Wasteland
Chapter One: Just Another Day

	James looked down at the mess in the dirt.  A man in a silly clown costume laid there on the ground, bleeding out from several gunshot wounds to the torso.  The clown reached for his gun which was just out of reach to his left.  It was right about then that the clown seemed to realize he wasn't going to live much longer.  James slowly lifted his arm, showing no emotion, and fired one last round into the clown's poorly painted face, now stained with blood.  As with everything in the American wasteland, the clown had a sort of 'tag' too.  The clown was what was called a 'vulture'.  Most vultures were also newbs, but vet vultures were not unheard of.

	Vultures were viscious, psychotic humans who would rob, murder, or rape anything that moved.  Some vultures looked like normal people, while some looked like something out of a horror movie.  The clown was the latter, and the blood dripping out of the back of his skull wasn't helping his appearence.  Due to their overly violent nature, vultures were very rarely organized and would hunt in packs of two to eight, assuming they weren't loners.

	"Take the guns, check their pockets.  We need to get out of here in the next five minutes or more might come." James said with a casual tone.  The end of a firefight was always a bit of a bummer.  All that adrenaline was suddenly useless, and you had to go through the tedious task of searching for useful supplies.

	"Water bottle on this guy right here." Gunner said cheerfully before tossing a half-full bottle of water to James.

	After a solid five minutes of scavenging, James & Gunner left with two and a half full bottles of water, a few empty guns, a quarter bottle of hand sanitizer, and a handful of fast-food joint napkins.  All it took was killing five vultures.  Compared to some loot runs, this was pretty good.

	The two newbs made their way North for around two hours before setting up camp behind a fallen tree.  The time was around 11:30 when they were finally finished setting up camp and getting a fire lit.  Night time was always one of the most stressful parts of the day, second only to the morning.  A campfire in the middle of a pitch-dark field was the perfect target for a pack of vultures.  If campfires weren't such a necessity, James wouldn't bother making one.  Campfires provided much welcomed warmth, and a sense of hope.  A sense of hope that kept the two newbs ready for the next day and whatever it would bring their way.

	The night's silence was broken every few seconds by the crackling of the fire, as the embers would float upwards and seemingly disappear into the night.  Just watching the fire was enough entertainment to keep the mind active but still vulnerable to sleep.  It was almost like watching a really boring documentary on television, late at night.

	Eventually James dozed off.  The journey to unconsciousness was a long one for him, sleep just didn't come as easily as it did for others.  The few moments that preceded real sleep were torn realities.  His dreams and the real world would mesh together, sometimes causing fascinating dreams, but sometimes causing terrifying nightmares.

---

	James awoke abruptly to the sound of a gunshot.  He reached for his gun, aiming in front of him.  There was nothing there.  As he gained consciousness, he noticed some music playing from a beaten up CD player somewhere behind him.  He turns his head to look behind him and noticed Gunner shooting at empty soda cans.  It wasn't the first time he had been brought back to consciousness by the sound of a gunshot, and definitely not the first time he had awoke to the sound of Gunner's gunshots.  Gunner enjoyed waking up and immediately shooting at things, even if those things were empty soda cans.  He was a pretty good shot, too.

	James was drenched in sweat.  He had almost no recollection of his dreams, but they must've been pretty intense.  He decided to go get a recently acquired bottle of water out of the cooler, which was barely a cooler.  It was filled with nasty water which used to be jagged pieces of ice.  After wiping off the unclean water from the business end of the bottle, he took several long gulps of water, letting out a deep sigh of relief as he finished.

	After doing his morning routines, James decided to check the packs.  Both James and Gunner carried backpacks, which is where literally all of their supplies were stored.  They'd tried other things ranging from pulling a wagon to using a car, but backpacks proved to be the most efficient way to carry supplies.  Wagons were easy to break on rough roads, and cars were far too reliant on gas, and easy to steal.

	James tended to sort things according to their frequency of use.  Things that needed to be readily available for use were stored in the top-front pockets, while items used for trading were kept in the lower, less accessable pockets of the packs.  He kept the hand sanitizer in the back pockets since he used hygeine-related items as trading items, and canister of water near the front pockets for convenience.  He had a bit of ammo in one of the front pockets as well.  Almost all of his currency was in the back pockets, and the rest was in James' pants pocket.

	Occasionally, they would find better packs in abandoned stores or warehouses when they would go on looting runs.  The process of swapping packs was one that James & Gunner had grown accustomed to, but it still managed to annoy them.  They had to move all of their supplies to corresponding pockets, get used to the feel of the new pack, and remove useless price tags.  They had always joked that in this wasteland, price tags were the most pointless things in existence.