the people kept cheering. I wasn't cheering.

Well, that was yesterday. That's life. But today, well. Today I had that pain and that need that makes you rotten. And when I saw security raiding the market I didn't lower my head and look the other way like I normally do. I saw him, the man who shot my father. He was filling up a sack of rice. That was ok, we ate yesterday. We could go another day or two. But I had that pain and that need and I did something, something bad. 

I killed the man. I took a jagged piece of stone from a wall and I cracked his spine from behind, and he went down and bled out in the sand. I didn't run, I didn't hide, I waited to die. But when the shooting finished and the dust settled, three more security were dead and I'd had a bag thrown over my head. 

And here I am now, in a dark, hollow tunnel god-knows-where, looking at the rebel's flag on the wall. Red and green triangles meeting in the corners. It's tattered and there is blood on it. I guess I'm a fighter now. I guess I have something to die for.