"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."