Waking in a Post-Apocalyptic World

[IsabellaRose]

You wake to feel cold concrete pressing against your cheek, gritty with dust and fine debris. The faint scent of mildew hangs in the air. As you stir, tiny fragments of glass crunch beneath your fingertips, and the distant sound of dripping water echoes through the stillness like a metronome. You open your eyes and look around. You're in ruins, but not the kind you expected. You sit up slowly and take in your surroundings.

The space you're in is the cavernous, gutted shell of a modern office building. Desks lay overturned, their surfaces warped by time and water damage. Shattered flat-screen monitors lay strewn on the floor near most of the desks. Filing cabinets in a corner still stand, a few twisted open and their contents strewn about, paperwork faded and illegible, some yellowed, others clumped together with moisture. Above you is a modern looking drop-ceiling, many of the tiles missing, leaving black rectangles where no light shines. A fluorescent light fixture dangles from one of the empty rectangles, swaying slightly, its glass tubes long shattered.

A tree had forced its way through the shattered floor-to-ceiling windows on one wall, its branches reaching into the building like invaders claiming the space. Vines curl up walls and coil around the skeletal remains of cubicle dividers. Nature had begun its slow takeover; moss carpets the floor, and mushrooms sprout from the damp corners, feeding off the decay.

The silence is oppressive, broken only by the faint creaks of the structure settling in a breeze you can feel slipping through the gaps in the broken windows. The air from outside carries with it the faint scent of vegetation mixed with something sharper, metallic, and foreboding. The distant caw of a scavenging bird echoes through the open space. Piles of debris, broken plaster, splintered wood, and twisted metal, created treacherous obstacles in the open spaces between the still-standing cubicle dividers. 

Then, something shifts in the shadows, a movement so subtle you almost missed it. A rat the size of a small dog skitters across the far end of the room, its fur patchy and its eyes gleaming with an unnatural intelligence. It stops and turns its head toward you, sniffing the air, before disappearing into the rubble. The sight sends a chill down your spine.

Rising to your feet, you make your way to what had once been the windowed edge of the building. Below, a city stretches out in ruins, a jagged forest of concrete, steel, and green. Many skyscrapers still stand, their frames draped in ivy, some leaning like toppled dominoes, while vehicles sit abandoned on cracked and increasingly green streets. The silence isn’t empty; it feels watchful, alive with unseen dangers. This world, for all its familiarity, is alien, and wholly indifferent to your presence. You have no idea how you got here.

As your new reality settles into your mind, you realize that you may not be safe here. That giant rat-thing may come back, and it may not be alone. You will need to find water, food, shelter, and as much safety as possible in this ruined world. Just as you begin to think of what your next step should be, a voice breaks the silence, and you whirl around to see that you are not alone.

• If you see a massive man clad in scraps of leather, metal, and fur who says, "Ello, leashling... you're a brave one, runnin' into the Shatter. Now, gimme a taste 'fore I take you back to the Boneking." click here.
• If you see a massive man clad in scraps of leather, metal, and fur who says, "Any sign of the leashling? The Boneking said whoever finds her first gets free use." click here <link forthcoming>
• If you see a woman dressed in armor that seems to be cobbled together from scavenged sports equipment, metal scraps, and reinforced leather who says, "Oh, baby, the Boneking's gonna be so mad that you left him for the Iron Sisters. C'mon, lets get you back to Haven. Morrigan will want to meet you." click here <link forthcoming>
• If you see a woman dressed in armor that seems to be cobbled together from scavenged sports equipment, metal scraps, and reinforced leather who says, "Looks like you've lost another leashling, Meatdog. Tell your Boneking if he comes looking, all he'll find is death."
• If you see a creature that could be a human mutated into an animal or perhaps an animal mutated into a human who says, "Hop hop, little bunny. They eat you all up if they find you. Come. Come! Burrowkin hide you. Protect you. Quickly!", click here.
• If you see a creature that could be a human mutated into an animal or perhaps an animal mutated into a human who says, "Lil bunny safe from meatdogs! You never find burrowkin. We too fast!"  click here <link forthcoming>

Edited February 11 by IsabellaRose