Blackout Forever-- Day 364

It was day 364 of the New World. That’s what everyone called it. Everyone that had survived. The death count was by the hour. For the first few months of the New World, everyone was kind of okay, we still had had essential needs like gas and food, before it spoiled, but as time went by, we have run out of those things. The New World was declared official when scientists all over the world couldn’t come up with any ideas on how to turn the power back on. On March 21, 2012 the world lost its electricity.

Crouching behind an abandoned building, I peered around the side of broken brick. With my gun loaded in hand, I waved the others over to follow, who were standing around the corner behind me. We were out hunting today. It was hunting season in the city. Ever since the New World began, people came in flocks to the cities all over the world. You couldn’t survive in the country or anywhere else these days. You had to be with a group of people or Others would attack you and eventually you would end up dead.

We called them Clans. Every single person was part of a Clan, an organized group of people that they could trust and were willing to work with. Clan’s could be small, from 2 to 10 people, or very large, from 11 to 30 or more. The greater the Clan was, the harder it was to get enough food for everyone, but the safer you were when it came to raids. People were frantic, and would do anything for food these days. I’ve heard stories that you couldn’t imagine. Things that would make your flesh crawl. People were desperate. Times were so hard; I didn’t know if the human race would survive.

But just like everyone else, I was only worrying about one certain thing. My Clan. We had 13 people, including my older brother, Jesse, my younger brother, Kyle, and 10 other people that were our friends and now family. If you weren’t close to your Clan, you wouldn’t have such a good chance surviving. If you Clan were mad or upset with you, they could easily betray you to the Others. The Others were what we, and by we I mean everyone all over the world, called our enemy’s. It was you and your Clan and nobody else mattered.

Now, we were waist high in tall dry grass, sprouted from the hard solid cement around the vacant buildings of the abandoned city and we were tracking a small herd of roe deer. Hunts were when you skimmed the city for wild roaming herds of animals or any people who were weak or betrayed by their Clan, who you could take hostage and either added to your Clan, which was rare, or trade them for other supplies.

Each Clan had different rules for hunts. If the group was smaller, then normally everyone would go on hunts, which could be dangerous for little kids, who you couldn’t risk to lose. Or, with a Clan like our size, which was a normal number, only certain aged people could go, for younger ones were to valuable and needed. In our Clan, you had to be at least 14 and know how to use a gun. That was me and Jesse, and the other 6.

To be continued...