Was Sam an evil person? A misunderstood person? That Sam was a person to whom nature seemed intent on delivering one misery and misfortune after another there was no doubt.

Sam had been identified in first grade as the thief who took lunch money from book bags at school. The day he was wrongfully identified and accused, he was totally innocent – he had seen the real miscreant empty the intended targets moments before he could. The class shunned him.

There was just something about Sam that caused everyone else to shun him, too. Mothers would pull their children closer, dogs would raise the hair along their spines when Sam came into view, if your eyes met, yours were quick to move on.

Sam felt the world collapse around him, but he was so used to having things not go his way, he shrugged and waited in the dark. After a while he climbed the stairs and tried the door. He couldn’t get it to open all the way but managed to get into the darkened other room to discover everything in a jumble of disarray and his way blocked. He fell and hurt his head, and cut himself pretty badly, and almost didn’t find the door back to the third basement, but did, and then followed the sump drain pipe over to the drain and lifted the grate. Sam had always been curious, and early curiosity had led him early on to explore the DWV – drain, waste and vent – systems of his building to see where he could get to unobserved. He had explored it all, and knew where petty cash was, liquor, and the women’s showers in the gym/lounge.

He also knew his way out of the building and followed this route into the city’s storm sewers, the real underground.

Everything was black, but here and there, a light running on emergency power still broke the gloom. He never liked to approach these lights for to do so would expose himself to other watchful eyes, and he knew they were always down here, like himself, up to no good, and therefore, not good company to keep. Honor among thieves? Sam knew better.

Sam followed the discharge feeder to the main sewer, and then followed it all the way to the water treatment plant on the edge of town 11 miles away. Near the end, the pipe was shattered in several places, in fact at one the whole hillside had caved in and took the last couple of hundred yards of the pipe along with it.

When Sam looked out he saw the flattened earth, the near total destruction, the fires, the dust cloud. Sam was hurt and tired and went back further into the pipe, found a small inlet pipe and crawled up inside and rested, fell asleep and dreamed about what to do next.

He couldn’t come up with anything, so once again he ventured out to the edge of the broken pipe, and then took another step outside and stood blinking in the bright haze of a different world.

Sam took off running, down the shallow ravine and into the steeper erosion ditch at the end, and then down to the stream bed that led to the hills in the distance, and that he knew led to the river.

Sam had seen death before, several times he had stumbled across bodies in the sewer, bodies that had remained underwater until the gasses caused them to float off downstream and eventually come to a rest somewhere. Sometimes it was a body blocking a pipe, and once he had had to take hold of one and pull it out of the way so the rising water would go down enough for him to get across.

For the next couple of years Sam had managed to work his way away from the areas of worst destruction in the north toward the mountains to the south and west. Sam learned to live off what he found, and often would find a deserted house or building with canned food, and once found a liquor store with many, many bottles of unbroken spirits. All his favorites had been broken but some were still standing on their bottoms and Sam was able to strain out the broken glass and dead bugs and splinters. Almost all the Galliano and Creme de Menthe and Campari had come through fine and these he went though last.

Sam spent his days drinking himself into sweet oblivion until everything was gone and all the food was gone and he had no choice but to move on.

Once he had nearly been killed. Rounding a corner he came up on a man unexpectedly, who, on hearing the noise whirled and fired the 12 gauge shotgun and Sam was hit in the face by several pellets. With a silent scream, Sam backed out and took off without looking back and kept running and kept running with lungs on fire until he thought he was going to dry.

He wheeled around to the back of a rock ledge and looked back and saw the man outside waving the gun and yelling but Sam didn’t understand, couldn’t hear above his own gasping for breath, and took off again and ran all afternoon.

He was terrified now and couldn’t sleep, but had to rest and holed up for the night only to take off again the next morning as soon as he could see.

He lived like this for a long time, but undisturbed caches of food were scarce, and he lost weight, looked gaunt, had acquired the wild eyed look of a hunted tormented animal.

One day he smelled smoke and went to investigate, saw the cave, saw the signs of life, saw the rabbits drying over the smoke of a small fire. His stomach cramps were so vicious he went straight for the food, saw the children but thought them to be no threat, told them to stand aside and came closer. He heard, sensed and saw a dark shadow pass between him and the children, and once his eyes turned away from the food and focused on the dog, he saw the dog’s hair stand up, the lips come back. Panicked, Sam swung his staff at the dog’s head, and his world exploded.

Sam grabbed at his face, grabbed at this thing that was churning his face to ribbons, this thing that had clamped down on his eyebrow and pulled it off and flung it away.

Now Sam, bleeding, hurt, dazed and confused, took off again, crashing through the brush and crying loudly. Trying to see through the blood streaming across his face, trying to see through the rapidly clotting blood that stuck inside his eyelids and on his eyelashes, trying to wipe it all away with badly bleeding hands, Sam ran into trees, into rocks, fell down, caromed off everything into everything else, and eventually managed to get some distance between him and whatever it was that had just happened.

Sam collapsed into a bleeding, whimpering pile of broken man, curled up into a ball, shut his eyes to close it all off and waited to die.

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