You said nothing when you should have about the surface five years ago. That was your fault. You can do something now though. Something unpopular and drastic, but something that will better ensure the safety of your family.

“Alright, I’m doing something I should’ve done a long time ago! I’M taking over!”
“You? Says who?! What gives you the right?!” someone in the crowd shouts.

You point your pistol in his direction.

“THIS! Is what gives me the fuckin’ right bitch! My willingness to allow you to continue your goddamn existence! Now here’s how things are gonna go down.”

You begin to implement new changes whether anyone likes them or not, and most folks don’t, but as usual you don’t give a shit.

You keep Nina’s plan for the surface idea, one of the things you do is install another call button so the elevator can now go up and down without all the extra hassle of fucking with the computer anymore, you still don’t know what the fuck GZS was thinking about with that idea of fucked up engineering. Parts of the shelter begin to get stripped along with some of the vehicles still remaining outside to create a few small homes.

As for who is going up to live, you devise a random numbering system that everyone has to participate in…of course you’ve purposely rigged it so your family doesn’t have to live up there. You’ve also rigged it so certain “useful” members don’t have to live up there either making them a little more receptive to your changes. Charles and some others are suddenly pleasant with you again. Naturally everyone who does have to leave hates your guts.

Your next step is to send out “explorers” to go find other communities to contact and trade with, because you desperately need more supplies. You pick Leon for the task, but Todd also volunteers. Brenda wants to go too, but you need all the people with medical knowledge here in the shelter.

A few weeks later Leon and Todd come back from their explorations. They mention they came across a place called Ashtown. They say it’s a small town, but willing to trade since they have routine problems with raiders and wouldn’t mind a supply of fresh water for a change.

Nina doesn’t exactly approve of your methods, but she goes along with you, because she loves you and you’re actually getting something accomplished.

Five more years pass...

Things have changed quite a bit, for better and for worse.

You’re running the shelter and its now above town called “Exile” basically by yourself and its putting you on edge each and everyday. One thing you didn’t think about when finding a trading partner, was the fact that more weapons might be coming in. You now aren’t the only person here with a gun. Which has lessened your intimidation value a bit, but you’ve countered a full blown rebellion by turning the “sheltered” and the “unsheltered” against each other. The people who live in the shelter are of course a lot more well off and healthier, while those living on the surface now suffer from the elements and the occasional mutant wolf pack attack.

The haves vs. the have nots. It’s an old tale that’s been played over and over. A tale that resulted in Armageddon, and now apparently even beyond it.

But even you cannot prevent an unstable powder keg from exploding forever and one day it does. Full blown rioting breaks out, you attempt to squash the rebellion, but it’s not even a rebellion so much as it is full blown anarchy as people IN the shelter are attempting to kill you in the opportunity to attempt to take over. Damn, you really thought Leon was on your side too.

You end up having to shoot your way out of the conference room, and make it back to your room where Nina is barricaded with Jake, she opens the door long enough to let you in.

“We have to get out of here!” she screams. “It’s over! They’re gonna kill us!”
> You run while you can
“I’ll go with that idea, but we’re gonna have to be quick! Grab only the basic necessities. We’re going to Ashtown.”

 You and your family grab what you need and run for the elevator which fortunately is still on the bottom. A couple of guards still loyal accompany you. When you arrive to the surface you nearly get your head blown off as soon as the elevator door opens. Your guards shoot the would be killer and you all move on.

Outside the shelter entrance it’s even worse. There’s fighting all over the place, and as soon as people see you, they all start trying to kill you. You urge Nina and Jack to run for the wilderness immediately. You fire back at the angry mob moving on your position, while running at the same time. The last of your guards go down. You run to attempt to catch up to Nina and Jack, which you do, but the mob is still chasing you. A bullet whizzes by your ear and then you hear a scream, its Nina.

You turn around and think she’s been hit, but it was Jack who was hit. She goes back to retrieve his body. Of course the mob isn’t stopping.

“NINA! NO!” you shout and fire at the mob, but killing a few of them doesn’t stop them from shooting Nina, who falls by Jake’s body. There’s nothing you can do now. You continue to run until you eventually lose your pursuers. Then you weep for the loss of your family.

You wander the wasteland for a bit, hoping something will attack you and put you out of your misery, but you never encounter a thing. Eventually you make your way to Ashtown. You get a couple of strange looks. A few people from Ashtown have heard descriptions of you, but never actually met you in person.

“Aren’t you…”
“No, not at all, you got any work around in this dump?”

The citizens of Ashtown have a few old generators that they need working at maximum efficiency, so that’s what you work on. They’re so grateful for your technical expertise, that they keep quiet about you being here, the next time a group of people from the shelter come to trade. Things don’t look like they’re going to well at the shelter from what you can tell though, word has it, that they’re going to have to completely abandon the shelter itself and live completely on the surface now, apparently the shelter’s computer system was severely damaged and is libel to shut down at any moment. The people are miserable and the baby mortality rate is high

This gives you no joy however, you’ve lost more. Much more. The solitude you once cherished and have again now only feel like emptiness. One day during a raider attack you purposely go out and fight them along with all the other defenders. You get yourself shot in the stomach and you don’t even care as you lie dying, anything to end your suffering.


The temptation is too great, you have to go. You’re just too curious not to.

“Hey Todd, and Charles I think you guys are ready to monitor this thing by yourself. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, and I’m going back to my room to take a short nap, don’t tell anyone alright?”

Todd and Charles just look glad that you’re showing some confidence in them for once.

“Yeah, sure it’s cool. We won’t tell anyone.” Todd says.
“Alright, I’ll be back. Remember just monitor, don’t fucking touch anything!”
“Okay! Got it!”

You leave the computer room and look around; the shelter almost seems eerily empty right now. Nina’s no doubt got everyone’s attention with her speech in conference room and all the kids are being looked after by someone in the children’s room created a couple years back.

You make your move. You run to the elevator, open it and get inside. You take a deep breath and press the button up, no time like the present to test it person.

The elevator begins its ascent, you begin to wonder what you’ll see above, you then check you pistol just in case what you see is unfriendly. Finally the elevator opens up to the same foyer you entered five years ago. Looks exactly the same, except the payment machine is now offline in fact the screen is cracked. There’s a crowbar lying on the floor and the doors to the outside look like they were pried open. You see the outside world for the first time in five years. From where you’re standing, it doesn’t look too bad; maybe the devastation wasn’t that great in this area. Somebody or possibly several people were here at one time attempting to get in.

You take the crowbar and jam it in the elevator door so it doesn’t close on you. There’s no call button up here either since it was the payment machine that opened it up. You make a note that if you’re able you’ll have to install another one up here, and shake your head at the typical shitty GZS design of its shelters. They built this thing like a high tech mass coffin as far as you’re concerned; you’re convinced that if it wasn’t for you up keeping and tinkering, everyone would’ve been dead due to shelter failure by now.

You exit the foyer and go outside, you see a bright light. It’s the sun; you forgot how bright it could be. You see everyone’s cars still parked here, well almost. You can tell that few of them must’ve been taken at one time; a lot have just been plain vandalized. Your van still looks the same though, nobody in their right mind would steal that thing, and it already looks vandalized. You wonder if it would still start, but you left your keys to it in the shelter. You doubt if it would though.

It occurs to you for the first time, the shelter might not exactly be “safe”, granted its not safe by design, but you’re thinking safe from bad people on the surface. Its possible these folks who passed through here stealing vehicles and vandalizing them might’ve just been trying to scavenge whatever they could find. The surface certainly can’t be a comfortable place to live now. Maybe they were just looking for safety. Of course it’s equally likely they were looters and other bad types.

The shelter community isn’t exactly a bunch of “warriors”, besides yourself, Leon, and maybe a few others you doubt it they could handle a bunch of hardened surface raiders who’ve been living in the wasteland for years. Granted the elevator wouldn’t allow for a large invasion of these types of people to take place, but it still makes you wonder if precautions shouldn’t be taken.

You need to get back though before everyone finds out what you’ve been doing. You rush back to the elevator (Throwing the crowbar back on the ground) and take it down hoping that nobody is wandering around when you exit the thing.

When you arrive at the bottom, you half expect to see a crowd to meet you, but its dead silent still, you quickly head back to the computer room where Charles and Todd are talking about another movie.

“Hey you’re back. So what did you see on the surface?” Charles asks
“Yeah were there mutants and shit?” Todd adds

You’re a little taken aback.

“What?! How did you guys know?”
“Sheesh! Come on, we’re not the morons you think we are! You told us to monitor the computer system, and when you used the elevator, the computer mentioned the elevator was in use, we put two and two together. So how was it? Is it all desert and shit with people dressed in leather walking around?”

You nearly slap yourself in the head for forgetting that little oversight on your part.

“You watch too many movies Charles; no I didn’t see any of that. At least not in the immediate area. And YOU two don’t know I went up there and I mean you don’t tell ANYONE! If Nina found out, she’d a pitch a bitch at me. She’s already made it clear that she doesn’t want me going up on the surface.”
“Don’t worry we’re not going to say anything. I dunno, I think maybe we should start going to the surface though, I mean this place can’t support a growing population forever. Eventually we’re going to have to start expanding out.” Todd mentions.
“Yeah, but that probably won’t be for awhile, we a got a lot of room still. Lots of supplies too, and with us in charge the food and water dispensers are working perfectly now.” Charles retorts.

You roll your eyes “With us in charge” actually it was you who made sure the damn things wouldn’t be breaking down on a regular basis. Still Todd makes a good point and it was something you were thinking about too. Maybe you should address this further with Nina after all her being the shelter leader she’s the one that could enact a plan about it.

Later that night, you’re in bed with Nina wondering if its time to tell her she should think about expansion…
> You address it
“Hey Nina get up.”
“Huh, what? Not tonight I’m tired.”
“No it’s not that. It’s about the surface. I think we need to start taking precautions and possible steps to expand above. The surface doesn’t look that bad and…”

Nina immediately sits up.

“YOU WENT TO THE SURFACE? After I told you not to fucking do that?! YOU ASSHOLE!”
“Calm down look you can see nothing happened to me. It doesn’t even look like there was any bombs that landed anywhere near the area.”
“You could be radiated! The wind blows your know or have you forgotten? Or maybe it was a biological weapon! A disease could be floating in the air! You ever think of that? You could be infected with god knows what right now and spread it to the whole shelter! And our baby!”

Another surprise.

“Baby? You’re pregnant?”
“I just found out recently from Brenda a few days ago. I was going to tell you soon, I should’ve told you yesterday before you went to the surface, but I THOUGHT you respected my wishes! I can’t believe you…”

Nina gets up and starts pacing. She’s very upset. You get up and try to fix this mess.

“Look that just makes this idea even more vital, this place can’t support all these people having babies. Even GZS mentioned in their delusional guideline statement it was the intention for people to eventually go back up to the surface and repopulate it with their families. We can’t live like a bunch of crowded sardines; we should make preparations now, before it becomes a problem.”
“But it might be dangerous up there.”
“It probably won’t be a picnic, but that’s another reason why we should start getting ready now. The more we’re prepared the better off we’ll be to defend ourselves.”
“But the radiation…”
“Look, the fact remains this place IS going to get overpopulated one day and people are going to have to start going up to the surface and any background radiation isn’t going to disappear within that time. So we’re just going to have to roll the dice and deal with that fact. Like I said I think we’re okay, we’re in a fairly isolated area away from an important major city. It’s not like we’re located on either of the coasts which were probably bombed the shit out of. And to the response to biological weapon thing, I highly doubt those were used, we were the only country that had the capability to launch such weapons from a long distance, except maybe Russia and I’m sure they probably just used nukes on us. Besides any virus or germ used in such a way would’ve died out long ago after it killed off the immediate population.”

Nina still doesn’t look so sure, she still look worried about you. You hold Nina to reassure her.

“If it’ll make you feel better I’ll actually go see Kyle and have him check me out. And you know how much I hate going to see doctors, especially one that’s got all his knowledge from the GZS info files. I’ll be here for a long time… for all of us.”

Your words seem to relax her a bit. She smiles and embraces you more closely.

“Okay, I’ll bring it up tomorrow…I still think it’s funny that you of all people would be advocating going back to the surface.”
“Pfft! WE’RE not going to the surface to live. We’re staying here! I just want get the rest of these fuckers out of the shelter and on to the surface! This place is too damn crowded as it is!”
“Now that sounds more like you!” Nina laughs.

Five more years pass…

It’s been ten years since you got here. It almost seems surreal to think about. Nina’s still the shelter leader and you’re still looking after the central computer. However a lot more things have changed, and just as predicted the population grew significantly, fortunately the implementations ahead of time allowed everyone to adjust with little problems.

There was some apprehension at first when Nina first suggested the surface thing, but eventually people did see the point in it. Some even wanted to go up to the surface. The first step was to make a fully functioning elevator that people could go up AND down on without any problems. (Of course that job fell to you again)

The next step was to create small “huts” with the cars outside as well as using current shelter material. This went quicker than expected as most people pitched in to help.

Nina gave birth to a son Jack, and almost went back to her duties immediately, leaving you to do most of the “Mr. Mom” work. Nowadays you split your time between monitoring the computer and monitoring Jack. Thankfully Charles and Todd have learned a lot more now and don’t require your supervision lessening your workload.

Now its time for the next step.

Nina and her council have been discussing plans for the even farther future. Contact with others and exploration. Within the past five years of the return to the surface, there has been contact with a few wanderers here and there, but they tended not to talk too much about their travels, they just mentioned that they’d seen other evidences of civilization, not all very civilized of course. Most of them just seemed to want to keep moving after doing a bit of trading and resupplying. One even hinted at some other “things” lurking around on the surface which didn’t sound too promising.

However, the shelter needs to start finding a stable trading partner, or at least a place to find more supplies, because the vital ones are starting to run out. Some people are asked to volunteer for this exploration mission

It wasn’t surprising Leon volunteered, but Brenda and Todd also volunteered. They were given as much supplies as they could carry and armed with the most “dangerous” things in the shelter. Leon and Todd carry some crowbars and Brenda carries a scalpel. You wonder if that’s really going to be enough though. Chances are some people out there (Quite possibly a lot) are carrying guns on them. Todd and Brenda aren’t going to be much good in a fight anyway, and while Leon is a fighter, even he can’t stop a bullet.

You’re the only one with an “equalizer” around here. Maybe you should hand it over to them to give them a better chance. Though you really don’t want to do that, for various reasons.
> You hand over your pistol
Before they leave you approach Leon, you and he still have a bit of history over the whole Elliot thing years ago. You’re guessing he’s not one to hold a grudge though since he’s never sought any type of revenge or something. You only hope he isn’t the patient type.

“Alright Leon, I know you’re the fighter of this group, and I know its most likely going to be dangerous up there, so I’m gonna do something totally out of character. I’m giving you my pistol and the two clips I have. It’s in good condition, and it’s only been fired once in ten years and I think you know when that was. Here you go.”

Leon takes the gun and looks at it with silence for awhile and then speaks. You think this is the first time you’ve actually heard him speak at all!

“Y’know, I never did apologize for that shit ten years ago. I dunno what the hell I was thinking following Elliot; none of us who did do. You and Nina have done a better job of keeping this place running than anyone. Anyway, this is really generous of you, but I can’t shoot worth shit, but I know someone who’s going with us who used to practice regularly before the bombs dropped. Hey Brenda! I got something for ya!”

Brenda comes over and her eyes widen when Leon hands her your pistol.

“Aw yeah! This is what I’m talkin’ about! I just hope I’m still a good shot; I’ve only been able to practice my aim by throwing this scalpel at a human diagram chart.”
“Yeah well don’t practice too much with it, save your bullets for an emergency. I didn’t know you were a gun person Brenda.” You say.
“You really need to get out of that computer room and socialize more!”
“Shit, he barely socializes when he’s in there with me and Charles.” Todd adds.
“But yeah I used to practice with my own when I had one. I was too afraid to try to sneak mine in here though…you know we’ve all always wondered about that, how DID you sneak this in?” Brenda asks.

You just smile.

“Hey I think you guys better get going.” You say almost laughing

“Oh come on! What a gyp! Alright, but we want to know when we come back!” Brenda says and then her, Leon and Todd enter the elevator wave goodbye to everyone and go up.

You and everyone else go about your usual business. Nina mentions what you did.

“Wow, that was really surprising for you, you’ve practically been walking around with that thing on you for ten years.”
“Yeah, well I can only hope I don’t need it within the time that they come back…if they come back.”
“You just gave them an edge I’d say they’ve got more of a chance now. Don’t be so pessimistic. They’ll come back.”
“Yeah I hope. Bring Jack by the computer room later; I know you got some sort of meeting to go to.”
“Oh I can cancel that, it’s not vital.”
“No its fine, bring him by. I’ve been indoctrinating him on the basics of the shelter computer. Someone’s gotta run this thing when I’m gone.”
“Well alright then, hey don’t worry. Everything will be alright.”

Nina kisses you and you exchange remarks about how you love each other before you make your way back to the computer room. You know its silly to think about it, but you can’t help thinking about some worst possible scenario.

You think about those three getting captured, tortured, and killed by a large group of psychotic bandits or something and then those same scum coming here because they found out the location after torturing them. You wouldn’t have anything proper to defend your family with and the surface scum would probably have all kinds of weapons to kill everyone with. They’d start by killing everyone in immediate area of the entrance, then they’d come down in small groups with automatic weapons they undoubtedly have and start killing down here and worse…

“HEY! Stop spacing!” Charles suddenly says to you.
“Huh? Oh! Okay.” You say snapping out your horrible daydream.
“Man, what’s wrong with you? You’ve been doing that the whole time you got here.”
“Nothing, just a little pre-occupied.”

You still don’t really relax until Jack gets there, which allows you to think about less terrible things like teaching him about the computer system.

When you’re finished with your duties, you go back to your room, and Nina’s there waiting for you looking as lovely as usual. You came in this place ten years ago with nothing except a bad attitude, now you got a lot more…

You’re not losing this. No way in hell.

The next day you start visiting the community gym area. You know other people like Leon use it. Nina uses it to keep in shape, but you’ve never stepped foot in the place, you never really saw any reason to, its not like you were fat or anything, but you realize if some shit goes down you’re going to have to be in better physical condition. You might not have a gun, but MAYBE you’ll be quick and strong enough to take one away from somebody! You need a fucking edge. You begin training regularly. Nina’s a little confused about this sudden change, but she’s not at all displeased with it.

You do this for the next six months with the constant theme running in your mind of how you’ll be able to take out the first miscreant that steps through the elevator, grab his gun and…

“Hey everyone, they’re back! And they’re in a fuckin’ car with a shitload of stuff!” someone shouts while you’re training.

You immediately stop and head for the surface. When you arrive you see Leon unloading some stuff out of a beat up, but functioning car, he’s got a patch on his eye now and his face is scarred, but otherwise looks okay. Brenda comes up to you and tosses you your pistol back, along with three clips!

“Came in handy, but I think I’ll be using THIS from now on!” Brenda pats an automatic rifle slung over her shoulder. “Hey, you look different, you been working out?”

“Um, something like that. So where did you get all this stuff?”
“Most of it we got from this small place called Ashtown that’s agreed to trade with us, we’d found it after about a week of wandering around, we were there negotiating with them and they wouldn’t trust us at first until the place suddenly got attack by a bunch of raiders. We helped defend the place from a one month siege! We also stuck around to help heal the wound. After that, they decided we were okay…that was at sort of a high cost though. Todd didn’t make it. He got killed in the fight. Tried to save him, but it was already too late by the time I got there.” Brenda explains.

“Damn...he was an alright guy…so is this fight where Leon got all scarred up?” you say as he approaches.
“No, that happened after we left Ashtown, we went exploring some more, we found another place a lot less friendly called The Combine. Trust me; we want to AVOID that place. We barely got out of there; we were basically prisoners. That’s why we were gone for so long. However, that’s where we got this car. We stopped back at Ashtown to pick up some supplies and came back here.” Leon answers, then he looks at you with his remaining eye. “Damn, you been working out?”

You nearly start laughing at your situation, here you were training and thinking up every possible worst case scenario that was going to befall the shelter, while Brenda and Leon were actually engaged in some worst case scenarios. You’re just glad that nothing did happen to the shelter, but you certainly feel less naked now that you have your “equalizer” back!

Life in the shelter continues.

Ten more years pass…

You’ve been here twenty years and as always there are more changes.

More people have moved to the surface, pieces of the shelter have been dismantled and started to be used to build a real town along with supplies from Ashtown, and scavenging from other places. Still, the shelter is needed to ensure at least a clean water supply so you’re still running it. Nina’s position has changed though. Since the shelter doesn’t contain a majority of the population anymore, her position is more of a community council person and her title is no longer “shelter leader”. The place has been given a name now; New Haven

One current problem is to keep the place together, but with the younger population, they’re less likely to want to stay. Ever since Leon came back with a giant mutant wolf head on one of his exploration trips, they all want to be “explorers” too. Your son Jack being one of those young people.

Nina of course doesn’t want him to go anywhere (You’re reminded of when she didn’t want you to go to the surface) and you can’t say you’re too fond of the idea either, but what can you do?
> You increase his work time with you
The longer you can keep an eye on him the less likely he’ll be sneaking off, maybe you can drum some discipline into his head again too, because apparently he lost some of it. You go to find Jake who’s hanging around the edges of town as usual.

“Hey Jack come here!”
“Aw Dad, I don’t feel like working with you in the boring ol’ computer room right now!”
“Boy, you better get your ass to that computer room!”

Jack follows you in defeat before you embarrass him anymore in front of his friends. When you arrive in the computer room Charles is there. Jack slumps down in a chair next to a console.

“Oh hey there, I didn’t expect to see you both here today.” Charles says unsure of how he’s suppose to respond to this situation.”
“Yeah, well Jack needs to spend some extra time down here, he’s been slackin’ lately.”
“I ain’t been slackin’!” Jake protests.
“You’ve been slackin’! Now check the power systems!”
“(Sigh) Fine! I dunno why we have to do this for; there hasn’t been a problem with this thing for years.”
“Yeah, and it’s gonna STAY that way too! The only reason why we haven’t had problems is because I’m on top of things all the time! If I let this thing go to shit, no more clean water supply for us! Would you like that? Drinking piss water?”
“I know I sure wouldn’t.” Charles mumbles.
“Damnit Dad this is boring! I don’t wanna be doing this shit! I wanna go out an explore the world like Leon!”
“Like Leon huh? In case you’re blind, you’ll notice Leon’s got a missing eye, a missing left ear and pieces of his fingers. That’s what the rest of the world does to you, if you slip up just slightly and nobody’s perfect. Look at Brenda, she’s the best marksperson in this place and she got herself shot in the leg which stopped her from going out. She now walks with a permanent limp! Is that what you want?”
“God you’re a fucking control freak Dad! I thought Mom was bad, but…”

Over the line. That one incurred Jack a wrap to the head.

“DON’T YOU DARE TALK ABOUT YOUR MOTHER THAT WAY!” you bellow as Jack holds his head.
“Um…I think my shift is over, see ya later!” Charles says getting out the way of this family squabble.

The rest of the time in the computer room is silent. Jack doesn’t say anything, he just sullenly does what you tell him. The next day he does the same thing, and the day after that, and so on, until one day he doesn’t. Mainly because he’s run away with some of his friends and stolen Leon’s beat up car. Nina is very distraught along with many other parents. The only thing is that Leon said it doesn’t have that much gas in it because he hasn’t been able to come across any lately.

You, some of the other fathers and Leon go looking for all of them. You first head towards Ashtown thinking that maybe they just went there to be “a little rebellious”. You come across the car, which they obviously abandoned, and continue to Ashtown with hope that Jack still headed that way, but no such luck. When you arrive, the people their say they haven’t seen anyone come by in weeks.

Days go by and at one point Leon thinks he’s got a lead, but then the worst happens. You’re attacked by crazed cannibals and their mutant dogs. You immediately tag one of the cannibals and duck behind a rock. But the cannibals also have guns and while the other fathers have weapons too, they haven’t been practicing with them like you and Leon have. They’re a lot better shots, you see a few of your fellow parents go down for the count, while the dogs finish them off. Leon holds his own, and you and he manage to take out all the cannibals, but it’s the fucking dogs that give you trouble…

Three of them leap onto Leon, knocking his weapon from his hand, he sticks his thumbs in the eyes of the one that tried to take out his throat, but that still doesn’t stop it from biting him in the face before it dies, one is chewing on his chest though and the other one is going to town on his crotch. You’d try to help him, but you got one that came out of nowhere that rips into your leg. You shoot the damn thing in the head three times before it lets go. You then struggle to stand and shoot the other couple dogs, but its too late, Leon’s a mangled corpse.

“FUCK!” you shout in frustration looking at the dead all around you. You collapse to the ground and put your hands on your face thinking about how this got all fucked up and then that’s when you notice the smoke coming from the cannibal camp and the smell of burning flesh. Your heart sinks and you drag yourself over for a closer look.

“No…don’t let it…” you to yourself. You see some bones and clothing. Some on it looks like that of some of the other parent’s kids. You don’t see anything of Jack’s. You don’t know if he got away, or they ate him and threw the clothing elsewhere or what. Somehow it doesn’t really matter; you haven’t found him, so for all intents and purposes he’s dead or at best; missing.

After grabbing all the remaining water you can from the others you make the long painful journey back to New Haven, thinking about what you’re going to tell everyone. Much has been lost this day.

When you get back you collapse again, this time you feel a fever. Brenda and Kyle immediately see to you. It’s your leg, its festering and infected from the mutant dog bite. Nothing can be done; you get it chopped off at the knee. The only good thing is you were unconscious at the time.

After you get over the initially shock of waking up to a peg leg, you only have more bad news for everyone, especially Nina. However, many lives of husbands and children have been lost and someone MUST take the blame. And that someone happens to be you just because you happened to be the lucky one to come back alive.

Nina is voted out of her position on the council for some made up reason which you protest loudly, but it hardly bothers her since she’s been preoccupied ever since you came back with the bad news. She holds on to sanity by making herself believe that Jack DID escape and is somewhere out there wandering the world.

They can’t get rid of you so easily since even with Charles around you’re still the only guy who can keep the computer system running everything working right, but most of the population sure gives you a hard time. If you weren’t walking around on a fucking peg, you’d start kicking some ass. As a few years goes by, finally you get sick of the shit and say:

“Fuck it. Let ‘em rot. They can run this shit themselves, this place is getting dead anyway. Nina, we’re going to Ashtown.”
“Ashtown? But that’s so far away! And you’re walking on that peg!”
“I didn’t mean go right this minute or by ourselves, I meant the next trade caravan from Ashtown that comes by we’re tagging along with it.”
“We’re just going to pick up and leave? Just like that? After all these years?”
“Hey, I don’t like it either, but its obvious all of our efforts weren’t ever appreciated here. Yours OR mine. Since they hate us so much, then let ‘em live here without our help. There’s nothing for us here now. All we got left is each other.”

Nina agrees and holds you tightly while telling you how much she loves you.

When the Ashtown caravan comes around you and Nina have all your stuff packed. They’re only too happy to take you with them, since Ashtown has been trying to get a couple old generators working to maximum efficiency and they heard you were good at that sort of thing.

You spend your remaining life in Ashtown. It isn’t as secure in safety as it was in New Haven, but at least you had Nina to make it equally as comfortable.


Before they leave you approach Leon, you and he still have a bit of history over the whole Elliot thing years ago. You’re guessing he’s not one to hold a grudge though since he’s never sought any type of revenge or something. You only hope he isn’t the patient type.

“Alright Leon, I know you’re the fighter of this group, and I know its most likely going to be dangerous up there, so I’m gonna do something totally out of character. I’m giving you my pistol and the two clips I have. It’s in good condition, and it’s only been fired once in ten years and I think you know when that was. Here you go.”

Leon takes the gun and looks at it with silence for awhile and then speaks. You think this is the first time you’ve actually heard him speak at all!

“Y’know, I never did apologize for that shit ten years ago. I dunno what the hell I was thinking following Elliot; none of us who did do. You and Nina have done a better job of keeping this place running than anyone. Anyway, this is really generous of you, but I can’t shoot worth shit, but I know someone who’s going with us who used to practice regularly before the bombs dropped. Hey Brenda! I got something for ya!”

Brenda comes over and her eyes widen when Leon hands her your pistol.

“Aw yeah! This is what I’m talkin’ about! I just hope I’m still a good shot; I’ve only been able to practice my aim by throwing this scalpel at a human diagram chart.”
“Yeah well don’t practice too much with it, save your bullets for an emergency. I didn’t know you were a gun person Brenda.” You say.
“You really need to get out of that computer room and socialize more!”
“Shit, he barely socializes when he’s in there with me and Charles.” Todd adds.
“But yeah I used to practice with my own when I had one. I was too afraid to try to sneak mine in here though…you know we’ve all always wondered about that, how DID you sneak this in?” Brenda asks.

You just smile.

“Hey I think you guys better get going.” You say almost laughing

“Oh come on! What a gyp! Alright, but we want to know when we come back!” Brenda says and then her, Leon and Todd enter the elevator wave goodbye to everyone and go up.

You and everyone else go about your usual business. Nina mentions what you did.

“Wow, that was really surprising for you, you’ve practically been walking around with that thing on you for ten years.”
“Yeah, well I can only hope I don’t need it within the time that they come back…if they come back.”
“You just gave them an edge I’d say they’ve got more of a chance now. Don’t be so pessimistic. They’ll come back.”
“Yeah I hope. Bring Jack by the computer room later; I know you got some sort of meeting to go to.”
“Oh I can cancel that, it’s not vital.”
“No its fine, bring him by. I’ve been indoctrinating him on the basics of the shelter computer. Someone’s gotta run this thing when I’m gone.”
“Well alright then, hey don’t worry. Everything will be alright.”

Nina kisses you and you exchange remarks about how you love each other before you make your way back to the computer room. You know its silly to think about it, but you can’t help thinking about some worst possible scenario.

You think about those three getting captured, tortured, and killed by a large group of psychotic bandits or something and then those same scum coming here because they found out the location after torturing them. You wouldn’t have anything proper to defend your family with and the surface scum would probably have all kinds of weapons to kill everyone with. They’d start by killing everyone in immediate area of the entrance, then they’d come down in small groups with automatic weapons they undoubtedly have and start killing down here and worse…

“HEY! Stop spacing!” Charles suddenly says to you.
“Huh? Oh! Okay.” You say snapping out your horrible daydream.
“Man, what’s wrong with you? You’ve been doing that the whole time you got here.”
“Nothing, just a little pre-occupied.”

You still don’t really relax until Jack gets there, which allows you to think about less terrible things like teaching him about the computer system.

When you’re finished with your duties, you go back to your room, and Nina’s there waiting for you looking as lovely as usual. You came in this place ten years ago with nothing except a bad attitude, now you got a lot more…

You’re not losing this. No way in hell.

The next day you start visiting the community gym area. You know other people like Leon use it. Nina uses it to keep in shape, but you’ve never stepped foot in the place, you never really saw any reason to, its not like you were fat or anything, but you realize if some shit goes down you’re going to have to be in better physical condition. You might not have a gun, but MAYBE you’ll be quick and strong enough to take one away from somebody! You need a fucking edge. You begin training regularly. Nina’s a little confused about this sudden change, but she’s not at all displeased with it.

You do this for the next six months with the constant theme running in your mind of how you’ll be able to take out the first miscreant that steps through the elevator, grab his gun and…

“Hey everyone, they’re back! And they’re in a fuckin’ car with a shitload of stuff!” someone shouts while you’re training.

You immediately stop and head for the surface. When you arrive you see Leon unloading some stuff out of a beat up, but functioning car, he’s got a patch on his eye now and his face is scarred, but otherwise looks okay. Brenda comes up to you and tosses you your pistol back, along with three clips!

“Came in handy, but I think I’ll be using THIS from now on!” Brenda pats an automatic rifle slung over her shoulder. “Hey, you look different, you been working out?”

“Um, something like that. So where did you get all this stuff?”
“Most of it we got from this small place called Ashtown that’s agreed to trade with us, we’d found it after about a week of wandering around, we were there negotiating with them and they wouldn’t trust us at first until the place suddenly got attack by a bunch of raiders. We helped defend the place from a one month siege! We also stuck around to help heal the wound. After that, they decided we were okay…that was at sort of a high cost though. Todd didn’t make it. He got killed in the fight. Tried to save him, but it was already too late by the time I got there.” Brenda explains.

“Damn...he was an alright guy…so is this fight where Leon got all scarred up?” you say as he approaches.
“No, that happened after we left Ashtown, we went exploring some more, we found another place a lot less friendly called The Combine. Trust me; we want to AVOID that place. We barely got out of there; we were basically prisoners. That’s why we were gone for so long. However, that’s where we got this car. We stopped back at Ashtown to pick up some supplies and came back here.” Leon answers, then he looks at you with his remaining eye. “Damn, you been working out?”

You nearly start laughing at your situation, here you were training and thinking up every possible worst case scenario that was going to befall the shelter, while Brenda and Leon were actually engaged in some worst case scenarios. You’re just glad that nothing did happen to the shelter, but you certainly feel less naked now that you have your “equalizer” back!

Life in the shelter continues.

Ten more years pass…

You’ve been here twenty years and as always there are more changes.

More people have moved to the surface, pieces of the shelter have been dismantled and started to be used to build a real town along with supplies from Ashtown, and scavenging from other places. Still, the shelter is needed to ensure at least a clean water supply so you’re still running it. Nina’s position has changed though. Since the shelter doesn’t contain a majority of the population anymore, her position is more of a community council person and her title is no longer “shelter leader”. The place has been given a name now; New Haven

One current problem is to keep the place together, but with the younger population, they’re less likely to want to stay. Ever since Leon came back with a giant mutant wolf head on one of his exploration trips, they all want to be “explorers” too. Your son Jack being one of those young people.

Nina of course doesn’t want him to go anywhere (You’re reminded of when she didn’t want you to go to the surface) and you can’t say you’re too fond of the idea either, but what can you do?
> You have a talk with him
You figure you need to address this now; you go to find Jack who’s hanging around the edges of the town as usual.

“Hey Jack I need to talk to you.”
“Aw Dad, I don’t feel like working with you in the boring ol’ computer room right now!”
“Hey watch your mouth! And it’s not that anyway. It’s about all the talking you’ve doing lately about exploring the wasteland like Indiana fuckin’ Jones.”
“Who?” Jack genuinely asks seeing as he’s never heard of the movie being born after the bomb and all.
“Indiana…look never mind that, your Mom worries night and day that you’re going to go running off and get yourself killed.”
“I’m not gonna run off…I mean I thought about it…but I just…I dunno…”
“Well spit it out boy!”
“It gets too boring here sometimes! I just wish I could go and explore the world like Leon!”
“Yeah, well if you haven’t noticed, Leon’s missing an eye, his left ear and a couple of pieces of his fingers, not to mention he’s all scarred up and complains about pain all the time.”
“Well I’D be more careful!” Jack boasts.
“Hmmm, that’s what everyone says.  I know you and your friends think all the stories are exciting, but if you’d really paid close attention you’ll notice all damn danger as well. You know we’ve lost a few people doing that adventure shit, and the only one who still does it is Leon. Even Brenda stopped going out after she got shot in the leg. She was lucky she managed to escape. The world isn’t a safe place Jake. Never has been. And the way it is now, it’s even more dangerous.”

Jack looks at you.

“We can’t stay here forever Dad.”

You see it in his eyes that he’s going to do what he wants and you aren’t going to be able to stop him. You don’t like it, and maybe you can’t stop him, but you can improve his odds.

“Alright son, you gather all your little friends and meet me back here in a couple hours. Don’t go anywhere! You hear me?”
“Okay, okay.”

You go and find Nina and explain the situation, she’s of course completely opposed to the idea and it takes some reasoning, but eventually she sees you have a point, even if she doesn’t like it. You tell her to go inform the other parents; in the meantime you go and fetch Brenda and Leon.

You meet Jack who’s standing around with a bunch of his other friends and most of the other young people in town. Brenda and Leon are behind you.

“Alright Jack, if exploration is what you want, you ain’t gonna do it unprepared. You all know these two. Brenda here is going to teach all of you how to shoot properly. We’ve got plenty of guns and ammo now and she’s the best marksperson here. Before ANY of you people go out anywhere you better know how to aim your damn weapons. After a month of that, then you’ll be going out, with Leon. He’ll be able to give you on the job training with the whole explorer thing. In time, you’ll be able to go out by yourselves. Now before any of this goes down, all of you are probably gonna have to discuss this with your parents or some shit, so you’re all gonna have to work out your own personal lives yourselves, but Jack you’ve got a reluctant okay from both me and your mother.”
“…I dunno what to say, I mean thanks Dad.” Jack smiles.
“What you can do is pay attention to Brenda and Leon’s instructions and not get yourself killed! And here, take this. It’s saved more than a few lives.” You say and hand your pistol to Jack.

And so begins the training. In time most of them go off to pursue their adventures elsewhere, naturally the world being what it is now, some don’t return, but for those that do return most come back to stay permanently. Just a little bit of the taste of the outside world is all most of them needed to see it’s a lot better to stay in New Haven! When Jake returns he’s ready once again to follow in your footsteps.

“See Nina, I knew my idea would work. Let ‘em go out in the world for a little while and they’ll come to appreciate the comforts of this place! Might be boring here, but at least you don’t have some motherfucker with a Mohawk shooting at you because he likes the boots you got on. They just needed some training first to give them a chance to survive.”
“Well I’m just glad Jack’s alright.”

As you and Nina breathe a sigh of relief that Jack’s home in one piece, little did you realize that your idea set a major plan in motion.

In time, the New Haven Militia is created.

Thirty …

Fifty years have gone by you briefly realize as you look at the old shelter entrance; it’s hardly ever used anymore. Extensive changes have been made to it so it’s rarely necessary to go down there anymore, only Jack and few other technicians go down there to check on the water purification system now in place. Practically everything else has been dismantled and used to help build up the surface of New Haven. New Haven has grown far beyond the shelter that you entered so long ago.

You don’t think you ever saw this happening. Nobody did. The place is very large now; populated with the children of those you entered the shelter with as well as refugees from other places. Mostly everyone you originally knew is gone, not that you were ever one to greatly socialize, but still you do miss people like Leon, Brenda and Charles, hell you even miss Ron.

You especially miss your beloved wife Nina. It’s been two years since she died. You miss her everyday. Jack comes by with his family to keep you company sometimes, but nowadays all you want is solitude.

You enter the shelter and go down the elevator. You probably aren’t supposed to be down here, but you don’t care, you’re going to live in the past for awhile.

You walk around the practically gutted shelter and remember all the things that happened.

Here’s where you first met Nina, you never thought you’d end up marrying and having a child with her someday, but even though you were annoyed by first impressions, (As she probably was with you!) you always thought she was beautiful.

Here’s where you shot Elliot. To this day you know you did the right thing. There’s no doubt in your mind that things would’ve been very different had he taken over.

Here’s where Jack was born. You remember Kyle having a hell of a time getting him to come out. He always could be a little stubborn. You just remembered you’re supposed to have a check up appointment with Kyle’s daughter Shelia. It can wait though; you’re busy right now.

Ah now here it is. Your old room. You remember spending a majority of your initial time here. Still has the shelter manual on the table. You insisted that this room remain intact when the shelter was in the final stages of being stripped. You always knew you’d return here some day.

You lie down on the bed and enjoy the peace and quiet from the surface. Slowly you begin to get drowsy.

“Ahhh, so peaceful with no other people around…I just wish Nina was here with me to enjoy it too…” you say to yourself as you drift off to sleep.


“Hey Nina get up.”
“Huh, what? Not tonight I’m tired.”
“No it’s not that. It’s about the surface. I think we need to start taking precautions and possible steps to expand above. The surface doesn’t look that bad and…”

Nina immediately sits up.

“YOU WENT TO THE SURFACE? After I told you not to fucking do that?! YOU ASSHOLE!”
“Calm down look you can see nothing happened to me. It doesn’t even look like there was any bombs that landed anywhere near the area.”
“You could be radiated! The wind blows your know or have you forgotten? Or maybe it was a biological weapon! A disease could be floating in the air! You ever think of that? You could be infected with god knows what right now and spread it to the whole shelter! And our baby!”

Another surprise.

“Baby? You’re pregnant?”
“I just found out recently from Brenda a few days ago. I was going to tell you soon, I should’ve told you yesterday before you went to the surface, but I THOUGHT you respected my wishes! I can’t believe you…”

Nina gets up and starts pacing. She’s very upset. You get up and try to fix this mess.

“Look that just makes this idea even more vital, this place can’t support all these people having babies. Even GZS mentioned in their delusional guideline statement it was the intention for people to eventually go back up to the surface and repopulate it with their families. We can’t live like a bunch of crowded sardines; we should make preparations now, before it becomes a problem.”
“But it might be dangerous up there.”
“It probably won’t be a picnic, but that’s another reason why we should start getting ready now. The more we’re prepared the better off we’ll be to defend ourselves.”
“But the radiation…”
“Look, the fact remains this place IS going to get overpopulated one day and people are going to have to start going up to the surface and any background radiation isn’t going to disappear within that time. So we’re just going to have to roll the dice and deal with that fact. Like I said I think we’re okay, we’re in a fairly isolated area away from an important major city. It’s not like we’re located on either of the coasts which were probably bombed the shit out of. And to the response to biological weapon thing, I highly doubt those were used, we were the only country that had the capability to launch such weapons from a long distance, except maybe Russia and I’m sure they probably just used nukes on us. Besides any virus or germ used in such a way would’ve died out long ago after it killed off the immediate population.”

Nina still doesn’t look so sure, she still look worried about you. You hold Nina to reassure her.

“If it’ll make you feel better I’ll actually go see Kyle and have him check me out. And you know how much I hate going to see doctors, especially one that’s got all his knowledge from the GZS info files. I’ll be here for a long time… for all of us.”

Your words seem to relax her a bit. She smiles and embraces you more closely.

“Okay, I’ll bring it up tomorrow…I still think it’s funny that you of all people would be advocating going back to the surface.”
“Pfft! WE’RE not going to the surface to live. We’re staying here! I just want get the rest of these fuckers out of the shelter and on to the surface! This place is too damn crowded as it is!”
“Now that sounds more like you!” Nina laughs.

Five more years pass…

It’s been ten years since you got here. It almost seems surreal to think about. Nina’s still the shelter leader and you’re still looking after the central computer. However a lot more things have changed, and just as predicted the population grew significantly, fortunately the implementations ahead of time allowed everyone to adjust with little problems.

There was some apprehension at first when Nina first suggested the surface thing, but eventually people did see the point in it. Some even wanted to go up to the surface. The first step was to make a fully functioning elevator that people could go up AND down on without any problems. (Of course that job fell to you again)

The next step was to create small “huts” with the cars outside as well as using current shelter material. This went quicker than expected as most people pitched in to help.

Nina gave birth to a son Jack, and almost went back to her duties immediately, leaving you to do most of the “Mr. Mom” work. Nowadays you split your time between monitoring the computer and monitoring Jack. Thankfully Charles and Todd have learned a lot more now and don’t require your supervision lessening your workload.

Now its time for the next step.

Nina and her council have been discussing plans for the even farther future. Contact with others and exploration. Within the past five years of the return to the surface, there has been contact with a few wanderers here and there, but they tended not to talk too much about their travels, they just mentioned that they’d seen other evidences of civilization, not all very civilized of course. Most of them just seemed to want to keep moving after doing a bit of trading and resupplying. One even hinted at some other “things” lurking around on the surface which didn’t sound too promising.

However, the shelter needs to start finding a stable trading partner, or at least a place to find more supplies, because the vital ones are starting to run out. Some people are asked to volunteer for this exploration mission

It wasn’t surprising Leon volunteered, but Brenda and Todd also volunteered. They were given as much supplies as they could carry and armed with the most “dangerous” things in the shelter. Leon and Todd carry some crowbars and Brenda carries a scalpel. You wonder if that’s really going to be enough though. Chances are some people out there (Quite possibly a lot) are carrying guns on them. Todd and Brenda aren’t going to be much good in a fight anyway, and while Leon is a fighter, even he can’t stop a bullet.

You’re the only one with an “equalizer” around here. Maybe you should hand it over to them to give them a better chance. Though you really don’t want to do that, for various reasons.
> You keep it
No, you have to keep your weapon; you need something to be able to adequately defend your family in case the need should arrive.

Leon, Brenda and Todd leave and life goes on…until one month later.

You’re on the surface one day spending time with Nina and Jack who is playing with the other children. It’s a community event; nearly everyone is on the surface today. That’s when you hear the sound of motorcycles. You look in the direction of the sound and see several approaching. The riders don’t look like social types either. Everyone else on the surface begins to look too, and wondering what they should do. Nina quickly gathers up Jack.
> You run to the shelter
“Nina, we’re getting in the shelter NOW!” you grab her hand and run to the shelter entrance, upon seeing this others begin to follow your lead as the motorcycle rumble gets closer.

You Nina and Jack get in the elevator first, and everyone else starts to crowd inside unfortunately everyone is shoving and pushing to get in, but there simply isn’t enough room not allowing the door to close.

“GET OUT! THE ELEVATOR CAN’T CLOSE!” You yell.
“FUCK YOU! YOU GET OUT!” someone shouts back.

Desperate times call for desperate measures…

You pull your gun out and start shooting in the ceiling of the elevator, causing folks to run out.
“GET OUT! THIS IS OUR RIDE!” you shout and push the door button, taking one last look of the frightened crowd as the doors close.

On the way down Nina holds on to Jack trying calm him down. She looks at you with silent disbelief. She can’t believe you actually sacrificed all those people just like that, the men, the women, and the children.

“Don’t look at me like that Nina! I did what I did to save us! This is fuckin’ survival Nina! You know that!” you retort.

When the elevator reaches the bottom, Nina runs back to your room with Jack and you quickly get something to jam the door open, so the elevator can’t go back up again. You see Charles come out from the computer room. He must’ve been the only one down here to keep an eye on the computer.

“What’s going on? Why are you blocking the elevator door?”
“We’re under fucking attack and I can’t let those fuckers come down here!”
“But what about everyone else?! You can’t just leave them up there! You’re the only one with a proper weapon!”
“Hey that’s tough! I mean I’m sorry all those people are in deep shit right now, but that ain’t my concern, my family is MY concern!”
“You heartless bastard! What about all the other families you left to probably die up there?! I always knew you weren’t fond of people, but I never thought you’d go to this extent! Well if you’re not gonna do anything I will! Get outta my way, I’m going up!”

You shove Charles back hard.

“What the fuck are you gonna do Charles? You ain’t a fuckin’ hero! This ain’t like those old movies you watch! You’re a fat outta shape fuck, you wouldn’t stand a chance! Shit you don’t even have a weapon!”
“Well gimme yours then!” Charles says trying to take your pistol. You push Charles back even harder, when that doesn’t work, you hit him with face with the butt of the gun causing him to fall back.
“Don’t even fuck around like that Charles.” You warn pointing the pistol at him.

He doesn’t seem to understand you’re being deadly serious here; he makes another attempt by charging at you. You shoot him three times before he falls dead at your feet.

Nina comes running from your room to see what’s happened now, she’s horrified. Your actions within the past few minutes have severely changed her view about you.

“He was trying to go to the surface! I can’t allow that, we have to remain down here where it’s safe! Who knows how long those fuckers will stay around! I’m trying to protect all of us!” you shout.

Days pass and things are strained between you and Nina. She doesn’t approve at all of what you did. A lot of those people she was friends with. She says you did it purposely just so you could get more of your precious solitude and while that isn’t true, you can’t help but feel things are a lot better without anybody else around…

A year passes since the invasion, you used to keep an eye on the elevator door on a regular basis, but lately you haven’t bothered. Nina has been distant with you ever since that day. Sometimes you’re all right with each other, but more often than not you argue. If it wasn’t for Jack, the both of you would probably just stay on opposite sides of the shelter.

One day you wake up and look for the both of them, but you can’t find them anywhere then it suddenly occurs to you where they’ve gone. To the surface. You immediately press the call button and shut “Come on! Come on!” at the elevator’s slow descent. You do the same thing when you’re going up.

You rush outside wondering where the hell Nina thinks she was off to, considering there’s no knowledge of any beacons of civilization nearby. You figure she couldn’t have gotten far and you’re right, she’s surveying the remains of the invasion. Everything that was built on the surface was destroyed, and it looks like nobody was spared. You see skeletal remains littered everywhere. She’s crying while holding on to Jack and then speaks when she sees you.

“See what you did!”
“Hey I didn’t do THIS! The wasteland scum did this! What the hell Nina? I only have so many bullets, and I didn’t even have my spare clips with me at the time! I couldn’t shoot them all!”
“Oh, but you could shoot Charles right?”
“Now that was…”
“Or how about Elliot? Remember when you shot him and claimed it was self-defense?”
“That WAS Self-defense! Nina, you’re acting like a stupid bit…” you stop yourself from completing that sentence, calm yourself and then continue. “Look, I did what I did to protect us, I didn’t want any of us getting killed. Let’s all just go back inside the shelter and…”
“Get your hands off of me! I’m not going back in there with YOU! I can’t stand to look at you anymore, even if it is a rarity nowadays!”
“So whadda ya gonna do Nina? Take Jack traipsing across the fuckin’ wasteland and hope you don’t get raped and killed before you die of dehydration? In case you haven’t noticed, but this is IT! There probably ain’t another place like this for miles! And if there is, I bet it damn near isn’t as comfortable OR friendly! Look Jack needs the both of us here and…”
“Jack doesn’t need YOU! You’re barely spend time with him anyway! I can’t do it anymore I can’t spend one more day in that shelter with you after seeing what you did a year ago!”
“NINA SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET BACK IN THE GODDAMN SHELTER NOW!”

Now Jack begins to cry, and Nina attempts to make him stop, and now you see this situation isn’t going to go away even if you dragged them both into the shelter kicking and screaming. Yet despite all this, you can’t let Nina and Jack leave, you do the only other solution.

“Oh fuck it. Here.” You pull out your pistol and shove it into Nina’s hand. She doesn’t accept it at first until you force her take the thing. After she finally holds it, you start to leave. Nina calls out.

“Where are you going?”
“Oh now you show concern? I’m leaving Nina, you said you can’t live here with me since I now repulse you so much, so I’m doing what’s best and fuckin’ leaving, because whether you believe it or not I do what’s best for this family. I’ll leave and probably die somewhere out in the wilderness or if you still have any kind of feelings for me, you’ll save me a lingering death and just shoot me now. Either way, I’m gone. Jack, take good care of your Mom, she gets a bit high strung at times. The computer’s easy to run, just read the damn manual. That’s what I always told everyone else. Both of you have a nice life.”

You turn and begin to walk, you start wondering how long you’re going to last without any kind of supplies, you didn’t even bring a canteen with you. What does it all matter now anyway? Fuck it right?

You turn your head and see Nina and Jack just entering the shelter entrance. You shake your head, wondering where you went wrong. Where all the love went so damn quickly. Maybe she was right in some ways, maybe you were too ruthless. You just wanted to save them so badly though, you didn’t want to lose them. Of course you did anyway.

You turn your head again, now you just see Nina. What the hell is she doing now? You hope to god she didn’t have some change of mind suddenly. Because you know what’s going to happen, she’ll ask you to come back, and like an idiot you probably will, and then things will be semi-okay and then they’ll get worse again and you’ll be back to this again. At this point you don’t feel like putting up with the shit anymore either. Just let it go Nina, just let it the fuck go. You made your decision now stick fuckin’ by it.

Once more you turn your head; she’s walking briskly towards you…with your pistol in her hand. She has an unemotional look on her face. Reminds you of when she was going to throw Ron and his boy toy into exile that one time. You always knew she had a darker side to her, looks like its coming out one last time.

You slow down your walking so she can catch up to you quicker, until finally you stop altogether. You don’t turn you head anymore; you want to make this easy on her.

Now you feel the metal barrel to your head. Your last thought on this burned out world are:

“She did still care.”


No, you have to keep your weapon; you need something to be able to adequately defend your family in case the need should arrive.

Leon, Brenda and Todd leave and life goes on…until one month later.

You’re on the surface one day spending time with Nina and Jack who is playing with the other children. It’s a community event; nearly everyone is on the surface today. That’s when you hear the sound of motorcycles. You look in the direction of the sound and see several approaching. The riders don’t look like social types either. Everyone else on the surface begins to look too, and wondering what they should do. Nina quickly gathers up Jack.
> You stand your ground
No way in hell you’re going to hide, you’re a good shot, (At least you used to be, you haven’t practiced in awhile) you figure you can get enough of them, while taking cover and everyone else here doesn’t have to be defenseless.

“Everyone grab some sort of weapon! Mothers grab your children and run to the shelter, when you get to the bottom jam the door open so it can’t come back up!” before she can even say anything you turn to Nina, “Nina! No arguments! Just do it!” you then kiss her before she does what you say.

The bikes are getting closer. There’s at least ten, each with a driver and a partner riding in the back. There’s some sort of bloody head on the front of the first bike...its Leon’s.

You can only guess the fate of Brenda and Todd were similar. Then you hear one of them yelling.

“YEEEHAAA! THERE IT IS! JUST LIKE THAT BITCH WE RAPED AND KILLED SAID! ATTACK!”

You fire a couple times hitting a driver, the bike and its riders go flying into a couple other bikes. Not bad, in fact better than you expected. Unfortunately they’re shooting at you now too. You duck for cover while everyone else does likewise, some getting shot in the process.

The remaining bikers attempt to circle around and open fire, but now everyone has adequate cover, so most of the bikers in the “bitch seat” get off to be a little more thorough.

The shelter people and the bikers clash. Not all the bikers have guns, but they’ve been surviving on the road long enough to be better fighters. Many of your people are going down, and you’re the only one who seems to be able to do any damage to these invaders. You manage to blast three more in the chest.

Soon you’re out of ammo, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Some monster motherfucker starts attacking you with a spiked bat, landing it right in your leg. You punch him out before collapsing in pain. You attempt to pull the bat out, but then you’re kicked in the face and thrown into the path of a speeding motorcycle which rides over your arm. You’re not going anywhere; in fact the only thing that saves you from a follow up death blow is the fact that Nina and all the mothers come back up to the surface with weapons to help defend against the attack. Nina grabs your pistol which you dropped and loads it up with a clip you left down in the shelter and blasts the giant biker’s brains out.

Seeing many of there comrades dead and reinforcements arrive on your side, the remaining bikers sound a retreat and ride off. Much has been lost this day though; the shelter’s population has severely been decimated, not to mention the confidence in staying on the surface.

After this event, all ideas of rebuilding on the surface are abandoned. The shelter has more than enough supplies and room now for everyone considering this last attack. Of course that problem is only going to pop up again in the future when the population replenishes itself again. Maybe not in your lifetime, but certainly in Jack’s. He can’t stay here, he’s going to have to go out in the world and learn how to deal with it. And you make sure he’s better prepared than you were.

You stop Jake’s training in learning about the computer system; it won’t do him any good. Instead you make him do physical training in the shelter gym. You’ve never used the thing, but he’s sure going to. You can’t directly train with Jake since you’re basically crippled in one leg and arm, but you can motivate and that’s what you do. Nina doesn’t exactly like it, but she sees that one day the shelter is going to need someone to get more supplies.

As years pass you eventually start succumbing to your damaged body’s inability to continue this life. Jack is now a young man, the shelter’s population is starting to grow again, and the shelter’s supplies are running low. You say your goodbyes to Nina, telling her you love her and ask to see Jack as you lie in your bed.

“Jack, you’re going to have to leave this place soon one day. Whether you decide to leave permanently or you decide to come back with supplies to keep this place going, is up to you. But you are going to have to leave it. You understand?”
“Yes Dad.”
“(Cough) Good, now here. Even though you’re a tough guy who knows how to defend himself, you’ll still be needing this when you go out there. Wish you could practice with it, but it only has one clip left and you’ll be needing all the bullets you can get.”
“Well I did practice my aim by throwing some scalpels at a human diagram, if that’s any help.”
“Couldn’t hurt. Glad to see you’re inventive, you’ll need that up there. Okay, I think that’s it…I hope I taught you enough.”
“You did Dad.”
“Good. Now leave me, I ache all over and I need to rest.”

Jack leaves you where you have your last moments of solitude before leaving this mortal coil.


Something comes over you, maybe it was the tension or the hostility or maybe you were just horny, but you grab Nina and kiss her passionately. Fortunately for you, she returns the gesture. Now nobody knows what to think they all just stand around watching, they’re probably just glad you didn’t shoot anybody this time. William and Ron are still recovering from their beating and staggering in the doorway of the elevator.

Nina stops you just for a moment to address everyone. “The exile is off, everyone go back to your lives…and YOU are coming with me!” then she starts pulling you back to her room.

You and Nina relieve a lot of pent up sexual energy that day. A lot of things change after that…

Four more years pass...

You and Nina are an item now, which makes you somewhat more social by necessity (unfortunately) its not all bad though since she’s the one that’s still shelter leader and has to do all the major work. She does a good job hence the reason she’s stayed in power. (Though not surprisingly William and Ron still vote against her, even if she did apologize)

You’re now in charge of maintaining the central GZS computer system which you insist on doing primarily by yourself, though Charles and Todd assist you sometimes. Eventually you manage to get the damn thing running at near maximum efficiency and nobody has too many problems with things breaking down anymore.

The Shelter’s population has grown a bit now; the only good thing about the shelter was the design to make allowances for a population growth. Of course now there’s rug rats running around which means Nina appoints a person to start being a “teacher” of sorts for when they start getting bigger. Fortunately there are a couple of those already in the shelter. Kyle and Brenda are now the main medical practitioners, though you doubt if they’d be able to do open heart surgery, they’re competent enough to keep people in relatively good shape and they keep trying to learn more whenever possible with the medical database provided and from books. (You still don’t understand WHY you’re the only competent tech though! “Gah! Read the books! Study the schematics! It’s not difficult!” you’re constantly saying and that’s to Charles and Todd!)

Then there’s the elevator. After the near exile incident, it was still considered a good idea to have it accessible at all times just in case. What you eventually did was install a call button and did some re-wiring to do just that, though nobody has ever dared to actually go up to the surface. (And nobody’s ever gotten thrown out either)

You begin to wonder what the surface looks like now though from time to time.

One night while lying next to Nina…

“Hey Nina, you ever wonder what’s on the surface now?”
“What? It’s probably an uninhabitable wasteland.”
“Well maybe, but we’ve been down here five years, it might look different.”
“Yeah, and it might not. Go back to sleep.”
“You know I just thought about it, everyone’s vehicles are up there. I bet we could strip them down for parts or something, maybe some of them will even work. We could drive around and see what’s going on else where.”
“What? I don’t want you going up there! The elevator is a last resort thing just case something bad happens! And since when do you want to play great explorer? When you first got here you never left your room!”
“I dunno, maybe your socialization has made me a little more extroverted.”
“Hmm, knowing you, you probably just want to get away from the increasing population here.”
“Ha ha, maybe. But I still wouldn’t mind just taking a quick look outside, and to inspect the vehicles like I said.”

Nina now sits up.

“No! I don’t want you going up there! There’s probably radiation still all over the place! I don’t want you getting radiation poisoning or mutating or something!”
“I’ll be fine! I won’t go too far, I just want to…”

Nina grabs a hold of your hand.

“NO! I don’t want you going up there! It’s not safe!”
“Alright, alright, calm down. I won’t go anywhere.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah!”
“Alright then, I don’t want to hear anymore about it. Our life is here, not up there. I love you too much to lose you.”

The both of you lie back down, and Nina holds on to you tightly, putting her head on your chest almost in an effort to make sure you’re not going anywhere tonight.

Of course now you’re lying awake REALLY wondering what the surface looks like.

The next day you’re working with Charles and Todd doing the usual mundane routine. They’re talking about the same stupid movie they’ve watched over and over in the community living area. Shit you feel like you’re at work again. The GZS central computer hasn’t been giving you trouble for quite some time, and you know there’s a big meeting going on in the conference room…

Maybe you could sneak out and just take a quick look on the surface for awhile. You could let Charles and Todd look after the computer, you know they’re capable of doing that.
> You stay
Nah, Nina’s probably right, you might get radiation poisoning or some shit if you go to the surface. Probably nothing left up there for miles anyway. You’re just a little bored and were trying to figure out some way of relieving the boredom and going to the surface isn’t it. You’ll think of something less dangerous. You go back to doing your duties and putting up with Charles and Todd’s chatter.

A few weeks later, Nina tells you she’s pregnant. In nine months your son Jack is born. You also begin to notice how many other babies are being born or on their way of being born, you start to wonder if there will be enough supplies and room if the population keeps growing like this.

Oh well surely something will be figured out by then. Still, you do wonder if you shouldn’t have tried harder to convince Nina that it isn’t a completely terrible idea…

Five years pass…

Ten years have gone by and the shelter is starting to get a little crowded. After all there isn’t too much to do in the shelter that hasn’t already been done, so sex is always (as it always has been) a popular way to pass the time. The result of that fun activity is too many babies.

At this point now you say something to Nina about the surface, she’s a little reluctant about the idea, but sees that it might be necessary. Unfortunately the rest of the council doesn’t see it that way. Many of them have been here so long now that going to the surface is almost unthinkable. Despite great protest Nina overrides the council’s advice and goes ahead with the plan anyway. This doesn’t make her too popular.

For one reason there’s the decision of who is suppose to live on the surface, many people have full blown families now, they’re a little unwilling to risk taking them up. So that means the single or childless people get the boot upstairs since they have less to “lose”. That doesn’t go over too well either. People start protesting loudly about being kicked out of their homes since they have as much right to stay too.

One day, you’re in the computer room at the time arguing with Charles who happens to be single, and giving you shit about Nina’s new policy. Todd is pretty much indifferent to the idea since even though he’s single he doesn’t mind the idea of going to the surface, he just thinks you should’ve said something to Nina a long time ago to implement this plan sooner before everyone had a whole mess of babies.

That’s when you get the word.

Kyle comes in to tell you that during one of Nina’s speeches William (Who would’ve been one of those kicked up to the surface along with Ron) attempted to assassinate Nina with a scalpel he stole from the medical supplies. Leon managed to stop him with extreme prejudice by breaking his neck. But its not ending there, people are starting to riot and call for someone new to be the shelter leader.

You’re pissed off now, you storm into the conference room ready to kick everyone’s ass who DARES to try to hurt Nina again. You fire your pistol into the air causing everyone to take notice. When you get over to Nina, she’s pleading for you to not shoot anybody. The assassin was already taken care of, there isn’t any more need for killing.

While that might be the case that still doesn’t solve the problem of everyone hating Nina (And probably you too as well) if she gets thrown out of her position, the next step might be to try to throw you guys out of the shelter.

Part of this you feel is your fault, you could just roll the dice here or you could attempt to take the hard line approach.


Always one to solve a problem before it starts…

You pull the trigger and blast Elliot square in the chest. He looks down in disbelief and then slumps down on the floor by your feet. You then get up from the floor as everyone else runs out of the room.

“Yeah that’s what I thought! So much for your fearless leader!”

As you drag Elliot’s body out of your room, everyone else in the shelter has come out of their own rooms after hearing the gun shot and screaming.

“OH MY GOD! HE’S GOT A GUN!” someone shouts.
“HE’S KILLED ELLIOT!” another screams.

Everyone is very afraid of what you’re going to do next. Only Nina dares approach you.

“You…you killed him? I always knew you were anti-social, but…oh my god…”
“Yeah I fuckin’ killed Elliot! And YOU of all people oughta be damn well glad I did! He was planning on taking over this place from your boyfriend Ron!”
“Ron’s not my boyfriend! And I don’t believe you! Elliot was gracious in his defeat! He was a good man unlike you!”
“Yeah he was so good he tried to recruit me for his little rebellion gang, and don’t try to hide in the fuckin’ crowd Leon and act like you weren’t there! All of you fuckers hiding right now, came to my room with Elliot! And lemme ask you this, WHY the hell would ANY of them come to MY room? Everyone knows I don’t invite people!”
“I dunno what to say right now…please just put down the gun…I don’t want you to kill anyone else…”
“For fuck’s sake Nina I’m not a mass murderer! It was self-defense! He was gonna kill me, just like he was gonna kill Ron and shit maybe he should’ve, the fuckstick’s supposed to be the shelter leader and he’s not even here for this! Where is Ron?”

Nina suddenly wonders where he’s at as well, she runs over to his door which is still shut.

“Don’t tell me, he’s THAT much of deep sleeper.” You mutter while standing by Elliot’s dead body.

Nina doesn’t even knock, apparently she’s got her own key to get in his room. You’re STILL wondering why nothing has happened between those two yet, your questions are soon answered, and everyone is in for another surprise this eventful night.

“EEEEEEEEEEEK! NO!” you hear Nina scream when she goes inside the room and then runs back out crying. Ron steps out in his underwear.

“No, wait! Nina, its not what it looks like!” he shouts to her and then another guy in his underwear comes out. You think his name is William, you never knew too much about him before, but you know MORE than you wanted to now!

“Get back inside William!” when Ron sees that there’s a whole crowd of people staring in various states of shock. It’s too late though now, everyone knows.

“Wow Nina sure is a good judge of character, she thought Elliot was a good man and she thought you were straight. Looks like I wasn’t the only one with a secret in this shelter! Heh heh.”

Ron finally turns to you and sees what you’ve done.

“…You got a gun? YOU FUCKIN’ KILLED ELLIOT?”
“(Sigh) Not this again! Yeah I fuckin’ killed him. He tried to kill me and he was planning on killing you to take over this dump!”
“Now just calm down, and put down the gun…”
“I’m not putting down shit and I’m not killing anyone else unless someone gives me cause to do so! What the fuck, was the dick in your mouth so good to you, you didn’t hear the gunshots and screaming out here? I’m sick of explaining this twice! Now I’M going back into MY room to get some sleep! And none of you better fucking disturb me for the rest of the night! And someone better clean up Elliot’s carcass from in front of my room when I wake up tomorrow!”

You return to your room.

“Yeah, I think that went well.” You say to yourself.

After the night of multiple “incidents” a lot of things happen. The first, is Elliot’s body being the first one dumped into the incinerator. The second being that Ron is immediately voted out by his own council who all follow the GZS guidelines. Apparently being gay was more of an offense than being incompetent, since GZS guidelines were explicit in not wanting homosexuals in the Community Shelters which he obviously lied about. Nina is unsurprisingly the most vocal about his vote out; in fact she ends up taking over. Ron and William move into a separate far room together and become social pariahs. Everyone who was previously friendly with Ron suddenly starts treating him like garbage. You never really cared for him, and thought he was an incompetent moron, but even you think it’s shitty for them to all just turn on him over who he happens to be fucking. But that’s how people are and that’s why you try to avoid them.

Your situation is a little different, they can’t really treat you like a social pariah mainly because you were always one to begin with and another because everyone’s afraid you’ll shoot them. All of Elliot’s former friends have no doubt reinforced the belief in others that you’re dangerous. You don’t really care though, just as long as nobody fucks with you and stays out of your way (Which everyone does for the most part since you now walk around with it at all times)

A year passes…

The shelter sees its first baby born and there are a couple of other pregnant women ready to pop as well. Nina has improved the place a little bit more. No doubt without anyone to fawn over now she’s throwing herself into her work. There’s actually a guy (Kyle) who’s has some medical knowledge now, they still don’t really have a good “tech guy” though and things are still being jury-rigged. Nina knows with a growing population this shelter needs to be in tip top running condition.

You get that expected knock on the door.

“Hello, Nina.” You say.
“Yeah hi. Look, I just want to know if you have any intention of helping us out or if you’re still going to remain an isolated asshole.”

Nothing like being blunt. Politics has really hardened Nina, she’s all business now it seems and lot less naïve.

How strangely appealing…
> You remain in your own world
“Its served me well so far, so I guess asshole it is.”
“Yeah, I thought as much. Thanks for nothing.” Nina says and walks off.

You go back to what you were doing. About an hour passes and then your lighting starts to dim, and then goes out altogether. Its pitch dark and you can hear yelling and screaming all throughout the shelter. Someone fucked something up, but good.

You leave your room and stumble through the darkness bumping into frightened people until you manage to find your way back to the computer room. You see some flashlights shining at various parts of the computer.

“What the hell did you idiots do?” you yell, as two technicians shine their lights towards you.
“Whoa! It’s you! Don’t shoot!”

Nina then shines her light at you as well.

“Now you decide to help?”
“Get outta the way, before I shoot all of you!” you exclaim pushing the two techs out of the way and grabbing one of their flashlights.

You inspect what happened and it’s not good, they completely fried the CPU. You don’t know how the fuck they did that, but they did. You can’t fix this, even if you had the right tools and adequate lighting. Somehow you really aren’t hysterical about all this.

“Well guys, I got some really bad news. We’re in deep shit that I can’t get us out of. You’ve doomed us all. Nice going guys.”

The two techs begin to freak out and run screaming; Nina has a quiver in her voice.

“You mean, there’s nothing at all?! We’re all gonna die?”
“Looks like. The question is how, quick or slow…and I got this gun here as you all know…you coming with me?”

Nina doesn’t even hesitate.

“Let’s do it.”
“You sure?”
“Just shut up and do it.”
“Okay, now I gotta get close since its dark…”

You point the gun directly at Nina’s head and pull the trigger. You feel a splash of blood on your face and the slumping of a lifeless body.

You hear the screams echo throughout the shelter get louder. You’ll be glad to leave this insane asylum, you just wonder if you should’ve done things differently…

No time for that now. No time for regrets, just time to do it.

You pull the gun at your head and pull the trigger.


“Yeah, well you do what you have to do, just leave me out of it. Your little power struggle with Ron isn’t any of my concern. And if and when you do take power don’t think you’re going to be ordering me around either.”

Elliot’s expression changes to that of someone very perturbed by your response.

“I’m very disappointed to hear you say that, I really thought you could have a place in the new community I was planning.”
“Think again, now get outta here…”

You begin to shove Elliot out of your doorway, but Leon reaches over his shoulder and shoves you back with great strength. You fall backwards on to your floor, Elliot and his gang start to enter. He pulls out a scalpel, something he probably got from the medical supplies. You happen to be right next to your mattress, so you reach in and grab your pistol to point it directly at Elliot. Now they all look like they just seen a ghost and all the bravery has drained out of them except Leon, who looks like this isn’t the first time he’s had a gun pointed at him, but he’s still stepping back.

“You wanna fuckin’ take another step motherfucker? Go ahead, I fuckin’ dare you!”
“Holy shit, he’s got a fuckin’ gun Elliot!” a women in his group says.
“I can see that Brenda! Okay, look maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. I mean obviously you’re a more resourceful man than I thought…I mean as far as I know you’re the only one in this place with a goddamn gun. How’d you manage that?”
“Never you mind, just get the fuck outta here!”
“Very well, but remember, you don’t have any friends in this place, and you can’t watch your back all the time…”

Elliot has just announced his intentions of eliminating you whenever it’s possible. You’ll have to live in constant paranoia now. Unless…
> You let him go
If you shoot him, everyone’s going to think you’re a murderer, so you let him go. Besides if he planning on taking over by force like he seems to be wanting to do, he’ll show his true colors soon enough. You just have to watch your back until that time. In fact it occurs to you that you should just go tell Ron and Nina about this incident, sure they might not believe you, but it’s better than saying nothing.

The next day when you wake up, you hear a lot of commotion going outside your door.

“See?! I told you! He’s the one who did it! He dropped the bloody scalpel right in front of his door!” you hear someone say, sounds like Elliot.

You grab your gun and open up the door to a crowd of frightened onlookers. Elliot is in front of them speaking and then turns around when you come out.

“SO! The murderer finally shows his face! We both know what you did last night! I saw you! I saw you break into Ron’s room and kill him and his friend William! Then when you saw me see you, you threatened me with a gun you snuck in telling me I better keep my mouth shut or you’d kill me too! But I couldn’t stay silent! I don’t care if you do kill me! I had to warn these good people that they’re living with a psychopath!”

Elliot’s already gone through with his plan. He had to speed it up since you were a risk to tell everyone about it, but now he’s turned it to his advantage by blaming you for everything.

“WHAT?! Elliot you’re full of shit! YOU came to my room last night trying to get me in your little rebel gang! You’re the one trying to take over, not me!”
“LIAR! Who’re you gonna believe? Me? Who’s been nothing, but supportive of Ron, even when his plans weren’t exactly efficient? Or HIM? Someone who’s done nothing to help anyone, and has shown utter dislike for Ron and everyone else here?”
“It’s true! (Sob) He has always hated Ron!” Nina cries from the crowd.

You attempt to explain, protest and argue the situation, but its no good, Elliot is a master speaker, manipulator, and everyone likes him and can barely tolerate you. Feeling yourself threatened you start pointing your gun at the crowd, but even that doesn’t do any good, Elliot whips them all into a frenzy to attack you, claiming how you can’t kill all of you, of course that doesn’t stop you from killing some of them (Elliot being the first of course).

Soon you’re mobbed and the gun is taken away from you where upon someone dispenses vigilante justice and caps you in the head with it.