These are the first two days of NaNoWriMo

A bullet lances through the roach’s oversized head, insectoid viscera splashing against and soaking into parched earth, irradiated dirt and shriveled flora. He curses, but takes a knife to the joint anyway, separating it at the thorax and tying the damaged goods to the string about his waist, joined with its fellows once more.
Rippling muscles and a strong chin that juts from beneath his almost comically defined jaw-line make his silhouette an unmistakable one, cast down from the entrance of the shantytown from the sun at his back. He strides up to the barkeep, confidence bursting from every fiber of his being, and slams the chain of roach heads down upon the counter.
“This the ten you wanted, chief?”
The bartender cocks an eyebrow as if surprised, but shakes his head and slips the quarry beneath the counter, replacing it with a stack of ammunition.
“Close ‘nuff. Now git outta here. Spookin’ the guests.”
It is the waster’s turn to feign surprise.
“Gone? After all I’ve done for your folks, who would be scared of little old me?”
He punctuates this with a flex of his bare arms, caked in dust and grime, but still glistening with sweat and the light from the sky – his perfect biceps. A gaggle of florid harpies, wrapped in the pretense of shallow lust, gather around him and coo plaintively, stroking the firm musculature beneath his tank top. He smiles his best shit-eating grin and drapes his arms over them as the bartender fumes.
“So… Which one’s your daughter?”
The fist is interrupted by a loud chime and a small, gray box. The image of the hand in flight fades, replaced by a teal Windows desktop, effaced by the all-too-familiar error message that had been crashing Jack’s game for weeks. How was he supposed to conquer the wastes of the North-East at this rate?
“How am I supposed to conquer the wastes of the North-East at this rate?”
A break: that was what he needed. The chair protested as he rose, pleather gripping his ass and refusing to let go. It was not that Jack was particularly large, or even obnoxiously ugly. He just wasn’t exceptionally anything.
He wobbled downstairs on uncertain legs. How long had it been since he’d left his room? Hell, how long had it been since he’d saved his game? The sudden thought sent shivers of horror down his spine and drew a groan from between chapped lips.
The kitchen was empty, his family out at their jobs and other responsibilities. He had no such luck and was thankful for it every day. God bless irresponsibility! He crumpled up the note from his mom, telling him it was time to at least look for a job, and opened the fridge, grabbing some jelly to match his peanut butter. The bread lay forgotten in its drawer.
Jack didn’t see the flash or hear the bang. He was busy rummaging through the refrigerator and was knocked unconscious by the initial shockwave as it ripped through the kitchen wall and slammed his head forward, body crumpling to the tile, blood running in rivulets from a gash in his forehead to the white and black squares upon which he’d fallen. He would remember nothing of the experience when he awoke, but the image of that fluorescent light, of day old veal parmesan and day before last hamburgers au poivre, would forever be burned into his retinas. It would be both his most blessed and most cursed memory, for it would remind him of what he had once had and, hard as he might try, what he would never have again.

The door didn’t open. It wasn’t that it was locked, or even that the hinges were welded shut, though both were true. No, the wood was solid and secure in its frame, but the wall around it had crumbled into dust, a shambles of its former self. Tattered rags that had once been Armani-branded duds dangled limply from his shoulder, the socket where his arm should have joined his body less than a stump. Blood, some, but more so pus had stained the suit from within, but it was preferable to leaving the wound exposed and, crusty as the jacket may become… He simply couldn’t bring himself to care.
His head spun and his legs could barely take him forward, but he reached the kitchen somehow, saw the wreckage that had once been a tastefully decorated, contemporary home of modest, upper-middle class size. Again, his senses were dulled to it, numb to the pain he should have felt – would have felt – had his house been destroyed under any other circumstances. No, these circumstances were specific. They were too much. He was too tired, too hurt, too… too.
Just “too.”
The upstairs no longer existed. His son’s computer was doubtless gone with it and, in all likelihood, so was his son, but he had to hope. He had to think that, maybe, maybe his useless, good-for-nothing leech of a son, love him though he did, had been lounging around in the kitchen, the kitchen that was covered in what had once been its ceiling and the upper level’s floor.
He was too dazed to listen for breathing, his hearing focused on his own heavy, labored intakes and exhalations. He only had one working arm, but he put it and his feet to good use, kicking and throwing aside surface debris, sweat pouring from his brow and splinters ripping flesh from his hand and legs.
It felt like hours. It wouldn’t have surprised him if it had been hours, lost to time and any of the sensations that may have given him pause – the sun was not the only source of heat, not anymore, and his eyes were rapidly degrading from nested, burned images overlapping and intertwining into an impenetrable tapestry of the past so thick that he could not see what lay in front of his knees as he fell to them, felt the chest stop him short of the floor and the cough of life from below as his own body breathed its last and keeled to the side, upon its stump-less side. The light, having already faded from his eyes, receded deeper within until his skin was ash gray, radiation charred flesh flaking away in a slight breeze that he could no longer feel.

Jack coughed. He hacked and gagged and filled the air with spit and dust, bile soon coming to join it. By the time he saw his father, dead beside him with his flesh torn almost to the bone on an entire flank, there was nothing left in his stomach with which to mourn him. His throat burned and tears stung his eyes and warped his vision. This was a godsend, as it took the image of the man who begot him over two decades ago, who raised him in his own family’s tradition, and twisted it into something unrecognizable – so much easier to swallow than that familiar form lying so still and broken.
Unable or unwilling to find anything to dig with, he buried his father beneath stacked layers of what was once his home, dry wood and cooked plaster. The tears stopped, eventually, and with them gone his mind turned to other issues. He had always been a loser, a lost soul. A parasite, to quote his sister.
He hoped she was dead, too. Just for a second before he caught himself and realized how terrible a thought it was, how happy he would be to see her alive and well right now. His father was dead, his sister and mother were nowhere near him, the refrigerator was broken and the food within likely irradiated beyond all belief – the water blasted away wholesale… He was utterly alone and, worst of all, the lack of an upstairs told him there was no way his save files were intact.
Fuck.
Only one question remained, eating away at his mind from within. The key, the one he must answer because it was the only question that mattered. That most important of matters, “So what now?”
Why did it have to be so… Perplexing?

The outside world was familiar, and it was that very familiarity that bred such disgust. Twisted caricatures of what they once were, houses stood bent and broken, slanted aside and tilted inward from their caved in frames. The neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Miller, sat in their seats in their living room, visible through what was once a full-wall window, only remnant slivers of glass around the edges of its pane. Jack moved closer, creeping slowly along the dried husk of a yard, grass dissolving beneath his heels. He entered through the window and stopped mid-wave, cooked shadows in place of his godparents, pitch-black forms in sharp relief against the floral patterns of their recliners. He averted his gaze, relieved and disturbed at once that his gag reflex had apparently been jaded into non-existence. He stepped between them, past the remains of a cheap end-table, and into their bathroom where he found there medicine cabinet.
Aspirin should be fine, he figured. So too were the bandages, which he wrapped about his forehead to stop the cut where he had struck the refrigerator. He looked into the largest whole piece of the mirror and appraised his stubble, his pale, unfocused eyes and dark hair, untidy, unwashed and now covered in dust. After knocking back a pair of aspirin he punched the mirror, shattering the glass behind the reflection into a myriad of sparkling crystals, tumbling listlessly to the ground. Grunting in pain, breath labored, he wrapped his knuckles in the bandages and stumbled back into the living room, flicked on the television and crashed to his knees before it, falling to his side against the carpet. His face began to itch.
He was so preoccupied with the thoughts of his father and the Millers, the sensation of scratchy old carpet against his cheek, that he almost missed the brief flash of activity on the screen, the burst of sound from the speakers.
“Citizens of Stamford, Connecticut: This is an automated emergency protocol. Please do not panic…”

The car had been left, still running, in his driveway. Thank God for small favors. The emergency tank warning blared at him as he pulled out, but he wasn’t going far enough for it to matter. Just a quick jaunt on the highway over to Stamford’s downtown, the now-desolate high rises with their empty windows and shadows burned into the ground. It was the Stamford Town Center that he was after which, despite its name, was simply a mall.
The announcement had pegged it, though, as the place to go, the spot to congregate at for any and all who could hear the announcement. It was the only hint of civilization, of anyone still living, he had yet seen and so, as his car puttered down the street on the last of its gasoline, he kept an eye out for any flashes of movement, any indication of human presence.
The mall was a shambling hulk of twisted architecture, the lot of it ripped up and thrown back down in random order. He passed the entrance to the parking garage, barricaded with crumbled concrete. The car gassed out near the end of the block and Jack got out, took the keys just in case and started around to the back of the building, toward the recently completed outdoor food court. It was here that he saw the crater, the spot where the bomb had hit, the epicenter of downtown Stamford’s destruction. It was here that he saw the cooked bodies of the mall-goers, skeletons peeking through where there had once been flesh, twisted dioramas of families and lovers in mid-bite, frozen forever in ashen prisons, devoid of life. It was here that he met his first, fellow survivors.
It was here that he found hope.

It was a slow process, building a shelter. One of the others with a car had rationed out the gasoline that remained in his tank, spreading it between the Jack and the other two, who had come together, so that the lot of them could take what little material they could find and transport it, quickly, to a less irradiated zone. They ended up in the forest, trees still clinging to life with the fervor that only hundreds of years of existence can bring, that grim determination of their dignified station. There was not enough time or material to build their shelters just yet, but they had the trees to take from and, thanks to a bit of resourcefulness, they had an axe. Today, it only tasted the sap of branches, and little sap at that. The dry wood made for a passable fire, and they were able to sit and heat themselves at the chill of night settled upon them.

Don was the owner of the pickup truck, the axe and even the gasoline that ran through Jack’s car. He was a man out of his time, designed for and reveling in hard, manual labor. His body reflected this in his tremendous strength, hirsute appearance and a number of scars and injuries, most notably a duo of missing fingers on his right hand. He joked that the axe he’d brought was the beast that had taken them, blood for an inseparable bond.
Megan and Zach were step-siblings whose parents had married only a few years before. Unlike Don, who was already broaching middle age, these two were a few years younger than Jack. Megan was slim with dark features and, if she hadn’t been covered in soot and he hadn’t had to bury his father’s corpse hours before, Jack most likely would have been reduced to a blubbering mess. Zach was a red-head with the freckles to prove it. He was quiet, though that might have been a result of the circumstances. As it stood, he found himself shying from conversation, as did the rest of them and, before long, they had returned to their respective vehicles for the night. As Jack closed his eyes and felt the weight of sleep descend on him, rolling down over his mind, he allowed himself the brief moment of panic he had been holding back since he’d woken up in the kitchen. Where did he think he was going to go? What did he think he was going to do? It had been hard enough to find a job when society hadn’t fallen into nuclear holocaust around him – how was he supposed to do it now that it had?
He did not sleep restfully that night.

Morning broke with all the delicacy of a dancing hippopotamus. Jack’s eyes opened to the kitchen of his old home, stacked shelves of his refrigerator filled with food and his belly rumbling. The one faded but the other remained, that hunger eating at him and reminding him that, despite the circumstances, he needed to find something for his stomach.
The fire had burned down over the course of the night and left only embers in its wake. They glinted dimly in the morning light. Don stood hunched over them, a stick in his hand, prodding the small pile of ashes within the ring of stones. He turned as Jack approached and waved.
“Hey.”
Jack’s reflex was to wave back, but his hand went to his rumbling belly mid-movement. He smiled sheepishly.
“Sorry. Are Zach and Megan up, yet?”
Don shook his head. He shifted the burnt pile around a bit more, then grabbed some more branches from his side and put them in the circle, threw on as small a portion of gasoline as he could and lit them up. They burst into amber and orange flame, along with the occasional flicker of blue. Without another word, Don took a sheet of aerated metal, small holes allowing the fire to breathe, and lay it upon the flame, a small skillet atop that. Two eggs and some bacon were all it could fit.
Appropriate it was, as that was all he had.
“You’ve got your own?”
Jack shook his head. He hadn’t been expecting this and was surprised enough that Don had anything, despite all the establishments they’d passed on their way out. It just hadn’t struck him to pick anything up. For his part, Don didn’t seem to be caught unawares and begrudged the younger man a portion of his food: an egg and a strip of bacon.
“The other two’ll just have to fend for themselves today.”
They shared a smile and a chuckle, but their spirits couldn’t bear anything more just yet. Maybe later, years or decades down the road. Maybe only days, for who truly knew how the mind would recuperate from something such as this? They gave it no further thought, eating eggs with plastic utensils and bacon with dirty hands. Zach and Megan, it turned out, had raided the local supermarket before they’d driven out to the Town Center. They didn’t find out that the effects of the nuclear strike had been so widespread until hours later, when they drove into downtown Stamford and saw the leaning towers of commerce and business. Their car was stocked to the roof with bottled water and dry and canned foods, non-perishables that they could keep for as long as they needed, for they didn’t know that they would ever come across another chance for such amenities. Money had been left on the counter, but they still felt guilt over taking packages of supplies from the shelves of the barren shop.
Even lukewarm, nothing compared to the refreshment of pure bottled water at that moment. They were immediately put into a better mood, a more joyous mood, their appetites curbed by cookies washed down with more of the precious fluid. They were still not ready to laugh, but they were ready to search. Don pulled out a gas station map and ripped it into three sections, each leading back to the town center, where they planned to meet before making camp that night. He took a marker and drew a path for each of them, tracing a progression through that section of the city that eventually curved back in on itself and took them home. They would survey the damage and lead any survivors back to the Town Center, where further action could be decided upon.

Jack struck out north and east, toward Norwalk. He avoided the highway, not trusting I-95 before the bombs and certainly not now. The Taco Bell at the edge of downtown, the Autozone further on, a recently completed apartment complex that had once been a used car lot… He passed them all and recognized them, but paid them no mind. He still couldn’t resist a stop into the liquor store, picking up enough alcohol that the possibility of “sterilizing wounds” became less a physical proposition and more of a mental one.
It took a few moments for him to realize he was in Darien. The trees that had once denoted the shift from one township to the next had browned and died, barren lots in their places. The effects of heat and radiation had spread so far, but he noticed, as he passed the homes of wealthy suburbanites, that the physical damage was much less pronounced. They had, apparently, been far enough from the blasts that only the aftereffects of the bombs had reached them. No broken homes and shattered buildings, here.
Past the Jaguar dealership, beyond the new library and small, kitschy shops for jewelry and knick-knacks, books with ancient bindings and archaic furniture, a gas station where the fuel still cost over three dollars a gallon. Up the hill leading out of town and into Norwalk, he felt something in the pit of his stomach. At first, he thought it might relate to the stagnant condition of the town, the lack of people and movement, there, but it seemed to matter less and less as he went.
No, this was a sense of foreboding and, as he crested the rise and lay eyes on Norwalk for the first time since before the blast, his eyes shot open and his pupils shrank, the image of the kitchen returning once more. He hit the brakes and stopped, but found no solace in time, no balm in thought.
Norwalk, Connecticut was not desolate. It was decimated.