text: The western world didn't end with a bang or even a clamor. It was a quiet death that allowed people to get comfortable with it before it really happened. As with anyone who watches someone pass from a prolonged illness, there's almost a sense of grip and letting go days before the end. For the world, the gripping motion tore most of the modern countries apart. All manner of national law, trade agreements, and human decency seemed to be up for grabs. Larger governments failed to keep their power leaving cities to cite pre-industrial days, building walls and restricting movement. It seemed everyone was convinced their neighbor would not be their salvation but their enemy in the days to come, and most stockpiled in the way you'd expect. There was a run on banks, grocery stores, gun and ammunition ranges, and oddly, libraries. It seemed information was finally more important than the risk of overdue fines. There were millions of suicides. Almost as if the media had a single order from the top, the news began explaining how the catastrophe predicted by science wouldn't be as bad as previously theorized. The news anchors tried old tactics of distraction, focusing attention on inane celebrity lives and feel good stories of families who stuck together through tragedy. It didn't work. The suicides continued and the population of the world was cut by two thirds, in the modest estimations. It wasn't just self-harm though. Humanity can do amazing and terrible things in the same breath. Whole towns that decided to create a stockpile system for citizens would be overrun by a few, taking everything with them after ending any chance of retribution. I wept when I heard of the first like this. By the seventh city massacre, I was no longer interested in how the outside world was collapsing. I looked inwardly and began to plan. I was near enough to adolescence that I understood what might happen. What had already occurred would not be the worst of it. No one took the time to explain to me what I should be preparing for but I'd seen enough movies to know to be ready for zombies or (more likely) the collapse of society. I didn't let the transition to godless barbarians rip my family apart. I decided to walk away first. I'd never been close with my mother or father. They weren't close themselves so when Dad unlocked the gun cabinet and allowed each of us to choose our own, it seemed best to take the gift and go. I'll never know what the actual plan was or if Dad had even had one. If the world was going to end, I wasn't about to let the last conversations of my life to be arguments concerning what was and wasn't any longer. I don't know if they looked for me. I know I didn't look back. As I was packing my stuff the night my father had given me the gun, I realized that most of what I had would be useless in a hard world. I looked around and settled with the basics. There were items that I would need on the way and I began to enter them on my phone. Realizing how stupid it was to depend on tech that would give up in the next few days, I put my phone in my 'maybe' pile. In the end the only personal item I packed was a piece of glass cut to make rainbows. My grandmother had given it to me before she'd passed. As she put it in my palm, she told a story about how your loved ones can visit on rainbows when you see them. It may have been a child's reasoning, but I was a child. The first of millions about to take on their own independence and I clung to any idea that I would not be alone. The dissonance of actively leaving my family but hanging onto a spun tale about dead relatives visiting is clear to me now. It was the end of the world and I don't blame myself for holding onto it. In fact, I hang it every night before I go to sleep, so when I wake up I can say hello to everyone I loved. It works. The first few months were harder than I expected. Despite my decision to strike out on my own, I wasn't ready to go feral from the start. I lost my pack and all my belongings three times before I gave up my attachment to things. The first and second beat downs, I fought. I found my instinct to hold onto what was mine hard to break even when the second batch had been cobbled together from remnants of houses left to rot. The third time I still lost my items I didn't fight as vehemently and was mostly bruised due to insolence. The fourth time I didn't fight at all. When it was clear they were more willing to harm than I was, I dropped my bag and walked away. I kept my hat that time. My rainbow-catcher had long since been hidden away, embarrassingly, inside me. There was no pocket I could guarantee safe passage for something so precious. So I'd stuck it the one place it would be worse for someone to steal than the rainbow-catcher. That first year, I celebrated my 15th birthday over a fire with a can of beans. They were delicious. I developed a routine. I'd scout each new area for a day, darting around until I found the best and most vacant looking house to sleep in. I was aided by a taboo that began when suicides became common. While humanity fell apart for the living, those who'd left this world brought back superstition in the extreme. No one raided the house of someone who'd killed themselves. It just wasn't done. It was likely this habit, rather than all the other less than angelic ones I developed, that made me notorious. I didn't see the dead as the rest of the living did. I knew the spirits were gone and the only way they could visit was on a rainbow. I'd put my catcher up in the house at night and stay until I saw a rainbow. You'd think this was only on sunny days but rainbows are everywhere. When I finally saw one, I took it as the spirit's blessing and allowed myself to resupply. After another night of sleep I would move on. My education hadn't been fully executed at the time of the collapse. I took it upon myself to learn from any books on useful topics in the houses I slept in. These I kept with or without a spirit's blessing. Admittedly those books were the hardest things to lose. I developed the ability to speed read and an extremely good memory. I started with an emphasis on science hoping to learn things that might help when I was a bloody pulp. It wasn't until I found an A-Z herbal remedy book that I started to learn anything useful. With that new knowledge I was able to scavenge herbs with confidence, finding bottles to keep them in. I would work on my medicine cloak at night when it was too dark to ready by firelight. The cloak was red and was full of pockets. It was first item of red I began to wear regularly, inspired by a favourite story I'd read before the collapse. These were good times. There were bad and terrible nights. Nights when food and fire were scarce. I couldn't always find the kind of home I preferred to sleep in. In my travels I found a pop-up tent, the kind you get for an over-privileged child. That was freedom itself and I slept in nature with delight. Eventually, as all things seemed to, my tent and other items were lost to a bastard who was stronger and meaner than I was. I knew my life was more important than what I could scavenge. The benefit of living in a world of such previous consumption was that there would be surplus of items for years, if you kept moving as I did. I let the tent go and went back to living in houses of suicide victims. As I traveled I kept a specific checklist for scavenging. I wasn't picky but I did become particular. If I found an item in better state than I had, I would lose the first and keep the second. I kept my eye out for tent supplies as I could. After creating my cloak I found my favorite color of clothing was red. I decided it would be the only color I wore when I found a collection of Deadpool comics. His assertion that it made him a better fighter was enough for me. I'd take whatever red clothing, male or female, from the closets of those blessed houses. I didn't wash clothing, just threw it out when it became to unbearable to continue wearing it. My cloak was the only thing I washed on a regular basis. This was more to ensure my herbal supplies weren't ever exposed to anything deadly than a preference for being clean. The red and natural smell made me feel like a poison dart frog, just rank enough to be left alone unless my attacker was truly desperate. There'd only been a few times when I'd been attractive enough for someone to try at taking my rainbow-maker. The first time it saved me. As they entered my virginity, they were not gentle and rammed themselves so hard there was an audible snap. My attacker was so wracked with pain it allowed me to curb-stomp his nose in and run away, with my pack and virginity mostly intact. The second time I was not so lucky. The woman had fooled me into having a cup of tea at her fire. She'd been quick with the leaf and before I recognized the strong sip of valerian, a powerful sleeping drug, she was on me. She found my rainbow-catcher and removed it deftly, flinging it and its leather cord into the fire. Once she'd satisfied herself, she took all my belongings and left me with only rags of clothing. It was difficult to move the next day and it wasn't until the evening that I had the strength to search through the ash of the fire for the glass. The rainbow-catcher cleaned up. I took longer to physically and mentally recover. That attack was the only time I'd ever regretting not replacing the gun my father had given me. After this, I wanted to be stronger and knew I needed to develop my muscles. Abandoned gyms were everywhere so I took a break from my endless journey and searched for an appropriate gym. While there were a myriad of choices within the small town I'd stumbled through, most were occupied by gangs. I set up camp in a 24/7 Fitness Center that had a locking mechanism left in the closed position during the collapse. Evidently no one had enough reason to break in and as a result the place been left unmolested. I spent the day working out how to get onto the building's roof and muddled my way through air vents until I was inside. Snug as bug, I settled into a workout routine three times a day. When you have little else to do but physical training and reading, you get strong quickly. A smoothie bar within the gym had stocked dehydrated fruit preserves that left me with better food than I'd had in some time. I was there for a month and subsisted on orange concentrate, protein mixes, and power bars. All in all, my newfound strength was the smaller prize considering the safety I enjoyed while living there. I dubbed it my 24/7 Fortress. I marked my mental map in case I ever had a desire to repeat my stay or found another like it. There was a small chance but it was enough to leave a happy mark on my memory. With the decreased population, wanderers were a rarity. I would stay on the outskirts of towns and mostly preyed on vacant suburbs. Sometimes you'd run into people to trade with but I kept my interactions to a minimum. As that first year turned into the second, towns began to recover and society returned in some measure. Communities grew around gardens. Villages were cobbled together in city centers and farming areas alike. Rarely shunned but always treated as the outsider I was, I was happy enough to pass through quietly. My red clothing was loud enough to mark me and when I began to hear questioning rumbles about who I could be, I left immediately. My herb knowledge became more useful when I exposed myself to others. When I finally knew enough to fill a book, I would transpose what I'd learned from stolen library tomes and through experience into scavenged notebooks. If I was treated kindly I would leave this with whomever seemed to be in charge of medicines in the village. It was easy enough to create a new one and I didn't require a written reference. I earned my first nickname of the Red Doctor by doing this a number of times. Villagers began to seek me out as I travelled. I would cure and treat what I could before insisting I needed to move on. These were also good times. It wasn't until items in the world became scarce that I earned the name that stuck. I'd never had that sense of superstition for the dead as others had and when I stayed freshly clothed and fed when others were struggling, some saw me as the worst kind of thief. As I walked the struggling hamlets, I would hear my name rippling through their grapevine. They would quietly cluck that the Red Bandit had arrived. This set the stage for my finest and darkest times.