"We come bearing the finest cuisine the wastelands have to offer," Xander announced as he unbolted the door and plopped his worn-out backpack on the counter. "Canned lima beans, canned garbanzo beans, and…" He dug through the contents, "Oh, canned peaches! Yum."
"Plus toilet paper!" Willow grinned with pride, "Two-ply!"
A few years ago, neither of the two would have been quite so excited by the prospect of eating some fruit preserved in its own juices or wiping one's ass with something softer than a piece of loose leaf. But times had changed, and so had they.
"Jesus Christ," said Buffy. "What took you guys so long? I was worried sick."
"We had to go a few abandoned towns over," said Willow. "The closer stores are all looted by now."
"Besides," said Xander, "We can take care of ourselves." He paused. "Well, Willow can take care of both of us."
"Look, you know we don't want to draw too much attention with the magick," said Buffy. "You know how it is these days."
"Right—well that's why we're also armed to the teeth with military-grade firearms," said Xander as he took off his rifle and leaned it against the wall
"I don't like you guys going out without me," said Buffy.
"Buff," Willow said, "You're still hurt from last night. Besides, you're just as useful here watching the house and—"
"Tara!" Spike cried, chasing the witch in question down the stairs. "Put that down, luv."
Willow raced over to Tara as she reached the landing, saw the big knife in her hands.
"Hey baby-girl," said Willow, eyes soft but stern, "What's that? Can I see it?"
"No, it's shiny," Tara whimpered. "It's pretty. Ever since the energy left—"
"Give it to me, baby-girl," Willow cooed. "Come on."
Tara reluctantly handed Willow the knife and cocked her head, confused. "There's more tigers in the cupboard."
"I still think we need to raid the hospital," Willow told the group, turning from Tara as she petted her hair. "She needs meds, and that stuff goes for a fortune in the Markets."
"Not like we don't have it," said Anya from where she was counting little rocks at the counter. "A fortune, I mean. Sure, we are low on fragments, and trust me, I'm more bummed than anyone that the US Dollar has lost all its value. But the good entrepreneur adapts, and we have to accept that the modern economy runs on magick. And you know as well as I do that we're basically rolling in it."
"Anya," said Giles as he stood gingerly, a cane supporting his left side.
Buffy held her hand out to stop him and snarled at Anya, "I'm not doing business with demons," Buffy spat. "We don't have to stoop that low yet."
"Actually, Buff," said Xander, "We kinda do. Will and I were digging for scraps today. If we don't start engaging in the post-apocalyptic capitalism thing, we're gonna starve."
"We'll figure something out," said Buffy. "We're not like them. If we start playing by their rules, they've won."
Anya scoffed, "They've already won, Buffy! It's been over two years. You have to stop acting like you're still gonna save the world. This is the world now and you're gonna have to learn to live in it. There's nothing to save anymore."
There was a long silence.
"Willow-treeeeee," Tara whined. She whimpered and rubbed her stomach.
"Are you hungry, baby?" Willow said. She looked over at the sparse pickings of food stacked on the counter and felt her own empty stomach growl. "You can't eat right now. The food has to last, or there won't be anymore and you won't be able to eat tonight. Alright?"
Tara whimpered again. "Only dragons hoard the gold."
Buffy frowned at Tara, and then sighed and addressed the group. "Fine," she said. "Tonight me, Will, and Anya will go to the Markets and pick up some essentials."
"Why does she have to come?" was the pointed question both Anya and Willow spat at the same time.
"Willow knows about magick. Anya knows how to haggle." Buffy shrugged, "Keep it civil or no one's going."
"There's nothing civil about the Markets," Anya muttered.
Two years and five months ago, the demon-God Glorificus used the Key to open a portal to Hell. Buffy and her friends had tried desperately to stop it, of course. Willow's attempt to restore Tara's sanity was soured when the Hellgod saw her coming and punched her unconscious, and Buffy and Spike were unable to make it up the tower in time to stop the letting of Dawn's blood.
It was said that once the Key's blood stopped flowing, the portal would close. So in a moment of heroic righteousness, the teenaged Key pushed her sister out of the way and dove off the tower herself.
Only it didn't work: The portal didn't close, and across the Earth, Hell broke loose in the most literal way.
"Why?" Buffy had cried, clawing at Giles' chest. "She died for nothing! Why didn't it work?"
Thing was: they never found Dawn's body. So, with absolute horror, the surviving Scoobies decided that Dawn Summers, the Key, must still be alive in some other dimension, unknowingly keeping the door to Hell cracked open.
For three days the portal stayed open. Then, some balance restored, it slowly closed on its own. But it was too late; the damage was done, many times over. What was released from that portal over those 72 hours would make the Earth its own.
Humanity liked to fight, though, and demons liked to hunt even more than they liked to kill. So the race hadn't been, wouldn't be, wiped out completely. Still, the post-apocalyptic United States was desolate and lonely and vast; most of the demons lived underneath the cities in the Underway, what once functioned as the sewers when buildings still had running water. The remaining humans hunkered down in whatever shelters they could find or build, hollowed-out stores and abandoned homes, either looting their ways through the days or earning a living by cultivating goods or performing services for those people, demons, bandits, and things that got lucky and were better off.
At first, Buffy tried to fight. To fight everything, every demon, every danger: such was her instinct. But it was no use, and soon the other Scoobies convinced her that for now the best thing they could do was to make their home base the Summers home and survive. Tara was still insane. Xander and Anya were engaged to be married, if that meant anything in this new world. Spike was around, for some reason. And Buffy's soul was steeped in failure: to her sister and to the human race.
At first, they survived by looting. With at least half the human population brutally murdered by demons, the comparatively powerful Scoobies were the lucky ones that got to indulge in the left-behind resources. But now things were growing scarce, and the rise of bandit gangs and the like meant that they weren't even safe from other humans anymore when they went to scavenge during the day. Luckily, there was another way to stay alive:
The US Dollar meant very little these days. Demons just killed to get what they wanted, and humanity quickly realized that its fiat currency only worked as long as everyone played along.
No, the post-apocalyptic American economy ran on magick. Trinkets, artifacts, books, power. Anything a person or thing could use to protect himself from the creatures of the night or day or dusk or dawn was fair game. And the barter system lasted a good year. In fact, it still largely persisted, especially for bigger, rarer purchases. But in the time since The End, something simpler came about: in a system that almost resembled one a civilization might have, money now took the form of fragments : bits and pieces of Hell that spewed from volcanoes, fell with the rain, and erupted from trenches when worlds collided. Earth was riddled with them, now, black rocks with a reddish glow that each held just a little bit of power, a little bit of Hell at its core.
For demons, they were a little piece of home that could briefly boost their strength. For witches and warlocks, they were a foreign temptation that could empower their spells and open their minds. Still for others, they were a paranormal drug more potent and more abundant than the regular stuff. For most, though, they were now the most basic unit of currency with which to shop in the Endlands.
"Do you think Anya's right?" Buffy asked as she whittled a stake on the porch, the sun having just dipped below the horizon.
"'Bout what, luv?" said Spike, coming around the side of the house and shaking a can of gasoline like he could magically make more appear to fill the motorcycle Willow and Xander had near-depleted on their journey for loot.
"About the world," said Buffy. "Is it really past saving?"
"I think…" Spike sighed, "I reckon saving this world just looks different than it did three years ago. It's never goin' back to the way it was, that's for sure. But things can still get better, even if they ain't good."
"What if that's not good enough?" said Buffy. "Last night I busted my arm fighting a pack of demons, and for what? They outnumber us now. I don't want live in a world run by monsters. I don't want to just… survive."
"Thing about this world, luv," said Spike, "Is it's brave and new: no one runs it yet. Demons are fighting each other. People are fighting each other. Demons are fighting people, bandits are fighting demons, factions fighting factions… Gotta see how things play out. But till then, I think we gotta play the game, Slayer."
"You mean go to the Markets. Deal with demons like they're people. Use the para-tech and snort frags till I'm seeing stars?"
"Never said you had to start doing drugs, though you could definitely use something to take the edge off. All I'm saying is you and your Scoobies can keep on pretending that one day you'll open your eyes and you'll realize this was all a bad dream, or you can wake up now and live your lives. Make the most of it."
"This world was built for you," said Buffy. "So why are you hanging around with us?"
"Are you kidding?" said Spike. "Still got that chip in my head. Plus vampires are not appreciated by these so-called pure demons, 'specially a neutered one like me. Us vamps got it just as bad as you lot. Worse, I reckon, 'cause now these bloody transplants are taking all the food. Killing people and not even eating them, what a waste!"
In the garage, a red-haired witch sat at a bench with a pile of metal parts and a collection of tools.
"I think I found what I needed today," Willow muttered either to herself or to Tara, who paced in the background, "One more part and we'll have a working para-phone. Could help us, maybe we could get in touch with Angel or the Watchers or something?"
"Beams only break the dark," Tara said.
Willow wiped some sweat from her brow, smearing grease or dirt on her face, then glanced at her laptop. "And maybe… Maybe with a few more parts we can get access to the internet again—well, the supernet, whatever we're calling it these days—and then maybe I can find something to help you…"
The thing about apocalypses is that everything just stops. After the End, it was only a matter of time before the lack of human supervision and upkeep had those functional, technological parts of society breaking down. After a week, the internet was out. Two weeks, the cell towers. A month, the electrical grids. Then the phone lines went, and the plumbing. The remains of humanity had to pretty quickly relearn what it was like to live in the 16th century.
But they did have some things: they had batteries and generators, which provided limited power but needed to be conserved. They had cars and motorbikes, but gas was a rare commodity so those needed to be used sparingly too. They still had radios, and although cable didn't work anymore, TVs could still play tapes, CD players CDs, and record players records as long as you could find a way to power them.
And where structure and civilization, or the lack thereof, meant that some technologies would fail, another thing took its place and gave human- and demon-kind alike a whole new medium with which to invent: magick.
You see, magick was no longer hidden to the overworld, and technology no longer foreign to the demons that had lurked beneath. And, as it turned out, the supernatural and the electronic made a markedly powerful combination. While cellphones quickly became obsolete, their parts, combined with Fragments and a little bit of magical power, could create a device that functioned in much the same way (though these were clunkier in a do-it-yourself sort of way—would be until Nokia started up again in this post-apocalyptic hellscape). The internet, or some stripped-down version, sprang up again about a year into the end of the world, this one powered by mystical energy instead of just ones and zeroes.
Naturally, Willow Rosenberg was a whiz with para-tech (short for "paranormal technology", because the citizens of the Endlands needed to have a cool name for everything), and had already started designing new devices. She'd built a robotic leg for Giles after he'd lost his to a Entmer Demon (the leg wasn't quite strong enough to support all his weight, and its movements were clunky at best and disobedient at worst, but the fact that it could move at all was a marvel), and she'd pimped out all of the Scoobies' firearms with techno-magical upgrades.
Right—the guns. Buffy hated them, still refused to use them and understandably so. The things were loud and reckless and impersonal. If the Slayer was going to kill something, it would be up close and personal with a stake to its heart, not from 20 feet away with a shotgun.
But guns kind of came with the whole apocalypse thing, and it was quickly decided that her friends would need to arm themselves if they wanted to survive. Luckily, that military base they'd stolen a rocket launcher from back in high school was abandoned and ripe for looting when those soldiers were some of the first to face and perish against Hell's beasts.
Xander carried around an assault rifle and a handgun, plus a few grenades for emergencies. Anya had a trusty shotgun of her own, and even Willow toted a pistol and a hunting knife despite her magical powers, lest she find herself trapped in combat with her energy depleted. Her belt was loaded with all kinds of powders, potions, herbs—and explosives. Anything she might need should a bandit come out of the shadows and attack her.
Like Buffy, Spike wasn't much for weapons and preferred to travel unencumbered. But if he was in a fight and found a shotgun on the ground, well… he wouldn't be opposed to using it.
"Be careful tonight, Ahn," said Xander as his fiance got herself dressed and armed. "Those Markets are… Icky."
"I'll be fine," said Anya, "I know how to talk to demons. Don't forget I was one."
"Oh how I would love to forget that…"
"Hey!" said Anya, "You're disrespecting my demon heritage."
"Right," said Xander, "Sorry."
Anya bent over a vanity and seemed to be doing her makeup.
It was normal, these days, for people to disguise their humanity when they went out into demon society. They covered their faces, painted inhuman markings on their heads and arms to throw off hunters, like when a butterfly had eyes printed on its wings to confuse predators.
So the three women didn't quite look like themselves when they gathered at the front door: Buffy had dark green ink running from the corners of her eyes over her cheeks and down her chin, her mouth hidden under a bandana (if they can't see your mouth, after all, for all they know you might have fangs). She wore a practical utility vest over a long-sleeved shirt, and fingerless gloves to hide her hands, a gray hood over her head.
Willow had painted asymmetrical markings on her own face in a deep red: a thick horizontal mask across her eyes and stripes across one cheek. A hooded black cloak hid her hair and arms, a sheer black scarf over her mouth. She wore her own fingerless work gloves to hide her hands while still being able to access her magicks.
And Anya had disguised her face with blobs of black ink over her eyes and that ran behind her ears and back across her cheeks, a dark blue scarf over her face, hair hidden under a repurposed military helmet.
"You guys ready?" said Buffy.
"I haven't been ready for anything for the last two and a half years," said Willow, "Why start now?"
"No magick. Capisce?" said Buffy. "We do not need to draw attention to ourselves."
"What if someone attacks us?"
"I don't know, shoot 'em," said Buffy. "You got our merch?"
"Yep," said Willow, shaking the satchel she wore across her body, "All the trinkets we have left."
"And I have the frags," said Anya, "We have seventy-six. Can probably get us food to last us the month if we make it stretch. Would be smart to pick up a bounty while we're out there, Buffy."
"We'll see," said the Slayer.
"I'll keep my ear out for repair jobs," Willow offered.
"Alright." Buffy opened the door and took a deep breath, "Let's go."