Chapter 1: Call Me Ishmael
Message found in the strange subterranean house in the forest. Removed and preserved by Royal Archaeologists. Penned by unknown individual, and possibly alluding to the early days of the mushroom war. Awaiting detailed study by historians.
I knew it would happen. The inevitability of the whole thing, and yet…apparently the rest of the world couldn't see it. Either that, or they didn't care. Isn't it human nature after all? Serve yourself, to hell with everyone else? Even if your actions will eventually hurt you too? I mean, with all the saber rattling between nations, Iran threatening to blow up the Strait of Hormuz, drought in the Midwest…and damn it all, instead of trying to solve the problems, all of our politicians just sat and argued about such inconsequential ideologies. And the American people ignored the devil at the door, and split themselves between the idiots throwing crap in the bathroom.
Civil war. That's the only way to describe it. When food became scarce, and both sides blamed each other, I guess we had nowhere else to go but war. It was awful. Stupid. Bloody. Street-to-street fratricide as neighbors turned on one another for food, water and gas. And when our enemies saw us split, it was the perfect opportunity for them. The Chinese, the Russians, the rogue nations in the Mideast and Asia. Everyone wanted a piece. Even then, we couldn't stop fighting each other long enough to save ourselves. And so the war spread beyond borders. It became a world war. Old enemies deciding to get even for long-forgotten grievances. Even then, no one saw it coming. Except maybe me and a few others.
No one knows who launched first. Does it even matter anymore if it was the Ruskies or the Pakistanis? If it was us, or some self-made religious zealot with a dirty bomb? Is there anyone left to blame for the whole fracas that killed us all? No. Hell I was sitting in a steel-reinforced concrete bunker, a hobbit hole in the middle of nowhere as the bombs started falling. I couldn't have known who launched first, nor do I even care anymore. I saw it all coming, a modern day Noah doomed to save only myself. That's all I could do. Make my own power, horde my own food, and stockpile enough hardware to take out a small country to protect it all. Serve myself and to hell with everyone else. Ironic huh?
I was prepared to live as long as I needed to after the world destroyed itself. I knew all about survival, disease, I knew all about nuclear weapons and the effects of radiation, or at least I thought I did. There had never been a full scale nuclear war to see what would happen. No multiple, close-proximity explosions of the new Castle Bravo 20,000 kiloton bombs had ever happened, and there was no way anyone could have guessed at the strange aftereffects of such a reaction. That it would not only cause weird mutations, but could even rend the fabric of reality as well. That's just the stuff of sci-fi movies, right?
So I sat there, in my bunker, not even knowing if there was a world left outside anymore. 8 months, according to my calendar, according to my analog watch, and yet I couldn't have known how much time was passing outside. I don't even know today how It happened, or when exactly it happened, or what series of events led up to the story I'm about to tell. As I said, I was hiding, afraid to open the steel door of my shelter. All I know, and all I'll ever know is that when I finally emerged from my self-imposed tomb, everything had changed.
I'm finished now, talking about things I don't know about. I'm not going to waste anymore time trying to figure out how I got here, or what happened to the world I knew. The door is open. There is sunlight, grass, trees. Maybe someone lives in this strange new world. Maybe someone or something can give me answers.
