Dennis J Butler

Future Tribe Dennis J Butler

It had been more than two years since the world went mad. Everyone said that the world would never run out of energy but nobody it seems had counted on the developing nations thirst for energy. As reliable supplies of fossil fuel began to run out, countries constructed more and more nuclear power stations and safety systems were sacrificed for profit with often devastating consequences. As the situation deteriorated further, dominant countries made war on nations that protected their natural resources until untold millions of people were annihilated. Only the lucky ones survived to fend for themselves in an ugly and dangerous world. Some smaller island nations managed to hold their borders although for them rising sea levels were more of a threat than bombs or missiles. For the survivors there were virtually no reliable governments and even less official law. Unless the people had access to food, they were doomed to starvation anyway and nobody seemed to care. The surviving world slowly reverted to various forms of tribalism with the law of the jungle prevailing and the strongest dominating over the weak. Cities and suburbs had long ago been ransacked for anything of value that could be bargained for food or weapons. The only reliable law was at the end of a gun. The girl scanned the darkening street, her green eyes alert. A gusty wind threatened to build up to a storm and blew her greasy brown shoulder-length hair over her face. She felt alone and shuddered as the wrecked suburb around her responded to the wind with eerie echoes rebounding off the remains of the empty buildings. Threatening to make her even more uncomfortable, the rain started to fall. Big dollops initially, it slowly built up to rain that was more insistent as the wind swirled and eddied around the corners of the long-dead streets. Annoyingly, it dripped through holes in the rusted awnings of the old shops around her to plop onto the broken footpath. She was distracted watching single dollops increase to multiple drips that gradually covered the dry concrete until the whole footpath was wet and began to run off into the hopelessly clogged gutters. She wasn't thinking about anything in particular when a figure slipped up beside her. She recognised his odour first. It was an earthy boy smell shared by all the males in the tribe, not that the girls smelt much better. None of them had had a bath for weeks and they weren't likely to any time soon if they stayed where they were.