It all started in the year of
2050; what we now call The Great Slide.
The population of the earth had
breached ten billion. That is when the
environment tipped over the edge: the CO-2 levels reached an historic high; ocean
levels rose by two feet; the ozone layer all but disappeared; oceans acidified;
the air became barely breathable; temperature rose to extreme high norms and
the sun became deadly. What resulted
was a mass extermination which killed off most of the primitive third world populations
and practically all animal life – the rats survived – and humans that were left
became nocturnal – most living underground.
The surface of the earth is now
a fearful place. The sun is deadly and
daytime temps reach well above one hundred degrees, the humidity is always high
and there are constant violent storms.
The Slide was strange:
Christians claimed it was the Apocalypse, and identified a God figure they
proclaimed as savior. The Christians became
militant and Christian militias roamed the streets killing and torturing and
looting in the name of the new Jesus. Finally after a decade the government had to
put them down.
I don’t believe in the
Apocalypse or Gods; but a strange thing did happen at the beginning of the
Slide: the dead came back to life. They
were reanimated, but only the fresh dead walked. The recently deceased arose from the morgues
and from shallow graves. They
staggered around in a grotesque semblance of living persons. They weren’t dangerous except as disease
carriers, but the noises they made as they tried to speak were unbearable. It was quickly discovered that the best way
to exterminate them was with fire; and most were burned within the first few
weeks.
However, it is still eerie to
walk through a cemetery, because your steps result in a cacophony of moans and shrieks
from beneath the ground, from the corpse locked in caskets, entombed in
concrete crypts and buried six feet below the earth. The newly dead no longer walk but are cremated
as a precaution – otherwise the rats would dig them up and eat them.
You are welcome to add to it - or not.
the Ol'Buzzard
