Thread: Forager

Something I knocked up this evening...in a about an hour, I am not big on spending huge amounts of time on something I am going to bin, so I thought I would seek an early opinion in case it all fell on the cutting-room floor, as it were. I have no idea how it will be received - to me it is full of holes, but I don't know what kind or how big - hopefully someone will be able to tell me. This is the first piece of creative writing I have attempted in years, decades, and am not wedded to it, so feel free to be as blunt as you like - you probably couldn't be as critical of me as I am, myself. The concept interested me, of a post-apocalyptic scenario where there were no zombies, no flesh-eating bugs, no aliens or outsized mammals/spiders/reptiles to contend with - just the slowly dawning knowledge that you may be 'it'.

Knock yourself out.

Cheers.

Forager

December 2025

He looked like a rough collection of bushy hair and sticks wrapped up in a tough, brown hide parcel as he came out into the full, bright sunshine. Despite his desiccated look, he moved loosely through the tangle of broken concrete and rough scrub, easily clambering over the fallen slabs, avoiding the snags of exposed reinforcing and loose rocks.

His shambolic appearance was mostly a product of his battered drover hat and vast leather coat, for beneath this he wore a sleek jerkin and many-pocketed cargo pants, high-tech boots and was wrapped in complex webbing upon which he carried a bewildering variety of tools and gadgets. His backpack carried the rest of his burden in a series of pockets, mesh and packages.

He made no attempt at stealth, it was just his nature to be economic of movement and after all, it wasn’t like there was anyone or anything he needed to avoid.
Climbing through the half-finished foundations he made his way to the Keystone Construction site shed, with its warning notices, threats and reinforcing-steel-mesh covered windows. One thing he had worked out early on was that construction sites made for some of the best pickings – tools, explosives, fuel – as they were some of the first places to be abandoned when the dying started.

Supermarkets, shopping centres, gun shops, doctor’s surgeries, hardware shops and car dealers had all been high-priority targets for looters in the beginning, when the panic set in, but for some reason nobody thought to go back to work on the building sites. Maybe they saw the futility of carrying on building new when things were crumbling all around them.

He shipped his pack and slid his titanium pry-bar from its’ sheath. It made short work of the padlock and hasp.
Removing his hat and sunglasses, he wiped his forehead, blinking at the brightness of the sun as it fought its way into his creased eyes. Putting his hat, coat and webbing in a pile by the door he made his way into the office.

He had a regular pattern for foraging: head to the bosses’ office first, check the grog supplies – it was surprising the quality and quantity of single-malts that a construction foreman kept on hand and there was little left to be found in shops, maybe the odd bottle of blended if you were lucky. Beer was non-existent out in the world and most of the time he would just take a can or two, it was just too heavy to carry and besides, who wants a warm beer anyway?

“Thanks Mr Keystone”, he murmured to himself. “Highland Park, twelve years old! Well it won’t be getting any younger even though it may be getting smaller.” He filled his canteen to the brim, capped it and took a hearty swig of the bottle before re-corking it and laying it back in the drawer. He may be a scrounger, but he wasn’t a waster.

Then back into the main office to check the key safe – it was always easier to take the time to look for keys rather than have to break into the secure storage locker. Then there was the first aid kit – bandages, disinfectant, splints, safety pins, and paracetamol, anything stronger if it was on offer. The last thing was batteries – preferably the big lantern variety but he would take what he could get. It wasn’t that there was a shortage of any of these items, but you might have to try four or five places to find it all, whereas these construction companies usually had it all in one place saving him time - and one thing he was short of was time.

With a selection of keys from the safe he turned his attention to the outside secure store. Unlike the prefab office these were built like a safe. Considering what they held it wasn’t surprising that they were tough to get into. This one was nothing special, being a cut-down shipping container with extra lugs and half-inch thick toughened steel bars welded on. There were three sets of bolts with a separate key for each. Looking through the bunch in his hand he soon identified the most likely contenders and set to work unlocking and unbolting the door.

Undogging the doors and swinging them open he stepped back to admire the view.

“Well Mr. Keystone, I do admire your work.”

The inside of the container was tidily racked with packages of explosive, shock cord, detonators, cable ties, nail guns, construction adhesive, jerry cans of diesel and a couple of portable diesel generators, for the office not the building site. Attached to the wall was a scrap of melamine doing duty as a whiteboard, with all the normal admonitions to WRITE IT BLOODY DOWN IF YOU TAKE IT. Thoughtfully, Mr Keystone’s efficiency had extended to a clipboard hanging form the whiteboard with a full inventory of the store.

Looking it over, he traced the items line by line until he found what he was looking for. “Got you, you bugger!” he chuckled. He entered the store proper and headed to the racks of equipment lining the sides. A quick check turned up the tool he was looking for – a petrol-powered cutter, like a circular saw but with a big blade for cutting through steel, concrete, or reinforcing. He dug around in a bin next to the tools until he unearthed half a dozen different cutting blades.

Hauling his swag out into the daylight he checked the fuel, ignition and gave a few tentative pulls on the starter cord. The cutter coughed and spluttered but wouldn’t start, but it was enough. He knew the fuel was probably stale but the fact that it was even trying showed him that the machine was essentially a working unit.

He closed up the store, bolted and locked the doors and kicking a small hole in the dirt under the right-hand corner of the container, tossed the keys in and covered them over with dirt. “Never know when I might need some Gele” he chuckled.

Putting the cutting disks and his forage from the office into his pack, he carefully donned his webbing and adjusted it till it sat right, then he shrugged on his old coat, put his hat and glasses on and lifted the cutter by the carrying handle.

Looking around he judged the easiest route to get himself back to the rim of the site and headed off. As he trudged up the dirt ramp he heard a mewling sound and in front of him was a young tabby cat squirming in the dust of the ramp, obviously pleased to see a human. “Hello scamp” he said. It was all the invitation the cat needed as it purred and yowled itself a sinuous path round the foragers’ legs.

He gently gave it a scratch and a tickle as it wormed its way around him. “No use making out I’m your best mate, sport. You’re on your own. If I had a tin of sardines for every moggy that tried to make me his Mum I could start a fish shop.” The cat rolled playfully on its back while giving him an inviting look. “You must think I came down in the last shower, matey-boy. If you think I’m going to give you a tickle, only to end up with a handful of teeth you’ve got another think coming”. Despite his friendly protestations, he made a few half-hearted forays to the tabby’s stomach. Sure enough, the cat was waiting with paws and flattened ears.

"Sorry mate, but I can’t hang around here all day playing; some of us have got work to do."

Rising up to his feet, he picked up his cutter, waved goodbye to the bewildered cat and made for the top of the ramp.

The cat wasn’t giving up so easily. Making the quiet half-purr, half questioning meow that seems to be the particular idiosyncrasy of the tabby worldwide, he rolled a few times back and forth as if to say ‘play with me’, but when it was obvious that wasn’t working he opted to follow along.

“Don’t think I’m an easy mark, young feller. You’ll not be getting an easy meal out of me” the forager laughed, although he realised he was happy to have the young cat along. It had been a while since he had had anyone other than himself to talk to and while at first his voice had seemed rough and halting and sounded strange to his ears, he was now talking more easily, like going for a run after a bout of calisthenics.

With the cat in tow he circled the inside of the site fence till he was back where he made his descent. There was the corrugated iron panel he had crawled in through. “This is where I get off, young feller” he said as he put his cutter through the hole, followed by his pack and with his hat in his hand got down on his knees to crawl through.

The cat brushed by him in the way that indicates you are their property and nimbly jumped the timber at the bottom of the fence. “Excuse me, matey! Ladies first, of course” he grinned. The forager climbed through and organised his belongings, put his hat on his head and surveyed the street.

Now he was out of the open pit that was the construction site, the sun was held halfway up the office buildings. He got his bearings and headed down the street towards the harbour, the glimpse of blue sea sparkling through the canyon of the business district. The cat alternately ran ahead and chased his boots as young tabbies do but it seemed not at all concerned with where they were going or leaving where he had been “You’re an adventurer, like me. No fixed abode?”
He had seen all the zombie-filled, post-apocalyptic movies that were in vogue when he was younger but as he walked along the city street he reflected on how tidy it all was. There were some broken windows and open doors, the odd car parked at an angle, but mostly it just looked like your typical city downtown on any early Sunday morning.

You could be forgiven for expecting to see a newspaper truck or bakers van turning the corner any minute. Sometimes he kidded himself that he could smell baking rolls or roasting coffee, but he put that down to the olfactory equivalent to deja vu.

He didn’t often let himself reminisce. He wasn’t particularly given to thinking ‘what if?’ and even before the death hadn’t been particularly emotional or given to inappropriate compassion, preferring to think of himself as brutally pragmatic. That isn’t to say he wasn’t appreciative of beauty, art, conversation, even love, just that he wasn’t given over to being upset with the current state of affairs. After all, there was bugger-all he could do about it and he was best employed in travelling about trying to find out whether he was, in fact, the only person left alive.

He was never egotistical enough to think he had a particularly special place in the world, preferring to keep his head down and do his own thing, at his own pace. He liked working on his own and could easily spend a month or more before seeking out other human company. He wasn’t a hermit or a loner by conviction, he enjoyed company and could happily sit in a pub with a bunch of other blokes and watch the interaction of the various social cliques, it was just that belonging to one or another wasn’t really for him.


Christmas 2022

He had worked various jobs all over the shop since he was about 19. Forest worker, long-distance haulier, rigger, builder, fisherman and farmer. When he bought his little mine it seemed the last few years had been a training ground for precisely that way of life. He was adept with machines, timber, he could look after himself and had a good sense of self-preservation. He was happier with a good book and a small glass of whiskey than in front of the giggle-box. He preferred the quiet of the desert to the bustle of the town and he preferred his own company to the stress of having to dovetail with anothers’.

It even got to the stage where the only time he turned the radio on was for the cricket – that’s if he remembered – and the last time he bought a paper was when he went into town to vote. That must have been a couple of years ago, now.

He preferred the business district to the suburbs for foraging. Here it was rare to find a body or an angry, confused dog pack and he had had his fill of both. When he first found out about the death it was a shock. He only made around three or four trips into town a year and after his last trip he had been chasing knobblies, working slowly towards what looked like a reasonably rich seam, so had paid even less notice to the world than usual. When he was nearly down to his last tin of coffee and the scotch supply was looking decidedly shaky, he got his rumbler working and spent a week or so sifting through his roughs before travelling and seeking out the dealers back at the Ridge.

There were some things he couldn’t abide. One was dirty dealing, the other was waste. The way he saw it why pay someone to sell on your behalf, it was better to look the bloke in the eye and sort out the deal face-to-face. There were some that were happier to hand off their stocks to a runner just so they could get down the pub, but he was a patient man and would take the time to find the right dealer. In the twelve years he had been working his camp he had made a few solid relationships. Not friendships, no-one you only see for a couple of hours a few times a year could be considered friends, but blokes you respected, that would do a good deal and wouldn’t look to turn you into a mug.

As he worked over his roughs he started to catalogue his supplies, making a mental shopping list which he would transcribe for the blokes down at the co-op. He preferred to give them the list and then go over it once they had it all together – no-one liked a bloke looking over his shoulder while he worked, did they? Besides, they knew that when his kit was all together and he had checked it off and paid for it, one of those bottles of scotch would be finding their way into the smoko room.

He knew the co-op boys appreciated the touch and he knew that they always made sure he got any deals that were going. After twelve years they knew which items they could substitute and which were inviolate. That’s what he liked, mutual respect. They knew if they did all right by him, he would do all right by them and so it went.

As he sorted out the roughs he was keeping a running total of what he would expect to make from his sale. It hadn’t been his best year but hit had been far from his worse and with the price of knobblies and roughs last time at the Ridge, he was thinking that he would be putting more in the bank this time than he was spending at the co-op. Not every year had been as kind.

I thought it was great, and would love to see what you could turn it into with a little more development. This sort of story has been done to death, but I had no trouble reading this through to the end and would definitely have continued if there was more.
My one criticism is that there was no real 'hook', as they say, and if your writing wasn't as strong as it is you would probably lose a lot of readers by the time you got to the second section. You also dragged on a bit when you were telling us that he was somewhat of a loner. I picked up on that fairly early on without it being spelled out so much, and thought that by the end it was getting a bit repetitive.
I was interested to see the little jump back in time and wondered if this was just a flashback, or if you were doing a 'Memento-style' backwards story. It was a neat idea to describe the death from the point of view of someone who wasn't there when it happened, so the character and the reader has no idea at this stage what exactly happened to everyone. There are a lot of different directions you could take it from here, if you decide to pursue it, and I think it could be a really good short story.

Something I knocked up this evening...in a about an hour, I am not big on spending huge amounts of time on something I am going to bin...

Yet you expect us to spend time reviewing it?

Contd.

After sorting he packed the different grades and types into different plastic drums. He had worked out over the years that spending a day sorting his roughs and knobblies meant a better price. A high ratio of poor roughs can bring down the overall price a lot more than selling off a whole drum of poor ones to gemhounds and getting a high price for the good stuff. Dealers appreciated it as well, when they knew you knew what was worth looking at and what was just dross they revised their pricing upwards.

And time was something he had plenty of.

When he decided to have a go at mining he had managed to sock away a small nest-egg by doing some heavy hauling on the weekends as well as his steady job fishing during the week. It was hard work and meant he didn’t have the luxury of a social life or a relative luxury like a movie or a meal out for a couple of years, but that suited him. He got a beer at the end of his run and he got to listen to the rest of the crew on the way out and back on the boat - it was enough.

The thing about a mining lease was that if you didn’t strike it lucky, your had done your dough, so it was a gamble - but it was also a gamble not many men were willing to take. Men with families, mortgages, car payments. He had saved enough for a downpayment on a unit in the suburbs or a decent house in the country, but then what would he do?

He had read about the bonanza in the paper and how to go about getting a license, what kind of stones were selling and how to get a claim. He started picking up weekend runs that took him up to the Ridge or across the border. Whenever possible he made sure he made his overnight stop at the Ridge or near to, which was when he began collating the information that would help him build himself a working mine.

He had been reading up on the geology of the ridge and scanning the local ‘for sale’ ads for equipment. He struck up a deal with a farmer to store his gear there until he needed it.

A lot of young fellers come to the ridge looking for an easy win, they work their asses off and after six months or a year they are sick of the heat, the dust, the mud, the flies, the loneliness. That’s when a bloke with a pocket full of cash can strike a good deal. And he did, slowly acquiring some good-condition equipment from blokes that were just glad to see some money, any money, for their hard work and turn their back on the Ridge, back to the comfort of the cities and towns.

The best deals, though, were with the blokes who struck it rich - no more for them the back-breaking hard yakka of weilding a hoe and a pick and a shovel. They had hit the big time and were happy to let their gear go for a song. He would offer them some really low price for everything - lock, stock and barrel - and more often than not, he would get it. So he became a dealer in second-hand mining equipment, picking the eyes out of the good gear he came close to being able to set up his camp for free.

It was time to put his money where his mouth was and up-stakes to the fields. He told the skipper that he was off mining at the end of the month, he sorted out his rent and bond with is landlord, arranged to move his bank account and papers to the Ridge. He was a man with a purpose.

Come the end of the month he stood the boys a round of drinks, as well as standing their sharp jibes about ships of the desert, dying away from the sea, lack of women and the flies. He had never confided his plans to anyone though, so as far as they knew he had taken a job on a crew and was trading one harsh taskmaster for another. Who was he to disavow them of their petty prejudices. He had never put himself above them and in their eyes he was one of the boys, even if it was a quiet, brooding one.
He finshed his beer, put a hundred dollars behind the bar for the boys, shook hands all round and walked out without a backward glance, as he had done time and again over the years.

His rented cottage was sparsely furnished and his only possessions would fit in a couple of tea-chests and duffle bags. He had sold his old car and bought himself a well-worn but reliable ute, something pre-injection with carbs and a points ignition that he could work on himself. Loading his belongings into the back of the ute he reflected on his time working the boat and was content. He had made no waves, owed no-one any money and had left no children behind, to his knowledge. He was ready to leave.

He posted the keys back through the letter-box like he had agreed, got in the ute and headed North.

Originally Posted by Bloggsworth

Something I knocked up this evening...in a about an hour, I am not big on spending huge amounts of time on something I am going to bin...

Yet you expect us to spend time reviewing it?

No, I don't expect anything. As someone that is totally new to this I would be grateful if someone would take the time to tell me if I am driving off a cliff.

But thanks for taking the time to give me some feedback. I really appreciate it.

Originally Posted by josh.townley

I thought it was great, and would love to see what you could turn it into with a little more development. This sort of story has been done to death, but I had no trouble reading this through to the end and would definitely have continued if there was more.

Wow! Not what I expected, thanks

I agree, the whole loner-at-the-end-of-time scenario has rather been done to death but I thought I might find a new twist.

My one criticism is that there was no real 'hook', as they say, and if your writing wasn't as strong as it is you would probably lose a lot of readers by the time you got to the second section. You also dragged on a bit when you were telling us that he was somewhat of a loner. I picked up on that fairly early on without it being spelled out so much, and thought that by the end it was getting a bit repetitive.

I also agree that I spent a lot of time fluffing about and repeating myself. I said I spent a lot of time fluffing about repeating myself

I think, after now having read it about a dozen times, that I had no idea where it was going when I started - it was just an excuse to run some scenes through my fingers and experiment with dialogue and third-person POV. This is not an area I am at all comfortable. My writing has always been of the completely depersonalised technical writing - describing a software interface or operating instructions for a backup process - really gripping stuff! I am a reasonably quick typist and so find that I can get things down nearly in real-time as they occur to me, but that doesn't mean it is of any quality In between reading it back and writing some more I also perused more sections of the website and other online resources and realised that there is no substitute for planning. I need to find this story, whereas at the moment all I have are a bunch of descriptive sentences with a common theme.

I was interested to see the little jump back in time and wondered if this was just a flashback, or if you were doing a 'Memento-style' backwards story. It was a neat idea to describe the death from the point of view of someone who wasn't there when it happened, so the character and the reader has no idea at this stage what exactly happened to everyone. There are a lot of different directions you could take it from here, if you decide to pursue it, and I think it could be a really good short story.

Thanks so much for your kind words. It is so hard to know whether I even have the temperament for writing or if I did, whether I have 'the gift of the gab' enough to interest people enough to read what I write. Until a few hours ago I had spent the last 8 or so years just wondering, never being willing to put anything into practice. Having taken the leap, I now already know I want to do more. I started this at around 9pm, watched some TV, read some, found this website at 1.30am and have been gripped all night - it's now 7am and I need some more smokes because the thought of going to bed with what is hurtling round in my head is an anathema.

I think I will archive this as a testament to misguided first efforts and sit down and try and find the story, plan it and then come back and pick it up again. I do like the potential it has and am liking the concept of an Aussie protagonist - Neville Shute was one of my boyhood heroes and I guess this is harking me back to On The Beach more than anything else. I also think I may have my time wrong - Initially I was going cyberpunk, but I think he is more old-school. He doesn't need no steenking carbon nanotubes or a large pair of buckyballs... a decent Drizabone and some desert boots is what is needed - and a knife, a big knife

Cheers!

My apologies, i just realised there was a dedicated section for critique - If a mod want to move this, that would be wonderful.

Cheers

Originally Posted by Zootalaws

No, I don't expect anything. As someone that is totally new to this I would be grateful if someone would take the time to tell me if I am driving off a cliff.

But thanks for taking the time to give me some feedback. I really appreciate it.

In which case your opening was unfortunately phrased, it definitely gave the impression that you weren't bothered about any replies to your piece. I think that a slight over-wordiness gets in the way of the story, and the repeated use of HE should be broken up, and you could start by giving us his name so that we can identify with the HE to which you refer. Easily and clambering have opposite meanings, clambering is to climb with difficulty. I've been through the first 3 paragraphs to give you an idea of what I mean.



He Give us his name looked like a rough collection of bushy hair and sticks wrapped up in a tough, brown hide parcel Description overdone as he came out into the full, bright sunshine. Despite his desiccated* look, he moved loosely through the tangle of broken concrete and rough scrub, easily clambering oxymoron over the fallen slabs, avoiding the snags of exposed reinforcing and loose rock.

His(shambolic appearance was mostly a product of his battered drover hat and vast leather coat added to his shambolic appearance, for beneath this he wore a sleek jerkin and many-pocketed cargo pants, high-tech boots and was wrapped in complex webbing upon which he carried a bewildering variety of tools and gadgets. , the rest of his tools he carried in his backpack His backpack carried the rest of his burden in a series of pockets, mesh and packages.

He made Making no attempt at stealth, it was just economy of movement was in his nature to be economic of movement and after all, it wasn’t like there was anyone or anything he needed to avoid. Climbing through the half-finished foundations he Use his name made his way to the Keystone Construction site shed, with its warning notices, threats and reinforcing-steel-mesh covered windows. One thing he had worked out early on was that construction sites made for some of the best pickings – tools, explosives, fuel – as they were some of the first places to be abandoned when the dying started.

Keystone Construction’s secure store, its warning notices and steel-mesh windows no longer a deterrent. One thing he had worked out early on was that construction sites were a free supermarket for tools, explosives and fuel; they were among the first places to be abandoned when the dying started.


* Desiccated - Preserved by removing natural moisture/Lacking vitality or spirit; lifeless Are you sure that this was the word you wanted?

But you thought you were the man for the job to set me straight, right?

Just as well I listened to my mother...

Hi there, I found this extremely readable and was quite happy to go straight through both parts. I agree with what's been said, that you need to find the key driving force behind the story, but as a collection of pieces that could be reconstituted into something more structured, this is great. I know you're slightly on thin ice with regards to how original the theme is; I guess you just need to find the right angle to come at this. Perhaps it looks at his mental state in more detail, perhaps challenges preconceptions we have from the many post-apocalyptic works we already have, like mutant animals and government coverups. Definately a robust foundation here to work on.

Thanks very much, I appreciate the feedback.

I agree that the post-apocalyptic theme has a raft of work, but then so does Vampirism I was deliberately wanting to keep away from 'The Omega Man' and the whole zombie/undead/diesease theme.

I am looking at a low-sci approach. He isn't a scientist and has no knowledge of how or what killed everyone. Thats the reason for the Lightening Ridge (the Ridge) tie-in. He was living underground for weeks - which opal miners do - they have all their food, water, accommodation down in the disused tunnels as it is much more liveable than the searing desert above.

I have much more affinity with people and their motivations and triggers than of a hard-sci based on what happened - to be honest I am not sure what happened and neither is he

Thanks again for your kind words.

PS, I pretty much re-wrote large chunks of it today - it is much tighter and now has the germ of a direction. But, not to run before I can walk, there is much I need to learn about structure, dialogue and characterisation before I will attempt to make it public again.

I quite agree, I think that looking at his personality, psyche and reaction to events is far more interesting (and realistic, if that's not a redundant term in this context) than finding out all about 'conspiracy-this' or 'superweapon-that'. It can work but that's not where this wants to go. I also think that the mining background is a clever and interesting tool at your disposal, and one that gives your character a potential uniqueness of actions and words that strengthens his identity.

I agree, people and their actions and reactions are worth a ton of ironmongery - I find it impossible to watch many modern films owing to a superfluity of CGI, my brain screams FAKE! at me all the time. The book I Am Legend, the 1954 novel by Richard Matheson, was all the more frightening for what you couldn't see; the Will Smith film adaptation was so laughable I turned it off after a few minutes. The reason that Soaps always top the television ratings is that people identify and follow the characters and plot-lines, not the car crashes or bridge collapses. People are always far more interesting than rockets, unless you are selling to nerds and geeks, which you quite clearly state is not your intention.

I am still interested in this as a basis for a short story - so today I read a chunk of On The Beach and watched most of The Omega Man. It has helped to further define what I don't want Not sure what I do want, though.