Daniel, he thought, coming to consciousness grudgingly.
What loving mother would ever choose Daniel as a name? It wasn’t the name so much as it was the origin: his deadbeat father.. Daniel Epsaeson. Thankfully, dear doddering ma had blessed him with her last name: Stuart.
Stuart sounded like the name of a pastry. Epsaeson sounded like ‘Epsom’s salt,’ and ‘epilepsy’ or something, said by a drunken lisper. Then again, that’s what dear ol’ Dad was.. so…
He got out of his small, square-ish bed, prepared to get to the Greenhouse and toil for a shift. The underground apartment complex was oddly quiet; no children lowing, no lovers rutting. This was odd. Odd, yes, indeed. He paused at his door, his pants half-hitched. "Hello?" he ventured. He could hear unattended alarm clocks going off in unison. What the fuck..?
He wandered out in to the hall. Doors were left open, beds thrown asunder. There were trails of small items, mostly children's toys, dropped in the chaos. He did up his pants. Disregarding his shirt, he wandered the halls for a while, occasionally calling out to potential survivors. None were to be found. He trudged back to his apartment, his little hole in the wall; he'd have run of the town for a month or so, before anyone came back to Thursday to claim the land. I could stay in a penthouse, hot damn, he thought, too timid to say things aloud.
He braved the outdoors, briefly cursing that he hadn't grabbed a Briiomask. He was bundled right the fuck up, just in case there was some bio-warfare stuff hiding about. His big black jacket tucked under his chin, pinching/pulling on unshaven hairs. His pants were the standard for Greenhouse activities; coated with a rubber that repelled acid.
The streets were eerie. Hovocars littered the streets; in the past, pets would have wandered aimlessly, but animals had been outlawed for a decade, as a pest-control measurement. Papers danced in the air, all bearing the message that the Hurricans were coming. Some fliers taped to electrical beam-casings declared that the Motts were going to get them all. Make up your minds…
He was in a fine mess. With no one around in town, all of them most likely evacuated due to an anticipated air-strike by the Hurrican army. Well, not just anticipated anymore. It it came true. He knew it had started with an argument, swapped from one file clerk last week, to a dictator. That dictator being the Motts’ leader.. his leader, Jannai Smitt, it had been awkward to know that his own overlord intended to bomb Thursday – Daniel’s own county. Daniel must have slept through the city’s rush to escape. Being in an underground apartment with earplugs carried half of the blame, in his mind. The other half belonged to Daniel’s 16-hour a day job in the Greenhouse. That hot, muggy hellhole zapped his energy, leaving him to sleep like the dead for short bursts. One of these times was this one: the evacuation.
With Jannai Smitt’s planned assault, Thursday was to be reduced to a twisted metal wasteland. And, so – it should have been. There were placard signs left over from the rush informed him that this was to be Ground Zero. There were no signs of structural damage, aside from a few random fires.
He cursed his mother again, knowing full well that she was safe over in Sunder.
“That bitch. Of course, this would never happen to her. Yeah, yeah, yeah…” His voice in the calm startled him.
Sunder. That gawd-awful suburbia. It was worse, he thought, that living here, amidst the dizzying buildings, and the clustered inhabitants. Sunder was like a retirement home, where the Chosen paraded. Mother wasn’t a Chosen citizen. She was more of a nanny for a family of those asswipes. Regardless of the televators telling him that the Chosens were special and needed, he and most of the citizenry believed that they were leftovers from the old system.
“Chosen my ass. Chosen to make my life a living shithole. Fuck.” Now he was feeling a little more comfortable with the shock of hearing himself without background noise.
The old system was flawed. This one was supposed to be an improvement on the laxness of the former; it was.. for the normal people.
He stepped over little mines. They were obviously dropped for the people left behind. Sort of a preview-surprise for anyone unfortunate enough to have stayed at home. With a dawning horror, he thought, They haven't bombed yet…
Tripping, regardless of his new-found caution, he caught a blast right in the face. It was one of the Disfiguring Mines. It took off his jaw; these mines were the type that cauterized whatever was left. Daniel was left with his tongue.. well, some of it.
Pushing hands up to his face, all he could feel was pins and needles. His mind swarmed with protests, curses, and denials.
“Fuck,” he tried to say. "Hu—" he managed, finishing with a pathetic gurgle.
The Zeoroplanes loomed, zipping overhead.
Fuck…