LEANNE BAILA: Only the strong live in a cruel, unloving world

By Justin Davis

 Explore the rich and varied world of LGBT literature, where love, identity, and self-discovery take center stage. These captivating stories navigate the challenges of contemporary life with sincerity and heart, negotiating the subtleties of relationships. These stories showcase the complex tapestry of the LGBTQ+ experience, from hot romanc

• Language: English
• Publisher: Justin Davis
• Release date: Jan 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869105653

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LEANNE BAILA

Only the strong live in a cruel, unloving world

By

Justin Davis

This is a fictional work. Names, characters, settings, and happenings are either made up by the author or utilized fictitiously. Any similarity to real people, living or dead, businesses, events, or locations is completely coincidental.

@ COPYRIGHT

All right reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotation in a book review.

Lee threw the axe over his head, striking the split willow branch dead center and splitting it cleanly into two shorter logs. He stopped to wipe the perspiration from his forehead with his bare arm after replacing them with another piece of wood. He gazed down at the wood pile at his feet. He just needed twenty more and he was done.

Perspiration poured from his chin down his nude chest into the waistband of his tattered pants on a sweltering, humid early-spring day in Adult Camp 12. He yearned for something refreshing to drink, such as lemonade or tea. He hadn't had either in a long time, but the lemonade was more appealing because of the recalled acidity.

Because the soybean fuel required to power the trucks was so scarce, no one in the region traveled much anymore, not even to trade with nearby settlements. He remembered that making lemonade needed those sour, juicy fruits with seeds and thick, yellow rinds known as lemons, and the only location to obtain nice ones was further east, closer to the sea. He hadn't seen the sea in more years than he could recall, however.

Life was difficult, and that was a reality. The district leaders continued promising that the central government was hard at work on a plan to complete decontaminating the cities and bring people back to re-inhabit them. Rebuilding would enable people to move into secure, modern homes with fully working biospheres without the need for gen-packs for sanitation and electricity. All children would be permitted to attend school until the age of twenty-four.

When the adults gained access to a carefully calibrated UNI-Indus screen and could re-imprint the requisite systelogics of the techno-sci trades, they could return to gainful work, and everyone's quality of living would return to pre-disaster levels. After a few years, maybe they will be able to build a complete civilization with all the conveniences their forefathers were used to and a genuine life beyond the limited lifestyle they now lead.

After 500 years of living in villages and camps, much of the country was still at a very rudimentary mid-twentieth-century level, and it was almost hard to accept what the authorities stated. They spread the same lies that Lee's parents said they had heard from their parents, and their parents from their forefathers going back generations.

Some blamed the early failure of the communications network; others linked it to a large disparity in status between the haves and have-nots with no middle class; and still others argued that the main issue was a general shortage of people. Although impossible to calculate precisely, the present national population is believed to be barely 0.2% of the previous four hundred forty million... It had seemed to be the end of the world. It was nearly there.

The Catastrophe was the abrupt emergence of a virulent and uncontrolled epidemic that originated in a huge metropolis in the Georgia District and ripped apart what was then the United States of America in the mid-23rd century. According to mythology, some biohazard professionals were reckless with samples of the deadly virus, resulting in unintended transmission. As it spread in all directions, the victims flooded the hospitals, killing the medical workers who were treating them. So many people died as a result of the deadly effects that remains couldn't be cremated quickly enough, further spreading the airborne sickness. The Catastrophe wiped out the population, and millions perished in misery.

The administration had dissolved into disarray by that point. The fortunate few who could afford it, including the President and many members of his cabinet, fled behind the security of well-stocked, exclusive enclaves free of disease. They completely isolated themselves, leaving the nation to be consumed by a hundred twenty-five years of instability and revolt until it was ruthlessly put down and the districts developed to administer each region autonomously. The country would've been ripe for takeover if it hadn't been for the fact that the rest of the globe was disintegrating at the same time, but each nation had its own disease horrors to worry about. Entire civilizations, as magnificent and rich in history as they once were, have been left in ruins.

There wasn't much left of pre-apocalyptic rural America that their forebears would have recognized after the Catastrophe and the accompanying civil wars unless they traveled all the way back to before the Industrial Revolution. Basic utilities vanished, fields reverted to their natural form, and woods encroached on once-thriving cities. The crowds had scavenged everything of value to construct shelters and barns, but much of it was haphazardly thrown together. The parceling of land plots into what would become their present-day communities under district leaders was what eventually brought them back from the edge of nihilistic revolution, and slowly they began to rebuild and reconnect. They had shelter, and rudimentary land line phone service was only to be utilized in emergencies. Power and running water were sometimes accessible, but practically everything was scarce. Many products that were formerly deemed necessities were now considered luxury.

The cities remained deadly areas of still-infectious sickness, and the few brave or reckless humans who stayed there were generally immune or intended to profit from it and refused to leave, transforming them into crime and influence dens. Nobody was safe anymore, to be honest. The camps and villages were agricultural groups of people who lived together to work and rear animals, much like the fiefdoms Lee had read about once in a worn bock about the old-named continent of Europe. His own camp was far enough away from old-named New Orleans, as the nineteen-year-old recalled from his basic village education, that it wasn't as much of a concern, but he worried about his younger sisters back in their family village further southwest in the Bayou District.

Lee, said a beautifully feminine voice from behind him. Lee Boudreaux.

Lee grinned as he turned to see his elder sister, Evie—Evelyn, actually—approach him. They were two of the fortunate. They wound up at the same adult camp together, which didn't happen very frequently, and they were as healthy and happy as could be expected given the circumstances. In fact, the fact that they'd both survived their journey from the small hamlet where they'd been raised was a near-miracle, for bandits preyed on the weak and innocent, and many died as a result.

When Evie turned eighteen three years ago, it almost killed Lee, and it was time for her to be pushed from their house, leaving him to pursue her own path. But it was the only way to deal with the youthful hostility as they reached maturity, a result of poisons that had quickly built up in the blood of young people beginning a century before the Catastrophe. Nobody could explain the aggressive behavior other than the possibility that it was caused by industrial contamination in the groundwater, which had seeped into