Chapter 1
Dust. You could remove the man from the planet and the planet from the man and still dust will linger on in then air, on the surface, ingrained in everything. Now a days you can't run your hand on a rock without resulting a layer of it on your fingers; the remnants of what society used to be. Of what life used to be. The flakes of skin from the people and the metal grinded in the machiniery are all the same dust.  Dust stays a reminder of how far things have regressed, or progressed, depending on who you're talking to.
When it floats through the air and obscures the light through an open window into a dark hallway you might be forced to acknowledge it's existance as more than a troublesome burden. Or look at it as the decay of a time when things were better, that presents a constant reminder in the air that everything right now is so incredibly far from what you once lived through, believed; its all dust.
Or maybe you don't give it a thought at all.
It's been thirty eight hours since my last meal. Humanity ended about 20 years ago and now nearly every canned good i run into is ripe with botulism. I'm tired. I'm so tired.
I haven't heard the insects in two years; the buzz of summer with the cicadas singing their song; the mosquito trying to attack me when i go outside, the random seagull scrounging near a market. It's silent. Everything is silent. You want things to remain silent. Because, when they aren't, that means others. That means people. And with people means aquiring food, safety, stability, by any cause. And if you're the one in the way of that then if you know what's best for you then you'd flee. All the groups being formed now a days aren't political or sensible; they're tribalist and authoritarian.
When we were kids in grade schoool before THIS happened we were lead to believe that every person is either good or bad, there's some sense of rationality in the way the world works. When structure is removed from the equation and anarchy takes over, when surviving is all that matters and protecting what you love is prescedent you will see staunch believers in individualism revert to collectivism to protect their own. Either by the end of a rifle or the self realization that this individualist society that was once cropped up by capitalism is no more. Sometimes they break. Most of the time reality just hits them so hard and their survival instinct to protect what they love and what is their's over shadows it.

It's odd how people shake when they're afraid or excited. I think the emotion is the same.

It's almost impossible to believe that a controlled society that has the wealthy and powerful at the top and the rest of us biding for scraps at the table could possibly produce something so incredibly fucking 'wrong' that the order could be completely abolished and thrown into chaos. I used to believe this like I belived so many fabircations and coping mechanism. What happened wasn't something that any economist, businessman, or anyone of power could have forseen.

This was an act of God. I was hesitant to believe or read on him when i was a civilian just going through my 9-5, but as Nietzsche said "God is dead and we killed him." God died when Capitalism was born. If he even existed before. The horror of post nuclear fall out and the things i have seen my fellow man do to each other makes me, undoubtedly, unquestionably, deny God's involvement or any major religion for that fact into this fucking mess. Cannibalism, young girls strapped in public to be used as a fleshlight bc they were too promiscuous; seeds that wont sprout in irradiated soil; people who have no business being in the helm of power breaking down on national television when the veil thins out.

The veil always thins.

I sit in this abandoned house, next to the window, with the sunrays coming in and illuminating all the dust partciles. that dust. thats what society was. what it was. what it will never be again. I sit and I ponder on how things could have been. But, all I'm worried about right now is food, water, shelter, safety. Because at the end of the day it does not matter how we ended up here; all thats left is the nature of humanity to get us out of it.