Scorched Earth: A Future History of Planet Earth

by Walter D. Petrovic

A thick mist encircled the Earth for many years, slowly dissipating as it radiated out into space. The greater portion of the world was devastated; a population of billions, reduced to several million score. Once great cities were wiped clean from the face of the earth. Those that were spared stood like majestic mountains. With time, they also crumbled away, turning into gigantic mounds that were loosely held together by rusty girders, brittle concrete and broken glass.

Bands of strange-looking humans roamed the face of the land foraging for the scarce and much-valued commodities of food and fresh water.

In the years following the deluge, the surface dwelling survivors died out from exposure to radiation and to the adverse climactic conditions that were inherited from the global fall out.

The progeny of the survivors became strange in appearance and behaviour until they all became new forms of humans, evolved from mutants, to small hybrid races which soon became as distinct and individual as those humans that lived in the late Twentieth Century. The amalgamation of these races found that great tension had formed between them, due to their differences in appearances and forms of speech, and so they broke away from the main body of humanity and headed for their own select areas of the continent.

Many of these new races of humans ventured forth and eventually established unique civilisations. One race went to the extreme western part of the North continent. Everywhere, they found small pockets of survivors and conquered them. They looted their food stores and used those people as slaves; so becoming a feared band of humans that resembled upright, and very dark featured, apes. They called themselves the Teniqués. Those in the east were afraid that the Teniqués would begin to move back their way but although they were warlike, they stayed put and were soon forgotten.

Concentrated cells of normal humans were still alive. They were the ones who lived in the mountainous regions of the continent and although most became larger in size than normal humans, they were the most in resemblance to the people living during the Twentieth Century. They were hunters and gatherers, moving from valley to, in both the eastern and the western mountains. These were amongst the first people to be conquered by the Teniqués, in their move westward. In the east, there was also a race of perfectly normal looking humans called the Sëdash. They were a group of hermaphrodites that were compiled and exiled by the rest of human mutants, who disliked them, since they most closely resembled the previous normal humans. The hermaphrodites wandered for many years until a place to settle was found. They began to build a culture that they based on total equality between individuals.

Yet, the Sëdash soon became intolerant to any other forms of human. They developed a belief that they were divinely chosen to be "superior and perfect," and so they enslaved and mistreated those who happened to trespass on their city boundaries. For mating, only the true hermaphrodites were allowed to propagate. After several generations of regulated breeding, a pure-bred race of hermaphrodites was formed.

There was another similar band of humans in the eastern part of the northern Continent. They called themselves the Palatkans. Their appearance was much like that of lepers. They had segregated themselves from the main stream years before the great cataclysm. They congregated in long strips of semi-fertile land on the floor of lengthy canyons.

Following several generations of their offspring, they bore a race of ugly and canker-covered beings that developed a culture of cannibalism.

They believed that all the other humans were left on Earth for them to sacrifice to their gods, then to feast. They were aware of a life force that permeated everything and that was significantly concentrated within the flesh of humans.