text: It was going to take time to wait out the fallout.
  
  Utilizing the radio would have given a better estimate.
  
  Not getting it to work really pissed you off, more because of the fact that you didn't even know what you were doing wrong.
  
  Estimates before the dropping of the bombs said that two weeks would be enough for the fallout to calm down enough for any dwellers to leave their shelters and resurface.
  
  That didn't take account for if there had been a secondary invasion, along with fact that you didn't even know exactly where the bombs dropped.
  
  Nevertheless you still only had a week left before you could leave.
  
  Ashley didn't seem as distressed as you were. Probably because she thought you were prepared, given her calmness.
  
  Truth was you were absolutely scared shitless now that you couldn't get the radio to work.
  
  For now you would have to decide whether or not to resurface after the two week period, or stay under ground and wait it out a bit longer.
  
  > Stay
  You didn't want to risk the outside so soon. No fucking way the military would be able to regain any sort of order without even a month passing.
  
  That's how long you would wait, a month or two. You had the food supplies to wait that long, though you would still try to conserve as best you could.
  
  Ashley was ignorant on how long you actually had to stay in the bunker, so whatever you told her, she most likely would belive. This was for her own good after all.
  
  During your meal that following day you brought up the subject with her.
  
  "It looks like we won't be able to leave for a month or two, the radiation is still pretty lethal for us to go up any sooner."
  
  Ashley face turns into one of disappointment but she nods.
  
  "I understand, still that really sucks though."
  
  "Don't worry too much about it, I'm sure we can think of something to pass the time so the days go by quickly."
  
  "Like what?"
  
  > Hobbies
  Even though you only brought a single boardgame like Jenga, that didn't mean that didn't have anything else to keep you occupied.
  
  "Well I have a lot of paper and pencils stored away when I was first adding stuff to the shelter, you can use that to write or draw."
  
  "What about books?"
  
  "Most of the books that I have stored are technical ones for improvement or maitenence for the shelter, so I don't think you'd find much fun out of that." You explain
  
  "What else?"
  
  You think a bit more as you finish your meal.
  
  "I do have a guitar and a trumpet stored away somewhere, you can use that."
  
  "You didn't bother bringing in anything else for entertainment?"
  
  "Well building the bunker was pretty expensive, and this was only a hobby of mine so I didn't put too much work inside besides the basic essentials. The stuff I have should be more than enough to keep us busy, until we leave."
  
  "Well bring out that guitar then, I always did want to learn how to play." Ashley says as she finished her meal.
  
  > Week later
  Twenty one days had passed since the two of you had first entered the shelter. You were surprised at how much effort Ashley put into learning how to play the guitar as you took up writing stories instead.
  
  She learned surprisingly quickly without any guidance, since you didn't know how to play it either. The only thing you were experienced with was the trumpet, there would be times in which you and Ashley played together to try and mix the instruments. Most of the time it sounded pretty bad but occasionally the two of you made something nice.
  
  When Ashley wasn't playing, she would take up reading your writing. At first you were a little defensive at letting her see but after awhile you got used to it.
  
  There was even a story that Ashley really enjoyed, with her asking you on the daily when you would continue working on it so that she could see the rest. Wether or not she was doing that just to make you feel better was unknown to you, but it did make you feel happy nevertheless.
  
  You and Ashley weren't really sleeping with each other for the first weeks in the shelter, though as time went, it came to the fact that the two of you didn't really have anyone else so it naturally came down to the two of you developing romantic relations at some point.
  
  The point in which it happened was when Ashley was playing a old song that she wanted you to hear that she really enjoyed as a teen.
  
  When the end of it came, she started crying, the really ugly kind of crying.
  
  You comforted as best you could, knowing that the song most likely brought back a memory of something, or it was just the fact that the whole situation that you were in was finally becoming apparent to her.
  
  Somewhere along your consolation, she kissed you. Everything turned really passionate at that point, and after that day the two of you grew a lot closer with one another.
  
  > Time continues
  The two of you never really dug into each others past lives all that much. Instead, you stuck with what was happening now as you tried to stay up in spirits as best you could.
  
  Between the sex and songs, you genuinely felt happy being with Ashley down here as the two of you were almost always smiling and having a good time with one another.
  
  You excepted for at least one fight to happen between the two of you at this point but it never happened. You hate to say it but you were enjoying yourself a lot more then before the bombs fell.
  
  The day you turned forty, you really felt depressed since you were never really able to bounce back as man when your wife left you ten years earlier. Ashley made you feel like you were a young again, you just wanted time to stand still so you would never have to face the outside world that would be a special kind of cruel with how annihilated it must be.
  
  It was on the forty-third day that you decided to uncork a bottle of wine that you had been saving for awhile. You forgot exactly why you brought it down here in the first place, but you were enough of a dipshit to forget to bring wine glasses for it.
  
  Ashley didn't mind drinking it from the bottle as the two of you shared the drink.
  
  Upon intoxication, Ashley started to talk more, though her voice was mixed with a bit of slur.
  
  "You'll keep me safe right?" She asked at one point with her head on your lap.
  
  > Yes
  "Of course I will."
  
  She smiles, with her eyes gently closing.
  
  It was a nice night, though once she was asleep, you started crying a bit.
  
  You didn't exactly know why.
  
  > Next morning
  You spend the day sleeping in, a hard headache beating against your skull from last night.
  
  Between your consciousness you hear the familar sound of Ashley playing her guitar, giving you a bit of peace as she plays a relaxing song.
  
  You sleep for awhile afterwards.
  
  > Disturbed
  Something was wrong.
  
  You didn't hear anything in your bunker.
  
  No guitar, no footsteps, nothing besides your own breath.
  
  It took you awhile to realize but once you did you were wide eyed awake.
  
  "Ashley?!" You yell out.
  
  No response.
  
  At this point you were starting to freak the fuck out, checking everywhere in the bunker led to no signs of her whatsoever.
  
  What you did notice though was that the entrance door had been opened, all the locks had been unlocked giving notice straight away.
  
  Fearing the worst, you rechecked your stored apparel to find that a gas mask and set of clothes were missing.
  
  Checking your food stores led to you finding nothing out of place.
  
  Thoughts of what to do was racing through your head, you had to act rationally.
  
  > go out and look for her
  Something didn't feel right about this, you had to go out and look for her.
  
  Putting on all your clothes for the outside and finding a spare gaskmask, you took your pistol and opened the entrance door, ready to head out into the wasteland.
  
  The scenery outside was absolutely dreadful, with only dead tree husks coming into your view. Fuck, how were you going to find her?
  
  Looking At the ground you looked for anything that could be used to track her. Luckily there were plenty of footprints in the soft dirt to go off of. Wether or not it was hers was unknown to you, but it was better than nothing.
  
  The footprints seems to follow the decayed road, never actually appearing to actually step on it though.
  
  What really psyched you out though was that the footprints were doubled halfway after following them with there now being two sets of them.
  
  "HEY, THERE'S ANOTHER ONE!" You hear someone shout behind you.
  
  Tensing up, you gripped your gun and looked around for the source of the voice.
  
  Men started to come out of the woods behind you, there has to be at least six of them. With them was Ashley, who was tied up and gagged. They pushed her on her knees and placed a gun behind her head.
  
  "Who would of thought that a trip into the woods would have led to us finding you two! We normally ever find food in the cities!" One of them boasted to you, presumably the leader.
  
  It didn't seem that they noticed that you had a gun yet, as your hand was holding it behind your back.
  
  There was no way that you could kill all of them, not without Ashley being hurt at least.
  
  > Wait
  You would just end up killing yourself if you fired now. You had to take advantage of their ignorance until you had tactical advantage.
  
  "Just let us go, there dosen't have to be like this."
  
  "That's a big fat negatory I'm afraid. Do you not realize how hard it is to find food with most of the animals dead or irradiated. Fucking hell, we can't even grow any food in this shit soil, and I'm not about to risk my life going into Henderson for some measly canned shit."
  
  The leader and a few of his goonies started coming closer to you, yet the one holding Ashley hostage stood in his place.
  
  "So you see, you can't blame us all that much. Were doing what we need to do to survive."
  
  That's right, just a little bit closer.
  
  "Don't worry be done with you soon anyway, it's the girl that has us licking our lips. Hell, she's going to taste wo-."
  
  Pulling up your pistol and taking a step back, you fire directly into the fuckers skull, causing it to whip back as his body fell to the floor.
  
  You fired two more shots at the goonies who followed him, each of them being gun holders. Shocked with the death of their leader, their reaction time was absolute zero as they were in a close enough distance that killing them required little to no effort. The last one with a gun was the man who had Ashley, the other two had meat cleavers.
  
  "Don't even fucking think about it mother fucker!" The man screams at you as he shoves the gun in her neck.
  
  "Just let us go, we can still just walk away from this. No one else needs to die." You plead with the man, not wanting to escalate things any further.
  
  "You think I'd rather fucking starve, were doing this because we have no choice dipshit! How the do you guys look so well fed anyway, you've probably been eating people too you fucking hypocr-."
  
  The action is almost instantaneous, one of the men with the cleavers had come up from behind the man and swiftly decapitated his forearm in a single motion. Screaming in pain, the wounded man stumbled back from Ashley as the butcher went to finish him.
  
  Their other companion with the other butcher knife didn't even know how to react as he screamed at the butcher.
  
  "What the fuck are you doing Danny!?"
  
  With the gunman now dead, the butcher yeller at you while trying to take out his cleaver that appeared to be stuck in the body of th gunman.
  
  "Shoot that fucker!" He pointed at the last gunman.
  
  Taking aim you took two shots at the confused butchers chest as he tried to fuitily try to block the bullets with a outstretched hand.
  
  You thought about shooting the other man, but since he had helped you, it didn't seem smart.
  
  Not until you heard the reasoning for his actions at least.
  
  > New friend
  "Care to explain why you just killed your friends to help us?" You ask the last cannibal as he sits down to rest a bit.
  
  "Oh these cunts? I was never really apart of them to begin with. They found me wandeing the roads a couple of days ago, because I was so skinny and with all these cuts and bruises, they didn't really think I'd be worth to eat. Course I had to join them so they wouldn't kill me, never ate a person though, swear on my life." He explained as he cleaned the blood off his cleaver with one of the dead men's shirt.
  
  Highly doubting his last statement, you took his word for it for now anyway as you got to work on untieing Ashley.
  
  "Where the fuck did you go?" You asked upon taking off her gag.
  
  She didn't really say anything at first, her tears clouding up her eyes as she just shook her head.
  
  "I was just curious, I was only going to begone a few minutes before you woke up. When I was searching the woods to see if there were any animals left....they found me."
  
  That's when she started sobbing.
  
  "They knew I couldn't have survived this long on my own so they waited by the road to see if someone was to come. Thank god they didn't see me leave the bunker."
  
  "Well there gone now. So we're safe."
  
  You hear the cock of a pistol.
  
  "Not quite."
  
  You look over to see the man who saved you pointing a pistol at you, most likely scavenged from one of the fallen raiders.
  
  "What's this bunker your little girlfriend brought up."
  
  "What the fuck man, you're going to save us and fuck us over afterwards!" You seethe to gritted teeth.
  
  "I only killed those fuckers because I wasn't about to waste two bodies between six people. If I kept you alive in the right conditions I could make you last months, unlike those greedy bastards who never knew how to conserve and ignore their hunger for a second."
  
  He starts stepping a bit closer to you with the pistol being steady with each step.
  
  "But know I'm hearing of a bunker. Fuck I was starting to worry where I'd store the meat."
  
  "You don't need to do this, we can survive together." Ashley pleaded as she started to cry once again.
  
  "Like hell we can, you know how hard it is to feed three people in a world like this? Why not jus-."
  
  As we was distracted in his rant, you fired three quick shots from your Beretta that you managed to hide behind Ashley as you were hugging her.
  
  Unfortunately, the cannibal managed to fire a few shots of his own as you felt the bullets puncture your abdomen.
  
  Ashley screamed in horror as she raced to your side.
  
  Your vision didn't really blacken as per say, but everything felt blurry and quiet.
  
  We're you to die like this?
  
  > Aftermath
  You felt weightless, to be honest you kind of enjoyed it.
  
  It wasn't exactly even a numb feeling anymore, it was something that you couldn't explain all to well.
  
  What really sucked though was once you were starting to open your eyes to see Ashley looking down at you. Tears in her eyes, though a smile across her lips.
  
  "Thank fucking god, I heard you moving but didn't know if you'd actually wake up."
  
  "How bad is it." You ask expecting the worse.
  
  "Well most of the bullets went right through since I found a exit hole for every entry hole. Since none of us ever really used the medicine around here I had more then enough to treat you. It took some trial and error but reading some of the first aid books you had gave me some lessons." She explained as she gave you a bottle of water.
  
  "How long have I been out?"
  
  "Only a coupe of days, not as much as I first expected but it was still pretty scary."
  
  Using your arms to lift your body, you slowly start to lift yourself from your bed.
  
  "I would take it slow, those gunshots are probably going to make it a bitch to move." Ashley warned.
  
  She was right of course, you could hardly bend or stretch your torso as you could only make really stiff movements.
  
  Ashley rested her forehead against yours as she grasped your palms.
  
  "I'm sorry this was all my fault. If I never left then this would have never happened."
  
  Grasping one of her hands tightly you placed another against her cheek.
  
  "Hey we made it out alive, that's all that really matters. It was only a matter of time when we would come across scum. Well prepare for it in the future. As long as we have each other we'll be ok out here."
  
  She nods and gives yet another smile.
  
  "Well for now, keep on getting your rest. I think I can handle things around here myself until your able and healthy."
  
  "Just give me another day and I'll be back on my feet good as new."
  
  She kisses your forehead and laughs softly.
  
  You were beadbound but alive, not quite the best situation but then again you weren't really complaining.