Alexander hated walking. He hated every aspect of it with all the dark emotions his young heart could muster. Normally he would have loved the time spent with his father, but hunting trips always ended like this. One step in front of the other, ignoring the blisters scraping away on his barely shod feet, every step bringing fresh pain to remind the boy of his place in the world.
The mornings were never this bad, never this rushed or impatient. Him and the looming figure before him would leave the village as soon as the light of the sun cleared the way, step after step out into the world. They would take their time, his father stopping every minute or so to check for tracks, scarred and shaking fingers sifting through small stones and dry twigs for the smallest signs of game. They could afford the time, they were in no rush. The light scared away the worst of the beasts, allowing what was left of humanity to sift through the rubble that surrounded the last bastions they held onto.
But as the day grew older, and the light began to grow dimmer, the safety that the two hunters relied on would quickly begin to fade. It wouldn’t have been a problem if any creature worth eating had been within a day’s trek of the walls, but that hadn’t been the case. The small rodents that snickered and chittered from the cracks around them were hardly worth a bullet. Only if they were truly starving would either of the hunters take a shot. They needed something larger, something that would sate the slowly growing family for more than a single meal.
That was why the young boy and his father found themselves lugging the carcass of a deer over shoddy terrain, dusk rapidly approaching. The deer was half starved, with large pulsating growths covering one side of its flank but the duo knew that the trip had been worth it. If they could only reach the walls in time to make use of the beast.
That was why Alexander was pushing himself this hard despite the small trickle of blood flowing into his grimy boots. Unfortunately for him, his father wasn’t as capable as the wasteborn boy. The large man just didn’t have the energy levels of his son. Saddled with the most of the meat, he was struggling to keep up the pace he had set.
Unlike his son, the man had been born into better times. The ruins around him meant something, for he had seen the glory that had once radiated from the corpses of those buildings. Where his son saw the landscape he had been born into, his father saw the home he had been forced to abandon. Where his son traipsed and struggled through the faint green mist surrounding them, his father coughed and spluttered. Where his son abandoned thoughts of comfort as the skin on his feet grew worse and worse, his father struggled to do so.
With shaking fingers the older man pressed the glasses on his nose upwards, a drop of sweat dripping from his nose and splattering onto the muddy ground below him. The lenses of his most prized possession were cracked, while the frame bent strangely off his face. It forced him to continually adjust them, as losing them at this point in his life would be a death sentence. If you couldn’t see past the tip of your nose, you couldn’t aim. If you couldn’t aim, you couldn’t hunt. If you couldn’t hunt, he, his son, his wife, and his new young daughter would starve. His wife had repaired them as much as she could, the former mechanic trying her best with the fragile construct, but he knew there was only so much you could do.
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For all he knew the pair resting on his nose were the last in existence, for surely none had been made in the last twenty years. Maybe if he travelled enough he could find someone with the requisite skills to make him a new pair, but he doubted it. Unlike mechanics or doctors, optometrists didn’t make it very far in the first stages. Government allocated safe zones could only support so many, and while surely a few had been invited, even the bureaucrats in those days had been making tough choices. Not that they had made smart ones, as the man’s presence confirmed, but they had been tough. While his wife’s skillset had been integral in the beginning years, his hadn’t. Oncology had become a forgotten art in the irradiate nightmare their lives had become.
No one needed the cures he had on hand any longer. While they surely would develop the urge to seek his services eventually, most had more pressing matters. Like the freakish mutants that tore through the corrugated metal of their walls, or the wails of the starving children they now found themselves in charge of.
Doctor Pisk lifted his gaze upwards, the green mist parting only for a moment to allow a few harsh red beams to filter through the rubble. Lifting it even further he peered upwards, into the sky above him. Streaks of a sickly green colour weaved itself into a sky he knew had once been blue. Face flat for a moment he let out a sigh, old memories clashing with the sight before him.
He was frozen like that until a fist struck him in the lower back, just below the corpse of the deer, prompting him back into reality.
“Have to keep moving,” his son grumbled, taking the lead from his father, one set of blue eyes meeting the other as he passed by. The doctor nodded, turning his gaze from the sky the moment he had felt the touch, once again trudging forwards.
That was the other reason Alexander hated the walks back, his father always seemed to find new ways to waste both of their time. If it wasn’t a moment or two spent cloud spotting, it was an excited gasp and a point at a plant he wanted to gather. The thirteen year old boy never understood his father’s obsession with living things. He swore if it wasn’t for the need for meat on the table, the gun slung over his father’s shoulder would never get used.
Doctor Pisk smiled, watching his sons back for a few moments, increasing his speed to catch up with the boy, his squelching boot splats causing the boy to turn and return the smile, ignoring one of the rules his father had drilled into his head from a young age. Always look where you were walking.
A loud crack echoed around the pair as the boys foot pressed against a crumbling stone. If he had been watching he would have noticed it, noted it, and taken a longer route around that part of the path. Both he and his father new the dangers of hunting in urban environments. It was hardly the first underground subway he had broken into, but as the stone below him began to crumble away beneath his feet, the panicked look he gave his father would forever be imprinted on the man’s eyes.
A deer carcass hit the muddy ground instantly as the man leaped forward, hands outstretched as the man fought against the mud beneath him. His feet slipped, all of the man’s strength forced into his legs as he fought to get the last few handful of inches to his son’s outstretched arms. The glasses placed precariously on his nose slipped, tumbling off into the mud but the man didn’t care. He only saw his son, his eyes following the boy’s descent as the subway tile below the pair of feet he was grasping for finally collapsed sending the scrawny kid into the darkness.