The Event

The acid rain was little more than rare, and didn't do much more damage than light stinging on the skin when one stood out in it for too long, but John still hated it. His clothes were already worn down, quite dirty, and he didn't need them weakened down more than they were. The clothes on his back were the sturdiest of any he owned, beyond the full body suit he would put on under heavier clothes to move through irradiated areas safely. The sun was barely up---he could tell because the sky that was near the eastern horizon was barely grayish-brown, the usual color of the sky during the morning and daytime. Barely six months had passed since the freak virus that had detonated the world's nuclear missile storage---or whatever it was that had set them off---and he couldn't even tell if a government existed now. They didn't care about food or rations for the general population, didn't care about the mass murder in greater containment areas, they let people wander into the gated radiation areas. The only thing they did care about were guns. Guns and food they didn't have.

And he had both. John had heavy weaponry on his body at all times, and a sack full of canned food he hoarded obsessively. Perhaps he had learned from his first instance of cannibalism, but now he didn't pass up a building that could even have the possibility of having some kind of food or water, clothing, blankets for a warm night in the middle of winter.

The night before, he had taken refuge in the basement of a small house among a few others. He hadn't seen someone else in several weeks, perhaps a record. The little notebook in his backpack had marks that kept track of the days, the months, even the year, though it hadn't yet transitioned the new year. In fact, it had just become the new year when the launch was broadcasted all over the world, and he had been in the right place at the right time, so he'd been told before his only real friend and protector had been obliterated by the blasts. Sighing, John Doe stepped out of the building with his bag slung over his shoulder, looking around. One hand was glued to the handle of the hunting knife at his hip, and the other kept his bag from sliding as his heavy boots slapped through the quickly-evaporating puddles. He'd learned that the oceans had dropped ridiculously just a few months after the event, hundreds of feet. He hadn't made it to one to see that yet, though he'd seen how small ponds and even large lakes were now just craters in the ground. Very scant water existed, and most was contaminated.