Anarchy

North Haven, the Wasteland 3872...

Ivy lay on her belly, staring down the sight of her rifle. She had been tracking the beast all day. The boar was only a few hundred feet away. She moved silently, like the wind, and she stayed downwind so the animal would not catch her scent. Her belly ached; she hadn’t eaten in four days. Food in the wasteland was sparse. People were starving to death. At that moment, her father was lying in his bed, unable to even lift his arm. He had gone without for so long. They had so little, so he often gave up his meal to feed her. If he didn’t eat something soon, he would die.

This boar was the answer to her problem. It would feed her and her father for days. She had tried from time to time to grow food, but the land was tainted. Three hundred years ago, the ancients had ruined the world with the war to end all wars. A nuclear holocaust that swept through the land, destroying everything. It killed almost every living thing. Not much grew in the tainted soil. A lot of the water was undrinkable for a long time. The plants and animals died or mutated into horrible, disturbing things.

Even the people were affected. Many died, and those who had survived died off from radiation sickness or mutated. More than half of the population was mutants. Thirty percent of the normals were sick and/or dying of starvation or radiation sickness. Only a small percentage of those in the wasteland were normal and healthy. Ivy was one of that small percentage.

She had already lost her mother to dehydration two years ago. Her kid sister soon followed her to the grave when she was mugged and murdered, hulling water back from town. Now her father was on his death bed. Ivy was not going to let him die. She would bag this beast and bring it back to her father.

Ivy gently pulled the trigger, bracing herself for the kickback. The beast dropped, and Ivy smiled. Tonight they would eat. Ivy stood up and shouldered her weapon. She marched right over to her kill, stepping over deadfall as she walked through the Dead Forest. A million acres of mountain range blanketed in towering dead trees. An endless covering of grey, no leaves, no needles, there was some brush that covered the forest floor, but not much and none of it was edible… at least not for humans. She’d seen a number of animals munching on the brush, but even most of them couldn’t stomach it.

As she got closer, Ivy noticed the boar had been munching on a rat. Ivy kicked the half-masticated rodent aside and knelt down to look over her kill. It was a clean shot to the head, so the meat wouldn’t be tainted by gunpowder. Ivy placed her rifle on the ground next to her and pulled a large hunting knife from her boot. She slit the beast up the belly to bleed it out and clean the animal out for transporting.

The whole process took thirty minutes; her hands were covered in bodily fluids. She wiped them off as best she could on the grey rag she had brought with her for this very reason. Taking the rope she wrapped around her torso, she tied one end around the beast’s legs and draped the other end over her shoulder. She returned her knife to her boot and picked up her rifle. She was heading home and dragging the boar every step of the way. It was too heavy for her tiny frame to carry that far.

Ivy looked up, noticing the sun was setting quickly. She had to get home before dark. It wasn’t safe out after dark, all the really nasty things hunted at night, and thanks to the nuclear wars three hundred years ago, humans were no longer the top of the food chain. She walked as fast as she could, dragging that dead weight. It was slowing her down, but she wasn’t going to leave it behind. It was her kill, and she would be damned if she left it for some other predator to chow down on.

The last rays of the evening sun were dipping behind the mountain as Ivy reached the service yard. Home was a bombed-out four-hundred-year-old auto wrecker yard. The grounds were surrounded by a ten-foot chain-linked fence with barbed wire, which Ivy and her family had repaired to keep out predators. She slid the gate open and went inside, sliding it shut behind her and slipping the lock in place.

Ivy made her way through the yard, which was filled with old service trucks. Army trucks covered in torn canvass. There were big-rig trailers and cabs and a ton of small vehicles, none of which worked and were in shambles. Bombed out, burned-out wrecks that littered the yard. There were wrecking machines and car crushers, all of which did not work. At the far end of the yard was a large building, an old office that was converted into a livable habitat.

The windows were barred and blacked out to keep out the sun and the heat. The only door was reinforced steel, and when it was locked, nothing got in or out. The walls were thick concrete and cinderblocks. The building could withstand a bomb, and in the past, it had. Inside was five rooms and a service bay, which was locked up tight. The garage door was reinforced and had not been used in her whole life. In fact, she wasn’t even sure it would work if she tried.

Ivy stepped up to the door, and it slid open. Once inside, she closed the door and turned the handle to seal it. She dragged her kill across the main room and heaved it up onto the rickety wooden table. The room was a fair size, almost the same size as many of the tiny houses in the surrounding shantytowns. Her family had lucked out when they found this place. It was a good size for a family. Hell, to look at it, people would think her family was well off, but first impressions were not always correct.

Ivy and her family had to work hard for what they had. They were scavengers. They braved the cities and salvaged what they could find, using some of it to furnish and support their lives while selling everything else for what little money they could get for it. Not too many people ventured into the cities these days. It wasn’t safe. The cities were abandoned by all but the molarks, a twisted, grotesquely mutated group of cannibals that lived in the subways and sewers.

Daytime was safe enough if one stayed topside and out of dark areas. The molarks lurked in the darkness because their flesh was sensitive to the light; it practically burned them alive. So they only came out at night and searched the cities for food, and when they did not find any, they killed one another to fill their bellies. Ivy had been scavenging all her life, and she knew well how to avoid the dangers of the cities and the wasteland, which really was no safer. Anywhere you went someone, or something was trying to kill you. Out in the wilderness, the harsh landscape and the predators that called it home hunted for unsuspecting nomads.

In the shanty towns, one had to deal with thieves who would kill you if they must. As a woman, there were even more dangers. Everyone was a potential thief, rapist, or slave traders. Men that would stalk a woman home break in and abduct her then sell her off to the slave trade, and women like Ivy (strong and healthy) went for top dollar. Any woman that didn’t want to end up eaten or sold had to learn to fight, and being well-armed helped a lot.

Her father had taught her well. He taught her to shoot and fight. He taught her to hunt and scavenge. The father of two girls, he did his best to be sure they would be prepared for what the world may throw at them, and when Alice died, their father had become obsessive with protection, saying he couldn’t bear to lose another child.

Lately, though, he had been very weak and sickly. He was all skin and bones; his eyes had become black and sunken. His hair was thinning, and he hardly had the strength to move. They had such little food there wasn’t enough to go around, so he insisted she ate while he slowly starved to death. Only tonight he would eat. She took the butcher knife off the table and began to butcher the boar.

Cutting up some choice cuts, she grabbed some wood and tossed them into the old potbelly stove in the corner. Her father had rigged it so that the smokestack went up into the roof and let out the smoke. Once the stove was hot, Ivy tossed the meat onto the stove. She loved the sound of sizzling meat. The smell was filling the room; it smelled so good.

Ivy finished up the butchering while the meat cooked. She took down a clay pot from the shelf and filled it with water she had hulled in and salt she had bartered from a merchant in town. She added the meat and let it sit, the brine would cure the meat, and she would smoke it to preserve the meat for later use.

Safe at home, Ivy removed the many weapons she carried and laid them out on a separate table where they kept their weapons and ammunition. She removed her cloak, which kept the sun off her and protected her from the elements. She hung it up on a hook on the wall next to the others. Ivy returned to the stove to check on the meat. It was cooked nicely. She took the food off the stove and placed it on a clay plate, then headed for her father’s room.

Ivy pushed open the door and went inside. Her father lay in his bed. “Daddy, I have supper,” she announced to wake him. He didn’t stir. Ivy nudged him, but he still did not wake. A sinking feeling consumed her. “Please, no,” she whispered, placing her fingers to his throat to feel for a pulse; there was none. Ivy hung her head; her father had died sometime while she was gone. She had no one left. Ivy was eighteen and alone in this world.

The following morning Ivy dragged her father’s body out into the yard around the side of the building where the rest of her family was buried. She dug a shallow hole and rolled his body into it. She then covered the body with dirt and a mound of rocks. She then bound two branches together to make a cross and marked yet another grave. She was the last of her family. Who would bury her when she died?