"Do you honestly think some Mick fuckin' cop from the fuckin' Southie projects is gonna survive in a fuckin' world like this? You're just as worthless as your fuckin' father, you stupid cunt. You're gonna die before your make it to Jersey."
My mother's final words were very colorful, to say the least. I watched her die from on the floor of her apartment before I put a bullet in her head for safe measures. She was the last member of my family I watched die that day, and the one I wished would have gone first.
My name is Del Costigan. I'm twenty-four years old, and, up until this so-called apocalypse, I was working as a Trooper for the Massachusetts State Police, at the behest of my father. He wanted me to work for the Department of Corrections in one of the prisons, just like him, but the academy decided I was was better fit for field work, rather than getting accosted by creeps at Walpole all day.
Granted, I didn't always want to be a Statie. I had dreams of being the next Siouxsie Sioux or Dinah Cancer, singing songs for all of the kids from broken homes, like me. You see, my parents never got married; they met a the local tavern one night and started an affair. When mom got pregnant with me, and my father promised to make a good life for us all together. Good ol' mom didn't want anything to do with him after he knocked her up, and turned him down when he proposed to her. She always thought she was too good to marry 'some Mick prison guard'.
I was a punk kid, from the moment I could walk. When I started school, I was picking fights with kids and stealing things from my teachers, just because I could. Small time crook at the age of six.
Growing up, I split the time between my mom and my old man. When I was with my mom, she would sit around and bitch about my father, but the days I was with my dad were the best. He would teach me about being a cop, and taught me how to shoot a gun. He was shaping me to be a cop, even though I didn't realize it.
My acting out started getting worse; when I was sixteen I got in a fight with some Toonie broad during a football game. The fight escalated wicked fast before anyone could separate us, and, needless to say, I got her worse than she got me. I was taken out of the school in handcuffs, and they charged me with mayhem.
That was the last straw for my dad. He tried putting up with my problems, just writing them off to being a teenager, but he told me he had enough. He managed to get the charges dropped if I promised to clean up my act, which I was all too eager to agree to. From that day forward, I spent all my free time with my dad, learning everything I could about being a cop in Boston.
I was eighteen years old when my dad was killed in a prison riot during yard time. One of the inmates shived him. I was fresh outta high school, heading directly into the academy when I got the news. It only made me work harder so I could be the woman he wanted me to be.
This isn't a sob story about how my mom beat the hell out of me and treat me like I was a piece of shit. This isn't even about me being a cop. None of that matters anymore. All that matters is finding something worth living for, and that's exactly what I intend to do.
A/N: I'm just beginning to develop this, and I'm excited to write it. I'm going to post the next chapter as well (which will not be in first-person because I'm not very good at first-person POV) and this will be the introduction on the survivors we know. I hope everyone enjoys this.