A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse.

A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse.

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Wordcount: 5000

Commissioned by Arksoul

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In retrospect, leaving everything up to chance was a stupid idea and believing in the media was a stupid idea.

I’ll admit it.

I fell for all the buzzwords, propaganda, and drivel that was being fed through the social media engine back in day.

In my defense, there was probably a lot of money, resources, and time being spent to stop a massive panic from overtaking the globe, like it did once the façade fell off. Most governments in the world probably took their journalists out back and behind the shed the moment things started spiraling out of control, like they usually did when things went wrong.

I couldn’t blame them for that. Human instinct in the face of danger and disaster was to panic, be selfish, and look out for themselves.

When that happened with regular, normal human beings countries were brought to their knees.

If it happened with over half the population suddenly developing super powers?

Yeah, Earth would probably be a smoking crater.

Well.

More of a smoking crater than it already was.

The world’s collective pants-shitting when they realized that everything was fine and dandy took place seven-or-so-years after the whole deal with superpowers came to be.

The government probably went ahead and started covering things up shortly after it all happened. Besides the massive misinformation campaign, they probably had their hands full with radical organizations who suddenly had human weapons of mass destruction and using all sorts of things to keep order. I knew for a fact that there were plenty of those in the states after the election and there wasn’t a chance they would’ve stayed quiet and calm after become superhuman.

In all honesty, I would like to say that was impressed that an inept, bureaucratic mess managed to keep everyone from panicking for seven years… but I’d be lying.

I spent those seven years making money by selling my services, buying whatever it was I thought I needed, and securing a safe area for me to live in to wade out the incoming apocalypse. A lot of my fellow doomsday preppers were spouting stuff about judgement day, nuclear war, and a new race war, but I was convinced that superpowers came with threats meant to be faced with those powers.

I guess, in the end, me and all my fellow preppers were right.

All of that happened at once when the world lost its collective shit, as a doomsday weapon went off that the "heroes" couldn't have hoped to stop, and everyone realized that everyone needed to fight for themselves.

Nukes were launched. A lot were intercepted by superhumans, either the smart ones or those who could fly, but enough landed that a lot of people died. Superhuman or not, nukes were still nukes, radiation was still radiation, and people still needed food.

When the radio came online after strongest waves of radiation went off, I heard about the new race wars, the religious fanatics, and the rise of a lot of unstable people who needed to be dealt with by the rest of the survivors.

Naturally, I decided to stick inside my shelter for a couple years and wait shit out in my bunker, at Lassen Peak. All my work back in the day netted me a good place to weather out the apocalypse. I had geothermal power, a copy of the internet, spares of every electronic I’d care to have, hot baths, a small warehouse of frozen goods, enough canned goods to last a lifetime, a hydroponics bay, a dog for company, and most of it was either automated or easy to maintain, because I shelled out everything I had after working my ass off as a superhuman contractor.

So, why exactly did I regret leaving things to chance?

Why was I unsatisfied with my circumstances in the middle of the apocalypse?

The answer to that was simple.

After five years in the bunker, without any human contact… I wanted a double cheeseburger with bacon and I had no more buns, no more cheese, and no more beef.

That made me regret not fighting against the apocalypse.

However, in the end, as my father told me: “Regret’s for losers and quitters, Isaac. Get off your ass and work for what you want. Now… get the fuck out of my house.”

Okay that last part was more traumatic than anything, but the rest of the message was still true.

I had a hidden base to fall back too, plenty of time, and superpowers.

Even with California mostly a smoking crater, it did still used to be a massive agricultural center, which meant there was land out there… and potentially cattle that survived the apocalypse.

Either some community out there survived with cows, with whom I could trade goods and services for cheese and meat… or I could find a few myself to raise a good distance away from my real home.

Either way, I was leaving my bunker as a man of action, commitment, and sheer will for the sake of some post-apocalyptic cheeseburgers.

If there was any other cause worth me risking my life in the apocalypse for… it didn’t come to mind.

Doubles cheeseburgers with bacon or death it was!

…

I made sure to check on my bunker thrice, after I prepared for my expedition. While I was wholly committed to my goal of making some greasy, delicious burgers, or die trying, I didn’t intend to get myself killed. Having a safe base to work from and retreat to was ideal, and I didn’t intend to lose it while I was gone.

I followed all the instructions to put the bunker in a dormant state, unplugged everything that didn’t need to function, and locked up everything valuable in the safe. With all that done, I was ready to head out onto the wastes with Jackie.

Err… Jackie’s tooth.

On a necklace.

She passed away a few months ago, but she was still with me in spirit.

My sudden desire to risk my life for burgers was probably linked to her death and my subsequent lack of contact with other living beings. However, I chose to repress that fact from memory, and just move on with my life. Either it’ll be something that I’ll get over in the future, or become a traumatic memory that’ll be the catalyst for my mental breakdown.

In both cases, it won’t be my problem, because I’ll either be healthy or be  so insane I’ll be someone else’s problem.

Win-win.

What was I doing again?

Oh, right.

Preserving and actively defending my mental health by grabbing myself some burgers.

I finished my final check on my bunker before going over my supplies.

A week’s worth of camping supplies, pemmican, and water tucked into a backpack. Most of gear for the journey was relatively normal, at least for a time before the apocalypse and before society broke down. I was sure that I was going to attract a lot of attention, if I let people get a look at me, but having my set of powers sufficed for making sure that didn’t happen. If I didn’t want to be found, then I wouldn’t be found… well… in theory. In practice, people with some ability to detect things or danger were more common than I’d liked and security systems advanced rapidly when superpowers came into the mix.

Hopefully, I wouldn’t encounter either of those things, but my plan was to rapidly, bravely retreat if they were in play.

Violence could solve quite a few problems. In fact, I could probably use a lot of violence to solve a lot of problems at once. However, I wouldn’t be much of a human being, if I didn’t try out peaceful solutions first. Violence was most definitely on the table, but it was past discourse and retreating, as it should be for any rational, normal human being… with options.

If I didn’t have any options, it was naturally another story.

Anyway, with my equipment checked, my mind ready, and my stretches done, I took at my exit room.

Or, rather, my map room.

Most of the maps were crossed off.

Europe, according to the last few radio signals that came from there, was a battleground. A lot of city states popped up filled with superhumans and they waged war for resources with one another, as per most of their history. The Middle East was a radioactive wasteland courtesy of a full nuclear exchange. Russia was embroiled in a massive, bloody revolution, as per usual with their history, but with superpowers this time. The land wars in Asia were spicier and more violent with small arms and superpowers in the mix, so that was out of the question, and I had no intention with any of the island nations in the world.

South America and Africa were broken up by warlords. They probably had a lot of things to offer me, but my Afrikaans and Portuguese were both terrible, and most of the people I worked for there were probably dead. Mexico was something I had no intention of touching, because I was sane and didn’t want to deal with cartels fighting cartels and the independent citizens sick of their shit. Canada and Australia… were probably my best bet at finding someplace civilized, outside the major cities, but Canada was probably more frozen over than ever and Australia had a few scary people lording over the country the last I heard, so that was out of the question.

So, that left relatively local places in USA, and if I was going to stay in the US… I might as well check out how things were locally.

With a sigh, I did my best to recall if California was hit with any nukes, before just deciding to set up some additional protective measures around myself. It was annoying to set up protections against radiation, but I didn’t want to die of cancer, so I just went ahead and did it.

After all that, I took a breath and looked around my map room, my exit, and readied myself for my instantaneous journey to the town nearest my bunker.

I expected to see a lot of dead bodies, destroyed buildings, and courtesy of all the escaped inmates from the state correctional facilities located there. My way of fighting was pretty clean and quick, so my sensitivity to a lot of things was pretty low, despite my half-decade-long career. A little mental preparation went a long way, so I made sure to do it… and willed myself to where I wanted to be and took a single step forward.

With one step I was in my map room and the next I was in Susanville, California.

A former logging and mining town which became the infrastructure for two state correctional facilities, between which were ten thousand inmates, and half of which had powers before the world went crazy.

I was prepared for a lot of skeletons and a smoldering ruin of a town.

I was prepared for some tribal cannibals with superpowers.

I, however, was not prepared to find myself in the middle of crowd in a market.

An armed crowd that had guns on me in seconds and bullets flying towards me in a second, while a few more individuals charged at me with superhuman intent.

My first words to other human beings in half a decade slipped out of my tongue at the cacophony of gunfire and the battle cries of several superhumans.

“Huh. Neat.”

I dealt with their attacks and bullets for a bit, so that they wouldn’t hurt each other, but let things play out otherwise.

This was going far better than expected.

…

After about ten minutes of ineffectual attacks, I was left standing where I appeared in the middle of Susanville surrounded by a lot of pointed barrels behind barricade, atop rooftops, behind windows and at least three dozen superhumans around me on the ground and three dozen more above me.

I was tempted to take a seat and let them do what they wanted for a bit longer, but the last time I moved their attacks intensified, and I wasn’t interested in the standoff stop being a standoff.

As always getting attacked and shot at was fun for a bit, but it tended to get boring after five minutes.

So, out of the interest of saving time, I just kept standing and looking around taking in the town, until someone finally decided to talk to me.

That someone being a bearded, old man with a gun at the ready rather than someone with superhuman powers, which was a surprise.

He also had a sheriff’s badge on his lapel, which was even more of a surprise.

“Alright, you’ve made your point. You’re here and we can’t hurt you, and I’m sure that you can hurt us. But if you think we won’t give up without a fight if you ask too much of us, you’re dead wrong, boy.” It took me a moment to adjust my ears to some real audio coming out a real human being’s mouth, but I managed to stay cool. Half a decade of isolation, even with all the movies and games I wanted, apparently still had its effects… or was it three months without my cute dog? It was probably the three months without my dog. “So, tell us what you want and why you’re here, or we’ll do our damn best to see what we can do to somehow, someway hurt you.”

Old instincts told me to show my supremacy, to make it clear that I was the one in charge, and trifling with me would be very against their desire to live, but I decided against it.

This was my chance to get some companionship and achieve my true goals, so I wasn’t going to lose it.

“I want a dog, some cows, and some wheat. I have batteries, gold, and canned food.” I laid down my wants and desires from this bunch of trigger-happy morons lacking in the ability to think and preserve their lives. After five years without interacting with real people, I forgot that they were absolute morons who’d fire and attack someone who they didn’t know without question. “If you don’t have what I want, I’m leaving and never coming back.”

The response that I received was less than optimal.

“What!? Is this some sort of joke!?”

My stomach turned at the words filled with anger and disbelief, after I laid down my perfectly normal and standard statement with all my intentions laid bare.

I wanted to go back into my bunker for five more years after meeting another human being.

In fact… why shouldn’t I?

There were probably other less stupid, trigger-happy towns around, and I could go wherever I want… so why the hell not!?

If this were some sort of movie, or maybe some sort of story, this would be the part where a convuleted series of events would have someone call out to me and give me a reason to stay… but it wasn’t.

This was just me meeting my fellow man for the first time in half a decade and getting sick of them in less than half-an-hour.

“Alright. Got it. See ya never, jerks.”

So, I just left.

Yeah.

Just like that.

It wasn’t like they had anything I wanted!

…

I debated on my next move over one of my last pints of ice cream.

On one hand, there were a lot of things that society could provide me. Susanville can manufacture ammunition and weapons and sustain a large population of people. A lot of them wore relatively new clothes, several lights were on in the buildings, and most of them looked clean. A few kids were also present here there, meaning they considered themselves secure, and probably had access to medicine. A community of people could easily raise a herd of cattle, set up production for cheese and baked good, and lead to my ultimate goal of getting some double cheeseburgers with bacon.

On the other hand, society was filled with people, and I disliked dealing with their bullshit. Back when I conducted business, I only did face-to-face meetings when necessary, and just worked through contacts and agents. They took a large cut of my payments, but my abilities let me take on a lot of jobs and deal with them all in a few days. My contact with other people was limited to getting them across the world in a timely manner, or dealing with them before they could get a word out. My contact with other human beings was very limited, and I preferred living secluded and with my dog.

I took a final, deciding bite of vanilla ice cream before taking another look at my map.

Susanville wasn’t going to get crossed out, but I wasn’t about to go there either.

Taking a page out of history, I decided to rely on math to deal with things, instead of trying to use my feeble, human brain’s natural way of thinking. While hormones and instincts could easily mess with my thought processes, math was absolute, and therefore I could rely on it without any issue.

Working off the probability that small towns in America were likely to have survived, from my singular interaction with one such, thriving community, I took a map of California and taped it to the map room’s walls. I crossed out Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco since there was no way those places could’ve continued to exist without state-wide infrastructure and a nationwide logistics train. My focus was on the various small towns in California’s rural areas, where most of the agriculture took place, and where there was very little military presence.

The military would’ve opposed any form of threat against the established government, so they would’ve gotten taken out by any wannabe warlords and turned their surrounding areas into a warzone. If they weren’t taken out and were around, there was a high chance that they absorbed the local population and become petty tyrants without government oversight or any ramifications. I didn’t want to waste my time with a wasteland, or an authoritarian regime that I wouldn’t even get paid for taking care off, so any small town within fifty miles of a military base was off the table.

I considered several other possibilities too, like population numbers, industry, and demographics. If the population was too low and too old, then it was unlikely that they’d have survived. If they were a service-based economy without any raw material output or agriculture, then they most definitely wouldn’t have survived. The numbers spoke for themselves, I crossed out any that didn’t meet my minimum requirements and soon enough I had a list of small towns to visit.

After one final bite of my ice cream, I stood up and started stretching again to get the blood flowing through my body and make sure that a cramp wouldn’t get me killed, before I went to my first destination.

Napa Valley.

I was either going to find some sort of millionaire hovel filled with pseudo-nobility keeping enforcers in line with luxury, or a confederation of small towns fighting for their lives against raiders that want their crops.

I could easily sell my services to either, so I was fine with either result, though it’d be nice to be spoiled a little by some wealthy folk who think they can hire me on a permanent basis.

I’ll just make do dealing with hardy, rural, and mistrustful small-towns if they were the only ones who existed.

…

Since I didn’t want to deal with being shot at for ten minutes, I decided to do some reconnaissance on any town that I found before I going in. With some binoculars and the ability to just appear on the top of hills, mountains, trees, it was easy to stay out of sight, even if I couldn’t fly around. Against any aerial threats patrolling overhead, I employed the age-old tactic of having a cover of foliage strapped to some netting over me while I did my work.

I would still show up to thermals, or some sort of bullshit sensory ability, but it was decent enough cover in my opinion.

And, as usual, I was completely correct because not a single patrol around any of the communities I found located me.

Really, I didn’t even know why I bothered, because most of the time the fliers just kept their eyes on the horizon or above.

What was the use of aerial patrols if they only looked at the sky? It was the post-apocalypse! Fifth-generation gets weren’t going to start barreling out of the sky! Anything flying nowadays would need props and pistons and those could minced by anyone who could fly.

But, anyway, I found what I was looking for in Napa.

It was a mix of both my expectations.

There were several small communities tending to fields. Some used tractors while others used superhuman muscle. A lot of the asphalt was cracked and broken, but sections of it were somehow in good order, while a few cars here and there pulled along wagons full of people to their destination as makeshift buses. There were plenty of bicycles that pulled trailers around, but anything heavy was dealt with by those gifted with immense strength and stamina.

Clothes were simple, but sturdy. There was a lot of denim, since cotton was grown in places in California. There weren’t many colors available, a lot of people waked around in blue or just the light brown color of natural denim. Some people had white shirts or old, raggedy stuff beneath overalls or jackets, but just about everyone was wearing the same thing to cover themselves up in a reasonable fashion.

Some places were obviously recovering from the fires that ravaged California. Without state and federal agencies funding the firefighters, there wasn’t much rural counties could do to combat state-wide firestorms. They left places to burn, made ditches, and did their best to soldier on despite the hardship sent their way.  Tough luck, but that was simply how things went. Superhumans were strong and had lots of talents, but they couldn’t exactly replace nationwide infrastructure and support systems.

Speaking of infrastructure and support systems, the small towns that I scouted were all still working off of old power stations and water pumps, but some effort was being made to acclimate to the environment. Irrigation channels were being built up, water wheels were lining the river ways, and most places still had electricity. Some people had old smartphones and using laptops, while nearly all the towns used their local libraries as protected data hubs.

People were doing a lot better after the apocalypse than I anticipated.

I actually didn’t know whether to be happy about that or not.

There were more people to do work that I’d rather not do, but there were more people to aggravate me and remind me why I took a dog with me into a bunker instead of another human being. I suppose that I could live with the compromise of having access to goods and services that I couldn’t get myself, but having to deal with other people.

Barely, that is.

I made my rounds and catalogued what I found for a few days. Though I was tempted to go back to my bunker over the course of my investigation, I couldn’t chance the fact of there being some sort of bullshit power amongst the tens of thousands of living humans who could track me down. While I was confident in my ability to protect myself, I wasn’t exactly suited towards holding ground and protecting key assets. While I could go anywhere I wanted, if I wanted to send someone or something elsewhere, then I needed to be contact with them.

All they’d have to do is keep aiming at my bunker to fuck it over while I attacked them in order to get rid of my home.

So, yeah, camping and roughing it for a bit was a necessity.

I chose the ruins of Los Angeles for that. The megapolis was a massive ghost town filled with a lot of skeletons. Just-in-time logistics’ failure, the loss of water, and the small, nuclear winter returned the city to the desert. Most of the buildings were sun-bleached, the highways empty and devoid of life, and the port filled with the wreckages of massive, empty ships.

A gas generator worked to get one of the better mansions up and running, which I proceeded to use as a home after a quick clean up. The kitchen worked well enough with some propane, but my stores of pemican tided me over just fine, while I slept the nights away and cleaned myself with some wipes and water I filched from the rivers up north.

I’d planned on performing recon for a few weeks, choose a community to contact, and generally keep under the radar.

However, when I took a step towards my next, planned surveying spot, I found myself looking at someone in costume.

A detective costume of the noir fashion to be precise. Dick Tracy but in blue instead of yellow, along with a full-black pullover mask with goggles. Oh, and instead of square-jaw it was a woman’s slenderer jawline hidden behind fabric… but I learned a long time ago not to take any chances when it came to possible threats.

So, before whoever it was could say a word, I took a step back into my safehouse and went to my vantage point covering my vantage point, while bringing up my binoculars to observe the person who found me.

And, of course, I found that detective looking straight at me… and pointing up.

I was tempted to look up, but I decided to just retreat again.

Only to find someone in my LA safehouse.

Enjoying the air conditioning that I’d brought online.

Well.

It my safehouse could be in danger now, thus whoever was doing this had leverage over me, so I went through my plans of engagement.  As much as I wanted to resolve the situation through violence, I promised myself to go through discourse and retreat first, before using incredible amounts violence to protect myself and my personal interests.  Since none of my safehouses’ alarms were going off, meaning that there was no one there, discourse was most definitely on the table, despite my instincts telling me not to entertain the notion in the slightest.

I returned to my original vantage point, where the masked detective with a blue trench jacket and hat stood, and laid out my finest, firmest, and most logical choice of words against what I was dealing with.

“If you fuck me over, I’ll do the same to you tenfold.” I laid down the facts and committed myself to them completely. In case someone present was a clairvoyant, or had some other form of bullshit ability, I knew that I couldn’t back down. I needed to establish myself as someone not to be fucked with, so that I wouldn’t be fucked with. Control over violence was the cornerstone of society, therefore I had every intention of making it clear how much control I had over that particular, precious resource. “Now talk.”

I expected a threat and a demand from the well-clothed individual before me. From all my experience with other people with superpowers, and regular humans in general, those who thought themselves with an advantage pressed that advantage. Being able to predict my movements and send people after me ahead of time was one hell of an advantage, so I was prepared to hear some crazy stuff.

Therefore, I wasn’t prepared for what came out of the masked woman’s mouth.

“We have beef, cheese, and bread for trade for either materials or services. No dogs, you’ll have to find that yourself.”

Thankfully, I was still able to respond relatively quickly.

“Got it. I’m in. Let’s go to your market.” I stretched my mercantile muscle after a second and came up with a way to get myself a discount. “Can I get a discount for bringing back your friend in LA?”

“Yes.”

I nabbed that person back from LA and came right back. The flier had a weak stomach and started puking but that was more his problem than mine.

“Alright, then, lead the way.” The other flier, the one who had been above my other vantage spot, appeared. He wore the same uniform as his counterpart. A Khaki jumpsuit with a bear’s snarling face on his back. Both had helmets and goggles, as well as nametags. Conner and Brian both floated to the side of the detective as flying muscle. Well, after Conner managed to get his weak stomach under control. His puking was all his fault. “You can call me—

“Egress.” A familiar voice suddenly came forth from the sky… and I looked up to see a face just as familiar. Black hair fluttered in the wind. A black blazer fluttered over a red shirt and white tie. Slim black pants and dress shoes touched upon the forest floor. Pink lips curled into a smile beneath a petite, sharp nose. Two brilliant, violent eyes met my gaze. “It’s good to see you. It’s been a long time.”

Huh.

Well that answered the question as to why California wasn’t broken up into multiple territories led by superhuman warlords.

A living, breathing weapon of mass destruction already claimed all of it.

The woman who fought a thousand villains and defeated them all laid claim to California.

And, of course, she was also the woman who revealed every shady deal made in backrooms for global stability, and every atrocity committed by every “hero” on international television.

The woman who undoubtedly sent the world spiraling into this apocalypse out of her desire for justice.

Maelstrom aka Kaede Walker, the Japanese-American who tried to save the world and condemned it instead.

I had only one thing to say to her.

“Huh, I thought that you killed yourself after your fuckup. What’s up? How’re ya doing?”

The detective in blue stared at me.

Conner and Brian both went slackjawed.

And… Kaede laughed.

Yeah.

She was crazy now.

I figured.