Story. first instalment.

Ok, so i got bored and started writting this story about two hours ago. The dashes are chapter breaks, takes place in the not-so distant future, tell me what you think.

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Overdose

The crimson sun crept slowly up from its bed in the east, causing a slow line of pale light to illuminate the grotesque, desecrated corpse of a once great city. The city had been a primary target, its government offices identified as a possible location of a proxy government that could retaliate on some miniscule level. The base just on the city limits hadn’t been much of a help to the populous escaping its fate as a big red X in a map room halfway across the world. The faint yellow glow began to illuminate the area more as a few scattered fires still burned and thick black smoke rose lazily into the sky. Of the millions of people who had once lived in the small metropolis, less than a thousand were still alive. They began to shuffle about lethargically as the picked up the shattered pieces of their lives for the third week in a row, greedily stuffing what they could of their former lives into whatever they could find and carting it back to their homes that were now a ramshackle of insulation, fiber glass, and shattered masonry. Not a building in a thousand had more than three walls left, and those that did you didn’t want to sleep in, at the risk of waking up the next morning filled with the false hopes that all the events of the past few months were just a simple dream of an overstressed mind.
Lt. Saunders plucked the stub of a cigar from the corner of his jaw and smashed it under the right heel of his gritty combat boots. He idly dug his canteen out of his small backpack he had leaned against the brick wall backing a gated community on the outskirts of town and separating the supposed elite from the night shift that lived just at the base of the steep hill. It was a small canteen, maybe a liter and a half, wrapped in a quarter inch shield of lead for shielding. His left hand pulled a small pill bottle from another pocket on the backpack and he popped a solitary orange pill into his mouth, swallowing with clear displeasure. Not at the pill itself, but at what it represented. It was meant to keep the human body from suffering from a continuous, low dosage of ground radiation, and every time he took one he felt that he was accepting what had happened more and more, and somehow if he didn’t take it, it would all go away. His steady brown eyes gazed out from under his camo boonie hat as he reflected on the recent events.

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Flying Apocalypse

Saunders had just woken up to a blaring alarm at five o’clock in the morning; he slammed down on the alarm clock and threw it at the far wall in disgust. To his dismay at the time, it didn’t turn off; his groggy arm had failed to throw it with enough force to rip the plug from the wall. His mind slowly realized what was blaring from the radio on the clock as he groped under the bed for it. Through a slight flurry of static, he made out the words “… nuclear launch…” “… advised to take cover…” and “… thirty minutes…” The station then went back to static for a second, followed by cutting back to a pre-programmed classical music broadcast. He was about to let it off as a delusion of a half-awake mind when he heard faintly in the distance the city’s air-raid siren. Three years ago, the city council had heard a petition to take them down; the yearly testing was apparently too much on local fauna and the young children, to innocent to recall why they were needed in the first place. Had the yearly test not taken place the week before, Saunders would have shrugged it off, but given the circumstances, he methodically moved to get ready. The first casualties of a missile strike happened during the initial panic when the target realized what was happening, like a deer breaking its leg on a rock in a mad scramble to dodge an arrow. The military had at least taught him that, the worst thing you can ever do is panic. After the outbreak of the war in Europe that summer, he had personally converted his basement into a bomb shelter, enlarging it out behind his house in the country by burying two large shipping containers next to the basement wall and covering them with a good foot of concrete after cutting an entrance hole through his basement wall. He’d stocked it with food and water for a few weeks, and a good stash of the newest medical miracle, that he’d now come to know as “that damned orange pill”. All that he needed to grab was his home defense kit, which he kept in his bedroom when he was home. It contained an M1911 Colt .45 pistol with ACP, and an M4 with a rail system decked out with a flashlight and a fore grip and an ACOG scope. He then made his way cautiously down to the basement, where he got all of his stuff into the shelter and locked the thick steal framed, lead filled door behind him to await the apocalypse.


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The Four Horsemen

Saunders waited almost a week before he ventured outside, cautious despite the damn orange pills. He came to of the basement to a wrecked house; through a hole the size of a large fridge blown through the wall in his living room he caught his first glimpse of the new skyline of the city. He lived about twenty five miles out of the city limits on a small plot of land with a stream as his back property line where he’d fish on the few days of leave he had a month from the local military base. He thanked his luck that he had been off the night of the strike, from what he could see, the largest plume of smoke was drifting into the skies from the direction of the base. He checked his small barn to see if his horse as alive, but all he got for his trouble was a flash burned corpse crawling with maggots. The horse had been his trump card in case of this situation, no good to be driving around high profile like in a loud car when you don’t know the new lay of the land, especially with blocked roads. Now he’d have to hoof it to the base on foot. After grabbing his backpack, some water, and his two guns, he began the long walk to the base wearing the only clothes left to him on his back, a pair of blue jeans, some old hiking boots, and a black t-shirt.
The base was decimated, a hollow shell of what it had been, a large crater near the center of the base showed it had taken a direct hit. It’s said that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but in nuclear warheads, a direct hit eradicates all evidence that it was, in fact, a direct hit. Some scattered bricks were still standing, but that was about it. A few other people were milling around near a basement cellar type entrance that was the door to the bases bomb shelter, Saunders picked his way through the debris and spoke to the only person in a military uniform, his shoulders bearing the single chevron of a private. “Private, what’s the situation here?” “Sir, I am not at liberty to discuss that information with the general public.” “Private, look at my gun and backpack. They bear a striking resemblance to yours don’t they? Would a member of the general public be as well equipped as yourself?” “No sir, but I can’t know that you aren’t a well equipped member of the general public.” “Fine. Don’t tell me anything, but at least point me in the general direction of your commanding officer.”
After another fifteen minutes of painfully barking his way up the chain of command in an attempt to report for duty, he found his way to one LTC Bates. Bates was staring vacantly into space in the general direction of nothing important as Saunders approached. “Sir, Lt. James Saunders reporting for duty.” “You’re late Lieutenant, all active duty personnel were called in a few hours after the strike.” “Sir, I was saving my ass in a bomb shelter, sir.” “Saunders, regardless of why you were late, you’re still late. Now, I’d put you in the brig for going AWAL, but we need every man we’ve got to clean up this cluster fuck the Iranians have shoved in our face.” “I’m sorry I was too busy staying alive to report for duty sir. Where can I get a new pair of BDU’s, my prior pair had a knack for getting incinerated along with most of my house.” “I don’t much like your tone Lieutenant, check it or I’ll reconsider that brig option. I need you to take Corporal Hernandez here and scout out the communities around the Northern Hills gated community. I need a damage report and an estimate on the casualties.” “Anything I should tell the survivors and the wounded, should I find any, sir?” “Tell them we’re moving as quick as we can. You’ll find some BDU’s below in the bomb shelter storage room, change and get a move on, Lieutenant.”