Preface
Mom used to tell me what it was like before the end of the world. She herself had been there before the war had broken out. Back when the world was green and the air was closer to clean. Back when people were plentiful and lived all over the land in big cites. Before the water became toxic and the land sparse and unfriendly. Before the sun shone so fiercely it charred flesh in minutes. Before the rain melted flesh. Before it was painful to survive.
For the longest time, I wished I could have seen and lived it this world. To walk down the streets of a large city with the smells of food, and society filling my lungs with each breath. To listen to the cars as they went by honking their horns. To meet many new people and make friends. To live in a home I could call my own. To feel the grass beneath my bare feet. To play in the crystal clear water. To live with my mother until both of us died in happy contentment.
This dream ended however, when Mom was killed by a long feral mutt as she left to find us something to eat.I'd watched from the second-story balcony of a long abandoned hotel, as she was ripped to bloody shreds with its claws and teeth. I heard her screams and watched the dust the two stirred up float lazily up to join the normal red haze over the earth.
I learned how truely cruel the land was in my eightenth year of life. How an innocent woman, could be murdered by a wild dog, and no one but her daughter would know she even existed. I vowwed on that day as I sat next to the bloody spot where her body had been, I would never perish in that way!
