Chapter 1

“Hell is other people.”-Jean Paul Sartre

The thing you have to understand about people is that they are stupid. I know what you are thinking, “I’m not stupid!” and you may very well not be, but you’re not people, you’re a person, singular. When you’re alone and things are good, of course you think things through rationally. But when the bombs start dropping, the water dries up and the harvest is weak, you will scream and cry like everybody else. It’s called mass hysteria, when everybody breaks down and freaks out at the same time. That is why we are fucked as a species, because good and evil only exist in a world of plenty. You can only contemplate morality when you aren’t getting shot, raped and stolen from. Once order is disrupted, your books and your philosophies become worthless. There are no laws, there are no ethics and there are no morals. There is only painful struggle and death.

I don’t know what the f**k I saw in these guys. I was probably better off alone. I would have done better just me and my hatchet killing everything that moves. But, I guess that’s the way the cookie crumbles in post-apocalyptia; sooner or later everyone joins a roaming band of scavengers…everyone who is still alive that is. I guess it’s the only way to survive in this hostile environment. Strength in numbers, is that what they used to say before the war? I guess it doesn’t matter now. I guess nothing matters now except for staying alive, living for another day.

“Lunch time you dirty b*****d!” 

A bowl of rancid stew is handed to me. I look down at the rancid mess of meat, canned vegetables and all manner of crap scavenged from the waste.

“Eat it and let’s get back on the road!”

God I hate that Russian accent.

“Hurry up!”

I can’t take it anymore. Still looking at the stew I shout back,

“F**k off and leave me alone you stupid b***h!”

“Then we’ll leave you in some ditch like when we found your damn stinking a*s!”

Oh Natasha, that stupid f*****g b***h. Of all the women that could have survived long enough to run into me while suffering from some god awful parasite or whatever it was that was causing my ailment, it had to be her. Of all people to have the medical knowledge to find me a remedy in the surviving plant life, it had to be her. Of all the people in this God forsaken country, it had to be the damned Russian who comes to the rescue.

A gunshot is heard

“Snipes what the f**k is going on?”

Another shot, Natasha starts shouting again

“Comrade! What is it you’re shooting at?”

Another final shot. The booming sound rings through the air and echoes on the hills.

I climb the hill where I see a figure in dirty military fatigues aims his rifle at a figure that is stumbling towards us about 100 meters away.

A final shot, a final soul sent to hell. He turns around, clutching his ragged olive green cap, caked in dirt and filth.

“What is it?” Yells Natasha's shrill Russian accent, still at the camp site

“Zombies” I yell back, “Four of them. Snipes took them out but we should be moving, the sun has risen and with all the noise Snipes has been making, every zombie, raider and f**k knows what else will be tracking in on our position. Pack your bags everyone, we’re moving out.”

Natasha bends her head and says a quick prayer before we start packing up.

Johnny finally gets back to the camp. Every step he takes is unsteady, as an infant just learning to walk.

Natasha is enraged and begins to yell, “Where were you? You f*****g idiot!”

“Taking a s**t! What’s it to ya?”

“For a f*****g hour? How long does it take to s**t around here?”

“I had to find the right spot.” His voice is slurred.

We finish packing before Natasha kicks the white haired gentleman still asleep.

“Get up you lazy piece of s**t!”

The white haired man stands up, grabs his wooden cane and we’re back on the broken highway. I look at the group. How such a random group of survivalists ever got together is beyond me. Only the most fucked up and crazy people are in this group. Only the worst.

In the front is Natasha, a giant of a woman. She stands just under six feet when she is hunched over, bearing the weight of existence upon herself. Weight mind you, that has given her broad shoulders, bulging muscles and the overall appearance of an ox. She wears a white tank top under her leather jacket that, like everything else in this godforsaken country, is unspeakably filthy and ragged. The left sleeve of her jacket is torn off revealing a gray-green mass of tumors, bulging veins and growths that have hardened into a well-weathered lump that serves as something of an unwieldy club. It's effective at killing zombies, but causes her to lean to the left. Her face is as cold as the Russian winters she is so accustomed to.

Natasha’s the leader of the group.The victim of some freak experiments around the end of the Soviet Union have left her with burning scars on her face and her Back when the Z-Virus was only known in laboratories of various governments, she was kidnapped by the NKVD and infected. The doctors on sight then went about testing experimental drugs on her leaving her horribly disfigured in her left arm; if you can even call it an arm any more. What once was an arm has morphed into a hard grayish green mass that’s swelled to a massive size and is more of a club than anything else. Her eyes still glow red sometimes from a mixture of disease, experimental drugs and radiation. Yet, despite being exposed to enough radiation to kill several men, the experiments did nothing to her hair, coarse trey and tied in a disorganized bun every day, possibly in an attempt to hide the fact that she has been unable to wash it in over a month.

Then we have snipes. He looks like the kind of person who you would expect to survive the nuclear apocalypse. Being a former army sniper, he still wears his combat uniform and manages to keep it in good repair, though the sun, the dirt and radiation faded the once olive green garb and every day, the signs of snipes' diligent stitching become more apparent. His uniform appears as scarred as his face. Along with a bulging rucksack, every pocket in snipes' uniform is bulging with ammunition, food, tools and anything we could possibly need. His face is always partially hidden in the shadow of his cap, not that it matters. His hard well defined cheeks, glaring brown eyes and small, pointed nose show no sign of emotion.

Snipes is a former army sniper known to never miss. Thing is, he doesn’t talk. I don’t know why but he hasn’t said anything since I joined this post-apocalyptic freak show. He acts as our scout. He spends all day running around, disappearing for hours at a time only to meet us further up the road having killed some animal so we can eat. Only noise he ever makes is with his sniper; good thing he’s never talking to me.

Johnny, well he looks like your typical street junkie. He has sunken, beady green eyes with dark rings around them making him look like he's just gotten out of a bad fight. His large nose blots out of his face and is bright red, looking constantly swollen. His cheeks are hollow and his chin is covered in an patches of brown hair, scabs, cuts and sores. He wears a faded crimson sweatshirt with Harvard written across it in dirty white letters. Covering his mop of hair is a  blue toque which he wears even on the hottest of days.

I’ve always been suspicious of Johnny. I think he’s been eating some of those mushrooms that grow in puddles of radioactive waste. Rumors have it they give a great high but after a while they f**k with your brain, tearing down your concept of reality. Mushroom madness is what they call it. That’s what’s happening to Johnny for sure. He often will start yelling some incoherent crap for no apparent reason. I don’t know if or when he’s going to go insane and kill us all in a fit of rage. You can tell when he’s high because he’ll think Natasha is beautiful and start hitting on her until she smacks him with her club arm. I don’t know what’s in those shrooms but they must be strong to make Natasha look attractive. Much like Snipes, Johnny also is prone to disappearing, usually sometime during the night or early morning for a couple of hours so he can go get high. Sometimes I consider joining him. If nothing else it would be an escape. 

The white-haired gentleman, Charles is a different case entirely. He’s 50 years old and dresses in the most ragged suit, in pre-war times you’d swear he was a business man gone hobo. He has a black wool-felt bowler’s hat that is probably the only clean thing I've seen in over a year. It still has the crisp black look and the perfect, round shape you would expect on the head of an old English gentleman. Right underneath the brim are deep wrinkles, lines of experience drawn on his face, surrounded by the cracks of time. His thick bushy eyebrows ring with the same aura of experience. At the end of his nose are small rimmed glasses that form two perfect circles, albeit scratched substantially. Adorning his body a black trench coat he never takes off. The flowing black coat goes from a soft collar at his neck and ends at the tails running down just above his knees. It is adorned on the side with the silver chain of a pocket watch. The only thing that is not classy is the fact that Charles carries a brown rucksack that doesn't quite fit with his persona. The weight forces him to lean on his cane, a long black rod that conceals a shiny steel sword that is long and pointed. It’s not that he needs the sword, but he insists it’s fashionable and he will be damned before he gives up on the finer things in life.

Charles rambles on about his youth all day long. Stories of when he used to love and laugh. The rest of us usually just listen. It feels nice to know that someone in your group can still recall times before. The rest of us have long since forgotten what it is to be happy and instead experience it through Charles’ stories. Thing about him is that he has something to live for: his daughter. Charles’ daughter was on vacation in Florida when the bombs dropped. He’s spent the last 5 years making his way slowly down from Canada. If there’s a single human in this band, it is him.

Then there’s me. I’m new to the group so I’m still on the outs. They don’t tell me why they saved me and they don’t even bother to learn my name. If they call me anything, which is rare, it’s newcomer.

We must be getting close to Charles’ goal because we’re definitely in Dixie Land now. Every so often you see the dead body of a Klansman who came to an early death at the hands of either the zombies or rival gangs; their hoods still hiding their true identity in death as it did in life. Funny thing about the south is that after the war, the KKK was one of the only organized groups still active in the South of the United States. Given the power vacuum, they’ve managed to gain control of many settlements where there is still fertile land. Some supposedly even have black slaves like they had back in old times. Yep, there must be hundreds of black slaves now working on plantations, growing food for their masters to eat. It’s as if all progress made in over 200 years was undone in a week; aint life a b***h.

I adjust my backpack and look at the group. I hate them but I owe them my life so I have to stick with them and help them with theirs. A bunch of fuckups and I’m one of them, but we all are still alive so we must have done something right.

I walk beside Johnny as we go about the day’s journey. While most of the day is in silence, we do get the occasional conversation, mainly his stoner talk. He’s the only one who talks, other than Charles’ ramblings. I guess the mushrooms really have “expanded his mind” or whatever the hippies used to say. He starts by looking at the sun and whispering, “Man, do you know how we’re still alive? The sun man, the f*****g sun.”

I look at him quizzically, “How does that prove anything?”

He laughs a bit before starting his lecture, “Man, what causes all life? The sun! The sun makes the plants grow which makes the animals grow which makes us grow. Everything that is alive comes from the sun.  Isn’t that crazy?”

“Yeah,” I mutter, “radical.”

He continues, oblivious to my disinterest, “Crazy…right, newcomer? Um…right, the sun! So everything alive knows the sun is there because if it wasn’t, we’d all be dead so the sun, the sun keeps us alive and if we weren’t alive we wouldn’t care about the sun.”

“No, I guess not,” I say, not giving a s**t about what he’s saying.

He continues, getting more excited, “So dead people can’t see the sun, because they’re dead and dead people don’t see the sun. And we see the sun, so we’re alive.”

I look up, “Well what do you know, we are alive. Isn’t that something? Just keep walking you f**k.”

He takes off his pack and eats something inside it. His eyes dilate. “Woah man, things are great. Yo, we should find some marijuana. When we’re done smoking, wana drink the bong water?”

I roll my eyes, “No, regular water is fine Johnny, regular water is fine.” I hate it when he eats while we’re walking. He’s nothing but a hindrance to himself and the group. I would recommend we ditch him but considering that I’m new, they probably value him more than they value me.

He looks at Natasha, “Yo, man, I think Natasha likes me.”

I start to laugh, “Natasha? You? No way!”

He frowns, “Why not?”

I bring my laughing under control, “First, look at her,”

He looks over at her, “Beautiful, I’ve never seen anything nearly as beautiful ever.”

I glance over to see the ugly monstrosity that is Natasha, “Right, well she’s the Russian victim of weird twisted Soviet experiments. She doesn’t love. Next, nobody could love you except those mushrooms you keep eating.”

Rage draws across his face, “I am not eating nuclear mushrooms! What kind of idiot do you think I am? Those things kill you! Get off of them! Are you on shrooms? Give me the shrooms? Man we gotta help you!”

Johnny tackles me and wrestles me to the ground, “Give them up man!”

I push him off me, he’s got courage but he’s not that strong, “Shut up you idiot. I don’t take shrooms.”

Johnny looks down, “Sorry, I didn’t know. I worry. We cool man?” He looks up again, “I think she likes me.”

I pull out my canteen and take a long drink. I look around, we are in a wasteland. All life has been purged from the land. Nothing can grow, nothing can survive here in this barren wasteland except us, the survivors. We walk on, walk on and keep living, searching for Charles’ daughter, searching for safety, searching for anything. Johnny’s ramblings have turned into incoherent babbling.  

A shot is fired over the hill. We run over to see snipes having shot a zombie in a swamp. He’s found us water. He’s also found wood for us to burn so we can boil the water. Natasha pulls out a small pot and the rest of us set up camp. Even though we have several hours of daylight, it will give us a chance to fill our canteens and Johnny some time to recover from his trip which is pretty bad. Natasha declares,

“Newcomers take care of Johnny, you know the drill!”

I get annoyed, “Damn it Natasha, I’ve been caring for him all day, cut me some slack and I have a name you know, it’s…”

“It’s not important,” interrupts Charles, “what’s important is that you’re taking care of Johnny.” I guess I have yet to earn a name in this fucked up group. As Natasha bends over, Johnny tries to run to her.

Without looking up Natasha says, “Keep the b*****d off me, comrade.”

I tackle Johnny and wrestle him to the ground until he clams down. He starts sobbing, “I’m so sorry man, I’m sorry.”

I spit on him, "Don't mention it." He must be moving on into the next stage of the high: the crash. He's soon going to be a depressive son of a b***h. He starts crying. F**k, now I have to make sure he doesn't try to kill himself...again. I look around for anything he could use to hurt himself. His rifle and knife are in his bag so he’s safe for now. I sit down and awkwardly hug him, “It will be okay. It will be okay.” I have no idea what “it” is but saying it will be okay calms him down so I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Natasha calls us over. She’s prepared us some canned beans that we found the other day. We eat in silence. After that we go to sleep. I am on third watch. Charles shakes me awake during the night and informs me of my duties. I look out into the horizon, nothing.

 

Author's Note

edited to better describe the characters