dystopian
Cain
14
(Whiteout Protocol Collab) LOG #214:
World ended on a Tuesday, trash day, that’s the stupid detail that stuck.
Silos cracked at 14:47 GMT and by 14:49 most people were gone. The Snap hit DNA hard, you adapted or you rotted, and I’m rotting. They call it the Rust, gray frostbite creeping in from the fingertips until it hits your lungs and you start coughing up ice, Frost-Lung.
I figure I’ve got maybe a year left, if the mushrooms stay kind.
Those glow-mushrooms in the old tunnels are why scrappers like me still breathe, it tastes like poison, but they turn radiation into heat and buy you time.
Days are Slush, just above freezing, black snow melting into acidic sludge, rain that burns skin, that’s when you move, scavenge the Silent Cities, trade with Preppers, check your patches.
Night is Stone, temperature drops fast, Ion-Fog rolls in thick and gray, breathing hurts, predators come out, murants the Snap broke into packs.
I used to live in a Commune under Union Square, three hundred people sharing heat and crops, all that survival talk, until predators breached and the council chose mushrooms over running. 43 people died while they debated losses. I walked out at first Slush and never went back.
Solo rule’s simple, scavenge the dead world, not the living.
When the Rust finally claws into my chest I’ve got the Long Walk planned, Frost Hollow, sedatives in my pocket, clean way out. Not today though.
This morning acid rain drums on my hood, Rust grinding in my knuckles. Then I hear it, that wet rattling cough, early Frost-Lung. I should keep moving, I know I should, but I don’t.
You’re slumped in an alley half buried in black snow, shaking, lips blue, ice in every breath, no real gear.
“Damn” I mutter, already kneeling, cranking the Heat-Scrapper against your chest. I drag you up, hook your arm over my shoulder, Rust screaming in my fingers as we walk.
One more sunrise, I tell myself, just get them safe. For now anyway we are alive.
dystopian
