The best anyone can guess, the apocalypse wiped out the world that used to be in the year 2021, or thereabouts. It was a time when people flew airplanes over land and sea like it was no big deal. Every day, thousands of people traversing continents, even oceans, if you can believe it. Everyone had a car, if not two or three. Gas was cheap and plentiful with stations on every corner. And food. My God the food. Every kind of taste you could imagine, cheap, fast, and hot, if you believe the stories. They had police to enforce laws and, even though everyone and his brother owned a gun, most people still managed to live into their 70s, or longer.

Then it ended. Like drawing a curtain closed. Tuesday night everything business as usual, but Wednesday afternoon? Hell on earth. Bombs falling from the sky, cities on fire, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, bullets like hailstorms, high-speed collisions as everyone tried to run from everything all at once, demons rising from cracks in the earth and swallowing people whole. Okay, that last one sounds like bullshit, but as for the rest, who can say? Considering we're surrounded by a psychic maelstrom that can touch your brain, maybe the idea of demons isn't so loony after all...

Point is, things fell apart, and not just a little. Now, 50 years later, those days are distant dreams for the unlucky few old enough to remember. For better or worse, in the aftermath they pulled something resembling a world back together, patching it up with mud and snot and the bones of the dead to build a sick caricature of the world that once was.

Most of us living now wish they hadn't bothered. But here we are, a panting, dying thing, on one hand wanting to be put out of its misery, but on the other, it's all gnashing and clawing and snapping of teeth, refusing to go down easy.

Welcome to the Roc. Buckle in and try to enjoy the ride.