Ruined
I remember when I came here with my wife. It was some 18 years back. Lord, it was different. Rain came often, and growing was good. I built us a little shack from an abandoned town not far out. We got all we needed there. The simple life. A three room hut assembled from old wood and charred metal. A place to eat, with a well-worn table and always-filthy plates. an oven that took hours to move in and hours more to fix. A little bedroom on a broken old mattress with moldy blankets, with a hole in the roof we'd leave open on clear nights to gaze at the stars. The corrugated sheets of metal would collect rain that we'd catch in bottles to drink, and I'd never had a sweeter drink than that. I even found a radio that could catch signals here and there, most often of caravans coming and going, but in those rare moments, when the weather was good, we'd get music, and we would dance. Most days, we'd do nothing but sit together. She always wanted children. I was against the idea. Who would have children in a place like this? I considered myself, and do still consider myself, a sensible man. When she asked me once, when I first pulled her away from her hometown,a grungy little place in what used to be New Mexico, she leaned on my arm all soft, and asked if we would be together forever. I always figured one of us would die before the other, so I simply told her I was partial to it.
It was some 7 years after that the abandoned town became not so anymore. But they were not the finest neighbors. Some might have even called them awful. But that was before The War. Before when people cared about things like how you looked, or what you wore, or how you spent your time and with whom. They called the town Modesto; She told me it meant Modest, and I suppose that was appropriate enough. People squatting in the guts of a long lost country, doing whatever it took to live, with no attempt to hide it, was the definition of modesty to me. They'd come to us sometimes, often drunk or worse, looking for food or water. We'd have a surplus sometimes, and it was free for them to take. Charity was a word often forgot in those days as well, but we had each other and that was enough. But then times got hard. We had to start turning them away. And then they'd get violent. And then I would have to get violent, and she always looked at me terrified when I got violent; It was a side of me I hoped she'd never see. The side with a gun that knew how to use it.
We finally had children. 5 in total. I loved them all, but I could not be with them. I had to earn more to keep them all alive, so I had to leave. Modesto became my home away from home. I continued to be violent, away from her judging looks. She didn't understand. She couldn't understand. She never wandered, saw what it was really like, I made sure of that. And I was good at being violent, good at being bad. Justice? A fine concept. Lovely concept. But it holds little water in a land like ours. There are simply too many men that will not listen to reason. Too many monsters that will just keep killing no matter how politely you ask. So the innocent need a monster of their own. And that's a part I'm all too willing to play. But I suppose fate has a way of punishing even those with good intentions.
5 years ago, raiders came while I was out hunting. They were not like the raiders of before. They were organized, disciplined, but just as bloodthirsty. One of the few that survived the initial attack would say that they declared the town "unclean", and did their best cleaning it, as it were. Not one of Modesto would live past that day. It looked as though the War had happened just hours past...They knew of my home. I ran with such speed that I scarcely remember how long it took. The shack was still standing, but it was dead to me. She was no more. I held her hands close to my chest; They were cold as ice, white like the snow she never got to see. I could see the bruises on her face, the cut on her throat. The dress I bought for her the first time I went into town, covered in her blood and the dirt of our land. Her flowing black hair gnarled in the dried plasma, dyed brown. I buried her there. I burned the shack to the ground. The children were gone. I don't even remember their names, save one. The most recent. She was 2. I called her Grace. I still look for her, though I know that's a fool's errand. I suppose she took some of my sensibility with her to wherever we go when we pass. So why do I continue? Because she deserved better, and I promise you all, and I swear to God, I will show each and everyone responsible just how much she deserved. I don't ask for your pity; All I want is directions, and ammo, if you have any.