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Prologue

The year 2024 marked the beginning of the end, as is the way of life.

The economic collapse of France started a domino effect that the EU tried desperately to stop, draining the surrounding countries of their resources; toppling one country after another. Before anyone knew it the whole of Europe was drowning in debt, sickness, and homeless. Banks collapsed, insurance companies failed, hospitals ran out of supplies; and then so did the groceries. The governments, desperate for any aid, called out to anyone who would listen. China, Russia, Brazil, Japan, South Africa, Canada and America responded by providing aid…but that aid came with a price.

The freestanding countries saw this as an opportunity to exploit the EU for their own gain, essentially buying countries to spread their influence. America, China, and Russia were the worst offenders, before long resorting to spycraft and assassination to get their way.

The histories are fuzzy depending on who you ask, but they all agree on one thing; the resulting war, though lasting only three weeks, was the bloodiest in all of human history. In a matter of days the population of the planet was reduced by billions, and in the following years the radioactive fallout reduced it even further. When the dust settled, the face of the planet was remade. The winter was predicted to last for two centuries.

Humans are nothing if not a stubborn species. No matter how cold it got, no matter how hungry they were, they endured. They endured through the famine, the sickness, and war, and out of the ashes of death they rose. But as with all things in life, there was a price. Society as recorded in the history texts was gone, and in its place was a much harsher, bleaker, barbarian style of life where people traded luxury for survival.

Slavery was reintroduced into the civilized world, first shunned by the governments and historians but later embraced as ‘indentured servitude.’ It devolved into outright slavery when people could no longer pay their debts, and became cheap labor.

Food was the difference between life and death, and as such the penalty for theft was to either lose a hand, or death, depending on the severity. With harsh theft laws came much relaxed murder laws. This was the apocalypse, after all; people were desperate and desperate people did insane things. It was up to each family to protect themselves against the bandit and rapists. Carrying a weapon became the expected standard whether you were rich enough to afford a rifle and ammo, or if you just carried an axe wherever you went.

By the year 2124, people had congregated into relatively huge metropolises for survival, but the perpetual winter had made resources scarce and the fight for survival became a daily battle that many lost. Neighborhoods split, then towns. Soon, kings were declared, wars were fought and lost, and the people fled society to eke out a living on the sweat of their brow and work on the land, rather than to rely on the fickle market to supply their needs, should they even have the resources to barter.

Emil Jackson had been born on January 31st, 2162, in the ancient city of Nogales. Being along the equator, it was one of the few cities that still occasionally saw the sun. When it fell to war and strife, his family, along with many others, had struck east towards the ocean to start a life ranching sheep, goats, and rabbits. They settled in the barren tundra of Oklahoma, the furthest north any one dared live; it was the last settlement before the ice fields of the expanded arctic circle began.

Oklahoma winters were long, harsh, and the grass and any other greenery was tough. But that was the point. Emil and his family claimed hundreds of acres no one else wanted, and using hoarded ancient knowledge of the ‘world before’ they put into practice forgotten techniques for animal husbandry, architecture, and dairy farming. The ranch boomed and soon their herd numbered in the hundreds; but as is the way of life, this was simply the end of the beginning.

Chapter 1

Emil woke slowly, the steam of his breath frosting his beard with a thin crust of ice. For the thousandth time he wished desperately for electric heaters like he heard about in the wealthier towns. He yawned and stretched, his limbs all akimbo beneath the goat hide blankets as he listened to the wind whip outside his walls and a stray goat bleat somewhere nearby. Joints cracking he slowly kicked off the blankets, forcing himself out of bed to start the day.

‘I really need to get better insulation before winter hits,’ he thought to himself. ‘Or at least some of those long-burn briquettes they sell in market.’

Emil swung his legs over the bed, pulling on his thickest wool socks spun from his own shearings, and stomped his feet into his boots. He walked the few feet over to the small kitchen to start the fire for breakfast, using tinder and goat fluff. It smelled awful but it worked and, well….waste not want not and all that. olgun porno Life out here in the tundra was too harsh to suffer the indulgences of fools.

While the fire began licking merrily along the thin logs in his stove, Emil ducked into the washroom to relieve himself. Unbuttoning his pants he jumped when the cold hit his cock, and he swore yet again to put better insulation in his house; he dreamed of walking around and sleeping naked without the fear of frostbite, instead of the endless layers of furs, leather, and denim.

“Thank fuck for gortex,” He thought aloud.

As he walked back into the kitchen to reheat some rabbit stew, he thought about how his current crop of rabbits could use a good culling, and his pantry could use some refreshing. He went over a mental checklist in his head yet again for what he was going to buy today in market. He had thirty-three goat pelts, seventy-eight rabbit pelts, and ten compacted bales of wool to trade. It was the largest set of wares he had ever taken to market; it would net him enough coin to set himself up for a comfortable winter and hopefully establish his reputation. Perhaps even enough to take on an apprentice as help, especially now that his parents were gone.

As an only son in an unforgiving world he’d known it was a matter of reality that sooner or later he would lose his family and be on his own. He had just been hoping it would have been later in life than his 23 years. His father had been killed by bandits two winters ago, when the old man had gone to market to sell their latest batch of Dutch rabbits for food and pelts. His mother had died of scurvy the winter after when their bean sprouts died after a harsh storm.

Emil finished slurping the last of his rabbit stew and rinsed out his wooden bowl and spoon in the sink before heading out to the barn to check on the cargo he would be taking to town. He opened the snow door and frowned as the cold of the room sucked all the heat from his little kitchen fire right out of the house. Even for just those few minutes, it had been nice to not be cold for a change.

He carefully closed the interior door, and then opened the exterior door, steeling himself, and was surprised with a pleasant breeze that he guessed to be in the high 30’s. It was going to be a warm day today, which meant he wouldn’t have to worry about ice on the roads. Although he would have to worry about potholes on his way back.

He looked to the east at the expansive pasture his sheep were munching away happily on the tough grass as the sun finished clearing the horizon. To the north, the goats were a little slower to get up, perfectly content to sleep until it got a little warmer. Emil headed over to the barn, peeking in on the rabbits huddled together in their well insulated pen.

“Sorry little buddies, I gotta take away the warm.” Emil told them, genuinely feeling a little bad about having to remove the bales of wool stacked against the sides of the hutch.

He then turned and smiled as he walked over to the pride and joy of the Jackson ranch, the truck. It wasn’t an original truck of course, it didn’t have any of the fancy bells and whistles one of the ancient trucks used to have, but it was solid and dependable, made more so by the care that Emil has put into it. He treated this truck with an old motto he read in book once: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So every chance he got, Emil babied that truck, making sure that it would never let him down. He even once splurged on an original logo from one of the old world trucks and placed in on his grill with pride. ‘U Haul,’ it read, and according to the shopkeeper who’d sold it to him, it had been one of the largest vehicle companies in the old world. Their trucks had been so nice that people would come from miles around just to rent them for a day or two. Emil liked the way the red letters stood out against the silver of the steel, and it felt almost as if he owned one of those fancy old trucks.

After admiring his baby for an indulgent moment, he then connected the battery, filled up the tank from the hand crank on the fifty-gallon drum full of precious fuel, and started it up. It fired up to life on the first cycle with a roar and he left it to warm up as he loaded up the truck bed with his bales of wool and goat pelts. He put the rabbit pelts in the cabin so they wouldn’t fly away.

He then checked the rabbits, making sure they were adjusting ok without the extra insulation the bales had provided, then threw a couple of rocks at the goats to get them up and moving about. Grabbing his list from the house he jumped in the truck and began his three-hour journey south to the market.

Chapter 2

Emil argued heatedly with the squat little wool merchant,Kim, who he was confident had been trying to take advantage of him ever since his father died.

“No, it’s two gold for a bale! It always has been, and don’t you dare tell me my wool isn’t the best this side of porno the Mississippi!” Said Emil, frustrated

“Of course it is, I never said that. I said that there’s a rancher in Laredo who had a good flock this year and prices have gone down. I have to make a profit,” said the short man, wearing a fastidiously clean jacket and trousers dyed red to stand out among grey light of the overcast sky. Emil had never liked Kim; his father had always said to be suspicious of men who are too clean in a filthy world because it just means they make others do their work for them.

“It’s two gold a bale, or I can find another merchant who will give me fair prices,” Emil told him, crossing his arms as a signal of finality.

“You’re lucky I’m offering one gold and twenty silver per! That’s the old friend rate!” Kim whined. “You want my family to starve?”

“You charge a silver piece a sock, your family eats fine.”

“Fine! But only because your dad was a loyal customer all these years.” Kim said dejectedly, as he handed over the money, half in silver and half in gold. “Come Wintersnight you’re going to have to learn that the market fluctuates, and I won’t always be able to meet your unreasonable demands.”

Emil just grunted and pocketed the coin, grateful to be done with the whining little man. Even though he had gotten exactly what he asked for he was positive that Kim had still bested him somehow, and one look at Kim’s two children was more than enough proof that his family could skip quite a few meals without starving.

Kim had been his last buyer of the day, since Eimil had been saving the worst for last. He had done well overall, losing a little money on the goat hide, but he’d made a lot of money on the rabbit with someone saying something about rabbit lined collars on jackets being popular.

‘Even in the apocalypse people still want to be fashionable,’ Emil mused to himself.

Now he could go about the business of purchasing supplies he would need for winter. He bought wood, coal, lard, whiskey, oil, two new sharpening files, nails, rope, tarp, and a variety of fresh, canned, and seed vegetables. He paid special attention to beans for the winter to stave off the scurvy lesson that was now ingrained in him. A few bales of house insulation that looked like they had been through an entirely different apocalypse was his last find.

As he walked around the market, he told the shop keepers that he was on the lookout for an apprentice for next spring. He had hoped the Tanner’s son would be open minded, especially since he already knew the value of a good hide; but the boy was already filling in for Tanner senior who was recovering from a broken wrist. There were a few girls in town that liked the idea of working on a ranch, but they were all young enough that they would be more hindrance than help, and none of the family heads liked the idea of a teenage girl spending a winter with a twenty-something year old man. Not that they needed to worry, he didn’t like them that young.

He even approached old man Rivers the fisherman, but he was so far beyond his prime Rivers wasn’t sure he’d make it through another winter, especially in an environment as rough as the Jackson ranch.

Emil was starting to panic. There were no hands to help with his ranch and it was far too big to handle for only one person. It had taken the whole family to build it, then two people to maintain, and now it was just Emil and he was going to be drowning in work sooner rather than later. He needed help and he needed it now, before the coming spring at the latest.

“I need a gorram drink,” he said to himself with a sigh of exasperation. He walked over to the Prancing Pony tavern, thinking intently at his boot tips and taking care not to step in any of the horse apples strewn about. The rearing horse sign above the door creaked in the warm breeze as it swung gently, and the corners of the tin snow roof flapped gently. He opened the heavy exterior door and kicked his boots against the door frame to knock free the mud and offal. Walking through the interior door his senses were assaulted by the smell of straw, beer, unwashed bodies and then, blissfully…warmth.

In the center of the room was a huge raised metal fire pit. It quarter-inch thick walls were easily three feet high and four feet across, and in the middle there was what appeared to be a chunk of one of those old power-line-tree things that the ancients had planted everywhere, now roaring away merrily and filling the room with blessed heat.

Emil grumbled to himself, “At least the Pony has proper insulation.”

He sat at the bar that circled the fire pit and waited for one of the tavern girls to swing by, ordering a hot toddy once she did, and took off his outermost coat to just soak up the heat. When the girl dropped off his drink he drank in another sort of warmth and enjoyed the way it burned on the way down. The short brunette who’d brought the drink was very pretty, with a heart shaped face, framed well by her bangs, Porno izle a short shirt amplified her perky tits with its rather crass neckline, and her shorter skirt hinted at other… plump qualities. He enjoyed his view surreptitiously, not wanting to make a scene, but after all he was a twenty-three year old healthy male and so was his cock, which was currently begging to have his full and complete attention. A giggle let him know he had been caught, and as he met the green eyes of the girl, he blushed and she threw back her head roared with laughter at his blush.

“You can look, sweetie, but don’t touch,” she said as she spun away with a little flair he was sure was intentional, allowing him just a peek at her cute little ass and distinct lack of underwear. Emil coughed as he accidentally inhaled his hot toddy, and brushed himself off pointedly, ignoring anyone looking at him. He buried himself in his drink, downing it as fast possible so he could get the hell out before he made and even bigger ass of himself. He dropped a few coppers on the counter to tip the girl and pulled his jacket on as he stomped towards the door.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of yellow and he looked up to see a posterboard with advertisements for various wanted fugitives and odd jobs. A picture of a large man carrying an axe poked out from under another poster, catching his gaze. He lifted the poster and read the ad for the slave auction, taking place here in town tomorrow as it was held every Viernes. He looked at it thoughtfully for a minute and then yanked it off the wall, keeping it for later reference.

Maybe if he couldn’t get an apprentice through normal channels, he could buy some help. He lived far enough away from civilization that there was no way anyone could run away, and the flying spaghetti monster himself knew that he had enough food, and there was enough room now that there are two fewer occupants, he thought sadly.

Emil walked out to his truck and was checking his purchases making sure none of them had ‘walked off,’ when he remembered that he had forgotten to write down on his list the ceramic briquettes that he swore to himself he wouldn’t forget. He paused in the covered bed of the truck, stunned by the sheer level of stupidity it took to forget something he had told himself over and over again to not forget. It was too late to get them now; the shops were all closing up for the day.

“FUUUUCCCKKKKKKK my gorram life. This is…your are……aaaarrrgghhhh!” Emil swore. Now he was going to have to come back tomorrow to get the stupid briquettes, which was a huge waste of gas and more importantly, time. He sat down gingerly on a spool of wire he’d bought to mend the pens, and quickly did the numbers. It cost a silver a gallon of gas, it took twenty-two gallons round trip, so totaling up the two trips came to forty-four silver. Plus the silver he’d already spent on supplies, and the additional fifty silver for the briquettes, his grand total was well over five-thousand silver, total cost. That left him seventeen gold pieces and twenty-nine silver for a rainy day. He could afford to come back for the briquettes. The time, however, was something he could never get that back and a second six hour trip to look forward to wrecked his day.

Fuck it. The six hours of his life were worth a few extra silver; he’d just get a room and buy the briquettes in the morning. It’d probably be cheaper than the gas, anyways.

He stood up to crawl out of the truck bed and immediately caught his pant leg on an errant strand of wire sticking out of the spool he had purchased, tripping him to land painfully on his shoulder right on the tailgate of the truck. Cursing like a barmaid, he kicked the spool away from him and climbed out of the bed before it finished him off. He leaned against the side of the truck for a minute, feeling his shoulder throb, and tried to massage it through his thick coat, although he could barely tell he even had a shoulder under all that fabric.

He locked up the cargo shell on the bed with thick locks and made his way back inside the bar. He stumbled through the door and tried to take off his coat without moving his shoulder too much, but still winced when he had to tug on the sleeve. He probed the muscle tenderly, and shifted his shoulder around making sure it wasn’t dislocated or broken.

‘Just a nasty bruise,’ he thought to himself, ‘Thank fuck.’ He slumped against the wall of the mud room and stayed there for a second, just collecting himself back into something that vaguely resembled a capable adult. He eventually made his way through the interior door to the bar, walking back inside to the warmth being provided by what was left of the fire. Flagging down the sexy server, he asked her how much it was for a room.

“Twenty silver for the room, ten for a meal, two for laundry, and five for hot bath,” she said in the singsong voice of someone who has said the same sentence several hundred times. “For fifty silver, I’ll give you a bath myself, sweetie,” she said with a grin that very nearly made him stupid again. Emil counted out the silver for all the amenities; it had been a while since he had washed these clothes and nearly two weeks since his last hot bath, though describing it as ‘hot’ might have been overly optimistic.

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