Paradise Lost

The sun - a red sun, it turns the sand  the colour of blood.

Red, the colour of blood.

Blood, the warm liquid that ran down her hands and arms the day the raiders came.

A blood soaked world.

She doesn’t like the colour red.

She walks steadily down an old highway, eyes shielded by a worn out baseball cap. Her hands are covered with solid leather gloves, a long, torn jacket protecting her body despite the unbearable heat. Her clothes have seen better days. 

How many people have worn them before her?

Judging by the claw marks, a fair few.

Everything has seen better days, she supposes as she looks around at the old cars, long since abandoned. The Geiger counter in her hand clicks steadily - high, but not high enough to make her sick in the short-term.

It isn’t so rare to see an occasional skeletal hand reaching desperately out of an open window or collapsed beside a door on these sorts of hunts. It doesn’t elicit any emotion from her, why should it? These people have been gone for years. She often tells herself that they weren’t people at all, it helps bury that tiny voice inside her head that recoils at scavenging, at the indecency of it.

These are just things, objects, and in this world she lives in, everyone wants more.

She approaches the first car and pulls her scarf across her mouth.

Nothing there.

She digs through the glove compartment, on high alert for wild dogs. The last time a scavenger searched a car, a wild dog tore off half his face...he was lucky to keep his eye.

A couple of old coins, some dusty paperwork. She pulls out her map and scratches off this area. 

No good.

She shuts the door and walks away, flipping an old bolt in her other hand. It’s a thing she saw in some old film about a place that existed outside the laws of nature.

Her forehead is dripping with sweat when she eventually relents and pulls out her waterskin to take a light drink.

The red sun is merciless at midday, but she knows better than to walk into the shade to cool off.

Wild dogs are not the only things looking to kill humans out here.

She stretches her back and climbs on top of the car, wondering how far along she can get before curfew.

“The end of the world is peaceful, there’s no denying that,” she murmurs aloud, staring out at the jumble of rusted cars on the highway. She wonders where they were going when they saw the first flash of light.

Where could they have run to?

The hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

Danger.

But she is used to this now - her hand automatically raises her gun and fires. Second guesses out here are a mistake. 

The mutated thing drops dead to the floor.

“Interesting,” she murmurs, jumping down from the car and poking at it with a stick, “you were a bold one. You don’t usually come out into the sun.”

Mutants - humans warped by the chemicals in the war decades ago. 

Mutants, zombies, vampires - whatever label you want to give them, they’ve lost all sense of their humanity. Their bite is lethal, their blood toxic. One bite from them, and you’re marked for death.

“But it means your blood is a commodity,” She tells the dead thing, “all the scientists love any piece of you. I’d say a few fangs, a vial or two of your blood and I’ll be able to eat for a week.”

She works carefully, she has to, but soon enough she’s walking away from the thing, carrying her prizes. It’s easier to think of it as currency.

The community she lives in exists in the wreckage of an old cargo ship, the sea of sand around it a relic of some old lake. All twenty of them are bound together under three fragile laws:

1. No weapons can be drawn inside unless there is an attack.

1. No killing onboard.

1. Never go out past nightfall.

When night time comes, you want to be inside.

She learnt that fairly quickly as a child wandering the wastelands.

The ruins rise from the sands in all its hideous glory, a rusting relic in a land of the dead.

A spotter notices her approach and waves. The announcement comes over the squealing speaker,

“All weapons must be holstered.” 

She waves back in return and hoists her gun over her shoulder.

“Good hunt today?” One of the women asks her, carrying a bucket full of bandages.

“Good enough.” You never tell anyone what you find in this wasteland, not unless you want to have an “accident” during the night. She’s seen a fair few of those…she’s taken part in a few too.

She winds her away down the decks, ignoring the people around her.

She pushes her way through to the medical centre and throws her bag down on a table, startling the man examining something in a microscope.

“I’ve got something for you.”

“In this part of the world, we say "hello " and "how are you”, girl. I know I raised you better than that.” 

He does this every time - she doesn’t care. If he doesn’t want it, it’s easy enough to give it to one of the traders who moves through every week or so. 

“Do you want it or not?”

The scientist sighs and gestures to the bag,

“Some fangs and two vials of infected blood. I want enough ration tickets to last the week.”

He inspects the teeth inside the vial.

“You took a great risk prying these out. If you were scratched…”

“Yeah, I’d be dead. But I wasn’t.” She holds out her gloved hand, “The tickets.”

He hands them over without looking at her, holding the vial of blood up to the light.

“Where did you even find these? Were you attacked on the westbound route?”

“East,” she admits begrudgingly, “it ran out of the shadows into midday sun.”

His brown eyes fix on her face with burning intensity - he is one of the only people who can draw a semi-human emotion from her.

“If this is true…this is a risk everyone needs to be aware of.”

She shrugs and throws the backpack over her shoulder.

“Tell them if you want, I don’t care.”

“River.” The name stops her. She couldn’t remember her name when she arrived, so they named her after the street they found her on, “These people are your companions, there’ll come a day when you need them…I won’t be around to protect you forever.”

She leaves without another word.

Her bunk is on the lowest deck, the farthest away from the others. There used to be people in here, before the wasteland got them. 

The first and last people she had called friends.

Friends are worthless in such a cutthroat world.

She throws the backpack down on the ground, tosses her boots beneath the bed and lies on the old mattress, drawing her privacy curtain around her. Even that gives her anxiety -  not being able to see an enemy until it's too late.

Digging under her pillow, she pulls out a small photograph.

It is a photo of her with a man, the only man she had ever allowed herself to feel anything for.

No one speaks his name anymore, like all of those who are lost, once they hold a small ceremony, you never speak about them again. You have to forget and move forward to keep on living. 

Her finger traces his face, caught mid laugh. She has started to forget precise details about him now - the precise blue-grey of his  eyes, the depth and sound of his laugh, the way he smiled when she would be telling him a story.

She places the photograph back under her pillow and settles down to sleep.

In her dreams, she will see him again.

In her dreams, she will feel something beyond this empty void.

This world is a paradis