Homeless in Sunset Valley

Chapter One – “Out on the Streets”

Everyone romanticizes homelessness until it happens to them. Sure, everyone says, “Oh, homelessness is a problem that the person who is homeless has created for themselves. If they would just get a job, they wouldn’t be homeless, would they?” Well, it’s not that simple.

How River and I became homeless was one where I would say was not a problem that I created. What horrific kind of parents did I have that I would choose homelessness over having a roof over my head?

Imagine living with a parent that didn’t give two tinker’s damns about your welfare, whose main goal in life was to beat you down to the point where you didn’t even have an identity. In my household, I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion; was called stupid every opportunity. My ambitions were mocked and belittled, my goals sabotaged in every way possible just so that my mother could exert control over me for the rest of my life. There were no marks on me, so I couldn’t run to the police for help. I would have been laughed out of the station. Man up, if they aren’t beating you, you’re OK. Didn’t matter that one’s soul was being killed. So in that atmosphere of despair and utter futility, I stayed...until River came along.

Society says that you need to honor your mother and father. Even if your mother is an abusive tyrant and your father is an enabler to the n’th degree.

I chose to rebel from those abuses...and willingly paid the price. My life was not worth abasing myself to my abusers.

If you have parents who love you and care for you, don’t take them for granted. There are some of us who haven’t had that opportunity to have that kind of caring set of parents.

Unfortunately, Mrs. McIrish was too full up in her household to take me in...and thus River decided that she was going to stick with me, over the objections of her mother. River wanted nothing more than to see me healed and she was prepared to go through hardship to do it. She said that she didn’t care. That she would go through hell if she had to in order to make sure that I got away from my parents.

River and I had only just begun to see each other in a romantic light – we were testing the waters, then this whole “Get out” business with my mother happened along. I was sick and tired of my mother using that from the time I was in elementary school and 9 years old so I finally called her bluff, packed my clothes and walked out of the house. I think my mother was gaping at the fact that her long spine-less kick-toy finally grew a spine and told her off. She wasn’t expecting that.

So we were out on the street and broke; absolutely nothing in our pockets and no food to eat. It was either swipe food off the trees or starve. Because we sure as hell were not going to steal from the vendors.

Only, I didn’t know just how hard of a road that would be.

Day One:

Well, our first day out on the street started out with a rather smoggy morning. It was at least 8:04AM by my watch. My gal-pal and I decided to synchro our watches to make sure that we knew what time it was and that we were on matched times.

I had decided to get my hair cut real short so as to save money...on haircuts for at least six months. And wore old ratty clothes so that I wouldn’t get the clothes I treasured dirty and wet.

We knew the weather was going to get hot, once the smog burned off by midday, so we needed to get an early start. If we didn’t we would pay for it by heat-exhaustion. I decided to jog over to Grady’s Junkyard to see if I could dumpster-dive in there and come up with some valuables that I could hock at the Aleister’s Elixir/Consignment Shoppe. Yeah, have to be pretentious and put the double-the-consonant-and-add-an-e Middle Englishe-style spin on the word shop. The etymological history escapes me. Anyways, my objective was to dive and try to see if I could come up with something useful that I could pawn and hopefully get some decent return on.

This also would mean that I would need a shower at the end of it all. Yeah, good luck trying to find that while homeless. Also add to that, that evidently Bylaw Officer MacCready was already on our hind-ends thanks to my mother who shot her a note saying that I was a vagrant...and thus now I was §1,500.00 in fines behind the eight-ball. Welcome to hell, it gets even better from here-on-in. Read that as sarcasm.

We did get a lot done that day, surprisingly, even with our financial setback. With consigning what I found in the dumpsters, I managed to get a grand total of §2,725.00 which more than cleared our §1,500.00 in fines. But we have taxes tomorrow. I’m going to hate to see how much we’re going to have to pay.

And of course, with just our luck, the sky opened up and started dumping on us. So my River decided that she was going to head to Central Park to the only roasting fire pit there was. And frankly, so was I if after snorkeling I didn’t get stuck in my snorkeling gear and when the Watcher reset me, I ended up halfway across town. Bloody heck. I didn’t want to have to run clear across Sunset Valley, just to have dinner which for me would be a roast apple.

Can anyone tell me why if I eat an apple, I only get a half-stomach worth’s of hunger satisfaction? Whereas if I turn around, roast the ever-lovin’ bejesus out of it and leach all the nutrients out of it, I end up with a full stomach? Is that nuts or what?

We knew now that the authorities would do everything they could to drive the homeless (that was now us) out of town. I could see the worry on my sweetheart’s face. She now realized just how vindictive the haves could be. They thought of us as cockroaches, as vermin to be exterminated. Unlike some, we were just down on our luck, not addicted to any form of substance, nor abusing what we were on, which was sodas and chips which ultimately were the cheapest things that we could get. I wouldn’t say that she was naive; more like sheltered as to just how cruel humanity could be. Now our next ordeal would be since it was pouring rain and we had very little money to our names, that we would end up having to sleep outdoors. The only way to do that would be to buy sleeping bags and there were no outdoor stores open at 9:30PM.

Luckily for us, that meant napping in fits and starts on the benches...

…or trying to sneak into the gym in order to get out of the rain.

And guess what was in view? Yep, you name it, our friendly neighbourhood cop-shop. So we had a choice. Risk a trespassing fine going into the gym, a trespassing fine or a criminal charge of break and enter for going into the firehall. Or sleeping out in the open and risk another §1,500.00 fine for vagrancy.

Well, even better we got a notice that the city was coming by the lot to throw out our belongings. Well, unfortunately for them, we had nothing on the ground, so they would be wasting their entire time doing it. So somehow we had gotten away with it.

So, what we ended up doing was sneaking into the gym, freeloading off the showers and going upstairs and taking a floor in a room, we fell asleep exhausted since tomorrow would be yet another trying day of trying to survive.

End total Day One: §1,225.00
Total Fines: §1,500

Day 2

As it was, we were lucky that we had found shelter that last night, because it rained heavily throughout the night. When we woke up and started out for the day, we found that the ground was sopping wet. So it would have been nasty to have to be outside overnight. During the height of summer, it got down to around 10 or 11 degrees celcius overnight and it was chilly when it was early morning. Plus most who were indigent for some length of time ended up having their health eroded and were more prone to catching things that healthy people could avoid.

We were lucky that morning that a by-law officer who was making his daily rounds ignored us when we came out of the gym. Either he didn’t see us or he opted to give us a break. Because at four o’clock in the morning, it was probably too early to be actually in the gym for exercise. Well, we’ll try to use today to build up our finances and catching the lucky break in the morning would help us immensely.

Snorkeling had found us several gemstones so we were going up to Aleister’s in order to cut them and consign them. Hopefully that would give us a hefty chunk of money to live off of for the next little while.

Luckily we didn’t jay-walk and used the crosswalk in order to get across the street; River wisely making us cross at the corner. We didn’t need a §375.00 fine for cutting across the street. And it just so happened that the police were driving past at the time. Another lucky break. If we weren’t making a nuisance of ourselves, the cops tended to just tell us to move along and leave us alone. And since it appeared to them that we were moving along, they decided not to bother us.

I suggested that we cut the gemstones in random cuts and hope for the best. River argued that we should attempt to try to get the most possible money for them and cut them in spires. At least Aleister’s had an unlocked gem-cutter that was able to cut every possible gem-cut and we could manage to maximize what we were going to get. Eventually I agreed. We needed the money...badly.

After consigning the gemstones and well, considering the fact that we were already soaked, we decided to go get ourselves even more wet. After all, what’s a bit more water when one is completely drenched to begin with. It was absolutely pouring rain. So we decided to see about doing some more snorkeling in hopes that we could find any more gemstones that we could consign them tomorrow. We also had to see about making a trip up to our mailbox to be able to pay the tax bill. What a royal pain-in-the-rear end. Well, I said something far worse, but you can’t put that in print.

Since we were trying to save money, running was basically our way of getting from point A to point B. Of course, in the rain...it was thoroughly unpleasant. But what can you expect with a climate that was Pacific Coastal Rain Forest. Our attempt to find gemstones on my part was absolutely a waste of time. All I found were several shells. River had much better luck. I figured that it was time to do separate tasks. Maybe she was better at finding gemstones by snorkeling than I was. Me on the other hand, I wasn’t sure if I was more adept at finding dumpster items. But I hated smelling like a sewer after I was finished.

It finally stopped raining around five o’clock in the afternoon. We finished up and headed up to the park to see if we would be able to roast some more vegetables or fruits in the fire-pit. Even though we had a nearly §8,300.00 profit today, I was still down about not getting anything more than shells during my attempt at snorkeling.

While I went hunting for gemstones on dry ground, River harvested the park’s fruit trees and found us a dry place to bed down for the night. And she did find us a comfortable place to bed down after all, somewhere where we couldn’t be seen by those who would mean us ill. It was a place that was not immediately spotted from the street and a low fence concealed us from those who would be walking by.

I told her when I got back that she did a great job in finding us this place to bed down. And it would keep us safe, or as safe as one could be being out on the street homeless.

We were certainly lucky that we found the gemstones that we did and quite possibly we would have a decent amount of finances behind us after tomorrow. But once again, we would be making that long trek to Aleister’s to get our gemstones cut. But for now, we had to hope that it wouldn’t rain over night.

Day's Earnings: §8,357.00
Total Earnings and Current Balance: §9,582.00
No Fines:

For Future Homeless Saves: The Wheel of Misfortune and Pay for Fishing/Hunting License

To make a realistic homeless save, I decided to make myself a "Wheel of Misfortune" where there is a bylaw officer that occasionally comes around every week to your encampment and levels a punishment if you're homeless.

The punishments can range from a minor fine (which can be major if you are dead broke) or a major one that can involve one having to dump all of one's possessions and end up broke again (just remember to write down what your actual simoleon total was before you start selling your possessions because that's what you're going to end up as. This is going to reflect how some municipalities treat their homeless by just coming in and throwing out all their possessions. Yes, I've seen it done.

And paying for the licenses to hunt and fish legally.

End of Days - Chapter Two "Unlucky Survivors"

River’s Journal – December 31st, 1989 - January 6th, 1990

We have been incredibly lucky. There was no breach in the walls, nor was the structure damaged in any way due to the over-pressures we’ve endured from the detonations of the two nuclear weapons; one in the 350KT range, the other targeted at the military base in the 5MT range. Luckily our entire superstructure of our bunker has been Faraday-caged, meaning that there was lead sheets embedded into the walls, which were meant to block out Electro-Magnetic Pulses. Which means that anything electronic in our devices and in our motors that we have has been kept safe from burning out due to detonation of the nuclear weapons in our vicinity. Our exterior security cameras have not been so lucky. They are fried.

We have not had snow. The soot in the atmosphere has wrecked our ability to have weather patterns as far as we’re aware because we haven’t heard any rain beating down on our roof, so naturally, if there is no rain, there is no possibility of snow either.

Over the past six months, we have spent our time in the bunker doing the things that we had to do. Bebe, namely, working on her sciences and Clarissa on alchemy. Farmer and Felix have been doing their part to make life easier on us humans. The main reason why we were staying underground for as long as we have is the fact that we didn’t know just how much radiation had been pumped into the soil from the fall-out. The only soil that we knew wasn’t radioactive was the soil underneath our feet on the first floor above the bunker, because that was encased all the way straight down to the bunker itself and had no contact with the outside soil. There is no way that radioactivity could have leached in especially when our soil that we used was barricaded by concrete and rebar.

We will have to look out, one of these days, but as long as we have the capacity to stay here, this is what we’re going to do.

We did find out that Farmer heard rain hitting the roof through his far more sensitive auditory circuits part way through the first week. This was the first time that we had heard about precipitation falling since the warheads went off and undoubtedly that was going to send upwards, a spike in the rad-count, which meant that it was going to be dangerous to be outside in the rain. Right now all the dust and debris that were radioactive from the nuclear exchange was still floating around in the atmosphere contained within the clouds.

We had a round-table discussion: What do we do about the survivors? How do we figure out if any of them can be saved.

Felix must have overheard because he went, of his own volition, on a scouting mission...to retrieve friends of ours who may have survived. Even if they had radiation sickness which couldn’t be treated, at least they wouldn’t die alone. Out of the 50,000 population of Sunset Valley, we were only able to save two who had not received enough rads to have been fatal. Holly burst into tears when she’d encountered Felix. She thought at first that he was the emissary of an alien invasion but was brought about to realize that we were still alive and that we had managed to survive the nuclear onslaught within a bunker – that in turn prompted tears of relief; she was saved.

Felix also managed to save Parker Langerak, who somehow even though he was outside at the time of the rainfall, that he’d only gotten a dose of about 30 rads. Which would probably make him slightly sick, possible fever, maybe vomiting, but not enough to be fatal, thank heavens – he was only a teen, he still had his whole life ahead of him. Felix and Parker managed to make it back when the rain stopped and Holly made a mad dash for our bunker when she saw the two of them heading for the bunker.

We did have to make peace with the fact that we couldn’t save all of them. This death-rain would eliminate the majority of the survivors who were left out on the surface. It also meant that we needed to stay within the confines of the bunker for as long as we could, at least until the radioactivity died down.

Yumi Sekemoto came to us, pleading and begging for us to save her grandchild, Sam. She knew that she was dying. In fact, she had suffered a major dose of radiation poisoning and was quarantined away from the rest of us.

Farmer was designated to help her in her last days to make sure that her passing was comfortable. Sam, luckily hadn’t managed to get much dosage of radiation so we managed to nurse him back to health. And he looked none the worse for having lost both his father and his grandmother. Poor young Sam, Haruo and I would raise him as our own; he would be our first.

Despite how we feel, joy at the thought of raising a little one ourselves, we know deep down that Leighton should have been the one raising Sam. Sam will only know us as his parents, since he was too young to remember much of his father, his father having died when the first bombs went off as he was downtown. Then losing the only maternal figure, Sam had. We both would love Sam, but he deserved to have his father still.

Our intention as Sam’s surrogate parents was to raise him up to be a young man that Leighton would be proud of, not to replace him.

For how much longer would we have to stay within the bunker. The plumbots were equipped with on-board geiger counters, but we had none and we had no idea how they worked or how they were created. We would have to salvage some down the road if we were able to.

It may be that we may have to move from this place...and find a home that we can actually make a community out of. But that may be far down the road. Right now we can’t take the chance of exposure to stronger radiation than what would be healthy for us to take. We need to be able to reproduce, to bring humanity back from the brink of extinction and we can’t do that if the reproducing females of our species are rendered sterile trying to find a new home. If we’re not careful we could genetically dead-end the species.

Greg was busy playing with his Imaginary friend. He loved that doll, it seemed. Masaharu told me that one of the potions that he’d created was something that he had no idea what it did. He’d drunk one himself just to see what it did, but it did nothing – it was a gold-colored fluid and we had no idea what it was supposed to do. Hopefully Masaharu would be OK. He said he hadn’t suffered any ill-effects from it at any rate. It probably would be best if he didn’t do that again.

Bebe, taking matters into her own hands knowing that Holly was lonely - there wasn’t anyone her age to pair up with. So using the science station, Bebe asked Masaharu to donate some of his genetic code so that she could make a clone of him. Masaharu, I don’t know if he really put much thought into this, but he readily agreed. I’m not sure I would have wanted another clone of Haruo wandering around with someone else. But Bebe...well, she is a bird of another feather

Unfortunately, that particular science station cloning experiment failed and it seemed as though that was going to be a dead-end. However Clarissa got in on the act and decided that she would make a clone drone potion which Bebe, once she got that in her hot little hands, handed over to Masaharu who used it on himself. After the nice dark cloud that enveloped him dissipated, there was a young man who stood beside Masaharu that was practically for all intents and purposes the exact duplicate of him. He was a strapping young man who bore a striking resemblance to Masaharu. Masaharu named him Torahide. Torahide would probably get himself a haircut to differentiate himself from Masaharu, but for now...he was going to take time to get to know Holly.

Because we were in this bunker and unable to go out a lot of us were going stir-crazy including the plumbots. Felix bided his time by breaking space-rocks. So could my fiancé but the likelihood of him breaking his hand was probably on the order of six times as likely as Felix. Felix has a metal hand so the worst he could get is a severe dent which he could use a ball-pen hammer to iron out – my fiancé would probably end up with all the bones in his hand shattered which now with no medical help, would require an amputation of the hand because there would be no way to put the pieces back together. I tried to keep from laughing as the last time I saw we had roughly about four or five gemstones.

Now we have almost one hundred. And Felix is still going at it.

Thank goodness for things to do in this bunker. Torahide gravitated towards the sculpting station and was making immediate strides in creating sculptures in clay. Currently he was working on an alluring, at least to males – it did nothing for me other than to remark on what a nice sculpture it was, sculpture of a woman in Greek robes holding a bowl. Masaharu commented that he hoped that Torahide could make one of those in stone one of these days. Hopefully Bebe didn’t hear that.

My fiancé was taking the opportunity to teach himself how to play the violin. Unfortunately at this current point it was sounding like a cat was getting tortured. It would be a while before he worked his way up to it sounding like Haifetz playing the J.S. Bach Partita in B minor as my classical snob (~aside – oh I’m sorry, baroque snob...BWV 1002, II. Double, good heavens!) likes to state. With that and the fact that he had a gorgeous concert grand piano (9 footer) in the living area, we were somewhat able to take some enjoyment out of being cooped up in the bunker. To assuage his love of music, he also had a harpsichord and a organ...don’t know how he managed to fit that in there but evidently the pipes were encased within the interior walls of the bunker...with sections of wall having grates to allow the sound to somewhat escape. If it means that he won’t go bats-in-the-belfry, I’m all for it. Luckily he has not expressed a penchant to play Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor – that piece is scary enough as it is and especially considering the situation we’re in, I’m not sure I want to hear that piece again.

Phil on the other hand was making friends with the younger family members. That presumably was his childish trait kicking in. He had brought plenty of comics, manga and anime to watch on TV, which luckily were not affected by the nuclear blast’s electromagnetic pulse (EMP). So he would sit for a couple of hours and watch Jem and the Holograms, Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or GI Joe.

“Sandi...did you see the last episode of the Ninja Turtles?”

“No...Uncle Phil...you’re weird...I don’t watch that stuff.”

Mornings were a bit awkward. When we were in high-school, I was a high-school senior and...

Parker Langerak was a junior, which meant that I was in my graduation year and had committed to Haruo and going steady with him when Parker started expressing interest in me. I’ve had to discourage him quite emphatically from pursuing his interest in me. And well, now we were all stuck in this bunker together.

But what he realizes is that this bunker is his survival as it is with all of us. We all have to work together to move humanity forward from now on. He will find someone, but that someone won’t be me. I'm a grown woman thrown into surrogate motherhood and Parker's still a teen. He needs to find someone that he is more suited to. My fiancé Haruo has asked me to marry him and that’s the way it is now.

My husband-to-be is the one who stepped up to become Sam’s surrogate father thus making me Sam’s surrogate mother so be it. Whether we feel ready for it or not, we have to step up to the plate and hope that we can succeed at raising a child from the age of toddler-hood all the way to young adulthood. And we don’t stop being a parent when they leave the nest. We are their parents for all time. The fact that Haruo has shouldered this on himself has made me love him all the more.

If anyone had told me, “River, you’re going to be a mother six months after you graduate.” I would have told them that they were nuts. Yet here I am. I’m a mother to a toddler who is just about to age up to child who will be going to get tutored in things that will allow him to thrive in this new world where there are no laws regarding education nor any formal education curriculum. We have all been forced to grow up quickly in order to get by in this new situation we find ourselves in.

Haruo, when he was stressed, would go to the pool table and shoot pool for hours as he tried to figure out whatever mental conundrum he was working through. I knew not to bother him during those times because he was working through something weighty and probably oppressive that was going through his head.

A round-table discussion was needed as to what our next plans were. For the foreseeable future we were here. We had no idea as to what our next move was. We could sit here for as long as it took for the radiation to subside to levels that we could venture outside in order to effect repairs on the ruined buildings and perhaps create a somewhat livable village out of the ruins.

Haruo asked the entire group of us, “OK, what is the end-game on this? What do we do? Do we try to stay here and make a life of it in radioactive ruins that can potentially wreck us genetically?” he paused ominously, “Or do we take our chances and try to find someplace that hasn’t been affected by the radiation as badly as Sunset Valley. Remember that Sunset Valley, with our military base, was a prime target for a 1MT nuke. It’s going to take a while for it to come down to radiation levels that we can actually establish a town here that won’t be affected by background radiation significantly higher than other places.” I looked over at Haruo. Despite his insecurities at being sure of doing the right thing, his indecisiveness was being replaced by a new determination that his family, what we had here, would survive.

“I don’t like the thought of going out in the radiation. Like what if we grow three heads or something.” Phil asked, a frown on his face. I thought back to my biology classes in high-school.

“I don’t think biology and evolution quite works in that way. If you’re currently only having one head on your body, I doubt you can grow two more in the space of six months.” Bebe commented wryly, giving him a grin.

“I hope not, because do you really want two more of me?” Phil asked.

The rest of the table’s concensus on that was “Oh, hell no…”

“Outside of the immediate effects on our body…” I said, “One of the things that we have to worry about is the effects on us genetically which will manifest maybe generations down the line. Do we really want our families to have genetic defects from exposure to radiation...effects that we could have prevented by just moving out of here? When given the chance, that is…” There were nods around the table.

With Parker only a week away from young adulthood, it was hard for him to not be included in the round-table discussion as to what he wanted, but he knew that as a teen, he wasn’t going to be allowed at the table to discuss weighty matters that for most of us were a topic that we wanted to avoid as well. However, we were the ones that had to make the decisions for the rest of the group. We wanted him to still have hope, to be able to think that there was a future. We were the adults in the room, the ones who had to look at the future with a weighted unbiased outlook even though our ages were separated by mere years rather than decades. The frankly bleak future was not something that we wanted to impart to the youngsters and the teens. We needed them still imbued with hope of tomorrow’s promise that there would be a future, not one that the previous generation had ground under the feet of their biases and internecine hatreds that had finally culminated in a war that brought humanity to its knees.

Out of all of us, Holly and Parker were the only ones who were familiar with what had taken place. How tough it was going to be to survive out there. After all they had survived the nuclear blast, the radiation, the shortages of food. They would be the ones to impart the information and then we would make the decisions based on that information on what path we were going to take. The plumbots would scout ahead marking a path where we would run into the least radiation thanks to their onboard Geiger counters. And we would follow.

We had no timeline as to when we would move, but it had to be such that when our food resources were running low, we would make that move. On top of that we had cattle and chickens. How would we deal with them? There were no guarantees that we could get them out of here let alone bartering for more when we got to where we were intending on going.

“I think we need to keep monitoring the area better than what we’ve been doing…” Bebe said. “I can ask Phil to put together another plumbot and send him out on round-the-clock monitoring missions.”

“If that’s acceptable to you.” Phil added. “I have no problem with making another plumbot.”

“I’d have no objections over that. One stipulation though, however, is that the plumbot contains a video recorder to document the area that he patrols in so that we get a good idea of what the area is like. What the conditions are. Same specs as the previous ones, onboard Geiger counter to tabulate the rems in the area, an audio device to let us know what the sounds are like in that area. We want full telemetry readings and environmental monitoring of the entire area while the plumbot is on patrol. Phil, make it happen.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

The rest of us including Haruo rolled our eyes. We knew Phil was joking with that response and the accompanying military salute. But the truth of the matter is that we looked to my fiancé as the de facto leader of our group. Phil may have been the oldest,

...but of all of us, this apocalypse had hit Haruo the hardest. He hardly ever laughed, he hardly ever smiled, he had a new hardness to his jawline that meant that our survival was always on his mind. He had, without ever expressing so much as wanting it, donned the mantle of leadership.

Haruo glanced my way, And my look back towards him sent him a clear message. I will be by your side and I will support you in any decisions that you make for the benefit of our group. It was a quiet unspoken message of love and support that I wanted to send my fiancé. I’m sure the rest of those at the table saw it too. Haruo and I were for all intents and purposes, sans the formalities of ceremony, husband and wife, father and mother to Sam and that set us apart even from them.

“Well…” Haruo said, “I guess the meeting is adjourned then. Phil, let me know when the plumbot is complete and I’ll let you know what sectors I want it to patrol.”

Phil grinned at him and said, “Yes, sir. Commander…”

“Knock it off...I’m not a military commander…”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

I just rolled my eyes. Phil was always annoying my fiancé; it was just his nature and my husband-to-be just took it. He’d been friends with Phil for many years from the time they were in elementary school all the way through now. There were too many years of friendship between the two of them for there to be any animosities behind the ribbing. Although some days, it felt as though it was taking some restraint to keep from throttling Phil.

“Seriously, I’ll get it done.” Phil grinned as he headed off to the plumbot manufacturing station that we had – the same birthplace that Felix and Farmer had come from.

“The rest of us need to get our martial arts skills up. Secondly, we’re going to have to map out our route and make sure that we are able to hit resupply points along the way, including arming ourselves just in case we meet bandits. Sunset Valley is a write-off as far as equipment, supplies and weapons, we are going to need to locate places where we can get those things.” Haruo emphatically pointed out.

“Why would it be a write-off?” Clarissa asked.

“Radiation would have contaminated the supplies. What supplies we take from here is taken from our bunker – that’s the only supplies we know for sure aren’t contaminated. Radiation has had six months to leach through any protective sealant out in the open and we know ground zero isn’t more than a half-kilometer away from the store, so going down into the blast zone to get supplies is completely out of the question.” Haruo determined that the next choices were to start canning our tomatoes and making preserves out of what we had. We also had grains that we needed to make into travel bread. We would have to stock up...big time in order to get ourselves prepared to move out. “We need to not stick to main roads, but carve our own path. Most of the places that are on main roads will probably have already been picked clean by survivors. We’ll be looking at small towns. Places where we can find things...and that people have moved out of looking for supplies or have become self-sufficient and that we may be able to barter some of our things.”

We knew there was going to be a long road ahead of us. It was certain that we would face dangers that we hadn’t faced before. We knew that survivors would more than likely be hostile to new people moving in on their territory and we may be faced with having to take lives, something that was heretofore anathema. However if met with a choice between certain death and taking lives, I would choose the latter. It may not, pre-apocalypse, make us moral humans, but we have no choice in the matter now. Our lives mean more to us than those of others when it comes down to it.

Felix had laid down gemstones in the shape of a calendar and each day he would remove one, process it and get it ready for sale. And those were the days that we were going to calculate along with the readings that we get from the plumbot that we were going to create showing us the fall-out and how much radiation was still in the air. Then we would make a choice in fifty-two days whether we were going to leave or wait out another set of days.

Frank or FR-4NK was going to be our scout plumbot. The others could do so once we got on the move, but right now they had their own things they needed to be doing, namely harvesting crops and grinding gemstones so that we had ready bartering materials.

We needed Frank to do some radioactivity readings at various locations around Sunset Valley and then to fish and try to get a sample that we could test to see what the background radiation of the contaminated fish would be. This would allow us to determine if it was safe to venture out...and make our way out of Sunset Valley.

River’s Journal – January 6th, 1990 – January 13th, 1990

Our days were filled with martial arts training and making sure that we had enough supplies to make the trip out of here. Felix was busy making polished and cut gems to make sure we had enough money to make the trip and to start over anew when we got there, where-ever we were going. Farmer was busy trying to make certain that we had enough food supplies to last us a while after we closed the door on our bunker and started off on our epic journey.

What we intended to do was to take the best of the ingredients and use it to start our own little garden when we reach the place that we are planning to set down roots in. My mother’s always loved puttering around in the garden. Maybe she’ll have the opportunity to do that again.

By this time, I’d gotten to Master in kung fu. So I squared off against Haruo who had trained me. The last time we squared up, I’d beat him 2-0. This was a rematch. We put our game-faces on. The others were lined up at the board breaking blocks making sure that their hands were toughened to honed weapons. Because we didn’t have any firearms to speak of, we would have to make it so that we were weapons until we could get our hands on firearms. Ideally, we would raid a military base in order to get our hands on automatic weapons, but unfortunately any military base that we saw would be radioactive ruins owing to the rain of nuclear devastation that the Soviets had unleashed on us. On the other hand, we may have access to semi-automatic weapons, one shot per trigger pull if we could find a gun-store. At least one that hadn’t been completely ransacked of all the contents.

We were able to have five more board breaking blocks to allow everybody a chance to start breaking boards to toughen up our hands. This meant that the term iron fist was quite evident. Micro-fractures in the bone would knit making the bone tougher...or at least that’s what it was supposed to do. We knew that other survivors would probably have weapons, firearms, so we were going to have to get some ourselves.

I would be lying if I said that I was confident of the decision that we were going to go out of our bunker, but the fact of the matter was that we needed to make certain that we were out of the radiation contamination zone. And the only way to do that was to make certain that we left the area. With the base and the town having been targeted by two nuclear warheads that had completely decimated the area, it meant that we were in a situation where we had no choice. Sure we were safe in the bunker but we couldn’t stay there. We needed to find a place that would be safe, meaning lower radiation readings from the Geiger counter and no residual radiation from fallout. We would have to exercise caution leaving, but if it meant that we would have a chance to bring back humanity from the brink of extinction, then that was the only choice that we had.

Bebe and Masaharu were also concerned, but they understood that the risks in staying here were exponential in terms of genetic damage. I didn’t have to poll the others. They were prepared to move whenever the radiation died down enough that we could travel without encountering fall-out or radiation plumes. We would have to avoid hot-zones and for that we would need to make sure that we had Geiger counters. This would tell us exactly how much dosage of radiation as well as the background rads that we were taking into our bodies.

But what choice did we really have? We couldn’t stay near a detonation site. We had to move to safer ground. Day after day we had set out plans on how we were going to prepare to abandon our bunker; the safe space that we had when the detonation occurred. And we were going out into the unknown. What would greet us? What perils would we have to endure? How many of us were going to survive the journey to where we would ultimately lay down our belongings and call it home? How were we going to avoid the prevailing winds that would carry radiation our way? And where were we going to find cover to make sure that we weren’t exposed directly. We knew the farther up into the mountains that we went, the less likely we would be exposed. It was the city centers that were targets. Which meant that we would be relying heavily on the radiation readings the plumbots would give us as well as portable wrist-held Geiger counters that Phil had managed to cook up.

Watcher hope, that’s enough to keep us safe.

For now, while we make preparations, we wait. Hope is all that we have. That any place will be better than this. With the preparations underway, we needed to make my mother, Molly, Morgana and my step-dad, Cycl0n3 understand that we were about to make a trek that would be the toughest they had ever experienced in their lives. That we would be in danger through much of the journey and that along the way we would have to make some very tough decisions on who would continue on with us if the going got too tough for them. We needed them to understand that we had to keep moving, that to stop in an unsafe location was death and that there was no way that we were going to put our survival in jeopardy. Those that could not keep up would fall by the wayside.

Yet there was a part of me that was going ‘how can we do this to the children…’ who were young in years, who didn’t understand what it was to be pursued by something unseen in the darkness. Something malevolent that would insidiously hunt them and kill them. The foe we had was radiation. We had taken Geiger counter readings inside the bunker. Even with the shielding, we were at least ten rads above normal background radiation numbers and eventually that would lead to genetic problems down the future generations if we stayed here much longer.

On Friday, Parker celebrated his aging up to young adult. We all wished him long life and good health, though we all knew that was going to be a gamble when we headed out into the unknown. We would all face things that we didn’t know were out there. We may run into mutations who were stumbling around unawares much like zombies who would try to incapacitate us to feed on us.

So we’ve opted to stay until we are prepared. Until we’ve given the children a way to survive should the worst happen to us. Deidre has taken to the little children’s bake-oven like a trouper and is performing to her best abilities, naturally cooking up a delicious plate of muffins that everyone was happy to partake of.

Meanwhile, the rest of us honed up our skills. Parker, now being an adult, took to the martial arts and earned his blue belt and is now working towards his brown. We will have to test his skills to make sure that they are up to par when it comes to the journey. Each one of us knows that if the others fall, we are the children’s last line of defense.

Sometimes the experiments that are used to hone up science skills fail which means that the one doing them ends up getting singed. Evidently, there’s nothing like having a plasma bug explode in your hand. I’ve heard from Bebe that it’s rather painful. She was cloning one from a DNA sample when it went kaboom. She said it wasn’t a fun experience. Judging from what she looked like after the fact, I would highly agree.

I would rather stick to something a lot less volatile like painting. Although I might do better with a little more ventilation. I think the paint fumes are making me kinda loopy.

...or maybe that’s just my fiancé playing the violin...to the bathroom sink.