User:Ravenpen

Raven's Story

They say you don't truly appreciate something until it's gone.

I say that's the biggest load of horse shit I ever heard.

Only a first-class jackass takes the gifts he's given for granted.

My life before the plague probably wouldn't have been seen as extraordinary by anyone, but I always knew exactly how lucky I was.

How a bum like me ever ended up with a woman like Karen was as much a mystery to me as it was to all the jerks who eyed her whenever we went out. She always said she fell in love with me for my sense of humor, which seems strange to me now since I can't remember the last time I laughed.

Whatever her reasons were I knew that I had to have done something right when she agreed to marry me. Being married to her was like winning the lotto every damn day. It wasn't just her looks, she was smart and funny and she accepted me for who I was.

A lot of women can't handle being a cop's wife. The job practically comes with a set of divorce papers. During my first year on the force I saw one of the guys I went to academy with lose everything; the guy became a shell, worse than most of the people I see now.

But none of that bothered Karen. I'm not saying she didn't worry, but she understood why I was a cop and she was proud of me. I always used to love how she'd listen to her girl friends go on and on about their husband's work on Wall Street or how many Mercedes they sold that day. Karen would just sit back and when they were done she'd ask them how many lives their husbands had saved that day.

That line always shut 'em up real quick. It was just a little part of what I loved about her, there was so much more.

I didn't think that anything could make me happier than being with Karen, but I was wrong. When our daughter was born my concept of joy was redefined. I really don't have the words to describe how she changed our lives.

Everything about her left us in awe. I guess that's why Karen picked the name she did. She said that having her in our lives made her heart soar and between that and the black curls on her head the choice was easy.

My life may have been simple, ordinary, even mundane, but it was perfect and it was mine.

When the virus swept through town the station was one of the first places notified. I thought having some advance warning would mean I could protect my family. I raced home, but when I got there it was already too late.

In the blink of an eye everything I had was gone...my life was over....

But it wasn't....

Whatever forces had made my life so good must've had a sick sense of humor because what I was left with wasn't worth squat.

Even killing myself seemed to be more effort than it was worth. The only thing I knew for sure is that I wasn't going to let myself become one of those things.

I found myself an empty bar stool, which wasn't hard, and resigned myself to sitting there and drinking as much booze as I could ram down my gullet, 'till all of it was gone; all the hurt, all the pain, everything.

A few hours into my plan a haggard old drunk with the same idea woke me up to tell me that a group of those things was headed our way. He was in a lot worse shape than I was and I knew that he'd have no chance of getting away even at the rate those things seemed to travel. Eventually he'd have to stop and I knew damn well that they wouldn't, so I took what little pity I had left and helped him over to the coffee shop where a few people who had managed to escape the plague were holed up.

All the survivors at the shop were talking about a building where some sort of makeshift militia was set up. Some abandoned apartment complex where a bunch of guys had banded together to try and fight the things off. Their goal was to try and take back the town, which sounded like the craziest thing I'd ever heard. One look around the place and you could tell that there wasn't a damn thing worth saving. But the old guy insisted on going and I felt obligated to make sure he got there. Anything was better than sitting around waiting to die.

It took a couple days and there were more than a few close calls, but the old codger and I finally arrived more or less in one piece. He died three days later. It could have been starvation, but my guess is it was probably just his time. No matter how you slice it I'd call it a blessing considering the alternative.

The group seemed like a decent bunch of guys. None of 'em had gone off the deep end like I thought and their plan seemed a lot more reasonable after they explained it a bit. They were just trying to work together to secure whatever they could and try and make some semblance of a normal life. No one had any delusions that it was going to go back to the way it was, but they figured they could get back something.

There was one guy who had gotten his family through three suburbs just to get there and when I looked at them they seemed genuinely happy. Despite everything that had happened they were together and they were whole.

It was a start and that was something....

I joined up with the group and even made it official by adopting the surname that all of them used to identify each other. They told me I should choose another name to go by something so people knew who I was.

My old life seemed so far away that I really couldn't relate to who I was before, but there was something I could relate to. That family had something worth living for; the same thing I once had.

My daughter never got to see this world, but if I live I'm gonna make damn sure that every one of those things that took her from me knows her name.