Wasteland - Prologue + Chapter 1

Prologue

~230 YA

Everything had gone to shit. The former United States of America had stockpiled as many as seven and a half thousand nuclear warheads. It was only a matter of time before they fell into the wrong hands, and on July 4th 2020 a coordinated attack was unleashed upon the world power. The American government, as one of its last acts in power, released dozens of warheads on other known stockpiles around the world, and pretty soon Russia, China, France, Britain, North Korea and most of the Middle East were little more than glass craters. Not much is known about this event, but what is known is the aftermath, without the economies and produce coming from these superpowers, just about every market completely collapsed, and those that weren’t killed by the blasts, starved, died of disease or were poisoned by the combined radiation from a hundred nuclear detonations.

Chapter 1

Present day

Joan awakes with a start. It is still dark, she knows something must have woken her, it’s too early to have risen normally. She quickly becomes of aware of the breathing of something… make that several somethings. As her eyes adjust she finds herself looking down the barrels of several guns, owners each wearing a tattoo on their foreheads ‘The Beating Hearts’.

“Oh look she’s awake,” crows the owner of a particularly rusty sawed-off shotgun, an unkempt woman with one ear missing but several teeth still in place.

“What the fuck!” Joan exclaims.

“Oi, watch the language, or we’ll ‘ave to cut ya tongue off!” an old man with a sorry excuse for a Mohawk and too many to count nose piercings sneers at her whilst tracking her with a heavy looking pistol.

”I thought we were goin’ to do ‘at anyways,” voices the third member of the attacking party, a rather nasty looking boy with blood red hair and yellow teeth holding quite a powerful looking rifle.

“Oh yeah,” Mohawk deadpans, then bursts out laughing.

And with that, Red Hair stomps down on her leg and Mohawk smacks her with the butt of his gun.

Joan cries out, but it’s no use, no one else is there to hear and if she thought she might gain sympathy from her attackers, she was sorely mistaken. Literally. Her assailants, after several minutes of brutal beating, stop and strip her of her supplies. Her shotgun and pistol, along with several clips of ammo. Her hunting knife and leather scabbard. About two weeks worth of tinned food, fresh grain and other vegetables that could be grown in harsh conditions, and the usual assortment of pre-apocalyptic chocolate bars, soda cans and other preservative filled foods. They also take her small bag of empty munitions’ shells, the monetary unit of the wasteland. They continue to beat her, Red hair starts to carve away her clothing with his rusty looking knife, first her jacket, then her shirt, then came off her torn jeans. But before he could get any further, they are interrupted by the noise of and angered ‘Radcoon’, a monstrous, as was many of the irradiated creatures in the wasteland, rodent, the size of a large dog usually, and very dangerous.

“Oh, shit,” No ear says.

They shoot at it, which achieves nothing.

“Run!” Shouts Mohawk.

The sound of her fleeing would-be murderers, attract the Radcoon, following them and ignoring the prone figure on the floor.

Joan begins to cry softly as she drifts slowly into the dark abyss.

…

Joan awakens to the grey light of the filtered sun, beams of light trickling through ancient wooden shutters. She groans as she struggles to remember where she was, she remembers finding an old town, decrepit and in need of repair, yesterday after a week of barren wasteland. She remembered scavenging for anything of use in the old caved in buildings, finding nothing. After the grey light had started to become darker, she found shelter in one of the more intact buildings.

When she woke up she had felt somewhat peaceful, but now she was feeling cold, and sore. She suddenly realizes that she’s lying almost naked, she struggles momentarily to remember how she had come to be like this. Joan groans loudly as she recalls the brutal beating she received hours earlier.

Getting up slowly, her bones creaking softly, she walks around the old building. She looks for any of her old supplies, perhaps left there when the bandits made their hasty retreat. Alas, her search comes up short; it seems that her assailants were able to make with everything but her boots and slightly torn underpants.

Joan peeks out of the empty doorway to find that the sun, filtered many times through by cloud cover, is right above her, indicating that it was about midday.

She wanders out into the harsh, dry climate. She keeps to the shadows so as to avoid any more bandits or wasteland creatures. That, and she was naked. Not that she was modest, no one was in the wasteland, she just burnt easily.

As she was walking, Joan’s mind drifts back in time to two months ago.

…

Joan waited at the city gate. It was a big, bulky affair. No grandeur. All Purpose.

The City, Boyletown, named rather morbidly after a symptom of the devastating plague decades back, often held exploration and reclaiming parties. To map out, and hopefully claim back land and resources from the wilderness. She waited for the most recent to venture back, along with dozens more townsfolk.

The city itself was small in comparison to past settlements, but was a central trading post for the region, some three thousand strong in numbers.

The party due back today was exploring a dense forest, tens of kilometers East, yet to be reconquered by man.

A hubbub rose as several beaten and battered figures approached the gate.

“Look, it’s them!” cried a voice, lost to the din of the crowd.

The gate opened to let the morose travelers in, She scanned the faces of each man and woman, but did not find who she was looking for.

“Where’s my Father?” Joan cried out to one of the exhausted travelers.

“I’m sorry…” he said…

…

Her thoughts are cut short as she stumbles upon a gruesome scene. There lay the remains of whom she recognizes to be one of the Beating Hearts, Mohawk.

She wasn't sad, if anything she was a little happy, she hoped his death was painful and slow.

As she approaches closer she finds that his entrails are leaking out of a large hole in his stomach, his intestines splayed out in front of him.

She crouches over him and, careful not to get gore on her hands, rummages through his bags, hoping to find her old stuff. Unfortunately, none of it seems to have belonged to her, none of her clothes or weapons.

What she did find was the old man’s pistol. In poor condition and covered in speckles of rust, it was unwieldy and unimpressive.

Along with the gun, she finds a handful of rounds, and an impressive, if dirty, machete.

She finds several cans of beans, corn and soup (Tomato), and other preserved foods, no fresh produce.

Unfortunately, there were no clothes, apart from what he was wearing. Joan realizes she cannot go without clothes any longer, it would be too dangerous.

With detached disgust she pulls off his clothes, a shiver runs down her spine as she slips his jacket over her head. Blood sticking to her skin.

She steps into the trousers, several sizes too large.

She notes somewhat happily that the clothes seem to be padded, and quite stiff. Extra armor.

She leaves the dead man, walking out into the sun, no longer restricted to the shadows and rubble.

As she walks through the outskirts of the town Joan remembers what her mind was dwelling upon.

…

… “We were attacked” The leader says.

“By who?” a person in the crowd called out.

We had moved to the town square, it seemed the whole town was there, thousands of people had gathered after hearing that less than half of the explorers had returned. They were after all, celebrities among the common folk. It was rare for expeditions to come back one down, let alone half dead and limping along.

“We… don’t really know,” the same man said.

“What do ya’ mean?” another voice can be heard.

“We were ambushed in the middle of the forest, we just ran as fast as we could and got out of there, they split us up and picked us off one at a time. We were lucky to get out of there.”

They went on to describe other aspects of the expedition, new animals found among other things.

But Joan had stopped listening. She didn't need to; she knew her father was dead.

She trudged home with a heavy heart, tears pricking her eyes, but she refused to cry.

Her relationship with her father was strained, she rarely saw him, he was out with one expedition or another. But that didn't matter, he was her dad and she loved him.

So when she finally fell into bed, she finally begun to cry, and she cried until she fell into sleep.

…

The memory of her father had stopped bringing tears to her eyes, she still hurt, a lot. But she no longer felt the need to mourn, only to avenge.

She continues walking for another twenty minutes, then she stumbles upon an amazingly intact building. It was surrounded by a children’s play area, overgrown with weeds but still intact. It must have been a school, she thought.

She tries opening the door, but it is locked, unusual for a building out here in the wastes, she thought.

She walks back a few paces, then runs at the door. Bang! The door held. She does it again. Bang! And again. Crack! It caves and she falls to the floor.

She coughs and tries to clear away the dust that was thrown up.

She rises to her feet and dusts herself off. The inside was dim and dusty, yet it didn’t show the usual signs of raiders or bandits. It was neat and most things weren’t broken. Odd.

She spots an old vending machine, it looks intact and hasn’t been broken into, amazing, considering every other one she had come across had.

She walks up to it and finds that behind it was a doorway to a classroom.

In the classroom were the small bodies of long dead children, they were very well preserved, and they were at the doorway, leaning against the vending machine. They had been trying to escape when they died.

She sees two other classrooms and, opening the doors, sees the shriveled corpses of students in their seats.

Turning back to the vending machine, she kicks it, trying to get it open. Another kick, the plastic cracks. Taking out her machete, she uses it to pry open the door. The lock snaps and the machine swings open to reveal soda cans and water, bags of crisps flow out and she sees chocolate bars as well. Jackpot.

She cracks open a can of cola, finding it flat, if a little warm. She takes a sip, finding nothing wrong with the taste.

Opening a bag of crisps, she finds the chips are slightly chewy, but fine. Amazed, she reads the ingredients: Potato, salt, olive oil, sorbic acid, sodium sorbate, potassium sorbate etc.

She looks at the cola and sees the same case. Pre-Apocalypse people sure liked their food to last centuries.

She starts to fill her bags with the drinks and sweets.

Something falls behind her, making a loud crash.

Joan turns around, finding her face to face with the dead children.

Joan drops the can of soda and screams.

Fucking. Zombies.