Prologue
The year 2024 marked the beginning of the end, as is the way of life.
The economic collapse of France started a domino effect that the EU tried desperately to stop, draining the surrounding countries of their resources; toppling one country after another. Before anyone knew it the whole of Europe was drowning in debt, sickness, and homeless. Banks collapsed, insurance companies failed, hospitals ran out of supplies; and then so did the groceries. The governments, desperate for any aid, called out to anyone who would listen. China, Russia, Brazil, Japan, South Africa, Canada and America responded by providing aid...but that aid came with a price.
The freestanding countries saw this as an opportunity to exploit the EU for their own gain, essentially buying countries to spread their influence. America, China, and Russia were the worst offenders, before long resorting to spycraft and assassination to get their way.
The histories are fuzzy depending on who you ask, but they all agree on one thing; the resulting war, though lasting only three weeks, was the bloodiest in all of human history. In a matter of days the population of the planet was reduced by billions, and in the following years the radioactive fallout reduced it even further. When the dust settled, the face of the planet was remade. The winter was predicted to last for two centuries.
Humans are nothing if not a stubborn species. No matter how cold it got, no matter how hungry they were, they endured. They endured through the famine, the sickness, and war, and out of the ashes of death they rose. But as with all things in life, there was a price. Society as recorded in the history texts was gone, and in its place was a much harsher, bleaker, barbarian style of life where people traded luxury for survival.
Slavery was reintroduced into the civilized world, first shunned by the governments and historians but later embraced as 'indentured servitude.' It devolved into outright slavery when people could no longer pay their debts, and became cheap labor.
Food was the difference between life and death, and as such the penalty for theft was to either lose a hand, or death, depending on the severity. With harsh theft laws came much relaxed murder laws. This was the apocalypse, after all; people were desperate and desperate people did insane things. It was up to each family to protect themselves against the bandit and rapists. Carrying a weapon became the expected standard whether you were rich enough to afford a rifle and ammo, or if you just carried an axe wherever you went.
By the year 2124, people had congregated into relatively huge metropolises for survival, but the perpetual winter had made resources scarce and the fight for survival became a daily battle that many lost. Neighborhoods split, then towns. Soon, kings were declared, wars were fought and lost, and the people fled society to eke out a living on the sweat of their brow and work on the land, rather than to rely on the fickle market to supply their needs, should they even have the resources to barter.
Emil Jackson had been born on January 31st, 2162, in the ancient city of Nogales. Being along the equator, it was one of the few cities that still occasionally saw the sun. When it fell to war and strife, his family, along with many others, had struck east towards the ocean to start a life ranching sheep, goats, and rabbits. They settled in the barren tundra of Oklahoma, the furthest north any one dared live; it was the last settlement before the ice fields of the expanded arctic circle began.
Oklahoma winters were long, harsh, and the grass and any other greenery was tough. But that was the point. Emil and his family claimed hundreds of acres no one else wanted, and using hoarded ancient knowledge of the 'world before' they put into practice forgotten techniques for animal husbandry, architecture, and dairy farming. The ranch boomed and soon their herd numbered in the hundreds; but as is the way of life, this was simply the end of the beginning.
Chapter 1
Emil woke slowly, the steam of his breath frosting his beard with a thin crust of ice. For the thousandth time he wished desperately for electric heaters like he heard about in the wealthier towns. He yawned and stretched, his limbs all akimbo beneath the goat hide blankets as he listened to the wind whip outside his walls and a stray goat bleat somewhere nearby. Joints cracking he slowly kicked off the blankets, forcing himself out of bed to start the day.
'I really need to get better insulation before winter hits,'
he thought to himself.
'Or at least some of those long-burn briquettes they sell in market.'
Emil swung his legs over the bed, pulling on his thickest wool socks spun from his own shearings, and stomped his feet into his boots. He walked the few feet over to the small kitchen to start the fire for breakfast, using tinder and goat fluff. It smelled awful but it worked and, well....waste not want not and all that. Life out here in the tundra was too harsh to suffer the indulgences of fools.
While the fire began licking merrily along the thin logs in his stove, Emil ducked into the washroom to relieve himself. Unbuttoning his pants he jumped when the cold hit his cock, and he swore yet again to put better insulation in his house; he dreamed of walking around and sleeping naked without the fear of frostbite, instead of the endless layers of furs, leather, and denim.
"Thank fuck for gortex," He thought aloud.
As he walked back into the kitchen to reheat some rabbit stew, he thought about how his current crop of rabbits could use a good culling, and his pantry could use some refreshing. He went over a mental checklist in his head yet again for what he was going to buy today in market. He had thirty-three goat pelts, seventy-eight rabbit pelts, and ten compacted bales of wool to trade. It was the largest set of wares he had ever taken to market; it would net him enough coin to set himself up for a comfortable winter and hopefully establish his reputation. Perhaps even enough to take on an apprentice as help, especially now that his parents were gone.
As an only son in an unforgiving world he'd known it was a matter of reality that sooner or later he would lose his family and be on his own. He had just been hoping it would have been later in life than his 23 years. His father had been killed by bandits two winters ago, when the old man had gone to market to sell their latest batch of Dutch rabbits for food and pelts. His mother had died of scurvy the winter after when their bean sprouts died after a harsh storm.
