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The Dark City

It's cold here. There's a never-ending chill in the air that pains you to the bone. There are no seasons anymore. Just the cold and the rain. It constantly rains here and, despite the freezing temperatures, it never snows. And if you think rain that doesn't freeze is bad, you should factor in the wind that seems to gust constantly. The cold wind blasts your face as you walk down the same dark street like you always do on your way home. You come across a few feral dogs on the sidewalk, digging through the trash. The smallest one of the pack looks up at you, raises his lip back and snarls at you, showing all of its teeth. You decide not to get any closer to the angry mutt, so you step off into the street.

"Damn it's cold tonight," you say to yourself. "This hoodie just ain't gonna cut it." You pull your hat down further, so that the bill is covering part of your face, to keep the cold air from your eyes and onlookers from getting a good look at you. It would be hard for anyone to recognize you with your hat tilted down and a respirator covering the lower half of your face. The streets are a dangerous place at night. Muggers, rapists, gangs, thugs...your world isn't a safe place to live. Hell, just the other day you got caught in the cross-fire of a gang fight. It's a good thing you know the underground of the city like the back of your paw. It's also good to be a fox; you're quick, agile, have better reflexes than most, and you know how to stay alive in this forsaken city.

Once you're a safe distance from the beast, you turn left down a passageway. It's not an easy path to take for most beings. There are metal walkways strung across, walls to climb over...or under, and most of the buildings there are structurally unsound. You live in the southernmost part of the city; Ruins of the South they call it. A place that has been forgotten, abandoned, and left to rot. Most of this section of the city is deserted, which is good news for you; you don't like to be seen or heard. You're making your way through the corroded mess when you hear laughter and several footsteps that sound like they are getting closer. You jump up, grab a pipe, and start to climb. The pipe is ice cold, but it doesn't phase you. You leap from it and land on a roof opposite the side you were on, not making a sound. You peak over and see two hooded figures walking down a path perpendicular to the one you were just on. The path isn't safe anymore. 'Guess it's the rooftops to my house from here,' you think to yourself. The tin rooftops can be very loud if you don't know where to step and even louder if you fall through them.

Leaping and running from roofs and walkways, you finally arrive at your hideout. It's not much, but it's secure and defensible. However, it hasn't always been that way; you have had to fight, even kill, for things you need. That's the way it works here. Well...that's the way it works in the south, anyways. You look around, always cautious, and slide your keycard at the door, quickly closing the door behind as you enter. You flip a switch at the door, and the room is dimly lit. You take your hat and respirator off, now that you have some breathable air. You head to the corner of the room and turn on the monitor, which is linked to an infrared camera pointed at the door outside your hideout. Now safe from the outside world, you let out a sigh of relief and sit in a chair by the only window in the room. For fear of the light attracting unwanted visitors, you turn it off. The view from above is actually quite astonishing in its own, dull, kinda way. You see a giant lake full of polluted water. The lake separates the Ruins of the South from the rest of the city. On this side of the lake there is nothing. No light, no law, barely any food. It's a ruin of metal and ash. To the average being, this place is a hell hole, but to a scavenger like yourself it's a safe haven with the potential of providing anything. Across the lake you can see the silhouettes of buildings that are much taller than the ones on this side of the lake. During the day, they are just as dilapidated and broken as the buildings on this side of the lake. You've never been north of the lake and haven't had the desire too. It's too dangerous.

You lean back in the seat, thinking; wondering if all this is worth it. You struggle each day to get food; not knowing if you'll be able to make it back home. It's a kill or be killed kinda world. No one cares about you; your alone...You could end it here...No more worries, no more pain. You've closed all ties to anyone that knows you. Your family is gone; they died when you were a young pup. No one took you in. No one cares about you! It'd be easy. You always carry the pistol. The one you got when you were 14; looted it off another fox during a gun fight. He was dead, he didn't need it. Just pull the trigger back and let the bullet fly. You remember what it was like to have family. What it was like to hold someone close in your arms when things got rough. Your eyes tear up and you take out the gun from your boot. You look it over; it's solid black, grooves cut out at the handle for better grip. You click the safety button off. It's loaded. You turn the gun and look down the barrel and see the bullet in the chamber, ready to fly. You start to breathe heavy, your claw on the trigger. Your sweating, even though it's below freezing. You're ready...but you stop. This can't be the end. You haven't gotten this far just to end it by your own paw. There has to be more; more beyond this dead city. It's time to move on; it's time to leave.

There's kind of a problem though. No one leaves the city. Not that they don't want to. It's the simple fact that they can't. You'd die of radiation poisoning faster than you'd die of starvation. It's been two hundred years since the dropping of the nukes. There were strongholds built before the nukes were dropped. Your ancestors must have been in the right place at the right time, because only one of the strongholds made it through the devastation. Or so everyone says. If you were facing this particular stronghold, you would see walls spanning twenty miles from left to right, rolling up and down the rocky terrain, moving in and out of the mountain. You could see why this is the one stronghold that survived. It's backed up against a mountain that towers over the city. The city is on the east side of the mountain, making the days seem very short. It's always dark, always cloudy, and the radiation storms, NEVER let up. Most everyone stays inside because of the irradiated rain. MOST...everybody. There are several levels of the structures that still stand, so if one goes down far enough you can avoid the rain coming directly out of the sky. You're a scavenger. So you do what it takes to survive; things that the ordinary folk wouldn't normally do. That's how you've managed to survive so long.

It's about midnight, so you decide to go lay down on your makeshift bed. A bed made out of old clothes and rubber mats. You're used to it, so it doesn't bother you. You start thinking about what it's like beyond the wall. What dangers are out there, lurking in the dark. Who knows what the radiation bred out there for two hundred years, but it doesn't matter. It can't be any worse than in the city, having to fight for your life every day. Tomorrow will be a new kind of fight and you know exactly what needs to be done. Every now and then you overhear people talking. While you're hid up behind a wall, others passed by, unaware of your presence. You thought they were crazy, talking about actual working motorbikes. Maybe there was some truth behind it. Maybe there wasn't, but you're going to find out.