(SXWC) What use is Luck?

What use is luck?

If an outside observer had been watching the third planet of the solar system, they would have been likely surprised to see a comparison from a year previously. The 'Blue Marble', as the worlds' inhabitants had once described it, was anything but blue at this time. Odd patterns of red and orange were visible on the once lush and green continents, evidence of the severe damage the world had sustained over the last year. This was, however, the only terrain visible from the junk filled orbit of the Earth. The asteroid impact that had caused the extreme tectonic activity, and the latter activity afterwards, had hidden the rest of the surface from view. The extreme activity would have been an interesting subject to study for the world's geologists and physicists, were it not for the fact that there were none left anymore.

If the appearance from orbit was described as bad, the appearance on the ground was considerably worse. Some people (mostly the ruling members of the species) had known what was coming, and had taken steps to keep themselves safe for the coming catastrophe. Others who merely prepared for such eventualities on the off chance they would occur found themselves doing reasonably well, for reasons that became quickly obvious. The remaining population had fared worse. However, others had regarded them as the luckiest, though this description probably best suited those killed by a 5km wide asteroid hitting them on the head. The global leaders had, in a moment of rare openness, told the world what was coming, though the delay in them doing so meant this had happened a mere twenty hours before the impact. As such any preparation that had not been done before this was the best anyone could have had. The actual warning could have come at least a year beforehand, but only the leaders of the richest nations knew that. The astronomers who had the credit of finding the asteroid all suffered unusual and lethal accidents - a fact the more paranoid members of humanity had noticed, but since nothing linking them could be found by the public, this was not widely known.

On a cold and inhospitable mountain on a piece of land formerly known as Wales, a seemingly lone survivor of all these events hid in a small hollow in the ground. He hadn't known any of these events would take place, but had been more prepared than most people on account of being an avid hiker. His enjoyment of shooting and fishing helped as well, and was very thankful he was the exact opposite of a vegan. These latter traits had come in useful in aiding his survival over the past year under the ash clouds, though most of the time his opinion was that this wasn't an especially good thing.

On the day of the impact, he had been sheltering in a small cave a considerable distance from his present location. Since then an almost permanent state of hiding and moving by night had brought him here through the countryside between former urban conurbations and towns. These were now either extremely unfriendly places to be due to the more violent people still there, or unhealthy due to disease spread by the many decomposing bodies present. The people in Earth's so called 'Dark ages' had used corpses to disease besieged towns, and the wiser survivors of the impact knew this and had avoided the urban areas at all costs after two or three days of cosmic winter.

In the months since, the survivor had been mostly alone, since his companions had gradually fallen prey to disease, starvation and violence by other desperate people. This had led to him coming to this area in the hope of it still retaining some of it's former beauty and peace. This turned out to be a mostly false hope, as there was no direct sunlight to expose it's now hidden beauty. His regular nightmares of friends lost to the now hostile world kept him awake at night, and his general state of mind was thoroughly depressed as a result of all his experiences.

As such, when a bullet from another survivor hit him in the chest, he felt that dying was the best thing that had happened to him since December 21st the previous year, 2012.

Good writing my friend, and a good story to boot. I hope you do well in the contest.

wupy

Ahh, now that is a no hope story... I like to think that even in the worst of situations there is always a window of hope.

I have thought many times that your story could become a possibility, lets just hope not a reality...