please give feedback, and please be merciless…if it sucks, tell me so i can fix i – i can take it.

(The War came suddenly, and ended with complete devastation. The fires ripped across the face of the earth with no regard for what they ravaged. Nations fell, one after the other, until none were left but wanderers, nomads forced to endure the bitter, pitiless wild for survival. The once-great planet became a weak, ghostly shadow of the advanced civilization it had once been. Where there once was rain, now ash drifted from the sky to settle on the last remaining vestiges of mighty empires. The War destroyed our world.)

The gravel crunched beneath my boots as I walked across the desolate field. The remains of various vehicles littered the ground around me, and dirt swirled up into the air in a gust of wind, sending old papers scurrying across the cracked and sunbleached pavement. Glass from the shattered windows of the buildings around me glittered in the light of the setting sun, and the skeletal frames of those same buildings rose thousands of feet above me, stretching towards the sky like the fingers of an emaciated giant. A flicker of movement caught my eye. To my right, a small fire burned inside a building, somewhere where it could not have started by itself – this area was inhabited. Drawing my blaster from its holster on my right hip, I flattened my back against the nearest wall, weapon out, and peered around the corner. Breathless with apprehension, I scanned the interior of the ground floor. Though I saw no one, I did not let my guard down – whoever was here would not be if they did not know how to defend themselves. The silence pressed against my eardrums as I listened for any sound that could give away their position. Above me, a startled bird burst from an upper floor with a loud cry, and I let out a gasp. My cover blown, I ran down the alley as bullets began to rain down. As I searched my surroundings for something to serve as a shield, a small part of my mind noted that whoever inhabited the building had been there a long time – bullets were primitive. Ducking behind a concrete embankment, I quickly ripped a shred of white fabric from my plastic-fiber undershirt and thrust it up into the air with one hand. If my attacker was using bullets, there was a very good chance they would understand the meaning of my white “flag”. The fire storm ceased and, fighting my own survival instincts, I slowly rose from my place of concealment with my hands behind my head and my blaster securely in its holster. Muscles tensed with anticipation and fear, I waited for the response to my obvious surrender – and I would have to wait those few more impossible seconds to discover whether that response would mean my death.

*note: the part in parenthesis was supposed to be in italics nut Y!A wouldn’t let me.