All that is Left

All That is Left Part 1

Prologue

You could never imagine it. The lights and sirens whirl down the roadways and around neighborhoods. Telling people to take cover and get to the nearest nuclear shelter. It had finally happened. What I knew had been coming my whole life: the beginning of WWIII and the end of the world as we knew it. You thought the cold war was a nuclear arms race well then this is a god damn 100-meter dash. War was declared 3 days ago and we are already launching nuclear missiles on both sides. No one is safe. Due to treaties and alliances, our allies are launching them too but then again so are theirs. Soon there will be nowhere left that is inhabitable. No plants, no animals, no life. It will take at least 150 to 200 years for the radiation levels to drop enough for it to be safe outside. There's no telling how long it will be till plants are able to grow through the irradiated soil again. The only thing we can do now is to wait.

Chapter 1

Those were my great grandfather's last words to my father before he died from radiation poisoning 94 years ago. I wasn't born yet when my grandpa died. He had gone outside to check the radiation levels for his homemade nuclear shelter under his mountain home. He didn't realize that from use and age the suit had developed a small tear in the seam. He had been outside for only a couple of seconds before he started to feel sick and rushed into the airlock my father told me. My dad wasn't alive yet when the war started. So for a long time, it was just my grandpa and grandma. When my dad was born it had to be my grandpa, a mechanic, and investor, to deliver the baby. He said it was the scariest thing he had ever done. My mom was an orphan that my grandpa found wandering in the nuclear winter with a couple of days worth of food and a radiation suit. My grandparents took her in and raised her as their own. She happened to be a couple of years younger than my dad and they took a liking to each other instantly. Not that they had much of a choice in partners. My dad was 14 when my grandpa died. He was suddenly the man of the bunker. He repaired the suit and picked up his dad's habit of going out and checking the radiation levels of the surrounding areas every couple of months. The only difference is that now before every trip outside his mom would check the suit for tears or weaknesses. They were always worrying and he told me that he thought it was sweet but it bugged the hell out of him. One day while he was out checking the radiation levels he decided to wander to a store a couple of miles away and found an old police car. He jacked the radio out of it and took the handheld off the officer's body. Luckily we weren't in the flash zone so the radio didn't melt or anything. He was able to repair it and wire it to a power source as well as make a makeshift battery out of old batteries and tin foil. Not long after this grandma died from old age. It helped ease the worry because they could talk to him when they started to get worried. 16 years later I was born. I stayed in the bunker till I was 19. I started doing the radiation checks and then it happened.

Chapter 2

I radioed in that something unbelievable happened and went blasting into the airlock. It cycled and my parents were freaking out thinking that they had missed a tear in my suit. Then I showed them the Geiger counter that I had held on the outside reading. It was reading 0.26. It was safe to leave the bunker again. In order to make sure of this we hung around the bunker for another year. So grandpa's calculations were a little off but like I said he was a mechanic, not a scientist. At this point, I was 20 and wanted to explore the freshly non-irradiated world. What's left of it at least. My parents allowed it as long as I kept the radio and radiation suit in my backpack. Of course, I agreed to it and I went exploring. I found a couple of old police cars and an old mechanics shop. I set up a little base in the shop for myself and had some guns from those police cars I found. I found old pistols, a shotgun, and an old M4. The only reason I knew what they were is that my grandpa was a gun nut and had an army in the bunker. My dad taught me how to clean and operate guns but I had never actually shot one. Those cars had plenty of ammo so I set up my own range out behind the shop. I had also set up a bed in the office and found enough gas to place a generator outside and wire it to the building for power. I learned how to do that from fixing electrical problems in the bunker because that is how we got power, was a generator in a different part of the bunker. I would stay in my base till my parents would radio in that it was time for dinner. I'd run home and we would have dinner. This was the routine for several months. I went through a lot of ammo for the supply at the time but I had become a pretty good shot and had amassed a bigger arsenal. I did this by searching old homes and breaking open gun safes inside them. At this point, I had several police issue and civilian AR-15s, semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns, both lever and bolt action rifles, and both semi-automatic pistols and revolvers. I had become a very good shot and even found a human-shaped punching bag and started learning how to fight. I also had a lot of knives. I had switchblades, straight blades, fixed blades, folding, throwing, and even one ejection-bladed knife. I had no sinister intentions nor did I even know if there were other people out there. I just did it because it was fun. I even got a hold of some of my grandpa's old mechanics manuals and had started fixing up one of the police vehicles that I found. I believe they called it a Tahoe. Then one night my parents radioed for me to come home for dinner but we didn't wind up eating as a family.