Eutopia - Apocalypse

Chapter 1

Chapter One

The 'End' of the world had not come as anticipated. There had been no hellfire and brimstone, no 'Horsemen of the Apocalypse'. Truth be told, those four horses and their riders had been let loose upon the earth a long time before the 'end'. Human creation rather than any divine intervention. War, famine and pestilence had simply increased their attack throughout the ranks of mankind; hammering instead of creeping from village to town, city to continent.

For tens upon tens of years it continued, unchecked. The unbridled passion of humanity blazed like a flare, launching man higher than could be believed as he burst with knowledge and understanding to a point where he outshone the stars, only for him to combust. And fall. Oh, how mankind fell. Down, down, deeper and deeper until he was forced back through the ages. Electricity, technology, all the advances in science were destroyed until the world resembled little more than it had in what had once been called the 'Dark Ages'. It certainly was dark now. It seemed that no one in Eutopia's generation could recall life as it had been before Them. Even the generation before hers struggled to recall anything but Them.

Buildings that had stretched overreaching concrete fingers high up into the sky were now nothing but crumbled rubble, knocked back against the barren cities and towns that had dared to erect them, etched messily against an ever dark sky. Twisted metal husks of cars, blooming readily with rust and alive with the parasitic ivy and Japanese knotweed that had claimed most of the land now, remained where they had been abandoned more than seventy years previously. An everlasting reminder of the day that They had claimed the earth for Themselves.

Eutopia moved silently through those shadows now, it wasn't exactly difficult to do; there were an abundance of them, black against black. She slunk through the deserted mess of what had once been a street, the wrecked corpses of collapsed buildings throwing jagged and uneven shapes across what had long ago been bright, bustling spaces. Now, the light of the waxing moon cast deep pools of darkness, perfect for predators or any number of unsavoury characters to hide in. Eutopia was as light-footed as those stealthy night-time creatures that roamed unchallenged as soon as the orange haze of daylight faded. Dipping cautiously in and out of inky puddles and taking time to observe the area before and after to see if she was being followed, she had only one goal in mind.

She was as vigilant as the bright-eyed birds that pecked at the uneven ground during the day, their black silken wings shot through with a startling flash of blue as they took flight at the slightest sound. She inched across the broken landscape, hoping delicately from ivy-draped hollows to bare moonlit patches of uneven ground in a rhythmic pattern that would look totally bizarre to anyone who might be watching her, but of course she had checked and checked again to ensure she was alone.

Twelve steps right, sixteen in front. Twelve right, sixteen forward. Eutopia repeated the words silently to herself, timing each pat of her bare foot to the steady beat of her heart. Da-dum da, da-dum de-dum. It was a path she had travelled over and over in her mind, in practice, for the past week or so. But this was the first time she had tried it out in the open. Adrenaline fluctuated the beat of her heart and quickened her step faster than she would have liked but as long as she kept her steps in time, Eutopia knew that she wouldn't go wrong.

She paused, frozen beneath a haggard out-crop of worn masonry just a split second before the softest swoop glided over the silence. The Night Watch. Damnit. Eutopia cursed herself silently. She was moving too quickly. Although she knew she wouldn't put a foot wrong to dislodge any loose stone because she had committed the route to memory, creating a link between each step and every beat of her heart, her nervousness had thrown her timings out. And who could blame her? If she were caught out here by the Night Watch, she would pay with her life.