After the Ashes

My name is Longinus.

My parents, before they died, told me that they found this name in a tattered old book and bestowed it upon me, thinking it a good name. I am not so sure. Of the world as it once was, little is known now.

Once, the world belonged to us—humankind. But a great catastrophe nearly wiped us out and set demons loose upon the earth. They are many, and we cannot resist them.

I have read many scattered volumes, where the glory of humankind is recorded. I cannot glean the whole picture, but from what I read, life then seems almost mythical to me now. Compared to the present, it fills the heart with a profound sense of loss.

For those days are not so distant; as we walk the earth, the ruins of former buildings are everywhere. Though abandoned and crumbling—most now nests of demons—they still bear silent witness that those myths were once reality.

We are like the children of a wealthy family suddenly fallen into poverty; the memory of what was makes our days all the more desolate.

I live with many others in a village. The elders say this has been our home for decades, and that we should be grateful; there are few humans as long-lived as we are. Most fall to demons, or to the hands of their own kind.

We call our settlement the Waterless Village. It lies deep underground, accessible only by elevator. The village itself is a subterranean facility built to withstand nuclear war—like a vast mine, steel walkways branching off to caverns that serve as rooms.

I am a scavenger, one of those who go to the surface to search f