Dying Earth Chapter 1: New Dunn City

The air, water, and food has been poisoned. Communications have been cut off.

The village of Dunn Barre, Pennsylvania sits in the rural foothills of the Appalachian mountains and had a population of under a thousand before the burn.

Over a year later, seven thousand villagers and refugees lived there.

The village just happened to be en route to a handful of bigger cities – places with hospitals and other critical infrastructure – but as those cities themselves filled to capacity and began experiencing civil unrest as a result of the overcrowding, refugees from further afield often ended up staying at off-highway townships that had little to offer other than a general store and a bed and breakfast.

Now, thousands of people lived in these little towns, and for as many towns that skyrocketed in population, at least twice as many were entirely abandoned. Cars would fill the streets and gridlock every neighborhood.

I knew the cities would be overcrowded, but I also knew I couldn't survive alone for very long. Rural areas were running out of clean water and the purifiers couldn’t keep up with demand. Most crops were dying or withered, or even toxic to eat if they grew in the poisoned soil after the burn. Even if the rations persisted, my mental health would likely not. I watched as my little town, which was ironically bigger than Dunn Barre, turn into a ghost town as the residents either left or passed away.

I packed a couple bags and slipped my cats into their harnesses. The two felines, a tortoiseshell girl and a cream tabby boy, rode in a pet trailer that hitched to my bicycle. It had an enclosed, ventilated section with a clear top so I could check on the cats and a short bed for luggage. I tossed the duffle bag in the trailer and latched the chest straps of my backpack before pedaling through mountain roads toward the nearest city until I found civilization in Dunn Barre, about thirty-five miles from where I started.