Yesterday And Today (in need of critique)

Here's a post-apocalyptic story I wrote out a couple months ago. I think it's ready for some critique now. While this works rather well on its own, I'll probably expand it based on reader feedback. Formatting is far from perfect, since I'm copy/pasting directly from the Open Office document.

Yesterday and Today
Tomorrow Never Knows

A three foot piece of sharpened steel perforated his stomach.

It rummaged through his organs, tearing them and splitting skin, leaving his stomach a brutal mess. His attacker pulled back, wrenching her sword out of him. When he looked up at her with an irritated grimace, she charged at him once more. This attempt was clumsy and poorly thought out. Resisting the pain that he had become far too used to, the ragged man grabbed the blade the scrawny girl held and twisted the weapon around in her hand. The two combatants could barely see each other in this dank, resonant underground, a place lit only by an old light on the wall that illuminated the stone construction of their battleground. The girl was thin and spindly; the light illuminated the pox on her face and arms, and her black, stringy strands of hair glistened. As she lunged in wildly trying to free herself, her scent, like the rot of open, gangrenous wounds overcame him, and he saw the yellow sheen in her eyes; the only emotion he saw was hate, hate and instinct. He recoiled his face from her, repulsed, and tried to fight back against this thing that could barely be called human. A sick thing.

Still holding her sword, he pulled himself toward her and used his ungainly momentum to augment a fist heading for her unprotected face. She reeled from the pain, tearing her sword from her would-be victim's hand, and wailing in anger, not shock. With no weapons, the man opted to flee, running up a short flight of nearby stairs at full speed out of the lightless subterranean place. It was an abandoned underground transport system, he thought. Something from prior to the great war. From behind he heard a primal shout in no recognizable language, just the howl of an animal. He ignored it and carried on, trembling.

Above ground, he was met with a blasted, desert-like landscape. All plants were dead, except for tufts of yellow grass and thorny bushes. The sparse few trees were almost all blackened, and all leafless. Broken down buildings and worn away foundations lay all about, and shattered sections of road were visible under layers of dust and dirt. The sky was bright, yet bleak, and the sun shone mockingly down on this lone survivor. It was a world after a nuclear apocalypse. And such is life in the wasteland.

The history of this world, up until the middle of the 20th century, is hardly different from our own. However, near the end of the 1950s, leading atomic scientists discovered the holy grail of physics: cold fusion. With this power, the political and technological landscape advanced at a pace greater than ever seen before. Leading the charge was the United States of America, whose cold war with the Soviet Union only heightened as a result of the American discovery. However, the rapid change was too much for many people. Everyone, every single family in the developed world, was obsessed with the possibilities, the wondrous terrors of the atom. Culture, ever important to the average person, rapidly slowed to even less than a crawl. Ideas within the arts, entertainment and even much science stagnated. The future that people of the fifties had dreamed of mostly came to pass. So while monochrome televisions and simply designed computers were ubiquitous, so were fantastic inventions like laser weapons and miniature fusion batteries and household robots, and the ever famous juggernaut that was the nuclear industry.

After barely more than ten years since the discovery of cold fusion power, and just two years after man landed on the moon just as President Kennedy promised, the world felt the effects of the global “nuke rush”. Poorer countries that still could afford nuclear power went completely bankrupt, and the entire world sank into a depression reminiscent of the 1930s. Petty wars broke out between former allies, and the Warsaw Pact and NATO dissolved shortly after their formation. Even the United States was in national poverty. But they couldn't give up their nuclear addiction. They had to siphon all the resources they could in this desperate time. In the early days of the 1970s, the United States conquered parts of the nearby nuclear powerhouse of Canada, mostly southern Ontario, stopping just short of the country's capital. Even this couldn't save anyone. Again, the world turned their eyes to the two greatest powers, the USSR and the USA, now reduced to bickering old men; weak husks of their old pride. With nothing left to lose, both sides began the true war to end all wars in the year 1984. It was over in days.

And so, two hundred years later, humanity eked out a primitive new life in this lawless wasteland.

A calm wind blew. The cool breeze made the haggard man's rag clothing flutter slightly, making him realize the unflattering state of his once-pristine suit, not mottled with blood and burnt away. His eyes darted around, and spied a corner store across what used to be a busy street, and checked inside.

The state of the interior was hardly better than that of the outside. The old contents of the shelves: detergents, candies, magazines, and other useless objects from the old world were stocked on the shelves, some of which had fallen over and spilled their contents on the dusty floor. What he wanted was food. He knew that people from before the war had ways of keeping food fresh in cans for even centuries. But in this world, such things were a rare necessity. An old blues song flowed from a radio somewhere within, its melancholy rhythm matching the somber mood of the time. The music wasn’t loud enough, however, to obscure the all too familiar sound of heavy, desperate breathing.

Behind the cashier’s counter, a sickly, unnaturally thin man was fumbling with a tin can of beans. He beat it on the ground savagely, and wrapped his bony digits around one end, tearing at it with an expression of primitive rage on his pale, hollow looking face.

This wretched figure glared at him when he came near, and held his metal catch to his chest like an animal defending its kill. He even began to snarl and spit when the intruder adopted a rough fighting stance and made a plain attempt at snatching the food, which failed. Still holding the can, he coiled up, his joints cracking as his legs bent further and further. He burst forward at the person trying to take his meal, dived and knocked him down onto the cold, hard tile floor. The other man, still energized from his fight underground, punched the sick creature in the face, lashing out as hard as he could as it wrapped its foul hands around his neck.

The pale savage tightened his grip, but the choking had no effect on the intruder. A callous fist continued to smash into his face, bashing in his nose, bruising him and splattering blood on both combatants. The two lay there pathetically, both trying to beat the other to death, and neither showing any chance of giving up.

It was an unending brawl on the filthy tiles inside the corner store, with two men trying to kill the other as if they had no other purpose in life. The aluminum can of beans sat uncaring on the sidelines, not vouching for either side. It didn’t prefer either of them, it couldn’t. But still, these two beat each other mindlessly, unconsciously, trying to gain temporary ownership of a can of centuries old food. The man being throttled relentlessly stared at his attacker harshly.

As the claw-like fingernails of his attacker gouged into his neck, he simply repeated his previous assault, the two not altering their attack patterns. One punched viciously, and the other tried to strangle the life out of him. Soon the two had devolved to roaring like wild animals as they fought, their faces both covered with each other’s blood. The face of the more savage, pale man was barely recognizable at this point. His victim’s throat made sounds like it was caving in, and it was obvious he was having trouble breathing.

It was then that the man being choked made the decisive blow in the fight: He steadied his shuddering, blood soaked fists, and opened them. The person above him didn’t pay his actions any heed, and continued to crush his throat. Gasping for breath, he brought both hands up to the others face, coiled in his fingers and extended his thumbs, and pressed them against his enemy’s eyes, applying heavy pressure and jabbing his thumbs into his eye sockets. The pale man screamed in pain as his eyes were mashed into his skull, causing sanguine fluid to spurt out repulsively, leaving deep red stains on his foe’s thumbs, and leaving his eyes broken and squashed inside his skull. He brought his hands to his face, desperately feeling around his features. He grabbed and twisted the other man’s fingers, and he touched were his eyes used to be. The sensation of him underneath was gone, and he looked around blindly, swinging his head like a madman.

A heavy thud hit his skull, and his nerves jolted. Then another thud. And then he lost all feeling and control, and collapsed, dead.

His killer stood above him, the now dented can of beans in one hand, a corner bloodied. He looked down at the thin, skeletal man, who was covered with thick layers of his own gore all over his face and neck. The uniform he was wearing, presumably looted from the corpse of a pre-war employee of this store. The clothes were clean and wearable compared to what he currently wore; a pinstripe suit that no longer looked like a pinstripe suit due to blood, burns, mud and numerous tears that made it just a set of rags adorning his filthy body.

“William” read the name tag. “William will do as a name.” The poorly dressed man stripped himself and took the uniform from the savage that he killed, hastily donning it and grasping the tin can once more.

He smashed it solidly on the ground, opening it with one blow. He poured the cold brown beans into his mouth, scooping the rest out with his dirt- and blood-encrusted hands, and licked the food off of them eagerly. The can was empty in less than half a minute, and he tossed it aside, making a clanging noise that echoed through the open building. The radio elsewhere in the store was now playing a faster paced song, a song that did not fit the atmosphere of this place or situation at all.

William ducked behind the counter to where he had first seen the pale man crouched down, opening the can. It was time for him to investigate something that truly bothered him.

He lifted up the shirt portion of the uniform, making sure not to rip the fabric. The damage done to his stomach had healed completely and, prodding the area with his finger, he felt no pain from any kind of internal wounds. All that was left was a jagged, almost star shaped scar. His hands and fingers had no reminder of the instance where they gripped the girl’s sword in the subway tunnel, as if it had never happened.

Even more curious now, he picked up a shard of glass from a long-broken window that was lying shattered on the floor. He pulled up one sleeve of the uniform, exposing his arm, which had large, unhealed burns blemishing his skin. He gripped the glass tightly with his index finger and thumb, and cut a small incision along his arm, down from his wrist to the middle of his forearm. The cut was not deep, and the skin stitched itself back together as he dragged the glass across his arm. A faint indication was left on his skin, barely visible even in this light.

Next, he brought the razor edge of the glass to his wrist once more. He jabbed it directly into one of the coarse veins almost protruding from under his skin, and ripped it lengthwise, dissecting the bottom of his forearm, making an incision exactly thirty centimeters long. Blood spewed forth from the mottled red line, and it streamed down and dripped off of his arm as he raised it up, looking at it with a look of sickened dissatisfaction on his face, his lips contorted into a grimacing half-smile, half-frown.

He pressed his other arm to his mouth, stopping the surge of vomit from rising up and splattering all over the floor and his self-inflicted wound. And soon, his expression morphed steadily into one not of disgust, but of sheer exuberance as the reddish laceration reconstructed itself before his eyes. He clenched his teeth to mitigate the pain, pain that gradually became more and more bearable.

Deciding to go further, he brought one finger, trembling slightly, to the open gash, and prodded it eagerly. He gasped in distress, and jerked his whole finger, hand, and arm back, whipping the glass shard out of his grip. It soared over the shelves and clinked against the wall behind him, making another small noise when it struck the ground.

But then, the hot, bleeding meat stitched itself back together. William watched with a curious glimmer in his eyes. Blood seeped slowly back into precisely incised veins which were welded back together at an equal pace. Muscles reattached with each other, making a quiet, slick, squishing kind of sound, as if his body wanted him to be sick watching his own inflictions just mend themselves without pause and without error. It was like seeing the deep cut being made in reverse, as if time itself was reversed. An elegant and brutal process.

The regeneration now complete, William remained there, crouching, contemplating this wonderful, disturbing ability that he had.

“So… I can’t die. Every single time I was riddled with bullets I didn’t go down, and just now I’ve looked at why.” William whispered this to himself. He couldn’t decide if this was a blessing or a curse, given the utter agony he had to be subject to.

He stared down at the floor, now pasted with a thin layer of blood spattered across the accumulated dust. He brushed his hand around in the filth nonchalantly, pushing away old flyers and mixing the dirt with his own blood, and felt a small, unusual bump in a depression in an otherwise unassuming tile. Flipping the light tile out of the way, he looked closer and saw a lock, along with the faded black safe it was attached to, revealed through years of weathering. He brought his ear to the ground and his fingers to the round lock. His fingers made small, deliberate movements, carefully rotating the knob to find the correct combination. His preternatural hearing focused on the falling tumblers and blocked out the music and slight crackle of the unseen radio.

From inside the safe he could hear muffled ticks as his fingertips moved the lock around with sedate precision. The tumblers fell exactly as he thought they would. Within minutes, the lock made a click and opened smoothly. William slid it off, and placed it lightly to the side.

The door of the safe was heavy for its size, about ten by ten inches. William swung it out of the way –not without a clumsy clang as it hit the floor- and squinted and looked inside the dark box.

One hand rifled through the safe. Upon closer inspection, he could see a wrinkled pair of fifty dollar bills on one side, with the face of some man William couldn’t recognize in the center of both. He brushed them aside, along with a number of silver coins that were liberally sprinkled through the safe along with ancient packs of gum, concealing the rest of the contents of the safe. Underneath that meaningless garbage was an object William deemed far superior: a gun.

It was not the standard fare. Whoever owned this must have been rich, or a thief. It was a Glock Model 1000-C laser pistol, the best civilian firearm money could buy. Rectangular and bulky with a strange diagonal grip, it was bigger than most gunpowder based handguns, but was a staple of its time. A few spare energy cells, to be loaded into a bay on top of the pistol, were spread around in packs of four. William took all of these out, and saw a peculiar envelope below.

It was plain white, or at least it used to be, and was completely unmarked, but well kept. Putting the laser pistol aside, William hastily tore open the paper and looked at its contents with eager eyes. He found two things: an old monochrome photo, and a wrinkled, folded up flyer.

The photograph was of the face of a middle-aged man with an honest smile, light creases in his face and an optimistic sheen to his eyes. William reverently tucked it into his shirt pocket, and took a closer look at the sheet of centuries-old folded up paper. It advertised a parade in Toronto celebrating the tenth anniversary of the conquest and acquisition of South Ontario by the United States of America. In the center was a well drawn piece of art, mostly intact and clear, of numerous “patriotic” -as the poster stated- people marching alongside giant floats with jets screaming overhead, the trails behind them forming the iconic colors of the American flag. A contrastingly simple handwritten note was scrawled in one corner:

“Bombs at 2:00.”

He put the article in his pocket as he did with the photo. He wanted to preserve these pre-war artifacts from those who would desecrate them. It was the least he could do for this destroyed world; to keep the memory of the past.

Gripping the laser pistol, he flicked open the hatch on top and jammed in one pack of energy cells, enough for hundreds of shots. William gazed warily over the waist-high counter for anyone who might be near, or anyone who might be just like that wretched old man lying bloodied, beaten and dead in the corner. To his relief and dismay, the streets were as deserted as they were when he had entered the store. He feared that someone might be hiding in the shadows of the dead buildings, but knew he was ready for a fight. He breathed out, vaulted faultlessly over the counter, and ran crouching out of the small corner store.

The song had changed once again. It featured one woman singing, a voice he thought he had heard in some other songs that had played. It wasn’t upbeat, but it wasn’t quite melancholy. It seemed fitting, almost. Few structures were still standing, as most had been ruined by warfare and nuclear attacks, as well as two centuries of aging. It was a wasteland all around, and just outside this small town was a landscape just shy of being a rocky desert, not at all reflecting the fertile land that once existed here. William chuckled tiredly at his situation. Hundreds of miles of open land all around him, and nowhere to go.

Remembering the piece of paper he had scavenged, William decided to head south west, toward Toronto. It would be a long trip, but who cared? In this world, nothing really had any meaning. It was all pointless, he thought. But the idea of saving just a few more pieces of the old world, even it meant nothing, motivated him to press onward.

And so, he began his long journey to Toronto, one of the few major cities still standing from pre-war times. Gun in hand and strange healing powers still barely understood, he sighed and trudged down the broken down road.

“Hmph. It’s better than nothing. Damn, I really need some food again.” His stomach growled at him, demanding sustenance. The recent events had drained him more than he had expected. William hoped that there would be some kind of supermarket or food store or anything of the sort in the vicinity where he could rummage through the storerooms and take what canned goods would likely be there. He inspected his surroundings, and saw the corner store he was just in as the most viable option.

“I'm so alone.” He muttered forlornly.

William stepped back inside the old building and heard a sound behind him and felt something strange suddenly. A peculiar sensation on his skull. The noise was gone as soon as he had noticed it, drowned out by a sharp ringing that echoed in his ears. He inexplicably found that the vision in his left eye was completely gone, and that he couldn’t operate the muscles of that side of his face. The sensation was of slight stinging, like a giant wasp had stung him on his head. The pain grew exponentially within seconds, and time seemed to be still as ice. He absentmindedly noticed that the shelf in front of him had blotches of a distantly familiar dark substance on it. It felt like he had lost a part of himself, in a physical and philosophical sense. His heart ached at the loss he did not comprehend, that he could not comprehend. The vision in his right eye was now clouding over. A similar feeling of stinging assailed his chest, starting in his back and spreading forward. He started to lose all feeling in his legs, then his arms, and then he began to lose his balance. Unable to react, he crumpled backward into a pathetic heap.

He could no longer hear the ringing or the drifting music, or even the ever present whine of the wind. Everything was just silent. He merely looked up at the bright, somewhat tinted, sky with one eye, as clouds passed peacefully by. As his sight began to fade, he saw a man that he thought that he knew, or had some connection to, standing over him. From his view, he seemed to be upside down. He tried to chuckle, but only spurted out blood and a hint of air, the last oxygen that would grace his system. The man above him brought the barrel of a gun into his decreasing frame of view. William looked with a dissonant, pleasant attitude into the finely rifled barrel of the weapon. He thought that he saw the person move his lips, speaking to him or someone else or even just himself. William didn’t care. He wanted to speak himself, but couldn’t force out the words, no matter how hard he tried with his nebulous sense of being. So he simply thought,

“Oh. It seems... I’m dead. It seems I can die after all.”

He had no room for remorse as his vital functions began to cease, and the bright light of a gun being shot clouded his minimal sight. He accepted the bullet, and everything went dark, contrasting the flash from the muzzle of the gun. He was gone.

Such is life in the wasteland.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

“That’s another one down, Archer. Did you see it? Man, what rads do to people. I don’t think I’ve seen a healer like that since we left Ottawa! Guess I’ll just make sure he’s dead, then…” The man said casually to his friend standing a few meters behind him. The two humans stood, well-armed, outside of the corner store from which the mutant had come.

The creature on the ground was in the shape of any ordinary human, but had dark radiation burns on his skin, and had two bullets in its skull and four more in its chest. Three quarters of its face was covered in its own blood, and it was wearing a faded white uniform with an equally tarnished green apron, it too was bloodied. The human-like figure had somewhat deformed ears and bony limbs that were just slightly too long. Aside from the burns, it looked just like any other person to most, unless given direct, close up scrutiny, scrutiny that sooner came in the form of a bullet than a visual inspection.

Archer, now beside his friend, held up his arm to stop him. Archer was an exceptionally tall man, being at least six foot six. His face was marked with a dozen scars, and he had a layer of cleanly cut stubble along his jaw. He wore a black fedora to hide his sparse, burnt hair. For clothes, he had dark, toughened leather armor reinforced with varied steel plates, and his pants and boots were from an army uniform, fixed up and dirtied from use. His grey eyes reflected the hot midday sun, and he began to speak in his unique, gravelly tone.

“Wait, boss. He ain’t twitchin’. Might be a trap. I’ll take care of it.” With that, Archer stepped ahead and aimed his shotgun at the mutant’s skull, looking it over as he did so.

“Huh. Seems his name’s William. Just like you, huh?” Archer laughed dryly before he blasted the downed thing’s face, mangling it beyond recognition, removing its strangely civilized expression forever.

William, standing with his rifle readied on its sling, moved in to check the pockets of his fresh kill.

“That’s the thing with these muties. You have to shoot them in the head, or else the regenerators’ll get back up and kill ya. Destroy the brain, the things don’t give up, like animals. We’ve got to take out every one we see, to save civilized folks from running into them.” William explained as he searched the mutant thoroughly.

Archer scoffed. “Yeah, yeah. I know, boss. I know damn well better than you, that’s f’sure.”

In the front shirt pocket of the uniform, William found a neatly folded old photograph and a small poster advertising the anniversary celebration of America’s capture of South Ontario. William tossed that aside, and examined the photograph more closely.

“Hey, Archer. Look at this. It’s in great condition.” He gestured for his friend, who was warily scanning the nearby ruins, to check the picture. “Probably his father, or something. Maybe this bastard was a little smarter than the rest, you think? Ah, who cares? Just another irradiated freak. We probably couldn’t sell this picture for much anyways.” William haphazardly threw the black and white photograph onto the corpse before him. The soft breeze slowly lapped against the bloodied body, eventually blowing it out into the dusty street.

William continued to check the body. “Wait, what’s this?” He held up a rectangular, grey piece of steel with glowing orange stripes near one end. “Hey, this is a real laser pistol! How the hell did this mutie have one of these? We could sell this for, what, one thousand dollars?”

“Five thousand.” Archer corrected him, his voice taking on a tone of what sounded almost like wonder, or even somewhat greedy joy.

Examining the pistol just a little more, William soon put the safety on and tucked it gently into his backpack, with an expression of wonder on his face. Of course, the wonder was of what he could buy with a whole five thousand dollars. The sum was nearly immeasurable to him. Not wanting to get too caught up with the pistol and let his guard down, he turned his attention back to the town.

The cityscape was like most the two had seen in their journeys. Not a large place, yet not especially small, but the amount of old houses and building that had been flattened and worn away over the years made this place, like others, seem like but a pockmark on the wastes of southern Ontario.

From a radio, an old prewar tune reached their ears, filling the air again and settling the atmosphere. It was a classic number from the forties or fifties, a song William and Archer had heard countless times before. It felt somewhat nostalgic, despite the melody predating them by at least two centuries. It was a reminder of what the world used to be like, a carefree light in the cavernous nightmare that was reality. But Archer and William knew no reality beyond this one. The daily life of a scavenging traveler was all that they had ever known. Anything else, anything better, was foreign to them, like some kind of distant utopia. However, they were content. The advantage to not knowing any existence better than this was that even the worst could barely faze them. It was the irony of the wasteland.

Archer hummed along to the archaic song. “So, off to Toronto still, boss?”

“Yep.” William nodded typically, and trotted off back onto the street, heading in the general direction of Toronto. Such was their goal: to get to any kind of civilization. Toronto was naturally the best place to look for anything like that. Scavenging was a hellish profession, but it made ends meet. An organized group of people would provide an opportunity to trade and recuperate, just what this pair of transients needed.

William took off down the road at a hasty, determined pace. His brown hair, though cut short in a once-popular style, was wild and almost stringy, and barely blew about even in stronger winds. He had a disheveled, faded red plaid shirt with short sleeves and buttons, and a hint of a black bulletproof vest underneath. A hat he had owned and often was long gone, lost on a previous adventure, much to his dismay, and he wore slightly torn jeans and well-worn work boots modified to allow more leg and foot maneuverability when running. Unlike Archer, his face was mostly clean, and but a few untimely wrinkles and scars marred his face. But, as he often said, each nick and scratch on him had its own tale. The life of a scavenger, a “scavver”, was rarely a dull one, and rarely a long one.

The road progressed on into the cracked, sandy dirt. Soon there was barely a road at all, just scant skeletons of houses in once-organized rows. Sharp brown and sometimes slightly green bushes, dead, yellow grass, dead trees and even cacti populated the expansive, invasive wasteland. Any kind of green, other than the sickly grayish green of the water, was almost all gone, no matter the season. The landscape was reminiscent of an American desert, and the wildlife reflected that. The cries of hawks could be heard from way up in the sky, and the hissing of snakes and yelping of wolves was not uncommon. And now, a howl pierced through the cool wasteland air.

“Eleven o’clock, boss! There’s another feral. We’re getting’ a lot of these today, huh?” Archer growled, shouldering his semi-automatic shotgun.

A cougar raced out from a cluster of bushes alongside the road. It ran and pounced at William, who sidestepped the attack he was alerted to, letting Archer send a solid lead slug into the animal’s skull. The beast was struck mid-stride, causing it to crash back to earth, bloodied, and perform a heavy, inelegant roll in the dust as it died, coming to a stop in the middle of the road. William was soon upon it, hacking and skinning the cougar with his big hunting knife. He performed this task with ease, and nodded to Archer, holding up his bloodied hands, his knife gripped tightly in one.

After the skin had been given a cursory cleaning and the meat readied and packed, they hung these useful remains of their latest kill on their desert-camouflaged backpacks. They could not afford to needlessly waste any parts of an animal that they could somehow utilize. Between the laser pistol and this adult cougar skin, William and Archer were looking forward to the days ahead.

“We headin’ to Pickering, boss?” William heard Archer’s gruff voice behind him. “Plenty a mutants there, as I understand.”

William waved his hand in the air nonchalantly. “Nah, it’s a bit too… radioactive.” He laughed. “Well, maybe. I hear they get real hot blooded about ferals and freaks around Toronto. Imagine what they’ll think of what we’re doin’ here!”

His eyes took on a steely, harsh look. “Y’know, there are some pretty rich places around there, too. Old National Guard stations. I hear that’s a problem, too.”

Archer scoffed. “Thinkin’ of raidin’ another military depot? Hell of a risk, boss. Just like old times, huh?” Archer shifted his eyes, staring around at the horizon.

“There’s another thing.” William continued, his voice getting lower, more deliberate. “I hear they’ve got working tech there. Tanks, and all that.” He gave a knowing nod.

“There’s no way some place like that hasn’t been taken over already.”

“Up for it, Archer?” William turned to his friend behind him, smirking eagerly, expressing his emotion obviously, as usual.

Archer gave a rare, quick smile. “Damn right. Let’s do it, boss.”

Their plan had changed only slightly, as they marched down the rough dirt road. First to civilization, second to riches.

Such is life in the wasteland.

edited 5th Jan '11 10:19:15 PM by Five_X

No one here to critiqueify this?