Excerpt: Six

Henry came back early from work one afternoon, took off his coat and dropped it on the floor, then threw a coffee mug through the kitchen window.
He stood in the filthy kitchen, still panting from running up four flights of stairs, and looked out through the hole he'd just made. Dark clouded skies looked down upon a dim, sad-looking courtyard where no plants grew; a swing set with a broken swing, where children never played. An identical building was on the other side, with cracked plaster, coated in dust and grime. Perhaps someone else was looking out a window at him from over there.
He pulled the curtain. Ignored the glass fragments in the sink. Maybe if things got worse he'd come back and eat them later. He dragged himself to the couch, where he sat and knuckled his eyebrows with his fists.
A disturbing trend.
In the board's opinion, not yet fit for return to work.
Still unstable.
On the way home he'd stopped at a spice store. He made a habit of steering clear of the Morph drugs (he'd seen too many casualties of those back when he'd been on the job), but the guy there also ran a back room still where he produced basic alcohol. White, clean, searing. He would flavour it for you, for a few dollars more (before the cloud came he had apparently run a brewing supplies store), but Henry usually passed on the niceties and went straight for the burn. He swigged from the heavy brown flaggon bottle, which if he pleased, he could return for a discount on his next purchase. Henry's bottles usually wound up in pieces on the floor.
Fire ran up into his sinuses, and down his throat into his belly. He leaned back and felt the fumes obliterate his thinking. The phone in his jacket pocket started to ring. He looked at it on the floor. It stopped ringing. He lay down on the couch and rested his feet, shoes still on, over its one good arm.
Post-traumatic stress syndrome.
At the last evaluation, the board recommended a support group for fallout event survivors. We note this was not pursued.
The guilt of those that survived.
As if he had killed them himself?

He slept then, on the filthy couch, and woke as the sun was setting. From the couch, dry-mouthed and headachy, Henry looked out the window and saw the sun's feeble light, illuminating the dark cloud from behind. It had been years since he'd actually seen the sun.
His stomach was growling angrily; he'd been ignoring it for a while, but had to get something to eat now. He picked up his coat from the floor, and felt the phone buzzing with messages in the pocket. He took it out of his coat, and hefted it for a moment in his hand. From where he stood at the front door he could see his entire flat: the couch in one corner, bed in another, slightly obscured by a bookshelf. The sad little kitchen in the third. A cold draught was coming through the cup hole in the window. Henry wondered if he could throw the phone through the same hole.
He drew his hand back; threw. For a moment, there was the pleasing arc of the phone as it was caught in the bright orange of the streetlights. Then more tinkling of glass splinters in the sink. A second hole. It was a wonder the whole thing didn't splinter and shatter, all those storeys down to the courtyard.
He pulled his collar up when he got outside. The cloud above was low in the sky. Thick. Oppressive. Nights were always cold now, even in summer. He made his way down the street, looking straight ahead, not wanting to make eye contact with any of the mutants that always seemed to come out at night. They were selling everything: bits of meat on skewers, roasting over a dirty fire; trinkets and other worthless junk; a cage of cats, lying still; all manner of people, selling bodies, for all manner of purpose. On each side of the sidewalk were heaps of rubbish. The city was meant to send a collection truck out once a month, but Henry no longer knew if that still happened. All the same, he threw his junk and food scraps out on to the ever increasing pile outside their building, just like everyone else.
Once in a while a car would idle slowly down the street. People would shamble out of the car's way, dragging their sacks and baskets and supermarket trollies along behind them. Sometimes fights would break out between the drivers, and the pedestrians, who had been forced further and further out on to the street by the increasing piles of rubbish. But Henry knew not to make eye contact - not with any of them. No one normal could afford the price of petrol anymore. The guy driving the old holden could be a hitman for a gangland boss; the one in the merc, with the tinted windows, could just about be anyone: a chinese dignitary, or maybe one of the few Aussies wealthy enough to bribe their way across the border.
Around the corner from his place was a small cluster of caravans, all selling food and drink. Every night they set up there, and plugged themselves into a long lead that extended from the basement of a nearby office building. When dawn came, they unplugged the caravans from their pirated power source, and led the caravans away behind horses. Wherever they went, wherever they came from, the caravans were there every night, and gone every morning. Henry had heard they managed it all by bribing the security guards who worked in the office building. However they managed it, he was grateful, for it was the only place for miles where cooked food could be had - the kind that didn't make you sick, that is.
He stepped inside a blue and red caravan with dancing penguins and "Tashkoff's" in lights over the door. This one was fairly large compared to most - in addition to the small kitchen towards the back, there were four tables, each with two chairs set across from each other. And bolted up in the corner, was a television set. Everything inside was black with grease, and the whole place smelled rancid.
The TV was on, playing one of the four programmes that still got made: the soap, whatever it was called. It was about the lives of a regular kiwi family who lived in the city, and all the trials and apparent tribulations of living in a post-fallout Auckland. The characters had, no matter what, stuck together through thick and thin: love, death, and sorrow. Typical storylines included stopping grampa from partaking in cannibalism, hosting a wedding while in a bunker, and whether or not they should eat Sammy, the family dog. Henry hated it. But it always seemed to be on whenever he came to old Tashkoff's for a bite to eat.
"Hey," Tashkoff greeted Henry as he came up the steps from the street. He was a large man in his late 50s, with black hair and thick limbs. The scars on his face, and tattoos on his hands told of a chequered past, but Henry didn't care. Tashkoff was straight up with him, and so they were friends, of a sort.
They shook hands, and Henry sat in the chair nearest the kitchen. He watched the soap for a while, until Tashkoff brought out the evening's meal: fish pie. Henry raised an eyebrow when he caught a whiff of the fish from under the pastry. "Do I need to start worrying?" he asked.
"Is canned," Tashkoff said. "Don't worry."
Henry looked back at the pie, still unsure. He couldn't remember how long ago it was that the oceans were all but cleared out, and no one could be bothered with fishing anymore. And only mutants could stomach the chaff that came out of the fish farms these days.
"Is salmon," Tashkoff coaxed. "Is good."
Feeling like he was the hunter who had killed the last Dodo, Henry ate a mouthful of the pie. The canned fish was who-knows-how old, and the pastry just tasted of freezer, but Tashkoff certainly knew how to make the most of what little he could get hold of. Just to be on the safe side, and let his stomach make up its own mind for a while before the next bite, Henry decided to splash out and order a drink. Tashkoff raised one eyebrow, but nodded, and went to the back to pour the alcohol.
The soap finished, and the news came on. Henry's stomach gurgled, but was still. The news, the second of four programmes that played on the one remaining channel, was much changed from its previous incarnation, before the war. In those days the news was a fairly light-hearted approach to national, and international news. The news anchors would move smoothly between stories of suicide bombings and the granny down the road who helped new immigrants learn English in her spare time. There was news about weather, and even sport. Fast forward all those years (the black years, when there was no news, when the news anchors were probably kept, frozen, with bouffant hair and shine-resistant makeup still thickly applied, in the basement of the TV studios somewhere), and things were much changed.
Stories about one subject could drag on for days, if not weeks, now. Whoever came up with the news pieces had been given such a long leash that viewers could find themselves learning about the most intricate detail about all matter of subjects. Some were useful, such as the two weeks' worth of programming that taught everyone how to make their own mini wind-turbines, or all the different methods of purifying water. But then there were the odd shows about post-fallout fashion, or sheep-shearing. Mind you, sheep-shearing was the closest anyone got to sports these days. Gone were the days of watching international rugby matches, or even regional games. Rugby players had also gone the way of the dodo. Fans had to make do with watching and re-watching old games. There were clubs of them who would get together to relive old times, watching, with tears in their eyes, as their favourite All Black contingent performed the haka again, and again, and again.
In any case, it was extremely rare to find anything actually resembling news on the news. Half the news anchors were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which always made for entertaining viewing. And seeing as there was hardly any world left in the world now, the word "international" was going the way of the dodo as well.
Tashkoff slammed a glass down on the table in front of Henry. There was something oily and brown in it, and visible fumes rose from the liquid. Henry slammed it back without a moment's hesitation, and then spent the next five minutes coughing up the flames. Tashkoff chuckled and pulled a chair around beside Henry so he could watch the news.
"The leetle girls," Tashkoff said, elbowing Henry.
He glanced up though streaming eyes. It seemed there was actual news on the news tonight. Apparently a whole lot of girls - all quite fetching, by the look of them - had been stranded on an island out near the Chathams all this time. They'd managed to avoid the bulk of the fallout cloud that had come south from Australia, though it appeared that most of the adults on the island had died. Investigations were still proceeding. For a moment there was some footage of the girls, all waving from a boat. They had red hair and white teeth. No mutants there.
"What a load of crap," Henry said. "Bound to be some weird publicity thing."
"Last night they say girls all look the same," Tashkoff said. "Is interesting to me." He gestured towards his nether regions. "They make good money, yes? Many people buy. Tashkoff think he buy too. Tashkoff, he have money."
"I don't think the girls are for sale, Tashkoff." Henry could feel the fumes seeping up into his spongy palate, and out through his nose. What the hell was in that drink?
"Everything for sale now. Everything, everyone."
Tashkoff seemed so certain Henry couldn't be bothered to argue with him. Another customer came in, an old guy Henry recognised from his building, and Tashkoff was up and back in the kitchen again. Henry's stomach still seemed settled, so he risked finishing the fish pie. He left as the weather girl (a digital construct named Millie) started talking about the dry days and high winds that were likely to start kicking up more dust into the air.
A man was waiting outside his door when Henry got back to the flat.