A Random 30 Minutes - 03
Books for Survival
Normally, I just write fantasy. But because I want to be fair to myself as part of this weekly writing exercise, I’m being as random as I can be when choosing genres. Basically, the site I use has a list of genres, so I roll a d20 and pick. That is why today you have ….
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic - and the prompt is: In a world where memories are the last remaining currency, a young survivor must navigate a desolate landscape to find a hidden underground vault containing the last remnants of human history, while being hunted by those who seek to erase the past forever.
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Chas was weary. He hadn’t eaten in two days and his canteen went dry the day before, but he was close and he knew it was his last chance. For days he’d been running from burned out house to decrepit barn to a pile of rubble outside of what used to be a bookshop, or antique dealer. It was impossible to tell anymore.
Since the war, there was precious little to do except survive and Chas had done pretty well at the start. He was underground when it happened, and he stayed there for the better part of a week - long enough for the radioactivity to settle. Thankfully, the snow started falling before the bombs. And it continued to fall almost constantly. It kept the dirt and dust buried, but the snow itself, while less lethal, still wasn’t something you’d want to make angels in.
It had’t taken long after the dust settled for groups to form. Scavenger groups mostly. Some armed, some not; most were friendly enough, but a few had fallen prey to the usual species of lunatic who tried to take advantage of people at their weakest. One of those was Carl. He was from the Kingdom up in the northeast corner, and he had convinced a small group of followers that the surest way to prevent the past from being repeated, was to erase all hints of the past.
To this end, Carl and his band roamed the mountains and valleys looking for books - not to read or to learn from, or to help a community re-establish itself, but to burn and ensure a generation of ignorance. Not like he needed to help that case along much, I figured. In the state we were currently in, a pretty good argument could be made that ignorance had brought us to this particular juncture. But that’s hardly the point.
Among the other groupings of people, there were those just bent on survival - they holed up wherever they had access to food, reasonably clean water, and a defensible position. It wasn’t just renegades for people now - the wolves, and bears, and big cats - they all wanted to eat too, and the food chain had been decimated. What wasn’t killed in the blast was rapidly being eaten by the survivors. Civilization as we had all known it, was turned upside down.
I considered myself fortunate to live in a heavily wooded area, without major urban centers - at the very least there was room to spread out and fighting for resources wasn’t as common as all the dystopian novels suggested. Not here at least.
I’d also heard of a third type of group - a group that took the same instinct as the survivalists and added to their core mission one of a future better than the past. They were placing their bets that books would be the one tool to save them from the past, or at the very least, save them from the savagery they feared would take hold. I fell in with them at a university where they took over the library. It was a good position with thick walls and a roof that was miraculously still standing. Some of the books they decided to burn for fuel, but the useful ones they kept - agriculture, engineering, animal husbandry - the kinds of things that brought people out of the middle ages.
My job was to make it south to another university library where there was a collection of maps and drawings in the museum collection. They were simple steam engines and pumps — all things that could be easily enough re-discovered. It was determined, however, that for the sake of efficiency, having the plans to start with would be the way to go. As the most relatively fit, and with a background from a few years in the Army, I packed and made my way, following the roads but keeping to the trees as best I could. The scavengers had locked down the roadways, but weren’t strong enough yet to prowl the forests.
I knew Carl was tailing me well before I crossed the river. He was easy enough to spot because he made a terrible noise, and he yelled out in that cocky way dimwit villains in old movies did. Because of the snow, however, I could hardly obscure my tracks - a six year old could have followed me.
The best thing I could do, I decided, was to put space between us, so I lenghtened my strides and ran ten steps for every twenty I walked. I’d been doing it now for two days and coming down a hill, with the remains of the university in sight, I found out Carl had a weapon.
The first shot was long - a burst of snow in front of me and to my left turned me around where I saw him on the crest of the hill - a fair distance behind me for a run, but not so far a bullet couldn’t reach. I put a reassuring hand on my pistol, but didn’t take it from under my coat. Instead, I ran again, this time zig and zagging, never giving him more than two seconds to get a bead on me. It meant I ran a lot further than I wanted to and by the time I came to a wooden fence, I was spent.
The snow in the field was deep and running through it meant literally running through it - through a cloud of radioactive wetness that clung to my beard and eye brows like a toddler playing with flour.
Two more shots rang out, the first was short, and the second wide. I raced as fast as I around the first building and slumped against the wall, breathing deeply and holding my knees. The entrance to the library was off to the right, with the concrete walls of the building forming a tunnel toward the door. If anyone had staked out the library, I’d be walking into a kill box, but I had no other choice.
The door was open and there was no one waiting. I moved inside, ran to the side down an aisle of the stacks and took off my boots before running to the end. I’d wait there for Carl - at the distance from the wall to the door, the pistol would be just fine.
I hope you enjoy these story-bits. It is a great writing exercise you should give a try. If you’re interested in taking part, send me a message here on Substack, or via email at: author@rosairebushey.com If a few people are interested, we can get together live online and share a prompt and see what we all come up with.
If you like the stories, or the style, I also would be remiss if I didn’t point you to my books - which you can find at my website: www.rosairebushey.com
Thanks for reading this far down and we’ll see you next time (next week?)
Ro