A cold morning chill slithered through a cracked window and glided between the rotting wooden support beams of the attic. It scattered itself throughout the room before directing it's strike on an unsuspecting man lying in the centre of the room.
The blast of cold morning air surprised the man and he launched his body upwards, the loose beanie on his head gently falling off. His cold, tired body attempted to slink itself back under the warm blankets of his covers, but the man had work to do. He supported his near-limp body with his two arms for a while until he mustered the strength to stand up.
He stood up, a thin and grey long-sleeved shirt that was a size to large for the man generously coated his arms and chest and covered the cracked leather belt keeping his somewhat loose grey jeans from falling down to his thighs. He bent down, his sore knees felt like giving out in the process, and picked up his hand-made woollen beanie. 

The man looked around the attic room he had been sleeping in, his overgrown brunette hair started getting into his eyes until he re positioned his beanie to hide the hair. 
The attic room was wood, and it certainly showed it's age.
The wooden supports keeping a rusty tin roof covering the house. The floorboard, while not rotten themselves, was cracked and gave way easily, a reality the man learned the previous day when he dropped a ceramic mug on a crack, which gave way and allowed the mug to fall to the lower floor of the house, shattering instantly.

There wasn't much else in the room to note. The man's rifle lay solemnly against his backpack, with clothes and bagged foodstuffs strewn around in the vicinity of the bag. The rifle itself was a polished Remington model 81 chambered in .35 and with two loaded stripper clips carefully placed beside the rifle.

There was something else in the room however that was notable. A moderately sized square window with a large and long crack splitting the middle of the window. 
It would make the perfect snipers position, which was exactly what the man had in mind for it.

There was a person this man was hunting down. Such a profession was not one the man typically practised, but this time he made an exception. A bounty of what was $10000 worth of money in this new world currency was up for grabs to whoever could take out a specific target.
The target in question: A lone wanderer. Taken on surface value this wanderer seemed like nothing to rationally be afraid of. He wore an Akubra hat, covered his body with a red poncho, walked in tattered running shoes and appeared to be about 17-19 years old. But surface value wasn't worth much when it came to sizing up this kid.
He was what was called in this new world a "Waste walker". Someone who couldn't integrate into the society that formed in the ashes of the old one and walked the destroyed world. Many waste walkers were old men at this point, remembering with a tear in their cloudy eyes the days before the collapse. This kid was different. He was born into this world, lived under the crimson sunrises and sunsets, breathed only the air of this world. 
And yet he wanted to destroy it.
No one had identified the weapons that the man in red used. Some claimed that it was some kind of single action revolver, some said a concealable shotgun, one man even claimed it was an improvised blunderbuss.
But either way, there were two things known for sure about the man in red. Firstly: whatever he used, it was strong enough to kill a man with one bullet. Secondly: No man-made weapon seemed capable of killing the man.

Many people had tried to take down the man in red, and yet they all told the same story. It didn't matter what weapon they used, the weapon bounced off of the kid's poncho and hat and left him unharmed and ready to attack. 

Many folks were intrigued by this kid, getting to the point where they gave him a nickname. 'The Man in Red', a name made people fear him. But this man, the one in the attic, didn't buy into the stories. 

This man himself had lived before the collapse, an event recognised as a large white flash across the world that lead to the demise of political figures, military leaders and many civilians that no one could ever managed to understand.
Even to this day the man in the attic didn't know what caused the collapse, nor what it even was. Nobody did.

But while the collapse did destroy the old world, it didn't blur the man's memories. As a child the man heard of a story regarding an man living in a country called Australia. A man named Ned Kelly, who had a stand-off against a massive police force. Ned Kelly was captured in the end, but he survived all the gunfire of the battle by wearing a suit of makeshift armour. The man in the attic remembered this story the moment he heard of the man in red. He new from the moment he heard the kid was invincible that he had some kind of armour hidden under his poncho.

And because the people who encountered the man in red saw his face, he knew that his face was uncovered.

The man retrieved a small bag of beef jerky and lazily tossed it towards the window before zipping his bag back up. He looked at the bag for a second, reading a small inscription on the bag that read "Private Nathan Jackson". This was the man's bag, from the old world, and the name inscribed on it would forever prove that it was his. 
Nathan Jackson was his name after all.

Nathan loaded his Model 81 with a stripper clip and began moving it towards the window before noticing his beef jerky was missing from the area. He activated his rifle's safety, left it on the attic floor, and quickly jumped down a larger hole in the floorboards onto the second floor of the house.

The house itself was located in an old suburban area, a place Nathan new the man in red would visit while trying to find somewhere to quench his thirst for the old world. The house was damaged heavily, with some walls torn down or crumbling. The attic of the house however, while in bad condition, was usable and provided a good sniping position. Nathan was now on the second floor of the house, looking for his food.

He kept looking, evading the holes in the floor, failing to find his beef jerky. He considered simply leaving it behind, but he was low on food to begin with and couldn't stand to lose any. 
Out of desperation he continued downwards to the ground floor of the house, seeing the destroyed walls firsthand. After some searching he found his bag of beef jerky near the entrance of the house, somehow having fallen through multiple holes to reach said point. Nathan felt a small sense of relief. Be bent down to pick up the bag before something caught his eye in the distance. Something both red and moving. It was close to him, but not close enough to recognise what it was. Nathan brushed it off and bent down again to retrieve his food, again being interrupted by something.

A wave of buckshot hitting the wall beside him.

Nathan quickly jerked his body backwards in reaction to the gunshot before racing back up to the attic in record speed, going for his rifle. When he reached the attic, with his Model 81 in hand, he leaned against a wall for a momentary breather. Someone was there, near him with a shotgun, and said someone was now trying to kill him. Who was it?
It didn't take a genius to work out who.

Nathan took position by the window, readying the rifle to fire at the man in red. Unfortunately the man had noticed the window, allowing Nathan to meet with a dose of buckshot through the window. Two pellets and some glass grazed Nathans forehead, but he was still in good enough condition to operate. To say, however, that the shot hadn't fazed him was a gross understatement. He sat down, his back against the wall that kept the now-broken window, and froze for little while. After he had stopped shaking he moved towards a hole in the attic that led to the 2nd floor, his steps slow and fear-stricken, and climbed down to the second floor. He moved towards the house entrance, hoping to find a good position to take the man in red down. He knew he had to hit him in the head, but the fear of coming within an inch of his own life paralysed him. He peeked down the staircase linking the first and second floor, looking to see if the man in red was there.

The two men noticed each other instantly.

Nathan quickly ducked backwards, evading any shots the man in red fired at him. The man in red retaliated by jumping onto the staircase, giving him clear line of sight to Nathan, and firing another round of buckshot at him. Nathan turned when he heard the man on the staircase and recognised the weapon he used as a cheap looking Double Barrelled Shotgun that had seen more than it's fair share of wear and tear before being struck by the buckshot in the neck and shoulder. Nathan recoiled backwards from the hit, luckily managed to regain his balance, and sprayed his rifle at the man in red before fleeing the scene towards the safety of the attic.

His escape attempt was rapidly cut short by another blast to his back. It wasn't a bullet, but it was something with enough force to send Nathan flying face first into the ground, something like a bean-bag shell

He tried to get up, the blood pouring from his neck finally started having an effect on him. He fled to a hallway on the second floor, trying the only door to the only room accessible from that hallway. The door was locked

He continued to the end of the hallway before he started losing feeling in his legs and slumped against a wall. He fumbled in his pants for a pocket with ammunition that wasn't there, or for a knife that also wasn't there. He checked his rifle to see if there was a round chambered and found his gun to be empty. He looked around the room, the colour slowly fading from his sight. Nothing he could use to fight with.

There was one last option. He forced himself back onto his legs, which were numbing more and more, and positioned himself by the entrance of the hall holding his rifle as a bat. He listened intently as the man in red's footsteps approached his position. He listened as carefully as he could, feeling a liquid warmth running down the right side of his chest as well as his arm and hand. He listened as the man approached the entrance of the hall, hoping to god he would have the opportunity to charge the man in red with and get a decent strike on him with the butt of his rifle.

But such an opportunity never revealed itself, and the man in red approached the entrance of the hall, shotgun in hand, and fired one more buckshot into Nathan's chest.

The man left Nathan to bleed out, leaving his corpse behind as yet another failed attempt to end his life. Nathan looked up at the crumbling roof and closed his eyes. His tired eyes would open no more.