A t-shirt tied to a broom handle caught the wind poorly, barely a sail and more a decoration to make the slowly disintegrating trash pile look like a raft. 'Same Shit, Different Day' the t-shirt said. Oh how true that had felt two years ago, and been bullshit. How true that felt now, would a couple more years make that feel just as dumb? Lucas lay on his back on his raft as it drifted down river, a couple of fishing rods hanging over the trailing edge. Every bob of the raft would dunk his dark hair in the water ever since the plastic barrel on that side came off and took half the rope tying up the raft with it. Still, crawlers didn't like to swim all that much, so if the fish kept biting, Lucas figured he'd stay on the raft until something came along or it split under him.<br/><br/>He'd seen what happened to people who tried to take the fight to the bastards. Been at sea when it started to go down. Even had to anchor a way off the docks, medical helicopter coming down to vaccine them against the newest African Rat Flu or whatever. If only they'd known they'd have stayed out there. Instead they docked, unloaded, and Lucas took his paycheck and promised to be back in a fortnight for the next run. A week later and he was huddled in an emergency camp, watching the docks get overrun by crawlers on the news in a mob of scared people, his ship on the horizon. Another week and half the camp was on the run from the other, now diseased, half.<br/><br/>"Fuck." He spluttered as this time his whole head dunked into the water and he sat up, raft creaking even more ominously. He rubbed his hands back over his hair to squeeze the water out. "Waterbeds were meant to be way sexier than this." Snorting he looked around, warily but not tense. He hadn't felt safe really for a year at least, and that stiffening fear had exhausted itself early on. "Guess it's time to count my blessings." He muttered drily.<br/><br/>Himself, wet and cold but alive. Some clothes, also wet. Some spare clothes, entirely wet. A pistol that had been useless for him even before it ran out of bullets, even other humans seemed to just stare down it skeptically, if you could find any. Two fishing rods, some spare hooks. No spare line, he'd used that to try and jury-rig the raft. A big rusty knife, just about capable of gutting fish still. A duffel bag of camping gear he'd grabbed from some abandoned survivalist's stash, not that he could work out what half of it did.<br/><br/>And of course the raf-<br/><br/>As he swore and fought against the current to gather his belongings from the quickly separating bits of raft. With a gasp he'd just zipped the bag shut, tips of poles sticking out, when his body slammed into something big white and floating. "Ow! Who put a wall in the river?" He cried out, to what he thought was a lack of audience.