One Hundred And Sixty Eight Days After

By Jessica Kuzmier

You’ve heard the story before. A massive, unexplained disaster sweeps the land. There is no power. All electronics have been destroyed. Everyone hopes for help from the outside, but it doesn’t come. Modern civilization is gone forever. Every second is a fight for survival. In the midst of it, a lone female is left to wander in the wake of disaster, isolated and without anyone to help her.

Disaster fiction is full of these story lines, watching as the seemingly helpless and weak are left roaming the blotted landscape, all to be exploited by the most violent of the violent. But does this vicious and brutal plot have to be the story line in a post-apocalyptic world?

One Hundred Sixty Eight Days After is a novella that explores whether there is hope for humanity in post-civilization, or if the survivors are doomed to a vicious and gloomy life where everyone lives by the basest of animal instincts. Will the meek inherit the earth, or does survival of the fittest mean that the most violent bullies and tyrants will render the rest of the populace into submission? Is belief in humanity’s kindness a pipe dream, or reality? Follow the journey of Beth on her search for survival, community, security and perhaps the dream of once again living out a life of the highest of human instincts: hope, love, cooperation and friendship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jessica Kuzmier
• Release date: Dec 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005348069

Book preview

One Hundred Sixty Eight Days After. © 2021, 2018, 2013 Jessica Kuzmier. All Rights Reserved.

Website: jkuzmier.com

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Jkuzmier/

Cover Art by John Bauer.

Website: johnbdigital.com

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JohnBdigital/

The moon is full tonight, and the night sky is clear. I’m glad for those things. Really, I am. True, one hundred sixty-eight days ago, I didn’t think I would have given a damn what the sky was like. Too busy feeling sorry for myself, thinking my broken heart was the end of the world.

Well, it was. Until it really was the end of the world, when the explosion happened and everything changed. Then, I knew a little bit better than before. Because of the explosion, I’m glad for full moons at night, because at least there’s light somewhere in this world. The end of life as you know it has a way of giving perspective. Even if it’s only a little bit of perspective.

So, I appreciate things like full moons and clear skies now. Their immediacy takes my mind off of my broken heart. Because even now, my mind still goes back to that place of personal devastation, over and over. Even after a universal disaster like this one. I remember Scott, and how he broke my heart. I can’t say why my mind continues to travel there. You’d think starvation would take that memory away, and lend some perspective to something so silly as a breakup.

But its seems unless I keep moving, I go back to that place where my heart was betrayed, again and again. Can you believe my heart still remembers being shattered, even though the world where it happened no longer exists? I can’t believe it. But it does. I’m almost glad to have the project of finding food, so the memories aren’t as strong. Is that weird? I really don’t know.

Because there’s a full moon, it will be ideal for the scavenging I plan to do. The temperature is warm for this time of the year, late fall. If I were to guess, I’d say it was in the fifties. Still a little chilly for sleeping out in the open, but I will be on the move. At night, I tend to keep walking and save sleeping for the daytime. There’s a pleasant breeze, and I can almost think it’s back in the old days, when I’d go for a nighttime stroll near my house. Almost, but not quite.

I tend to drift in my mind when I walk like this. You wouldn’t think that would happen, given that it’s supposedly so dangerous now that everything’s changed. I never would have imagined it myself. I would have thought I’d constantly be looking out for some attacker, hypervigilant to every passing shadow. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? After all, I am traveling alone in a weakened state.

But other than the precaution of staying awake at night, I seem to have almost become numb to the danger. This oblivion reminds me of back when life was normal, and I used to drive my daily commute on autopilot. I used to put on my makeup, eat lunch, change radio stations, and yes so sue me, text people, especially my ex Scott as I was muddling through the daily crunch. I ran on autopilot then, just as I do now.

It’s strange how easily one can become numb to potential danger, at least one level. On another level, it makes perfect sense. How the hell is being paranoid going to make you any safer? It’s not like it gives you superhuman powers of intuition and strength. It’s like my subconscious mind says, why bother expending energy on useless things if you don’t have to?

So my mind drifts, just like I do as I aimlessly walk the streets. I don’t really pay attention to my surroundings, not in a really specific way, only if I can detect a safe place to look for food. There’s some kind of radar in my head that raises my hair at times, and then I change course. It doesn’t happen much, but when it does I just go someplace else. There’s other times when something happens to catch my attention, for no specific reason. It could be a couple of people walking, telling jokes. Or some garbage floating down the street. Very mundane things can turn into sublime art at times while on the road, I’ve discovered.

But after noticing these things, I go back to my vacant thinking. And yes, it’s usually about Scott. I admit it. Thinking about him is a lot more pleasant than thinking about when I’ll eat. At least I know there’s no way I can get the former. Hoping for the second is a tease that seems too cruel to contemplate. I’ll remember what I really lost then. It’s easier to just let my mind drift. It’s a way to get through the chaos of my life now. I can’t change my circumstances, so why go bananas thinking about reality if thinking about it doesn’t make me feel better. Right?

When scavenging, I case the usual places, like garbage cans, stores, and restaurants. I’ve gone diving through garbage containers in the company of other strangers, sort of like a couple of people sorting through the apple bin in the grocery store. There’s not a lot of fighting between people, strange as it may seem. Not like those movies and TV shows where everyone mauls each other when military trucks show up after natural disasters with food. Maybe after six months of limbo, everyone’s too tired to fight. I don’t really know. Since I missed the first month or so after the disaster, I’m not sure if there was a lot of fighting over resources in the beginning.

Some people I’ve talked to said they ran into problems, others say it’s just like I’ve dealt with over the months. I guess it just depends where you are at. Maybe the bigger cities are different? I don’t really know. The ones who had the most problems were the closest to the city that I live in, which is a relatively small one as far as cities go. But no one I talked to has been actually downtown, so it’s hard for me to really make a real comparison between here and there.

I’m not near my house anymore, or at least I don’t think so. I’ve stayed out of the city, but I think I’m at least ten miles away from where I used to live now. It’s hard to know. Things aren’t as demolished here as they are in the main city, which you can tell on a clear day was pretty much leveled.

But it’s still bad here. Store windows and doors are smashed, some buildings are just plain