In the beginning of The Bug War, Rebo had stayed put in his isolation. He was getting sporadic reports from civilization of the carnage afoot, and having seen a fair bit of carnage himself, he wanted no part of it. Rebo told himself that he didn't care if the entire planet ate itself - he was going to sit this war out.
The thing that protected Rebo the most was that very isolation. He had gotten so far removed from the civilized that it was a two week walk over trackless and rugged terrain to get to him, and no one really even knew he was there to be gotten to, much less did the mindless Unholy hordes realize that. They were in search of easy targets, people they could see. No one could see what lies a two week walk away. As people who still had enough mind left to be able to operate the technology available succumbed to The Bug and The Unholy who carried it, fewer and fewer people were left with any knowledge of how to operate the technology to escape the destruction.
Long distance reporting is also a function of technology. Over time, Rebo was getting fewer and fewer reports of the events on the planet. Five months after the initial reports, there were no more to be had. Nothing but static greeted his ears whenever he did the daily run of the dial to hear reports of the outside world. That continued for a further 7 months before Rebo snapped.
A year after the initial attacks, and seven months after he had heard his last human voice, Rebo decided to leave his stronghold and find the survivors - ANY survivors. When he had first come out to the wilderness, he wanted nothing to do with civilization. It was only after civilization was truly gone, and there was NO contact, that he realized just how isolated he really was, and that it was not what he really wanted after all.
Rebo packed up a few necessary items, his comms gear and the implements of destruction he had collected, and set out to find survivors. Instead he found the rotting remains of Hell. He first ran into the Unholy in areas within a couple of days from the cities. they were dull witted, stupid even, and seemed to have but one thing on their mind - killing. They weren't particularly fast or super-humanly strong, but what they WERE was "relentless". It was nearly impossible to kill them without destroying the infected brain stem - any other injuries, even head shots that would drop a normal human in it's tracks, seemed to have little or no effect on them. You could blow out giant gouts of gray matter from their heads, and yet if the brain stem remained intact, they kept coming. From the reports Rebo had pieced together before the radios fell silent, he knew that The Unholy were infected by a bug for which no cure had ever been found.
He killed them whenever he found them from a distance, and never, EVER approached the bodies. He knew, also from the reports, that The Bug couldn't survive past 72 hours without a living human host, but Rebo was never one to take chances. The numbers of the Unholy were falling off as The Bug completed it's deadly work, but Rebo soon found that the cities were unsafe. He concentrated instead on the countryside, individual farmsteads and outposts. Even in them, he found no living people.
Every afternoon Rebo fired up his comms and ran the frequencies, searching for the voice of a survivor anywhere, but he never again heard a human voice beyond his own. He spent the next four years running the countryside, searching outposts of humanity, killing The Unholy whenever he found them, and running the frequencies every afternoon. At the end of four years, he had gotten used to being alone, adjusted to it, but never really comfortable with it.
Over that same four years, his encounters with The Unholy became less frequent, as the attrition of The Bug took it's toll on them. As they razed the countryside and destroyed all the people they found there, there was less and less for them to eat. Between The Bug and starvation, they died in place by their millions, and only remained in the cities, where they turned to preying on one another, further reducing their ranks.
Rebo's initial forays into the cities were dangerous enterprises. There were still enough of The Unholy to be found in the cities to make life... interesting. After a year and a half or two years - what meaning has time when one has no schedule to keep? - Rebo found that there were less and less Unholy in the shining cities, until the time came when there were no people to be found in them at all - Defenders or Unholy, only skeletal remains in the streets, and the occasional mummified former human in some of the building interiors.
The infrastructure was still mostly intact - there was still power to most cities, the lights lit up, and automated machinery continued to run as if controlled by unseen hands. Several years before the Bug War, a battery had been developed that, while only the size of an Earth car battery, could power a city of 4 million people for 20 years. There were lots of these batteries/generators/ zero-point energy devices, or whatever they were - Rebo was no technician - around, and the power continued.
There were, however, no people left to employ it, save Rebo.
Over the course of the next 30 or 35 years, Rebo continued his search. He walked the continent high and low, ran the frequencies every afternoon searching for a companion, and exploring the cities of the dead. He never found nor heard from another living human. In 40 years, one can come to realize just how alone he is, and come to a sort of terms with that fact, but he can never afterwards be considered "sane".
In his last years, Rebo gave up the wandering portion of the search, and settled on living his remaining years in Kahala, a more or less central city of his continent, and once the capitol - when capitols had a meaning. Kahala had two fine towers projecting skyward from the same building at their base, and it was in one of these towers that he made his residence. From the vantage point of his perch in the top floors of the towers, he could see for miles in any direction. Every evening, after he came home from his forays into the city, collecting the things he found useful for survival, Rebo's ancient wrinkled hand would bar the double doors that were the sole access to his apartments, run the comms frequencies in search of a voice, for he had never given up hope that he would some day hear something, and watch the sunset over the encroaching jungle that was reclaiming the civilized on behalf or the wild.
The night came when Rebo ran through his routine as usual, and after the sunset, he cooked a meager meal, ate it, and sat to listen to the voices of the jungle and watch the dance of the stars through the window , before filling yet another page of his by now voluminous journal. He mused that he now appeared to be the sole possessor of an entire planet, and that there really wasn't a damned thing he could do with it but watch. After a couple of hours, he closed and sealed the window, put out the lights and crawled into his sleeping pallet on the floor, making sure his gun was close to hand and loaded, just in case. Old habits die hard.
Rebo drifted off to sleep alone, just as he had lived most of his life.
Rebo, The Last Man on Euzkala, never woke up.
The jungle didn't even notice - it just continued to do what jungles do, creeping ever onward to surround Rebo's sealed tomb projecting skyward out of the jungle as an unintentional but massive and lasting monument marking his final resting place.
The Last Man of Euzkala.
======================================================================
There are other stories in this story arc, tales of the rediscovery of Euzkala under it's new name of Khalamzadar, and one in particular that BIAD wrote, excerpts from the journal kept by Rebo, but I think I'll just pause here for the time being.
.
The thing that protected Rebo the most was that very isolation. He had gotten so far removed from the civilized that it was a two week walk over trackless and rugged terrain to get to him, and no one really even knew he was there to be gotten to, much less did the mindless Unholy hordes realize that. They were in search of easy targets, people they could see. No one could see what lies a two week walk away. As people who still had enough mind left to be able to operate the technology available succumbed to The Bug and The Unholy who carried it, fewer and fewer people were left with any knowledge of how to operate the technology to escape the destruction.
Long distance reporting is also a function of technology. Over time, Rebo was getting fewer and fewer reports of the events on the planet. Five months after the initial reports, there were no more to be had. Nothing but static greeted his ears whenever he did the daily run of the dial to hear reports of the outside world. That continued for a further 7 months before Rebo snapped.
A year after the initial attacks, and seven months after he had heard his last human voice, Rebo decided to leave his stronghold and find the survivors - ANY survivors. When he had first come out to the wilderness, he wanted nothing to do with civilization. It was only after civilization was truly gone, and there was NO contact, that he realized just how isolated he really was, and that it was not what he really wanted after all.
Rebo packed up a few necessary items, his comms gear and the implements of destruction he had collected, and set out to find survivors. Instead he found the rotting remains of Hell. He first ran into the Unholy in areas within a couple of days from the cities. they were dull witted, stupid even, and seemed to have but one thing on their mind - killing. They weren't particularly fast or super-humanly strong, but what they WERE was "relentless". It was nearly impossible to kill them without destroying the infected brain stem - any other injuries, even head shots that would drop a normal human in it's tracks, seemed to have little or no effect on them. You could blow out giant gouts of gray matter from their heads, and yet if the brain stem remained intact, they kept coming. From the reports Rebo had pieced together before the radios fell silent, he knew that The Unholy were infected by a bug for which no cure had ever been found.
He killed them whenever he found them from a distance, and never, EVER approached the bodies. He knew, also from the reports, that The Bug couldn't survive past 72 hours without a living human host, but Rebo was never one to take chances. The numbers of the Unholy were falling off as The Bug completed it's deadly work, but Rebo soon found that the cities were unsafe. He concentrated instead on the countryside, individual farmsteads and outposts. Even in them, he found no living people.
Every afternoon Rebo fired up his comms and ran the frequencies, searching for the voice of a survivor anywhere, but he never again heard a human voice beyond his own. He spent the next four years running the countryside, searching outposts of humanity, killing The Unholy whenever he found them, and running the frequencies every afternoon. At the end of four years, he had gotten used to being alone, adjusted to it, but never really comfortable with it.
Over that same four years, his encounters with The Unholy became less frequent, as the attrition of The Bug took it's toll on them. As they razed the countryside and destroyed all the people they found there, there was less and less for them to eat. Between The Bug and starvation, they died in place by their millions, and only remained in the cities, where they turned to preying on one another, further reducing their ranks.
Rebo's initial forays into the cities were dangerous enterprises. There were still enough of The Unholy to be found in the cities to make life... interesting. After a year and a half or two years - what meaning has time when one has no schedule to keep? - Rebo found that there were less and less Unholy in the shining cities, until the time came when there were no people to be found in them at all - Defenders or Unholy, only skeletal remains in the streets, and the occasional mummified former human in some of the building interiors.
The infrastructure was still mostly intact - there was still power to most cities, the lights lit up, and automated machinery continued to run as if controlled by unseen hands. Several years before the Bug War, a battery had been developed that, while only the size of an Earth car battery, could power a city of 4 million people for 20 years. There were lots of these batteries/generators/ zero-point energy devices, or whatever they were - Rebo was no technician - around, and the power continued.
There were, however, no people left to employ it, save Rebo.
Over the course of the next 30 or 35 years, Rebo continued his search. He walked the continent high and low, ran the frequencies every afternoon searching for a companion, and exploring the cities of the dead. He never found nor heard from another living human. In 40 years, one can come to realize just how alone he is, and come to a sort of terms with that fact, but he can never afterwards be considered "sane".
In his last years, Rebo gave up the wandering portion of the search, and settled on living his remaining years in Kahala, a more or less central city of his continent, and once the capitol - when capitols had a meaning. Kahala had two fine towers projecting skyward from the same building at their base, and it was in one of these towers that he made his residence. From the vantage point of his perch in the top floors of the towers, he could see for miles in any direction. Every evening, after he came home from his forays into the city, collecting the things he found useful for survival, Rebo's ancient wrinkled hand would bar the double doors that were the sole access to his apartments, run the comms frequencies in search of a voice, for he had never given up hope that he would some day hear something, and watch the sunset over the encroaching jungle that was reclaiming the civilized on behalf or the wild.
The night came when Rebo ran through his routine as usual, and after the sunset, he cooked a meager meal, ate it, and sat to listen to the voices of the jungle and watch the dance of the stars through the window , before filling yet another page of his by now voluminous journal. He mused that he now appeared to be the sole possessor of an entire planet, and that there really wasn't a damned thing he could do with it but watch. After a couple of hours, he closed and sealed the window, put out the lights and crawled into his sleeping pallet on the floor, making sure his gun was close to hand and loaded, just in case. Old habits die hard.
Rebo drifted off to sleep alone, just as he had lived most of his life.
Rebo, The Last Man on Euzkala, never woke up.
The jungle didn't even notice - it just continued to do what jungles do, creeping ever onward to surround Rebo's sealed tomb projecting skyward out of the jungle as an unintentional but massive and lasting monument marking his final resting place.
The Last Man of Euzkala.
======================================================================
There are other stories in this story arc, tales of the rediscovery of Euzkala under it's new name of Khalamzadar, and one in particular that BIAD wrote, excerpts from the journal kept by Rebo, but I think I'll just pause here for the time being.
.
Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’