Click. Magazine in. Clack. Action back. Clunk. Action forward.

This how I start my day-how I've started every day for the past four years. I used to drink coffee. Now, I don't even remember what a double espresso tastes like. I remember the woman who used to give me my coffee. She was cute, but now she's dead. I try to forget the dead.

The dead-who once walked and talked and laughed and loved and now are just dead. The dead who I will one day join, in a place that has to be better than this. This wasteland that I daily traverse. This place were I will die. This place where my bones will be picked clean by the scavengers.

When it happened, I was twenty four and rich. In monetary goods, that is. I made money and lived rich. I now eat canned food and no one knows who I was. A CEO. No one cares. Old titles and pointless letters.

Why it happened was pointless. Just tribesmen fighting, but with nuclear clubs and biological stones.

It happened and it hurt. Some will tell you that civilization died, but it didn't. It just shrank. The one-world society reverted to small towns and villages. We just took a few steps backwards, that's all. The office where I used to work was flattened. Along with the coffee woman who worked across the street, and her friends, and my friends and everyone else either of us ever cared about.

When I think about it, I want to laugh. I want to just tilt my head back and let loose-to just laugh until tears run down my face, until I can't breathe. Laugh at the absurdity of it all--Gone! Dust! Atoms! Molecules! It's so funny!

I suppose that I could kill myself and join them, but I don't want just to yet. Some part of me wants to see what is going to happen to this particular area of this planet that we fucked so much. I watch the farmers and the bandits-the farmers work and the bandits take. Just like what we did with our planet-the Earth grew and we took. The only difference is there wasn't anyone left strong enough to kill the bandits.

I do that now. It's funny-I used to just type out figures and play golf with people I hated. Now, I kill bandits who steal from people who are trying to live in this changed world. In my old job I was happy with my life. In my new life I am happy in my job.

Farmers didn't take too much damage from the nukes. Some radiation, but other than that, nothing. They still farm and barter with other farmers. It will work quite well for a few centuries. Feudalism may make a come back, but so what? After the dark ages came the Renaissance

I watch now as a farmer gives half of his food to a bandit gang. They drive off with his daughter. They drive in cars fueled by fossil fuel-they will work for a while, but eventually they'll run out of gas. Then they'll use horses. Eventually, there'll be gas-driven cars again. If we don't degenerate too far.

I know where the bandits live. I've done this hundreds of times. Follow, hide, wait, kill. I'll shoot the ones outside the camp with my Uzi. That was quite a find, the Uzi. After I left my mansion, I looked in my neighbors houses. (Most of my neighbors had fled to Africa when the war started. It's safer than here). I'd found the Uzi and about four thousand rounds-a Pancor Jackhammer with a thousand rounds, and a very nice Desert Eagle .50 with two thousand rounds-quite a nice collection. My new family, they spit lead and they kill. They need no food or water. They only need me.

When I get to the bandits hideout, usually an abandoned mansion or something like that. They were hoods before and now they are just bullies who can live where they want. I use the Uzi on the ones dumb enough to be outside. They fall as fast as the bullets fly. Then I go inside.

Once I get in I switch to the Pancor. Shotguns are much better for close up work. Their lethal spittle not spreading out so much. I clean the place out from bottom to top, killing every bandit. I kill them whatever they are doing-shooting, shitting, cooking, gambling, reading (that is the rarest instance, they would sooner burn books for warmth than read the knowledge contained within), fucking, or whatever. Then I free any hostages they have taken and tell them to return the food and goods taken from the farmers.

Then I move on. Ready to do it over again.

I don't always kill off the bandits though. I let the more intelligent groups live. The ones who aren't out to just cause mayhem, but only take what they need The ones that don't steal all the daughters of the farmers knowing that new generations of farmers are needed to feed future generations of bandits. The ones who read the books rather than burn them. The ones that one day will become a government of the people they now subjugate.

I am helping. I am making the world different. It will be interesting to see what comes of my changes, my meddling with destiny. Me-changing the world. My name is Darwin, and I am helping a new civilization evolve.

HOME

CONTENTS