~2~

2021

Nicholas

Clutching tightly to my backpack, I jog to my tent, leaving behind the sound of the helicopter I've just gotten out of. As always, it's too hot for this time of year, and I swipe away the sweat trailing down the side of my face, and my dark hair which has stuck to it. Heat, dirt, noise...that just about summed up the world now.

I push the tent flap to one side and step into the welcoming shade, automatically pulling my scratched sunglasses off my face. My eyes search for the one person I'm looking forward to seeing.

"Nicholas! Where've you been my boy?"

I grin as a bare-chested Andrew jumps off his bunk and struts over to me, wrapping me up in one of his overly-exaggerated man hugs. I pat his back and pry his arms off me with a laugh.

"Alright, alright, let's not get people talking," I joked. "I was sectioned over in the north of Delta Quad. They got hit pretty hard with the riots and acid storms last month. They needed all the help they could get with rehoming."

"Man," he says, his smile slipping. "Shit deal."

"No, the shit part is, most of the Quad rats are starving. They just want rations like everyone else. They just go about getting them the wrong way." I dropped my bag at my feet and shrugged, trying to brush off the injustice and horrors of what I'd seen in the DQ this past month. Because while what I was saying was true, no matter how hungry they were most of their actions were unforgiveable.

"Don't tell me you're getting soft. Rats are rats. And they'll always be rats, even if you do rehome them somewhere better than Delta Quad and give them clean clothes and food." Andrew's smiling, his one gold tooth glinting even in the dim lighting of the tent. "They're only out for themselves, you know that. I know you're not that stupid."

I nod and drag a hand across my bristled chin and jaw, my fingers feeling the small scar that hides amongst the stubble, only barely noticeable. "Yeah, I know. I guess I just want them to be better than this."

"Well they ain't, and they ain't gonna' be anytime soon, brother." Andrew throws his arms wide. "This is it, and you gotta' make do with what you got. Those rats are making shit harder for everyone, and they have to be stopped or contained."

Andrew is a true soldier. In both looks and mentality. With his shaved head and no-nonsense attitude he doesn't let sentiment get in the way of doing his duty. He feels no guilt, no shame, and no pity for these people, and I know I shouldn't either. The Quad rats are making it harder on themselves and everyone around them, but deep down I get it. These men have families, families that are starving to death. Families without protection from the suns deadly rays or from the acid storms that frequent the country, not to mention some of the other deadly storms we got hit with. They want protection, and they want it now. And if they don't get it—they'll take it by force. If I had a family, I couldn't sit around waiting for help to come either.

Of course, not everyone in DQ is like that. A lot of them are good people, waiting their turn for transport somewhere safer. Regardless, they have all been labelled Quad rats, and will be until we can get them the hell out of there. The trouble is, there is nowhere to go. The other Quads are already overcrowded. It is a carefully balanced situation and we can't put too much stress on any one of the Quads or the whole thing will come apart. That's exactly what had happened with DQ in the first place.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," I say the words, but they stick in my mouth like tar. "It's good to be back though." Now that was the truth and, God, was it an understatement.

Delta Quad is a living hell. As if one hundred years of civilization has fallen away, sloughed off like dead skin to reveal more rot and decay. People eat from the garbage, they beg in the thousands, and groups of thugs try to rule in any way they see fit. But we've broken some ground. We've gotten some control back. Sectioning the country into quadrants, each with four governing bodies a piece—North, East, West, and South—has helped. Things are undeniably improving, but we still have a long way to go.

The rest of world was even further away from reclaiming normalcy.

Shit. Most of us here barely remember what normal is. Especially the younger kids, the ones that should never have been drafted into the civil army. They'd spent their formative years surviving America's fallout and they didn't have enough humanity to know when to spare a life and when to take one. Andrew is like that, without the excuse of youth.

"You hungry?" Andrew asks, slinging his arm across my shoulders. "I've got a little thing going with one of the cooks. Even taught her my mom's favorite pie recipe."

"It must be love then." My stomach grumbles loudly as if on cue. I've been on protein paste and water for so long that the mention of something like pie has me nearly drooling.

"Don't be ridiculous!" he laughs and shoves me away before reaching down and picking up my backpack. "I'm too much man to fall in love with any one woman. Your bed's next to mine, brother." He slings my backpack onto the bed next to his and grabs a t-shirt from the end of his. "Come on, let's get you fed, looks like you're wasting away. At least, that's what your stomach's saying," he laughs loudly again, as my belly makes itself known once more.

Andrew slides the t-shirt over his head as we step outside into the scorching sun, both of us slipping our beat-up aviators on automatically. Sunglasses are a must in this day and age; you simply never went outside without them. Or sunscreen. Not if you want to live long enough to see your next birthday. And when the weather siren screams, you better get to shelter.

Because our tools of survival aren't just guns and bombs anymore. We have to be armed with more than that these days. Our enemy isn't just the quad rats; it is the planet itself. Everything from the sun above to the earth below was our enemy, and our gear proves that. Sunblock, shades, and acid rain covers—as important, if not more important, than our firearms.

I walk a few paces behind Andrew, my hands shoved deep in the pockets of my cargo pants, as he leads the way. I've known him since the world fell apart, but sometimes it feels like we've known each other much longer than that. Our paths had crossed when this base camp was set up, and we've been stationed together pretty much ever since—barring the odd times one of us is deployed to another camp for a few months.

We walk past one of the civilian shelters. A woman is rocking her child in her arms and humming. That sight gives me hope. It makes me feel like people still belong in this world. We aren't meant to die out.

Since the Mauna Kea Event, a monster storm that bombarded the planet with coronal mass ejections (CMEs) for three days straight, the world has gone through hell and fought its way back, but we are finally getting our act together, we are finally making things right again...or making things bearable at least. Yet, every now and then, we have a setback. The weather is fucked ten times to hell. Volcanoes erupt with little warning. Hurricanes form where they shouldn't. Sometimes the blast of the siren gives enough warning to get inside to what little safety we have, most often it doesn't.

The earth will never be the same, not with the damage that it has withstood and is still withstanding, but we can survive this; I am certain of that. We are building stronger shelters. Our scientists are looking for patterns to the storms so people can be better warned. We are clawing and fighting. Of course, most of this is our fault, so maybe we shouldn't survive. Humans. We've taken such shit care of our own planet that we've left it weaker than it should be, so vulnerable that it didn't have a chance in hell. Things might not be so bad if we'd cared enough.

Human-induced climate change.

Human-induced end of the world.

The irony isn't lost on me.

I glance up, but only for a fleeting moment. The sky is so bright that it's nearly white. I can't remember the last time I saw it truly blue. Looking back down, past Andrew's head, I see the cluster of greenhouses. They're brimming with plants now. When I'd left, the growing things had barely been seedlings. We'd fucked up our seed supplies so much with genetically-modified stock that there were some vegetables that might never grow again. So it's nice to see the emeralds and yellows and reds through the acrylic walls. Bell peppers. I'd never been fond of them before, but I'd eat the hell out of them now.

Some days I can well believe that none of this ever even happened. That it's a dream that I might wake up from, sweaty and gasping for breath as I stare into the blackness of my bedroom, my hand rooting to the other side of the bed for...

"Have you seen her?" I ask, not wanting to ask, even though I always do.

"Not for a few months," he replies simply and with a tone that tells me to drop the subject. I can't blame him; it's his least favorite one.

But no matter how many times I try to turn my thoughts away from her, like a soft breeze, they always come back.

My boots crunch against the gravel and dry soil underfoot as we continue our course across camp and into the food hall. When we enter, I'm hit by the strong odor the sweat from too many people crammed into too small a space. The food hall is lined along both walls with rows of rectangular wooden tables and benches, and one serving station. It isn't enough, not for the size of the base now, but there's no money left at the end of the world to build a bigger place to eat. So we make do with what we have, grateful, at least most days, that we are alive at all.

"There's my girl!"

I trail behind Andrew as he makes his way across the tightly packed space towards a fairly attractive looking woman. Short hair, dark skin, and even darker eyes—she's his type for certain, at least for the right here and the right now.

"Alice, baby, this is my good friend Nicholas. He's been stationed over at DQ and you know that the people in that quad got no taste for cuisine. They think roasted roaches are good eats. Look at him." Andrew pats my stomach jokingly and I instantly regret moving close enough for him to touch me. "He's been living off that shit protein paste they pass of for food. I told him you'd look after him." He leans over the counter and presses a noisy kiss on her mouth.

The silence is awkward as the kiss extends into a minutes-long affair, and I look away, waving at some familiar faces while I wait.

When the face-sucking sounds fade, I look back and see Alice's gaze moving up and down me. "I haven't got pie today, cutbacks," she finally says, her eyes leaving me. "I have corn though. Lots and lots of corn." I notice that her voice is soft, not sharp like her features would lead it to be.

"Jesus, what is it with you and fucking corn?" Andrew snaps, his good humor leaving him. I glare over but he pays me no mind.

"It's not my fault," Alice yells back. "I can only cook what I'm given, asshole! And corn grows in abundance."

She may be soft spoken, but her attitude is anything but and I grin as Andrew tries to back-peddle on his outburst.

"I'm sorry, baby, I didn't mean that. I just fucking hate corn. You sure you got nothing hiding back there for me?" He grabs on to the side of her apron and tries to tug her towards him, but Alice isn't having any of it.

"For you? No. For your friend here?" She looks over at me again, as if remembering that I still exist. "Sure, I can fix him something up."

I laugh as she hands over two plates of food. One loaded down with only corn for Andrew and the other corn and potatoes. I thank her graciously for it, laughing as Andrew takes his plate of corn and storms away like a sullen child. We go and sit down in the far corner, Andrew still bellyaching.

"Can you believe that woman?" he says as he picks up an ear of corn and begins to bite down on it. "Here I promise you pie and you get something just as bad as fucking protein paste." Even while complaining, Andrew continues to bite down on his corn. He hasn't been sent out to a quad in a while or he'd remember that nothing, absolutely nothing, tastes as bad as that tuna-flavored, heinous pink paste.

I scoop the warm food into my mouth, happy to be eating something that didn't come out of a tube. The years I had spent putting meat back on my bones has all been for nothing the last few months. I was easily back below the weight I should be. Food was seriously scarce up in DQ, and though I was glad to be back, I couldn't help the worry over the people I had left behind. I hated raising my gun against them, but we couldn't let them riot—even for food. But, god, it was a damn human right to eat and have clean water. As much as it was to breathe.

I'd come home with zero leftover rations. My last two tubes had gone to a little boy and girl I'd seen sleeping in the ruin of a fast food joint. The tube before those was given to a frail elderly man. He'd given me a chunk of jerky in return. I'd eaten it graciously, even though I was fairly certain it was rodent meat. That's the reason we started calling them quad rats.

There is little else to eat in the worst areas. Aside from the roaches. And that's what is on most people's menus night after night.

"What was it like?"

Pulling myself from my thoughts, I look up at Andrew, his corn ear hanging limply in one hand and I shrug. "Not good."

"Scale of one to ten?" He's pushing me and I roll my eyes. Scowling, he continues, "let's just get this shit over and done with right off the bat, okay, brother? You let it fester, it'll get to you more. I've seen it happen too many times. Brings your damn nightmares to life. I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it a hundred more; you can't let compassion make you crazy. You can't let following orders haunt you."

"A nine, easily," I sigh caving into his demands. I might as well because he wouldn't relent until I answered his questions, and in all honesty, I wouldn't feel any better until I talked it over. "Maybe even a ten." I look away from him, my eyes staring off into the distance as I thought about the starving people I had been trying to help the last couple of months. Help and sometimes control. "It was like going back to the beginning again. When everything and everyone was out for themselves. It was..."

"Shit?" he says matter-of-factly.

"No doubt." I look back at him and I put down my fork. "I honestly just don't get people."

Andrew groans at the same tired argument he's heard from me too many times. "Not this again."

I ignore him and carry on. "I don't get why when everything is against our survival, why we can't band together. Why we would want to see everything and everyone go down in flames rather than help each other," I choke on the last words, the voice of so many starving cries echoing in my head.

"Damnit, Nicholas. You've got be harder than this."

"I can't just let it go, not the way you can." It it's the kids that haunt me the most. Their swollen stomachs, and heavy lidded eyes. They've seen too much—knew too much for souls so young. They are starving, and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it barring giving out my ration of vile protein paste. What kind of humanity is that?

"It's dog eat dog, brother. Survival of the fittest. You know the drill." It's Andrew's turn to shrug now.

"I guess so." I look back down at my plate, my fork digging out a hole in the potatoes, my appetite still raging, but my mind resisting because of guilt. "It's not just here though. Fuck. If we'd just come together, the entire damn world, we could get everything back. There'd be enough for everyone." My fork stops moving, I'm so caught up in the thought of what should be. "Well, almost."

"Don't do that daydreaming shit around here. You know it brings nothing but trouble. The world is what it is. Why can't you just accept that?" His voice is matter-of-fact, no emotion to taint it. That pisses me off.

I look back up at Andrew, my mood even more sour now that I had allowed myself to think. "But what if—"

"What if nothing, brother. People are always going to do this to one another, it's the way of the world. Nothing is ever going to change that—not even the thought of the end. You've seen it, watched it for years, you know how this plays out." He bit into his corn again, the loud crunch heard even over the noisy food hall. Andrew huffed and dropped his food to his plate, before licking his tongue over his teeth. "Each person is out for themselves, brother, and we can't save them all. That's the way it's always been, way before any of the other shit that went down."

My appetite vanishes with his words. Words I've heard a thousand times. Words I've come to know and live by, and yet words I still couldn't get my head around, even after all this time. Because he was right in what he was saying.

Mankind had been doing this to itself for hundreds of years, so why did I think the end of the world would be any different?