After It's Over Ep.1

Episode 1: The Beginning of the End

It didn't have to be this way...

This thought came frequently to Reece in the dark and quiet of the evening, often as he gazed into the fire or took in the stars. A natural disaster is a thing of God, wrought upon us without our input or acquiescence, but the world he lived in today was not primarily created by a natural occurrence, but mostly by the wishes and whims of men and women who thought they could control what God had wrought or saw this crisis as the opportunity to expand their power.

A cascade of unfortunate decisions had permanently, with surprising speed, altered the world he had grown up in into this unimaginable outcome. Who knew that a world with so many people rested on such a fragile precipice. Now, there was nothing left to rule, as far as Reece knew. The world wide web went silent a long time ago and with it, all news from other countries and continents ceased. For all he knew, there was no such thing as countries anymore.

He was isolated back to the American frontier, which with every passing month resembled more and more the original state that early pioneers must have found it in. Reece traveled around, mostly as a hunter and scavenger, but providing help where he could to those who struggled to survive without the modern conveniences that everyone relied on. This world was not built to function without electricity and many things completely stopped functioning as soon as the internet went down.

Some people still kept the lights on, at least on a minuscule, local scale. Reece even visited some smaller towns where resourceful engineers were able to tap directly into nearby wind farms to provide some electricity on a wider scale, but everyone he encountered had given up on returning to the world before, where we all took for granted that a flip of a switch would bring things to life. In fact, some of the most content folks he met in this new world resigned themselves to the sun up/sun down schedule of another age.

Probably better that way. Keeping the lights on is admirable, but it tends to attract all the worst sorts. Not all those who survived made it based on knowledge, skill and hard work, many made it in this new world, the same way that they survived in the old, on the labors and knowledge of others. Some rely on charity, but more often, they found their solutions in violence and numbers and Reece saw a few communities where those with technical prowess were held as little more than slaves to provide for the many who were lacking.

Reece saw reports about some of the cities before the broadcasts went down. The pandemic had already raised fear and suspicion to the point where people were turning against each other. Earlier in the pandemic, even the threat of a shortage would cause food and essential items to disappear from the shelves, but when the real shortage would come, no one was prepared for the nasty turn it took. The cities were the worst, as they always are. Everyone there was completely dependent on the supply chain for their daily provisions and few people had other options. Wide scale looting doesn't help when there is no food to loot.

Rumors of supplies would lead the masses on an urgent pilgrimage to overwhelm the reported location. When the trucks were still running, desperation led groups of people to intercept food trucks before they could even make their deliveries, because they knew the competition at grocery stores would be even worse. Every new disaster was a new domino falling in a long chain that led back to much simpler decisions. No one knows if it was ill intent or incompetence that pushed the first domino, but Reece couldn't believe that the world they had today was the desired outcome of anyone.

What became more clear every day as society devolved into anarchy is that a culture built on memes and Tiktok videos was ill equipped to survive real challenges. Reece shuddered to think what the end had looked like in the greatest population centers. He had met people who said they had been in places like Dallas, Kansas City and Chicago until the end. Reports of mass starvation, rampant lawlessness and worse were common in all their narratives. It was like taking the worst of what he had personally seen, magnified and amplified by numbers, which is what cities normally do. More people means more of everything, the good and the bad. Not that society would likely ever have that problem again.

As near as Reece could guess, less than 20% were still alive from the population that existed before it all began, and it might be quite a bit less. It was hard to believe that a thriving, growing world could be destroyed so efficiently. Less than 3 years after the lights went dark, the country was a very empty place, with a population less than when the United States became a country. Reece liked to believe that some country somewhere was still standing, still functioning as it had before, but he realized that he might never know. Worldwide communication was now a memory and would soon be a myth.

Regardless of the status of the rest of the world, Reece Daniels would face each new day for the challenges it would bring. He hadn't given up and he didn't intend to any time soon. There were still people to help, a life to live and a journey ahead. He didn't quite know where that journey would take him, but perhaps he would find others like himself, who in spite of all that had happened, could still find the hope and courage to build a future in this new world.

I have exciting news to share: You can now read Amazing Stories from Hunter Chadwick in the new Substack app for iPhone.

The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here.