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The label Nuke Rappers stemmed from a common misconception during the apocalypse. They were about as far removed from their nuclear roots as a group could be. They’d begun as a splinter faction from the ever-surviving nuke radio station, and wore that heritage in their referentials. The first generation, maybe, had been rappers, but years and years had passed since then. Since the first of the Nuke Rappers, codenamed Wizard, fled the radio base under cover of darkness. The sun was blocked by a massive, sodden green cloud that day. On normal days, the massive clouds were chartreuse, and
yes there was a difference
, any self-respecting crater wanderer would tell you.
Wizard, unfortunately, was in possession of too many morals for the station’s misdeeds. Bleeding ears, hurt souls, shameless war crimes and the like. It became too much for her. She’d considered running away many times before the start of her investigation. Finding out her fellow broadcasters were at fault for the ruined state of the world, guilty for causing an entire globe to turn to miles of wasteland, was the final nail in the coffin. Wizard stole their nuclear launch codes, took her gear, set loose all the prisoners of war, knocked over the main DJ’s obnoxious caramel cinnamon mustard latte, and disappeared. As far as they knew, she was missing in action.
It took Wizard and her rowdy band of freed prisoners weeks to set up their new base, but everything went according to plan. Though the sun rarely poked through the atmosphere of haze, a small garden occupied their rooftop around the big signal antenna thingy. They were in permanent danger of retaliation from the original nuke rappers, but they managed to prosper, if you can call living in a fortified shack behind a burnt out gas station prosperous.
In the present, Wizard’s success is memorialized as a statue, at this point bearing little resemblance to her and looking much closer to a fish on legs, in the new Nuke Rapper courtyard. On top of the charred gas station. Nuke Rappers don’t like the trouble of moving. Years of radiation hadn’t killed them off and now they clung to their ancestral landing ground like a lichen. They had thick, waxy skin, tough exoskeletal crests to protect themselves, eyes like the lenses of sunglasses. Cultivation efforts through all the hardship produced many fibrous, colorful new types of vegetation, good for weaving, some for eating. The fruits their gardens bore came as thick skinned as their farmers, so the Nuke Rapper’s teeth had to get a little stronger. Strictly speaking, they’d improved.
From the perspective of the old radio station, they were a new species. Their language had changed, the dialect morphed into something befitting a cheerful gang of wasteland musicians. Nothing had changed at all at nuke radio. Same devious DJ team as always, only a bit more wizened, wiser, they would claim. The head DJ, who after Wizard’s leaving, stole her list of cool codenames in revenge and took the name Warlock, woke up one morning with a bright idea in his head and a single coffee bean, the last in the world, in his pocket. He roused the rest of the team by kicking their doors down, dwindled to only two others, and gathered them in the recording room, where bottles of neon green waste lined every wall.
“We seriously have to do something about Wizard’s band of weird wasteland-walkers, it’s been at least 200 years since they stomped off to who knows where!” He yelled. “We’ve run out of audio clips and bold new beats. They have our codes, our power, our DIGNITY!”
“Boss, the correct time is 266 years,” One of the others, a portly fellow named Davib Hamdurger, who actually was a wizard, spoke up.
“I said AT LEAST! At least 200 years!” Warlock scoffed. “See, this is why nothing gets done around here. I’m surrounded by nitpicky semantic pedants!” He flicked one of the many bottles filled with neon green waste at Davib, who expected nothing less from Warlock.
“C’mon idiots! Quit throwing stuff and let’s get on with the planning!” Their tech person, Barracudateeth Jones, made an attempt to get them focused. Barracudateeth always was the most sensible, even Wizard would agree. The argument continued as such for several hours.
When they finally got around to planning, and even finallier got around to leaving the station, they clutched a weathered map between the three of them. A map of pre-nuclear destruction Nunavut, which was not where they were. Ashy plumes of scalding hot dust burst from hidden cracks in the ground. What remained of the oldworld trees poked up amid a layer of fresh growth. The Nuke Rapper’s farmed flora had gained quite a lot of traction over the years, reaching itself out to paint the desolate wastes with new life. Warlock, Davib, and Barracudateeth paid no attention to the succession, squabbling over a landmark on the map.
“It’s clearly meant to be a mountain, boss, what backwards lake goes up?” Davib asked.
“It doesn’t go UP! That’s an island!” Warlock jabbed his finger at the map hard enough to tear a hole right through the maybe-a-mountain. “Are you FUCKING SERIOUS?!” He buried his face in his hands. “This is the worst voyage anyone has ever been on at any point in time.” Various ghosts raised objections, but they were too transparent to be acknowledged.
“War-” Barracudateeth began. Warlock shot them a look.
“Let Barracudateeth speak, maybe they can talk a mote of sense into you.” Davib demanded, earning him a grouchier glare.
“Thank you! Listen, guys. What was a mountain before could very well be a crater now. It really doesn’t matter what you think. Besides, there’s a hole right through the cliff over there, and it’s spouting water, that’s gotta check all the boxes, eh?” Barracudateeth said. The others stopped bickering.
The three rappers, nuke rappers, but not Nuke Rappers, were under the impression their map would lead them where they wanted to be, so they closed the distance to the cliff with a degree of dutiful diligence they hadn’t bothered with in ages. Hours of trudging behind them, there wasn’t a leg in the group that didn’t ache. Nobody could’ve gotten more lost. The cliff was right there, straight ahead. And right there. And right there. Illusory cliffshapes dotted the horizon. You’d think they might’ve given up after the clouds went green and descended on the land, or turned back before turning back was an impossible direction. They didn’t. Warlock urged them onward through the green smoke that burned their fragile skin and stung their eyes.
Wizard’s not-chartreuse cover of darkness when she left nuke radio was no coincidence. She lacked the power to make a person immortal, unlike Davib, yet her skill in weather phenomena knew no equal. She could change the smoke into a trap for the caustic, something they’d never be able to navigate out of. No way would she leave her people unguarded. So Warlock, Davib, and Barracudateeth were condemned to wander the smoggy apocalyptic wasteland of their own creation for the rest of time, leaving the Nuke Rappers to their peace.
And that was the end of nuke radio.
Eventually Nuke Rapper scouts would stumble upon the old radio tower from their predecessor’s tales and take it over as a part of their thriving city, but that’s a different story.