Prelude

FROM REAPERLANDS: PART ONE – PRELUDE

 

I’ve heard mankind referred to in many ways in my time. Mostly negative.

When I was young, this species, which created language, civilization, science, and the arts, decoded and overcome many, hell, most of nature’s mysteries to become the dominant species of a harsh and unforgiving planet, had come to view itself as a self-destructive blight on the very world it had risen up and conquered.

I’ve always seen this self-loathing as a strange kind of evolutionary luxury ’cause when the virus hit and man was once again forced into a life and death struggle with nature, such frivolous concepts were quickly forgotten.

The story goes, that one day a man ate the face off of another man. When they caught and examined the attacker, it appeared that he was already dead. Similar incidents began to occur around the whole goddamned globe at a rate so fast the governments of the world were helpless to respond by the time they were willing to accept that the dead were rising up from their graves to feed on the flesh of the living.

Like I say, I remember a little of that time before, but I was just a kid. Most of my life has been spent growing up in a civilization that was collapsing in on itself from the devastation of the outbreak. Every living, breathing human being was a refugee. We travelled in huge caravans from the major population centers — San Jose, California, in my case — to the countrysides, mountains, and plains, where we built camps that eventually became fortified cities.

If man is anything, he’s resilient, and at some point, the free fall of civilization slowed to a balance between the highest point on the Tower of Babel and complete anarchy.

In the U.S., regional governments sprang up in districts based roughly on the old state lines. The governors of each territory held most of the power, and they answered to the Assembly.

The Assembly was made up of military men, scientists, politicians, and intelligentsia — men and women of some supposed knowledge and power gathered together to rebuild the world. At least our little part of it.

There were stories of strongmen and tyrants ruling other former countries of the world and, truth be told, the members of the Assembly appointed themselves to power here. They voted in the governors as well. So, realistically, ours wasn’t exactly a democratic system either. Despite that fact, they insisted on continuing to call it the United States of America. Continuity, I guess.

Somewhere along the line, it occurred to the surviving remnants of humanity that much of the former world’s wealth had been left behind in the devastation of the major population centers. Retrieving it became a necessary, albeit undesirable, task and there arose the scavengers and junkmen, who created a thriving trade in service of that need.

Those who were crazy or desperate enough to travel to the cities and retrieve lost treasures came to be known as Reapers. And me, I’m one of those men — although I like to think of myself as a practical man, neither crazy, desperate, nor insane in the least.

For me, facing down death is just a trade, one I’m eminently suited for thanks to my time as a conscripted soldier in the militia. I spent years clearing the flesh-eating throngs of the dead from the countryside and driving them back to the old cities and urban centers. Way I see it, my choice of profession was an obvious one.

I have made notes on these times so that our struggle for survival might be preserved for future generations — should they come to be.

If you’re reading this, then perhaps they have.

From the journal of Gus Vandenborg – 22 Anno Mortis