Prologue

Just to make it clear, everything I'm about to tell you happened way before my time. Seriously; hundreds of years before. But the only way anyone would be able to carry on any of our history after the War of the End is story telling. Books – paper in general – became ancient history. As you can probably imagine, any form of technology – at least any that required electricity, became scrap metal. This story has probably been changed and altered so much that none of it is really true; more myth than actual history. I suppose the only beings that will ever know are the First Gens, but no one would be foolish enough to willingly approach one of them. Not unless you have a death wish.

The beginning is the fuzziest to figure out and I have heard so many different variations that I'm not entirely sure what to believe anymore. Bombs started to drop everywhere. Larger cities were the first to be destroyed but destruction soon panned out to the smaller ones. The real kicker is that the general population had no idea we were even in a war. It was a secret cold war that got way too hot all too fast. No one had a chance to run for cover. Boys too young were sent over seas to fight in a war they hadn't known about. Most of them never returned. Soon after, any form of government and military we had managed to hold together fell. That's when the real trouble began.

Stories arose out of the east. Tales about people with growing red eyes and unimaginable strength…

Then came the Big Boom. Or, Booms I should say, seven of them to be exact; one per continent. Remember Hiroshima? Nagasaki? Those atomics had nothing on these. Each one ripped a hole right through our ozone and anything below was fried in 7 minutes flat. We're talking millions of square miles of land burned down to nothing but sand, all in one day. No one knows who dropped them. I know it sounds like everyone ran around like a bunch of fucking chickens with their heads cut off, but that's how it happened. No one could possibly know that the world they knew would cease to exist in 6 months. Not that knowing would have known helped any. This was humanity's extermination. This was their exodus. The great ending comes to.

But humans, like the cockroaches we are, managed to hang on. That single last bit of survival skill that had been squashed down beneath the comforts of modern life arose out of the few who survived. Humans crawled their way out of the dirt and started up the world we know.

Revelation day, September 12, 20?

It's become a sort of holiday. Not the cookie-cutter happy ones that are still celebrated, but our own fucked up vampiric one. The coming out day of all vampires – they day humans realized they weren't alone. Like most holidays, it (probably) didn't all go down in this one day, but some human along the line decided to turn this specific day into a big fucking show of vampire's dominance over mankind. They became the main predators of the land and we humans were stuck as the weak little prey for the pickings, so why not stick a flaming stick in the ground and burn oils like some savages, right?

I suppose the blazing daytimes and the quasi-twilight nights made it too difficult for the vampires to just stick to the shadows, existing in secret. Or they figured why bother? Why not take control of the land you quintessentially already are masters of? So the big bad from the east, the Volturi, set up shop on the west side of the continent, while all the known humans settled into pods reaching across on the east coast. The only thing that separates them from us is the Dry Lands.

The Dry Lands makes up the entire middle of the continent. It's where the Big Boom hit. The ozone is so thin the sun fries anything it touches. 700 miles of barren waste land. Not that where we live is thriving in vegetative glory, but we can at least access greens. You get stuck in the Dry Lands and you're a dead man - human, vampire and werewolf alike.

A few nomad vamps are seen everyone once in awhile, but nothing like what's on the other side of that barrier. Only problem is, the ozone is beginning to repair it self, and every month the Dry Land gets just a little thinner.

Adamantium was our saving grace. It came in thick strips of twisted metal out of the land, far into the ground where only traces of burnt soil are found. Reaction of the earth mixed with the natural metallic elements found in the soil banded together after the radiation hit it from Big Boom numero uno. I'm not the scientist; I don't know how it works, okay? I just know it's the strongest metal know to this planet, nearly impossible to forge, hard enough to pierce anything it comes into contact with, including vampiric skin. Humans have adapted over the centuries – speed, agility, etc, sure enough, but let me tell you, we wouldn't be jack-shit without Adamantium weapons.

So we survive. We push on. I mean, what other choice down we have? We make the most out of each god forsaken day, taking care of those around us and holding onto what trace of humanity we have left.

My name is Bella and this is my story.

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TERMINOLOGY/SLANG

First Gen: Vampires turned before the War of the End

Second Gen: Vampires turned before the War of the End

Raiders: Human bands of nomads that raid towns, sometimes trade protection or goods from bands of vampires by bringing humans for harvesting.

Pods: Communities of humans dwelling in enclosed structures

Podites: Citizens belonging to a specific pod

Zyte: A powdery drug, residue of adamantium forging, taken for recreation and mind expansion.

Furs: Slang for local werewolf protection

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PHOTOS:

http:/ www flickr com/photos/56464896N06/sets/72157625365250989/

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Note from the Author

*Gulp*

Well, here it goes. I'm jumping head into this story. I've had the pictures and ideas brewing for about a year now and I just got the balls to sit down and finally write something.

Make sense? Need anything feedback feedback feedback please!