The Dusk of Setting Suns

Prologue

Little was left of the world that we knew. Sunlight faded out and brought nothing more than the indication that though time passed, nothing would ever change. The country I once called home had become a nuclear wasteland, but I still made my home amongst the wreckage.

I remember the days after the explosions. When the world dipped to silence. Not even the chirp of crickets remained. Instead the world was filled with the hollow sound of nothingness. Background noise replaced with a deafening peace.

It took twenty years for me to raise out from the metal prison I had grown accustomed to. Buried underground amongst people I once called a family, but when the opportunity arose for me to leave I left without a moment’s hesitation. Silence has the capacity to drive even the most sane of us to craziness.

I left the bunker with nothing more than a backpack and a drive to make something from myself. For twenty-five years I had lived on this earth, but it had taken one deep inhalation of the heavy, dust-stricken air to make me feel truly alive.

So, with the dusk of setting suns clouding my vision, I turned my back on the bunker I'd unwillingly called a home and headed west to follow that ever glowing sun to wherever it would lead me.