#upaf

This Myka thinks that the event that happened to bring about the apocalypse was her fault. That's why she's so angry at herself, so bitter; that's why she has left and hasn't come back. The truth is, though, that she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, the wrong time being a cascade of happenstances in the Warehouse that ended up not just exploding most of it but unbronzing Paracelsus.

Who has taken over the US, by using one specific artifact to make any fuel (gasoline/diesel, gas (as in, the stuff fancy stoves use), jet fuel etc.; hadn't entirely mapped out how far the damage went, but certainly the entirety of readily available fuels) vanish. Completely. At once.

As in, planes falling from the sky because their tanks were empty, cars and semis crashing for the same reason, ships stalling and then either being lost at sea or running into riverbanks, as immediate consequences. If I subsume coal and uranium under "fuel", then also power plants shutting down. Then, as long-term fallout, people leaving any place where you have to depend on cars, congregating in cities, riots, anarchy, food scarcity, worldwide upheavals: and that is when Paracelsus stepped in. Like, maybe he has an artifact source of fuels still or whatever. But he's now very firmly in power.

And there's a little enclave of people hiding out in the Rockies, part of a resistance network, that can make use of whatever doohickey Artie sent along with Helena - although he absolutely considers her (and Myka) valuable doohickeys too, to help that resistance.

But, back to our two heroines: picture empty plains, tall dry grass, blue skies without a single airplane on them - and among it, a woman and a horse, or sometimes two women, making their way first south, then west, doing their best to survive, and stay clear of raiders, post-apocalyptic cults, bears and pumas and wolves (oh my), and slowly building trust, recognizing the hurt in each other and respecting the other's silence about the reasons, but offering each other what comfort they can anyway, because they don't have anyone else but each other out here.