It is the far-flung future: The Year 2031. Ever since The Anomaly appeared between the Earth and the Moon, things have been fucked. The affairs of humanity have been scattered to the wind, much like the mercury-rich dust of the Florida Desert. The best laid plans of mice and men have been cornholed into oblivion.
We all noticed The Anomaly at different times. It overlaid the moon, seeming to stay perfectly centered between our world and our natural satellite. It took the form of a glowing, blood-red dodecahedron. Well, at least to the human eye. If you looked up in the sky, night or day, toward the moon in whatever phase it was in, there was The Anomaly. An unnerving red geometry, seeming to pulse with your own breathing patterns. But it was completely undetectable by all of our scientific instruments. Spectrometers, radio telescopes, hell, even everyday cameras would show no sign of it. It was invisible to everything but the naked human eye. Regardless, it sat like a wound in the sky, pulsing crimson to everyone who dared behold it.
Since it’s inauspicious but undeniable appearance, the world has gone kittywampus six ways from Sunday.
The oceans have become a murky greyish goop. Mountains have become pockmarked and granular, particulating into little more than oversized anthills. Wisdom teeth are just gone; dentists have lost a major revenue stream. The First World governments have collapsed. It was spectacular and almost instantaneous once The Anomaly took hold of the world. Heads of state tried to give serious addresses to their terrified constituents, but their words tended to lose meaning once their teeth transformed into earthworms as they spoke. It was mostly moist slapping noises, which are not exactly reassuring to a panicked populace.
Now, speaking as one of the unlucky ones who lived through the Change, I can report on the current state of things here in the Divided States of America. I have been tirelessly chronicling the characteristics, origins, and lore of the gangs that now rule North America. I think of myself as a scribe. An instrument of History, cautiously optimistic that humanity will eventually have a need for records. From New New York, to New Los Angeles, I have been studying the gangs of the end times.
CHRIST’S ARMY
Demographic: Previous Evangelicals, who are super-psyched about the state of things. Formerly well-to-do white Southerners who feel like they’re a whisker away from vindication.
Strength: Great in numbers, but mostly overweight and elderly.
Stronghold: The formerly affluent suburbs around Atlanta.
Weakness: Putting up a sign that says “Free McRibs this way!” with an arrow pointing toward a cliff. They will walk of the edge of the cliff every time and then fall to their death while asking to speak to a manager.
THE DOG TOWN BARKERS
Overview: The employees of various dog shelters and pet stores, who because of The Anomaly have been merged with their dog counterparts. Half-human, half-dog humanoids.
Strength: Being very alert. Barking at anyone who approaches their stronghold, especially mailmen.
Treats: Yes please.
Territory: Wherever they manage to pee, after sniffing around for rival gangs, and then pissing right on top of their marker. That’ll show ’em. This is MY yard. MINE.
SILENCE COVEN
Racial Bias: No.
Philosophy: That we should have probably anticipated that subjective reality would overwrite the objective.
Powers: Creating an interminable paranoia in those who are not initiated.
Weakness: Communication. They’re silent, after all.
NAMELESS BABY ARMY
MAKEUP: Not so much a gang but an inchoate horde of marauding babies. A force of nature comprised of 0-3 year old humans, who have all of the instinctive needs and ambitions of humans, but none of the empathy or decorum. Easily one of the most terrifying forces ever unleashed on this earth.
MUTATION: Yes, they are all 4-5 feet tall but just still act like babies.
FAVORITE BEVERAGE: Milk.
BATTLE TACTICS: Using their really sharp little fingernails and teeth.
THE SNAKEMEN OF WAUSAU
MAKEUP: Eight guys from Wausau, Wisconsin, who for some reason became immense godlike naga creatures.
QUEZTLCOATL: Perhaps.
TYPICAL CONVERSATION: “Oh hey dere, do ya tink we oughta go out dere and do a big cullin’ of da weak, er no?”
“Oh yaaah, I s’pose it’s ’bout dat time.”
“Yaah. And it’s so nice outside today. Be a shame if we just sat on our keisters dis whole day.”
“Oh yaah. Gotta cull da weak on a day like today.”
FAVORITE APPETIZER: Cheese curds.
PHOENIX SOCIETY
Leader: An impossibly positive man, one who can’t admit defeat.
Project: To restore the old world order, Capitalism and all.
Dress: Polo shirts and buzzcuts. Easily the worst look of all time.
Adherents: The easily duped, the get-rich-quick type who quickly check out whenever questions of mortality or morality come up.
Eventually, one of these gangs will inherit the earth. We’d like to imagine the eschaton coincides with or own death, but this is probably not the case. The end of the world happens very slowly, and it’s laborious. The world has in fact ended several times, but its’ so gradual that we don’t even realize it’s happening. The Anomaly watches into us as we try to go about our day to day lives. The strange becomes familiar and we watch the sky as it loses answers, tries to tell us that we’re not equipped to understand it.
The world has ended many times. Maybe once it will end for the better.
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