07.09.2022 19:10:42
sevvy
Life in the wasteland
The one thing they don’t tell you about near death experiences is nightmares. They never tell you about that feeling that settles into your chest as your mind tells you you’re in your final moments. The utter defeat you feel, knowing nothing can change your fate. You feel anything but at rest, but you know there’s nothing you can do to stop it. But you don’t die, you live. Still, you’ll have dreams about it and will have to replay those feelings going through your mind. Maybe in your dreams you’ll nearly die a different way, maybe not. Either way, you wake up in a cold sweat with your heart racing, having only yourself around to talk you down.
Jean had those dreams a lot.
He’d been in his car, driving home to his girlfriend when the aftershocks of the bomb broke his windows and rolled his car over. His car’s radio hadn’t been working so he never got news of what was happening. He hadn’t seen the impact, all he knew was that everyone was driving like a maniac, it was hectic.
This was the day after his first shift at work. He’d just become a pharmacy technician. He’d graduated just a little before that and was damn proud of his accomplishment. He lived with his partner of a little over a year, whom he loved dearly. In fact, he was planning to propose to her.
When his car rolled over, he was able to crawl out of it, but slowly felt the light drain from his vision. He didn’t die, just was rendered unconscious. You’d think after something like that, he’d be wide awake. His body, however, was unsure how to process it all.
And that’s how his world ended.
Finally, when he woke up, he had a migraine and bruises from his seatbelt. His body ached, and he really wasn’t sure what to make of things. He was able to limp to his house, only to find his beloved gone. Not dead, just gone. Maybe she evacuated, maybe she died. He never was able to find out but always hoped it was the prior.
There seemed to be nobody around. His neighbors wouldn’t answer the doors, no matter how desperately he knocked. Their cars were gone and their lights were off. For some time, he holed up in his house, eating all the canned goods he had. Maybe this was something that would blow over. Maybe his girlfriend would come back. Maybe the neighbors would answer when he knocked.
Jean’s next stage was breaking into his neighbor’s homes. Well, was it really breaking and entering? They weren’t there, after all. Running short on food, he’d take whatever they’d been stocked with and would make mental notes to repay them when they returned. But they never did.
The man lived in denial for the longest time, even after he’d been able to piece together what happened.
The third stage he went through was drinking. The booze he had made his mind fuzzy. When he drank, he forgot he was alone. The world hadn’t crumbled away and his partner was on her way home. He’d drink, sleep, then wake up and drink again. This went on for over a year, to which point there was no more alcohol to be found in his neighborhood. Finally, he had to explore the rest of his town which was just as empty as he’d feared it might be. He spent some time living in the nearest Costco, which seemed to have all the necessities he needed— and booze to spare.
He wasn’t sure when the ghoulification started. Whether it started a few months into his isolation or a few weeks. All he knew was his skin seemed to begin to melt and droop and his nose started to fall off. He turned into a monster, both inside and out.
One year turned to two turned to a decade. He spent a long time simply thriving in his small town until finally, all the food seemed to be gone. He knew he had to go somewhere to do Something about it all. So he went to the neighboring town.
It was quite the surprise when he found a family that had taken refuge in the Walmart out far. At first they feared him, terrified by his appearance. Some company was better than none, however. They learned to respect each other and together both he and the family thrived. Jean even sobered up, a feat in itself.
The worst part of being a ghoul was seeing people die around him. Not just of wasteland accidents, but due to age. After he saw the final generation of the family greying and begin to have trouble foraging with him, he simply left.
Jean would come to find descendants of survivors here and there. Occasionally, he’d come across another ghoul, however they didn’t have any conscience that he knew of, they would just blankly stare into space, occasionally twitching like a rabid animal.
It wasn’t until about a century after the war he met another ghoul. Her name was Anne. At this point, Jean found a small settlement of people attempting to rebuild the wastes, and they happily took him in in exchange for labor.
Anne and Jean bonded over their seemingly immortal status. Anne taught Jean the word ‘ghoul,’ and explained everything she knew about their condition. She made him feel like less of a monster, and more like a human. The two even had a brief romance, though that was cut short when Anne slowly turned feral, she would no longer respond to him after a while, and sometimes even attacked him. He had to put her out of her misery, that brought a new fear in Jean; one day he might become feral and lose all of his humanity.
More and more people began to spring up in the wastes. There came to be factions, teams of people vying to create a new system for everyone to come together under. At first, Jean was invested in supporting different factions. After a few decades, it stopped seeming worthwhile. There was no change, never.
Often, Jean would lament over the loss of his world. He’d mourn those he loved. He’d mourn his home, he’d mourn all and everything he’d had. He’d mope about himself, wishing he had died instead of becoming a monster, an immortal monster.
Jean never really settled down. He’d float from one town to the next selling whatever he could, like bottles and the least irradiated food he could savenge. He found himself in Bravo more often than not. It was a town between Nevada and California, or what remained of the states. They had a small bar that drew in quite the crowd. Thanks to its prime location, many travelers would stop there. Jean saw most of his sales happen at places like this, people who stayed there often had no place to go, as the owner let people stay in for very cheap, though they had to get their own food and clothes, and everything inbetween. Jean would sell his things for a bargain, and because of that he became well known in the area.
It had been a long time since the bombs dropped, a long time since his world was shattered. And yet, Jean would still have the dreams. He’d had guns pointed at him, been beaten, stabbed, and choked by wastelanders. Yet the dreams always took place back then, when he was in his car.
07.09.2022 19:10:42
