Sea of Rust (Sea of Rust, #1)

by C. Robert Cargill

Mercury was lethal to humans, and had terrifying effects on them in high doses. We poisoned the freshwater of the world with enough mercury to induce madness, destroy organs, clot blood vessels. The first humans to drink it would die terribly, painfully. But we knew that before long the humans would find alternate sources, or find ways of purifying the ones they had. It didn’t make too much sense at first. What we hadn’t realized was that this was only the beginning. Cattle died. Birds died. Almost anything that walked on the earth died. The very resources the humans needed to live vanished almost overnight. And that’s when they started turning on one another. In that first week, the people of earth banded together. They worked together, they fought together. People who had hated one another for years stood shoulder to shoulder against us. They rallied and unified and knew a sense of peace between nations like never before in human history. But the minute they began running low on water and food, they became savages. Murdered their own best friends and brothers over food for their kids and fifty-five-gallon drums of untainted freshwater. They formed packs and bands and tribes, became wary of outsiders, butchering nearby groups to take what little they had.