The bombs dropped,

no people here,

air’s so still,

you couldn’t hear,

the ticking of the clock, for fear,

of waking all the dead.

(ALO), 2 March 1972

The man who wore his advanced radiation protection suit tried to look at the clouds in the sky. It was covered in tiny flecks of ash; a nuclear war had erupted and the natural environment along with most living creatures was in a state of severe decline.

In front of him was a major intercity highway that stretched off into the distance, cars and vehicles were abandoned or filled with bodies who had either died by their own hands or by looters before the bombs had finally fallen.

The few buildings on the side had been turned to rubble or burnt, if the man saw any signs of life, he paid little attention. He took one step forward, heavy rubber boot crunching into the now-cracked asphalt, the sound echoing around.

Hundreds of thousands had been wiped out in cities and residential regions across the planet. Those living in the countryside had been relatively spared by comparison but would still struggle to survive.

The few survivors would need to cope with the fallout, nuclear winter, disease, and death.

Those that the radiation didn’t kill first would struggle to survive the change in the climate and a daily fight over resources such as clean food and water.

Few, if any animals would struggle to live past the first few weeks and any that did would be changed forever. There would always be an isolated region however where no nuclear bombs had been dropped and life carried on as normal.

But those places held little interest for the man nor his odd choice of companion, they lacked what he was currently searching for. On his hip a radiation detector was fitted on the outside and knocked against the suit with each movement, the red light ebbed and glowed as he navigated his way through

‘Just one more step forward. Towards a light, no, a flickering hope of civilisation. I owe the dead scientists I left behind me in to survive and pass on the knowledge of my suit. That and those who I still owe footage.’ said the figure.

Wearing a heavy fitting radioactive suit would normally have reduced the senses and overall awareness of surroundings of an individual.

Inside the outfit was a hearing booster which enabled the man to hear for several kilometres in each direction. The man had chosen to deaden his own senses to avoid being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of death.

That and he had wanted to truly experience the life of an average human who had truly experienced a world-changing disaster. The nuclear apocalypse had arrived and it would change the face of the planet.

The physical forms of animals and plant life would need to rapidly evolve change to adapt to the new world that had been created due to the violent actions of the human on this planet. The man in the suit kept walking one foot in front of the other, his heavily shielded boot crashing into the broken road that was in his path.

Aside from looking upwards occasionally his face under the mask was full of sheer determination to finish his job, his duty called him, that, and fear of his failing the lessons that his mentor had beat into him.

For right now though he just needed to keep walking, one foot in front of the other down the partially broken remains of the major inter-city Highway through the dust storms and debris clouds.

The enhanced senses of the man picked up survivors in the surrounding buildings and the highway beyond him. He could simply ignore the cries and moans they made as they felt their bodies and minds falling apart due to radiation sickness. Or they’d simply were dying from injury caused by the looting and falling apart of society.

The riots and civil unrest would set in soon once the initial shock wore off. The man could feel the radiation contamination radiating off people and groups in the buildings to the sides of the highway, he could hear their whimpers and skin and hair fell out as their organs began to shut down.

Horus turned to his companion thinking for a moment and set his mind firm. He’d had enough of it, just this once he’d take a chance and be kind. The agency would check for the action but this was right here, right now.

‘Casey. Kill them, I don’t care about the rules. Just turn them all off as peacefully as possible. Nobody deserves to live like that. I can’t stand the suffering. Just do it in a two-kilometre radius. Only those in terminal condition though. The ones who aren’t going to recover. Please. I think most around here are already dead judging from the smell.’

His companion perhaps sensing his mood didn’t talk aloud but there was a minor shift in reality as hundreds instantly died. The man stood on the highway surrounded by vehicles which has been either abandoned or let his head fall forward for a moment of pure silence out of respect.

‘I can’t help anyone. Not really. My mentor did. She broke the rules and look what happened to her. Exiled and forgotten despite producing some of the best tourism materials ever seen. Screw it. Let’s carry on with it. Back to the script. Let’s find us some government types.’

The hardest part of the job for the man on occasion was the ability to distance yourself from the specific reality and get with footage. He looked forwards to the distance and decided to continue for now. He decided to reduce his own senses even further down towards a standard human living on this planet. If it was essential, he’d boost them back up to optimal levels but for now he needed a moment of peace. He needed to focus and get the job done at all costs without the distractions.

After he had reduced his sensory awareness a large roadside sign with bright yellow letters broke off due to a sudden blast of high winds from the side of the highway and almost smashed into his body as he turned and narrowly avoided it. The sudden movement failed to stop the man stepping forward, but he did stop for a moment to watch where it had landed.

‘Huh. A military warning sign. Not worth a shot though. Too generic for my tastes.’

Stopping for a moment on his trek he looked back behind him and through his filtration mask he saw the words [In the Event of an Enemy Attack this Highway will be Closed to Civilian Traffic].

Horus watched as the sign got picked up by another gust of wind and flew off into the distance, forever forgotten. A stark reminder to the man that this world had been prepared in advance, but you never fully could, not in this situation. The further breaking sounds of the sign as it continued its passage along the highway faded behind the man as he stood there.

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‘Pretty close call there. I almost got my suit damaged. One broken seal on this and all the nasty stuff outside gets in. This area is desolate, guess they didn’t get to escape the blasts.’

The Highway was strewn with the remains of broken or damaged vehicles with bodies inside that had either been cooked alive through the heat of nuclear fire or died from the radiation soon afterwards. The man never stopped to look inside the vehicles, his desire was for the living not the dead or dying. His rubber booted feet continued to make gradual progress.

‘Dead, all dead but I need to keep going. For hope of a better future.’

The words of the man could barely be heard above the sound of the wind and from inside the filtration mask of the radioactive proactive suit he was wearing.

If he stretched his hearing, he could hear the sound of fires ranging out of control in settlements far away from the road. There could even be survivors there, but he wouldn’t be able to help them. Charity, first-aid, and resources weren’t something he was prepared to offer random strangers. He had his orders, and he was going to fulfil them. To keep his mind focused and clear he thought about what had led the planet to its current state.

‘It’s the same every single time. Madness and paranoia combined with weaponry gone out of control. Similar but different.’

Horus knew what had happened to this planet. A war out of control had used devices that once unleashed were unable to be stopped. Weapons of mass destruction had been used to great effect and little cheer. Once the bombs had been dropped it was too late to take in the great consequences that followed, the moral and ethical implications ignored as military force had swept across the lands without regard for the lives of those who once lived in this country. He had flown above and seen little more than ruins, destroyed cities, and struggling groups trying to cope with the shock and the primal need for food, shelter, and protection.

War caused devastation, death, and chaos. The man sighed deeply and continued his search, his mission. Heavily covered feet in the suit kicked up dust from the ground that could have been the remains of a public highway. He was a man on a mission, to find those who still lived. His journalistic instincts and intuition drove him onwards, occasionally taking the time to look at the sky when any patches of blue appeared and vanished.

The clouds were near impossible as the sun to visit, impenetrable beneath the layers of ash that had been pumped into the atmosphere. Some would still yet live the man silently pondered how many would survive the coming days. Those that did or were secreted away in shelters would be his targets, he needed footage and good stuff too. This was a job that needed paying and it wasn’t as though the wind and radioactive filled ruins would offer anything.

A flying piece of debris hit the ground in front of the man causing a hard sudden noise. A hard bang failed to elicit any reaction in spite of the mild surprise he had felt.

‘Nope.’

The man paused for a moment just to make sure that it wasn’t gunfire or an attack before looking to the sky for any other pieces that had been swept up in the winds.

‘Just the wind. Not an attack.’

Water, electricity, fuel, and food would all be running out for those unlucky enough to be caught outside. He was one of the lucky ones, he had been far enough away from the nuclear attacks inside his bunker along with his fellow scientists with enough resources to have lasted for decades. His purpose though was to find others like him.

There would be survivors, of that he was certain. Humans were resilient beings even able to survive in the world of circumstances. Born to survive. Eventually, he would make his way across the barren, blasted wasteland and end up meeting some of them.

They might even be willing to be interviewed if they weren’t complete assholes whose brains had rotted from drinking contaminated water and their asses glowed in the dark. It had made it far easier for him to spot them from a distance when the sun went down, and the crazies had come out. Green behinds showing their distinct locations made it easier for him to avoid them until they had run after him and kept chasing him. They were mostly annoying and complete non-conversationalists aside from the handful of words that they remembered.

All he got from them were one or two-syllable words at best, boring to say the least. They could have at least gone without all the screaming and had some kind of consideration for his hearing. He wasn’t affected by it, but he would have appreciated some form of politeness. They smelt bad, looked worse and made a whole lot of noise.

In front of him there had been a violent crash where one car had smashed directly into the side of the other. He thought that he could see a pair of legs sticking out of the side of one of the vehicle. This major city-highway was full of wrecks, and it made his travel slow, but it was considered a safer path. He put a gloved rubber suited hand out and pushed against the combined wreck, a high-pitched screeching noise as sparks flew on the ground and a hint of smoke as rubber tires were forced to move.

The man didn’t shove it over the edge of the major Highway through the metal barriers on the sides. The heavy clanging noise that it would make could echo throughout the area and attract unwanted attention.

‘I’m tempted to melt these wrecks down, but it’d ruin my boots. Stay in character, I am a superhuman scientist. No, a pacifistic scientist. No conflict.’

The ones with more intellectual thoughts were even more terrible to deal with for humans. He wasn’t a fan of those types of survivors, the ones that talked about him like he was a piece of fresh meat for them to eat. There he was minding his own business looking for a slice of human interest and they would turn up and talk about him like he was an animal to be roasted on a fire and dragged behind them to tenderise. It made him almost prefer the screaming glowing green eyed crazies by comparison. They didn’t try to hide their nature behind fancy words and attitudes.

Hopefully, this world would be better than the last radiation-blasted planet that he’d visited. Everyone there was heavily into cannibalism, not undead brainless zombies because that was a different type of post-apocalypse category, but the radiation had made them have a taste for uncontaminated fresh meats. Too bad their teeth shattered when they tried to bite his fingers off, the man was made of far stronger stuff than dentine.

‘I’m nobody’s appetiser. Ever.’ The man muttered to himself.

He’d had to write off the planet as mildly interesting but far too familiar after you’ve experienced one horde of cannibal humans who’d lost their minds due to radiation exposure and become a creature that was both more and less than your standard homo sapiens it got boring quickly. Stronger, faster but dumber. He did have a fair but of fun experimenting with different body parts for them to try and bite though, the sound of their cracking teeth made the man smile under his radiation protection suit when he recalled the memory. They didn’t succeed of course given the inherent strength of his body, but it had been pretty entertaining to record. The one key highlight of his planetary tour at the time.

They had smelt pretty nasty though when they got too close, like rotting blue melon juice left out on the surface of the sun. In other words, super bad and he wasn’t a particular fussy man usually.

Their hair and skin have been just as bad as well, with no sense of personal care. All messed up, overgrown locks and glowing faintly greenish-yellow skin. He did not want to remember how their toenails looked.

No. Just no. Their eyes melting in their sockets reminded him of ice cream gone bad in the sun.

Super bad hygiene habits as well. He understood that living in a nuclear wasteland meant that having a shower and access to clean water was hard, but they could always dry wash or just cut their hair. Yeah, that planet had not been out of his personal choice but just one of a massive selection that he had to try and make work.

He had given it a solid three out of ten when he’d given his professional review. Too many crazy cannibals and not enough diversity for his tastes. If they’d remembered how to cook and a bunch of them had become chefs of long pig then he would have bumped them up a point or two.

A place to check off the list. Horus had put it down as an inadvisable location, two to three stars at best. It likely meant the erasure of the planetary reality if nobody marked it up, but he’d been annoyed that day. Not every place got a five-star review. Zero stars would mean near instantaneous erasure. Horus had heard rumours at the main tourist hub but never saw actual confirmation in person.