Ye Olde Apocalyptic Tale (Colin)

It's finally here. It gets a bit...frayed...near the end, but overall I think it turned out pretty good. It's nuclear apocalypse with a slight twist.

---

Nights of Blackwinter

Colin K.

My grandfather once told me of what it was like to stand on a field of grass barefoot, staring at the sun as it rose high in the sky. A sunrise, he told me, is one of the most beautiful sights anyone can hope to behold. Before he died, he'd wanted to be able to stand barefoot on a patch of grass, just once more...

Now? Now...there is no grass. There is no sunrise or sunset...that we can see, at any rate. After the sky became scorched, all we ever knew is eternal night.

...I suppose I should explain myself. My name is Atticus Rockford. I live--if this can be called that--in one of the few remaining human settlements within the boundaries of the Old City that was once known as "Denver". We huddle together in our village made from scrap, struggling daily to fend off the extreme cold and the unfortunately common famines that strike our community, and we curse the ones who turned what was once a beautiful paradise into a world covered in ash and unspeakable horrors.

By the Old Calendar, the current year is 2156. According to the oldest of our settlement, the event we have come to know as "The Blackening". Occured roughly fifty years ago, in 2105.
The eldest of us told us of how the twenty-second century was to be a golden age for humanity, of how we had finally achieved true peace and prosperity for all. There was even food for all, though today we find this somewhat hard to believe. Humanity was finally unified, and was truly devoted towards the goals of social and scientific advancement.

It was the second that proved to be humanity's undoing. A volcano on Earth's northern pole was discovered by a geological survey team in 2101. A detailed analysis of the magma revealed that it contained large amounts of substances known as lithium and uranium. This, it turned out, meant an absolutely enormous energy potential.

Three years after the survey team discovered this irregularity within the volcano, the Council of the United Nations put forward a motion to construct a long-term research base with the goal of converting this magma into useful energy. The proposal met with overwhelming approval, and the project received full funding. Within mere weeks the base was completed, along with an experimental nuclear reactor that fed off of the lava.

Accounts of the next series of events vary. Some say that the reactor's meltdown was the result of a mere accident, a watchmen who fell asleep at his board or perhaps pushed the wrong button at the wrong time. Others believe that it was cause by sabotage, though the reasons for that elude me.

At any rate, we do know this: In 2105, the commander of the experimental facility sent a distress signal across all radio frequencies, explaining in panicked tones that the reactor's core was undergoing a critical meltdown, and that despite their best efforts, the reaction could not be stopped. A violent volcanic eruption was imminent.

I'm told that the safety protocols on the reactor then failed, specifically the ones that control exactly how much radioactive matter the reactor is to release in the event of a meltdown--an amount that is supposedly near zero. Unfortunately, for the facility's staff as well as the rest of the human race, not all the genius and safety protocols in the world could prevent what happened next.

The reactor core's contents had apparently spilled into the volcanic magma. I'm no physics expert, so I don't know how it all works, but this caused the volcano to become mighty upset.

The eruption occured just as the core detonated.

The flash in the sky could be seen from hundreds of kilometres away. At the time, nobody could have possibly known what was to follow.

Radioactive ash filled the sky and blanketed the earth, at the same time cutting us off from the sun and choking nearly every living plant and animal on the planet to death. The death toll after the first few months alone was staggering. As a result of the explosion, a large part of the north pole's ice began boiling away into the ocean, destroying many delicate floating sea communities and ruining the crops that the ash hadn't already destroyed. The seas themselves became choked with soot and the remains of dead ocean life. Total environmental collapse ensued.
The first three years after the apocalypse saw the death of one and a half billion people...a fairly large amount of Earth's population. The wave of death that has followed up until now makes my stomach turn just thinking about it.

Entire cities now lie empty, except for small settlements like my own. All around us we see the remains of Earth That Was--an Earth that many of us can never hope to know. The shells of many buildings remain, though many have collapsed into rubble over the years. The husks of many vehicles can be found virtually anywhere a person can look.

But none of this--the death, the hunger, the cold, the eternal night--is nearly as bad as the hazards found within every dead city.

Twenty years after the cataclysm, after the first human villages had been successfully constructed, rumors were heard that many of the survivors had acquired a terrible illness, one that could alter a living being on a cellular level. Whether this is from nuclear fallout or a freak accident we will never know. But what happened to those who acquired the disease will never be forgotten. Many simply died off.

They were the lucky ones.

Others began reacting more violently, becoming less and less lucid as the disease tore at their body. Eventually a few...transformed. They had already gone insane. What was left of the person within was mercifully destroyed.

I can only hope.

Those affected broke loose of their restraints and...tore their skin off. This alone is so terrifying it gives many in my village horrible nightmares.

What lay beneath was an abomination. It only barely resembled a human. They didn't even have eyes! But they were supposedly very good at echo-location. Their skin was palest white, and they travelled about at all fours at a swift pace.

And they hungered for human flesh.

Many of the smaller villages became overrun by sudden attacks of these mutants, which came to be known as Reavers. Those they did not kill and eat outright were somehow infected, increasing their numbers. Survivors fled to one of the other human settlements, and told them in quivering voices of what had happened. And, if they had become infected, that survivor would

become a Reaver and...well, I'll leave that to someone else's imagination.

Not even the Reavers are as bad as The Order, though. They sprang up just a few years after the collapse of Earth's environment. They supposedly have two leaders: The Preacher, and his (her?) student, The Scion. Their dogma is that the apocalypse was caused because "The Fates" were punishing us for our hubris, and that the world belonged only to the followers of "The Shimmering Path", which is apparently the text of their misbegotten religion. Not much is known about them, except that, as a group, they are large, and that they are powerful.
...and yet, despite all of this, there is evidence of yet a third force at work. Occasionally, one or more of the villagers will venture far away on a minor salvage expedition or scouting mission. Nine out of ten times, they return just fine, except with a minor run-in with Reavers or having to slip quietly away from a passing Order patrol. Such skills have become commonplace, and are quite handy in times such as these.

Every so often though, our people will not return. Usually, this can be attributed to a Reaver attack--though in many instances this is unlikely, given our skill in evading them. What? It's not bragging. It's fact. A fact that we stake our lives on.

Other times, and only very rarely, we find them shot to death with high-powered gyroslug rifles, their blood being used to draw ornate sigils around the body. This is the easily identifiable trademark of an encounter with The Order. Not very many who stray into an engagement with them live to tell about it.

Most often though, we find bodies found in unusual circumstances: some bear deep claw marks, and we know this not to be work of Reavers because, though they have very sharp teeth, they have no claws. In addition to claw marks, though, we also find their bodies...burned. Sometimes it's by thermite fire-bombing. We can distinguish this easily because of the unique chemical residue thermite leaves behind.

The most unusual circumstance of all in which we find a body, though, is with a single, neat, pinpoint precision energy blast to the head. It looks just as if a bullet had penetrated the skull...except that when our crude autopsies are performed, there is no bullet. Patrols of The Order do not carry such weapons, so the cause of such a wound is, essentially, a giant question mark.

And so, here we find ourselves, having to fend off the combined forces of hunger, disease, attack, and cold daily simply to survive. I know we cannot live like this forever. Each year our numbers dwindle. And...we continue to hear of villages which are destroyed under confusing circumstances. Something must be done.
...oops. Writing time's over. The wolf is at the door. God, what I wouldn't give for one week without these bloody attacks...