Excerpt from "A Cutting Wind"

Tech suggested I post an excerpt from the novel I am attempting to write for NaNoWroMo, so here it is. Keep in mind (please) that I am not a writer, and never have been, but I have often considered what life in our society would be like if trends of politically correctness continue at the current pace. This is the premise.

Be kind:

It was during this period of joblessness that John had taken to exploring the condemned, dangerously damaged buildings in and around the area in which he lived. The neighborhood was once one of the finest, high rent areas in the country, until the terror attacks of 2010 reduced the majority of the buildings in downtown Manhattan to rubble, and the rest rendered uninhabitable. Most of the residents were killed instantly, and most of the ones who weren't died soon after from the effects of radiation poisoning. Consequently, there was no one to claim the wealth of treasures left behind in the chaos. Treasures that included now worthless cash (worthless because when the new government was created the currency had been changed to pesos.), and jewelry, although most of the jewelry had long since been looted before John ever considered exploring.

Probably some of the most important treasures, in John's opinion, were hundreds of books. Books were still around after the war, but were in ever increasing short supply. These days, books were written and stored electronically, not printed on paper and pulp. Inside these condemned buildings were mounds of books, of all kinds, and John became a voracious reader. He would spend hours, literally, sitting on a pile of ruined, smelly, discarded bedclothes in the diffused light of a bombed out basement, reading out of books that were no longer in print.

The thing about the Bible that had grabbed John's attention was the way it was bound. It was the only book out of the hundreds of books he had found that was bound in leather, with gilt edges on it's pages, and a large part of the text, at least in the last third of the book, was printed in red ink, in stark contrast to the black print in the rest of the book. Yes, it was decidedly different in appearance, and, as John soon discovered, in content as well.