Blood Finale

Life in Catastrophe

17 years after detonation:
The boy was born in death, and to death he would later return. His mother traded his life for his own, the radiation in her body causing her blood to never stop flowing. The Boy's father, a man who had withstood the ending of his world, was wholly unable to nurture this new burden to him. He had already lost the other two children, women that the Boy would never know. The father took care of the Boy for 14 years, after which, the father would leave the Boy to search for more food and weaponry. The Boy would not see him for another week, eventually stumbling across his father's decaying corpse hanging from a tree down the road.

The Boy was alone, and forced to learn the ways of survival in this state. With only a butcher's knife as his companion, the Boy would leave his home, his father's mangled body still holding the photo of his past being the only thing that the Boy would remember. The Boy would travel from house to house, stealing what he could, killing what he couldn't. The Boy would eventually find an old gas mask, taken off of an old veteran man who could no longer defend himself. After committing the necessary sin, the Boy would scour the home for food and more materials. His tattered and faded Spider-Man backpack now bearing the weight of pistols, ammo, and spare food. The Boy thought only of the lack bullets, and never of what brought the world to such a state.

The Boy would sit on the roof of the old house, avoiding the holes caused by the destruction. He would observe the horizon, hoping to find light or smoke; however, today something new had caught his eye. Through the smog and with the assistance of some nearby houses burning down, the Boy is able to make out a pair of Golden Arches in the distance, perhaps a mile and a half away. These arches once meant something, but now only serve as a reminder of human ambition, of which the Boy will never understand. The Boy had seen enough of his hell scape home, and jumped into one of the holes in the roof, landing in an attic. This would be his shelter for the night, the walls would protect him from the eternal cold that was brought upon by the nuclear winter. Blankets or coats here were likely irradiated due to the holes lining the roof, so the boy curled up into the fetal position, and closed his eyes.

Morning came, though warmth did not. The Boy knew this, and got up from his nest of family photos and empty food cans. He used a ladder to climb back up onto the roof, a dangerous maneuver in the light morning as his small body made an easy target for those as hungry as himself. Despite this knowledge sitting in the back of the Boy's head, the Boy knew he had to map a way to those Golden Arches in the distance, as in their curves holds his potential survival for another day.

After sitting upon the rooftop and charting his path on the back of an old box that he had found that morning in the attic. The chart was crude, a mess of scribbles and meaningless lines to all but the Boy. The Boy would take one more breath before he left the house, the gas mask sighing deeply as he exhaled. The Boy made his way across the wooden floor to a small hatch, which he promptly kicked out, the ladder on the end of it crashing to the floor below. The Boy took hold of the wooden rungs, and began his descent into the house once more. He would do one more sweep of the house, and would stumble upon a small cluster of tin cans a few feet away from the body of the man he'd killed the night before. The Boy would wipe a small blotch of blood off one of the cans, before setting it in his bag, and walking out the door.

The smog combined with the gas mask made sight a challenge, but one that needed to be done well in order to survive. The Boy would keep his head on a constant swivel as he walked, keeping his right hand on the hilt of his knife as he did so. The fear in the Boy was unfounded, any person who was likely to attack him could easily be fended off, as the only people to do so are the starving, and the desperate. The Boy, continued his habits regardless always ready for another chance for more food. The Boy had been walking for half an hour now, nothing filling his mind except for the memorized instructions to the arches.