The Flares

Rules

Get in, get what you need, get out. I had three rules to live by, and though this one was at the bottom end of the scale, it was by no means one to be ignored. Last, but certainly not least. These three rules keep me alive. Keep my senses up. Ignore a rule, pay the price.

Time management will become your best friend when there are monsters constantly searching for you to break you apart like a cheap Crème brûlée. Once the creatures find you, your time spent debating over whether it was more practical to carry bottled spring water or bottled mineral water will have been for naught. The right answer is always both, to be clear.

In a convenience store, standing confused between two near empty aisles, I don't know how I noticed the figures approaching through the murky cracked windows, but I had rocketed out the back entrance before I realised that my legs were moving. This was how I lived now - terrified, and on the run.

That's post-Flare life for you.

In comparison, pre-Flare life is that that kid who gets shoved against his locker by post-Flare life, just because it wanted to assert its authority. Post-Flare life is a real bitch.

Which brings me back to my current task and second rule. In the destruction that came after the disasters and solar flares, looting is not only essential, it has become a part of everyday life; which is why I find myself rummaging through an empty convenience store for any trace of bottled water, because rule number two is to stay hydrated.

The EMP from the solar flares completely took out the power. All the power, all around the globe. Goodbye electricity, goodbye hot showers, goodbye midnight cups of cocoa. I will miss you all. Terrible as it may seem, the loss of electricity wasn't the worst thing to arise from the solar flares.

Radiation from the sun shattered the earth's ozone layer, and there was no saving yourself with SPF 100 suntan lotion after that. It brought about record breaking heat, which soon became the norm. Walking across the desolate earth in 150 degree heat became part of my every day life, which is why I've always got water. You're more likely to die of dehydration after the Flare began than you are of AIDS, Cancer and Ebola combined.

Another rule I follow strictly is to apply lotion twice a day. A good rule regarding the radiation and skin melting heat, but it isn't the top contender.

My number one rule; Never stop moving.

For those of you who don't know - radiation isn't exactly healthy to be exposed to, and it caused infection almost instantaneously. There are three categories of people now that the radiation has begun - those who died, those who changed, and those who wished they were dead.

For those who died, it was a pretty straightforward deal. Solar flares began, radiation hit earth, their bodies couldn't handle it, they met their maker. Bodies were burned, buried, or left as they were. That was the end for them. Lucky bastards.

For those who changed, it made life for the living a nightmare. A lot of people who changed paralleled that of zombies because of their mottled flesh, the smell of decay that followed them like a rash, and those grunts and groans that distinguished zombies from humans that you'd see in the countless movies and video games. The only difference was that, unlike zombies, those infected by the flares didn't crave flesh.

They craved destruction.

The radiation seemed to flip a switch in the brains of the infected, who became prone to violent outbursts and acts of intentional rage. Imagine asking if your loved one was okay, only to have them turn angrily to you and try to rip your eyes from their sockets. The infected seemed to be completely repulsed by normal people, and would stop at nothing to maul them as maliciously as possible.

Once they found you, they wouldn't stop until you were a pile of blood, guts and dismembered body parts. They wouldn't even take a moment once they were done to admire their artwork, or lick their fingers appreciatively like they did in the Kentucky commercials. You are not a tasty meal to the infected. You are a plague that they will stop at nothing to exterminate. Kill one human, then find another human to take apart. It wasn't efficient, but it was effective.

Effective enough to scare the final category of people left - those who wish they were dead.

There were upwards of seven billion people on earth before the flares began. After the flares hit, that number had been sliced in half. One third of that number were lost to radiation, one third was changed by radiation, and the final third are left to rebuild their lives after the radiation. Sadly, I form the latter.

Which, dear reader, is why I find myself in a convenience store obeying my second rule and filling my backpack with bottled water. Spring and mineral, as previously stated. I drink religiously. I also have to urinate religiously. These two events are sadly linked.

Aside from the twelve bottles of water, my backpack houses nothing more than a few bags of M&M's (melted and melded together), some granola bars and beef jerky (I don't like either but can't seem to find anything else to eat), a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird that I never returned to the library (64 weeks overdue and counting, and I'm still not done reading.) one bottle of sun tan lotion and one bottle of cocoa butter lotion, and deoderant. If I get torn to pieces by an Infected, I hope they honour the fact that I smelled strongly of musk from beginning to end. I also keep a titanium baseball bat as opposed to a gun, which would be the worst possible weapon to keep in a world of pin-drop-echoing silence.

You may think that I haven't much to eat, or that I don't carry around a change of underwear, but the one thing I've found is that because of the drastically low rate of mortality, nearly every store I enter is completely untouched. I'm free to pick and choose what I want at will. Barely anybody has taken anything, and there's nobody to stop me.

Nobody.

There lies the biggest downside to life after the Flares. Lonesomeness. You may think its a good idea travel light, and travel alone during the apocalypse, and you're completely correct, and entirely wrong.

Survival may be a primal instinct, but sometimes it gets hard to find the reason that I want to survive any longer without someone to survive for.

I haven't heard the sound of another person's voice in well over five months, distant screams of panic aside, or seen another person that wasn't being mangled by an infected. I'd give anything to hear my parents complaining about how antisocial I was just once more.

Zipping up my backack and slinging it over my shoulders, I give the convenience store one last look and retreat after a hefty sigh. The back door was my way out, and I quietly exit the establishment.

The usually bright and invasive sun has given way to golden arcs across the vacant city as the sky gives way to twilight, and I begin moving across the asphalt of the road forward through the city. Nighttime will arrive soon, and I wish I could tell myself that hiding away in darkness is safer, but it isn't. I can hide from the creatures, but I can't hide from my own nagging anxiety. The fear of being killed plagues my every waking moment.

Cities like the one I'm currently trudging through were quickly overrun by nature, with grass and weeds growing out of cracks in the tarred roads, and vines starting to form at the base of abandoned buildings. The air is humid and dry, thick enough to make you feel like your throat is closing up.

There's a growling in the distance that I'd travelled from, and I pick up the pace, willing myself not to look back. I know the creatures will be on my trail sooner or later, and I'll just have to keep moving with no intended course in mind, but I'll never willingly surrender myself to them. By magic and voodoo alone, I somehow managed to survive an entire year of destruction.

A year ago, the disasters hit, the flares began and the infection started. A year ago, life came to an end, but I'm determined to live another day.