Day 5

Yeah, I skipped yesterday. Found an old building to scavenge from; I think it used to be a house. Pretty big one. A bit of rubble behind it and next to it looked like the remains of two more houses. So, I spent the day digging through for anything worthwhile. Found a blanket, couple usable tools, some clothes. Got some cans that I hope are food, but the labels are long rotted away. And, big jackpot, I found several guns and a good bit of ammo. Keeping one of the pistols for myself, and I can trade away the rest. Found a decent-sized satchel I can carry them all in, too, easy to drop if I need my hands free.

So, as I was saying, humanity is no longer alone. Or might be. It all depends on who you talk to. There's the cats, for example. Some people have never seen any at all. Others have seen some, but they don't believe stories of them being smart. Others, like me, know that there's something scary going on there.

Humanity itself has changed, too. Some'll tell you its diverged; others will say we've evolved. And still others will say that there are “abominations” walking around, who mock humanity's form and should be destroyed on sight. Me, I like to say humanity's diverged. I've met them, spoken to them, traded with them, worked with them. Radiation has soaked into our species, changing us, and there are different kinds of people now, all walking this wasteland together and trying to rebuild or just to survive.

There's plain-old humanity, regular people eking out a living, usually building farms and towns on top of the ruins of the old. Then there's the Dyers, people who can look anywhere from near-dead to decades-dead, and they often try to live underground where the sun can't reach their sensitive skin. And last are the Mutates: giant brutes, like the radiation made a person's muscles and bones half again normal size.

And then there's the Rad Witches. They can come from any of the others, really, but they're most common from plain-old humanity. I just don't know whether to consider them something separate, like the Dyers or Mutates. First, they're much rarer. Second, they seem just like anybody else, by appearance. What they can do, though, sets them apart. I'll have to think how to explain it, go into more detail later.