You like it?”

 

“Shit yeah. Is this for me?”

 

“No Gabe, I boxed it up, gift wrapped it, and drove my ass up here on your birthday just let you see it. Yes, genius, it’s for you.”

 

We spent the rest of the night putting away whiskey and rummaging through Gabe’s house and garage looking for stuff to cut apart.  The next morning we stumbled bleary eyed around his yard trying to remember where we had gotten half of the things that we’d chopped to pieces. We also lost the sword, and after searching for nearly an hour, we found it in an oak tree nearly fifty feet off the ground. The blade was buried halfway through a branch twice as thick as a man’s wrist. Neither of us could remember how it had gotten up there.

 

Gabe brought me out of my reverie by throwing a piece of oil soaked cloth at me.

 

“Hey, space cadet, what are you grinning about over there?” He asked.

 

“Just remembering the day I gave you that sword.” I replied.

 

Gabe paused for a moment, then laughed and shook his head, “I hope you can remember more of it than I can. We were so shit faced drunk, I’m surprised we didn’t cut our own fool heads off. It took me two days to get over that hangover.”

 

He made another pass over the blade with a sharpening stone.

 

“I have to say though, this thing has served me pretty well since the world went to shit.” He said, his smile fading.

 

He tested the edge of the blade with his thumb then returned it to its sheath. He stood and propped the sword up against the wall. As he turned to walk back toward his chair, he jerked a thumb in the direction of the table with the laptop on it.

 

“You know, you really should start putting some stuff together to post to the Net.” Gabe said. “Once we get past the Appalachian range we should be able to get a signal. We should tell people about everything we know.” He said.

 

“If you’re so concerned about it, why don’t you write something down?” I asked.

 

“Because you’re better at it, college boy. Besides, I got bullets to polish.”

 

Gabe walked over to his pack and took out the duty belt we found that morning. He removed the pistol and the ammo magazines, picked up a cleaning kit, and sat down in front of the stove to begin working on them.

 

I watched him for a few minutes, thinking about how to start before I picked up the laptop and sat down in the chair next to Gabriel’s. After letting my feet warm by the hot stove for a few minutes, I opened the laptop and began to write.

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our world has passed away,

 

in wantonness o’erthrown,

 

there is nothing left today,

 

but steel and fire and stone...

 

 

 

Comfort, content, delight,

 

The ages slow bought gain,

 

They shriveled in a night,

 

Only ourselves remain…

 

 

 

-Rudyard Kipling

 

For All We Have and Are

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 1

 

 

 

Divestiture

 

 

 

I was a wealthy man before the Outbreak. Well, wealthy in monetary terms. I had almost no family by the time the world ended. I was an only child, and when my parents were killed, I had only my Grandmother and my uncle Robert. No wife, no children, not even a dog. Just a big empty house and a pickup truck. My existence could have been the punch line to a joke about a country-western song.

 

I always knew that Grandma had money. My grandfather was a successful attorney, and when his heart gave out on him, he left everything he had to the woman who had stood by him for more than forty years. Grandma didn’t do much with it. She was involved with her church, and she gave to a few charity’s, but nothing too extravagant. When she passed, she split what was left between me and my Uncle Robert. I inherited more than twelve million dollars in bond investments, and a few pieces of real estate.

 

That was how I met Gabriel.

 

He bought a large swath of land and a cabin just outside of Morganton from me. The first time I met him, I had driven to the cabin to clean it up in anticipation of a potential buyer coming to see it with his realtor.