"They're getting worse." She thought to herself.
She shivered slightly and looked around, She had fallen asleep in a medium sized fur tree. It was burnt and blackened but it reminded her of home. When she was little She would always climb the trees that surrounded the Sheppard air base, where she lived. Watching the airplanes take off hoping that one day she'd be able to as well, not knowing that most of them never came back. Nikki shook her head. The past was the past. She looked up and noticed that the stars and the moon still shined high above her but were slowly fading Into the dark sky. The sun would be rising in about half an hour. She pulled her hood up over her head and slid out of the tree to land on her feet.
Her warm breath turned white in the icy air. She fetched her back pack and bow from the ground and walked south. She wasn't sure what she was going to do when she got to New Huston but it was 400 miles away from her nightmares and she could use a little peace of mind. Nikki walked in and around the trees of what was left of a thousand year old forest placing her feet lightly against the scorched earth trying to be as quiet as possible. She blended in with the burnt forest nicely her black jacket makeing her fade in with the background. It was said that once, a long time ago. The human race was at peace and they took care of the earth. But they found riches in her soil and forgot about what there forefathers had told them. They destroyed there home. Thus slowly killing themselves. War broke out and nucular winter set in.
It destroyed the earths natural beauty and left it a deserted wasteland. Large cites became solitary and destroyed outsiders to protect there resources in order to survive. Gangs were formed and new promising religions were unearthed. I guess it gave citizens a peace of mind that they would be saved from this damned hell. That what was going on around them wasn't real. Nikki didn't know what to believe but it wasn't a major concern of her's. She wasn't blind, She could see what was going on around her. The human race was slowly dieing and only a few knew how to survive in this atomic highway, The fall of our existence. She thought about it often. How she could get the others to see... To see what was right in front of them. "What have we done to ourselves" She would repeat in her mind as she tried to sleep. When sleep came that is. How can you sleep when the earth is crumbling under your feet? When your fighting for you life.
We turn to our selfish desires in the face of death. We look inward for direction only to find a darkness we've never can we trust in times like these? When we cant even trust ourselves... For we will always look inside our selves to find an escape. In times like this. We can salvage what we can of our humanity. But until we look outward we will always be lost.
Nikki trotted down a small hillside and stopped short to listen. Her hope flickered as she heard the sound of a creek. She excitedly ran in the direction of the sound. The sound of life. The sound of water. It had been days since she even saw a creek and her water bottle was almost empty. As she broke threw the brush her heart broke in two. What she saw about 10 yards ahead of her wasn't a creek. It was a sewage drain from a near by town called Trinity and what was coming out of it wasn't even close to sewage. It was a chunky greenish brown mixture of toxic waste and death. The smell burnt her nose and she decided to leave the area quickly. She didn't even want to get near any of that crap. She had heard the rumors. Mutations that can either kill you or make you stronger, But she didn't want to take the chance.
There were times she wondered how can anyone help from feeling hopeless, The base was the only thing She had faith in. The only thing left worth believing in. But that had been stripped from her too. She realized just how little hope there was left.
Only a handful of survivors on this earth had the gift to see. They are given the gift to help restore humanity, This gift is what give us hope for tomorrow. But for now. We remain.