The Wanderer

Bolton - a now desolate place in a wasteland where the once large and prosperous town flourished. The town of Bolton had always been known as a place of growing stature and reputation that had become the target of ridicule and rumour from the capital, which had taken the up and coming town as a threat to their dominance over all. For years it had been Manchester, Newcastle and Birmingham that the south saw as southern enemy number one two and three, but they had taken their eyes off the surrounding towns, which were able to grow and build their own status to the point that the then mighty south had to succumb to a town in the northwest that without remorse, continually dealt black eye after black eye to not only the mighty south but tiny Bolton’s big brother, Manchester.
This was never made more evident then in the year 2010 when, after a once proud and successful football club went beyond realistic limit and dared to challenge the might and financially overriding fashion lased clubs that dominated the heights of the English Premier league. Their crowning jewel came in 2020 when after being turned down for manager of the national team, Dan Harrison led his team of misfits, has been’s and never will be’s to the Premiership title. This not only gave the mighty capital a black eye, but cauliflower ears, and two broken legs. It was a euphoria that was to be short lived. Bolton Wanderers were to become the last team ever to win the English Premier league.
On the 3rd of March 2021, the Worlds worst nightmare came to pass. No one knows which country fired first, but within twenty four hours sixty percent of the world’s population human, animal, bird and fish had been wiped from the Earth forever. A year later that number was to raise to eighty seven percent after much had succumbed to radiation poisoning, starvation, survival domination and disease. The human spirit was not to be beaten though, much of the world being uninhabitable led the world’s population of human and creature to one country, the one country that seamed to be least affected, Britain.
By an incredible twist of fate, Britain had avoided any direct nuclear attack. Due to a malfunction in it’s nuclear mainframe, Britain was unable to launce a nuclear weapon of any kind and was left helpless. What seamed to be their curse soon became their saviour as ninety percent of the world’s nuclear powers were set on computer automated nuclear launch against any country launching a nuclear strike, and as Britain had not launched an attack it was left out of the apocalyptic fray the planet Earth was never to recover from.
As for the few other countries that survived the initial attack, their apparent luck was soon to run out as they strongly depended on the desert rubble that was once a great nation, either for aid or their economy. Because of this, these countries very quickly imploded due to civil unrest and rebellion. Inexperienced and unprepared governments were over powered and changed on regular basis sending each country into a kismet of the worst kind. Within ten years every civilian, mutant, radiate or norm had one dream, one aim, one target. To make it into the one country still deemed civilised due to an experienced government that had initialised marshal law and upheld it during even the darkest of times. It was also the only country with working electricity and even a working TV and radio station on public viewing for the Uplanders.
Uplanders, were the people left behind by the then government to fend for themselves. The other ‘chosen people’ having fled to the four vault cities fifty kilometres underground. In this country, the one surviving civilisation capable of civil humanity, people had three things to look forward to other then natural fornication: the governments weekly rationing allowance, a black clad government soldier arriving at their dwelling to inform them that they had been accepted for employment by the government. Giving them the ability to earn kama (money) supplying them a little freedom to buy the few other pleasantries that the Pre Nuclear generation had taken for granted without so much as a second thought. Tinned food products, filtered water, alcohol, beds and above all a good deal of security as most ‘employees’ would be moved into the capital or the other main cities were law and order were still strongly evident.
Employees of great stature and wealth in the cities could even afford the luxury of a working television set, where the one constant government governed channel ran concurrently with it’s radio station. Any other Uplander unable to afford these luxuries were given the option of gathering around the few gigantic screens scattered around the cities to watch government censored television, mostly consisting of news, weather, advisory programs and any taped programming that survived the holocaust and it’s aftermath. Yet once a week, on a Saturday afternoon, hundreds of thousands of people would surround these mammoth screens to watch one two hour period of government information that was neither repetitive nor old. Football had survived the holocaust.