Earth’s surface, sometime in the 31st year of the Exodus.

Earth was almost barren.

Few places existed on the planet that could support plant life. The remnants of the only remaining rainforest struggled to seep into the surrounding, irradiated soil, and most of the planet that was not the rubble of past cities or polluted ocean was now desert and barren dust.

Many people of Arizona were used to desert-like conditions, some of them even before the war started. None of them knew absolute destitution and inhospitable conditions as they did now. The pre-war infrastructure was all but non-existent. The only way to support life had been either to aggressively conserve and hoard what little was left, or kill others to get what was needed.

The organisational structure of Phoenix nuclear bunker in Arizona followed the former approach. Supplies were in plentiful supply at the end of the war, although the battles leading up to it had taken their toll on the occupants of the facility. As a result, a bunker designed to house twenty-five thousand civilians and officers now housed a total of less than three thousand people.

The facility also maintained a strictly enforced hierarchy, not always favoured by the inhabitants. One commanding officer has full control of the facility, with advising officers and armed guards. The rules are obeyed, what few existed, and breaking these rules was strictly forbidden.

In the watch post of the facility, Edward Mensar sat with the watch guard for the evening. He wanted to take a break from his work, having tried unsuccessfully to construct a device to replace the broken thermostatic controls on one of the levels in the bunker. He looked out over the terrain, made barren by constant warfare and nuclear fallout.

Sometimes he wondered if the effort would be justified in the end, since so many people in the facility were hell bent on confrontational behaviour that was in danger of breaking up the group. It was the nature of humanity to be destructive, and yet, it was also the nature of humanity to survive where other species would fail. It was the nature of humanity to be confrontational with one another, and yet also the nature of humanity to band together and form a united front in the face of a superior enemy.

Sometimes, as was often the case these days, all of these tendencies surfaced at once, causing conflicts that were difficult to resolve. It fell to him and the colonial leader to fix these before they got out of hand.

It seemed always to fall to them to have to sort out other people’s problems.

Sometimes he could see no end in sight.

Nonetheless, giving up was not an option.

If humanity just gave up, what the hell would it all be for?

Edward did not give up.

He didn’t give up when his father was killed on board that suicide carrier, sent to create a diversion that the enemy saw right through. He didn’t give up, and he managed to stop his mother from giving up too, for a time.

He refused to give up when the fleet was destroyed by the force that should have been diverted by the suicide carrier. He took himself and his mother to Phoenix ahead of the attacking force. He had battled with himself over the necessity of that action but if he had stayed to valiantly fight the enemy, then he and everyone else he knew at the time would be dead.

He didn’t give up when she died the following year, having decided that life was not worth living without the man in her life. Never mind the fact that she had a son as Simon Mensar’s legacy.

He didn’t even give up when, thirteen years later, after having a seven year relationship with one of the surviving members of Phoenix, she was killed in a skirmish, leaving him with three children. He thought of her often, even though she passed on fifteen years ago.

He even refused to give up on life even though his eldest son was killed in battle nearly four years ago during an ambush that was laid out by surface-dwelling scavengers.

Since that time, he had seen almost as much in battle as he had seen the final year of the War. The only difference now was that the enemy was human and without the assistance of any of the “smart” tanks or aircraft that had been developed throughout the war, and mainly from outlying regions where there is no governing structure to maintain order. Scavengers were usually well armed however, otherwise they did not last the night.

This meant that the facility had to be well armed, too.

This reminded Edward that he was due for salvage detail in another half-hour, or the facility would be short on materials used to build their weapons. He got up and made his way to the armoury.

Deep inside the Phoenix fallout shelter

07:02 Hours Eastern Time, November 6th, Exodus Year 31

“Alright everyone, listen up!” The armoury officer on duty called to those present at their time for salvage detail. They were at the armoury nearest the entrance. “We’ve limited stocks of ammo for this trip so make ‘em count and don’t get too trigger happy! Five rounds each!”

There were shouts of complaint from some within the crowd at such a small measure of what they all considered their only means of defence. Each member of the team was to receive a pump-action twelve-gauge rifle with five rounds apiece. This was hardly ideal, since in many cases, scavengers normally carried automatics stolen from weapons caches and large amounts of ammunition. Many scavenger clans also built their own makeshift weapons and so the shelter had to learn how to do the same.

Jason Mensar was just one such person. He did so not for the good of the colony, but because his basic sense of survival was his own priority. He knew better than anyone else that without the ability to hand-build your own weapons, you would be limited to low rations of ammo and weapons and that would probably get you killed if a scavenger wanted to kill you.

His choice of weapon was a crossbow, and he had managed to make the best damn crossbow the facility had. He was also not about to give it up and so found himself volunteered for more missions to the surface than any other person in the facility.

Today was not his day.

So far, in the space of six hours, several things had happened to put him in an absolutely foul mood.

Before he had even woken up properly, Jason found himself pinned against a wall. His assailants were two of the other shelter population… Both were known for trouble making in the shelter. They had tried to steal his ration pack, and in the ensuing struggle, the pack fell into a drain outlet and was gone. Jason had gone hungry as a result. The bastards had taken out their failure to get his ration pack on him as well, leaving him with a number of bruises… He didn’t let them get away with it though, he fought back and gave both of them the same.

Not long after that, He gets news that his sister has been chained in the stocks, deep in the shelter. Usually that’s punishment for causing brutal bodily damage to someone. She said to him when he went to give her a piece of his mind that she had been attacked by a perverted guy who wanted a piece of her, and while Jason believed her, he also thought that she shouldn’t have given him such a beating. Look where that fucking got her!

So because of these things happening, he was already in a foul mood, and he just wanted to get this whole day over with. Now he had a salvage detail to carry out.

“Hey,” a boy’s voice called out.

Now Jason was really in a foul mood. The boy in question would not leave anyone alone. “What?” he asked tersely, though he expected the boy to have something for him.

“I got your arrows made,” the boy replied.

That was something at least, Jason thought to himself. “Thanks,” he said absently as he took the specially made explosive-tipped arrows from the kid. He started to examine them for workmanship and quality, but the kid was still standing there like an idiot. What was with him? “What now?”

“What now?” The boy repeated back to him, with a hint of petulance that Jason really did not like.

“What, are you some kinda parrot all of a sudden, you little shit?” Jason snapped at the kid. “What the fuck are you standin’ there for?”

The boy looked mournful, and slightly angry at the same time. Jason glared at him, hoping that it would encourage him to go away. Then he noticed the boy’s face set in stone and it looked like he was going to cry or something. That would top it all off for Jason, some little fuck making him feel guilty.

“Well? What?” Jason snapped again, encouraging the boy’s removal or at least some other response to silence.

“You could at least say thanks, you bastard!” The kid snapped.

“Hey, you can fuck off if you don’t like it. I’ll make my own arrows in future.”

Jason hoped that the comment would make the kid disappear…

No such luck.

“You don’t appreciate anything anyone does for you,” the boy snapped harshly back at Jason. “Nobody appreciates me around here.”

“Nobody fuckin’ appreciates you kid, that’s because you stand there like a idiot, whinin’ and bitchin’ all the time and I get sick of it you little shit! Now fuck off!” And Jason injected as much force as he could without actually shouting at the boy. He was really starting to get angry now, and just wanted this kid out of his hair.

And still the boy stood there. “I’d bet my great uncle would appreciate it.”

“Oh, here we go,” Jason replied sarcastically. Whatever it was this kid went on about at times like this it usually made no sense to Jason and it bothered him more than anything else. “You gonna tell me about your so-called astronaut great uncle again?”

“Well it’s true! You don’t believe me?” the boy asked in the sort of tone that made Jason want to scratch his face off. “He’s one of the pilots on the mission to-”

“Well whoopie fuckin’ doo for him then!” Jason bit back.

“You know what,” the boy’s tone became immediately hostile. “Fuck you, okay? Fuck you! You don’t get to talk to me like that any more. You and your fuckin bow and arrows and your attitude-”

“THEN GET AWAY FROM ME AND MY BOW AND ARROWS YOU LITTLE-”

Jason was about to add more to that, when both of them were thrust against the nearest wall by the two guys that beset Jason earlier that day. They were trouble, alright, and Jason hoped that the boy would keep his mouth shut, or he’d get hurt. Jason could handle himself, but the boy would get mauled.

“You two yappin’ away like that’s givin’ me a headache,” the more intelligent of these two thugs told Jason. He was the smaller of the two, but he was bigger than Jason, and well-muscled, considering the state of most of the population in the shelter.

“Yeah, I gotta headache,” the other one said. He was bigger and fatter, an obvious anomaly in a world where practically everyone was starving, but Jason knew his arms had power in them. He’d felt their blows.

“Well good for you, guys,” Jason spat the words at them. “But this don’t concern you, and I told you last time-”

“You’re gonna have to pay us if you want us to leave you alone, you pair of bitches!”

“Oh yeah, you mean like you wanted me to pay for breathin’ earlier?”

The leader of the two glared at Jason, with a gleam in his eye that bore no good. It made Jason feel sick to think that anyone could be that evil. “You lost us our meal earlier today… Stupid of you to drop it down a drain, wasn’t it?”

“That was mine, not yours, and I'd gone hungry ‘cos of you two.”

“We gone hungry, you mean,” the bigger of the two sneered.

“Yeah right, as if you ever go hungry, you fat fuck.”

The smaller of the two hit Jason across the face, opening a cut that he had acquired earlier. “You got a big mouth.”

“You gonna close it for me?” Jason growled back. “Remember what I told you earlier?”

“About touchin’ you again?” the smaller of the two asked, mocking Jason with a laugh. “That was funny, I gotta say! You were gonna do what, exactly?”

“This,” Jason said quietly, before he thrust his knee straight in between the guy’s legs and sending him to the floor. He then punched the bigger of the two guys with as much force as he could, smashing his nose and spraying blood everywhere. By now he was so enraged that he was prepared to kill both of them if they forced him.

He turned to the boy. “You, fuck off now before they get back up again! You wanna get the shit kicked outta you?” The boy complied immediately, which left Jason to these two.

“And you,” he seethed, kicking the smaller of the two in the ribs. “I told you that if you touch me again, I would make you pay!” he lay another kick as he spoke the word ‘pay’ right in the guy’s stomach, sending him flat onto the floor. “And I fuckin’ meant it!”

“Little shit!” The bigger of the two laughed nastily as he grabbed Jason from behind, forcing him against a wall. “My nose was already broke so that didn’t do much.” He pulled a shiv out of his pocket that was fashioned and sharpened from an old small-scale girder. “I think the brits used to call this a ‘chelsea smile’,” he spoke in too soft a tone as he made as if to apply the knife to Jason’s mouth.

Just then, a hole opened in the guy’s shoulder, just missing Jason by less than an inch. The guy collapsed, dropping his knife as he did and then clutching at his shoulder in pain. Just for good measure, Jason kicked him in the ribs, hard.

“HEY!” called a voice, interrupting him. “KNOCK IT OFF!”

The voice belonged to Janet Fletcher, the administrator of this infernal place, and the only one anyone listened to, these days. Jason thought it a bit of a surprise when she took over the shelter, since at twenty-three, she was the youngest to take up the position. Even now, three years later, she was still younger than her predecessor who took charge at the age of thirty-seven.

Maybe this happened because of the lack of strong leadership in the older ranks.

In any event, Jason complied immediately, and stood straight, stepping back from both of the thugs.

“You two, again?” she asked the two that were still on the floor, her tone harsh as ever.

“We don’t know what you mean,” the smaller of the two asked in what sounded to Jason like an innocent tone. He wasn’t fooled, and he hoped Janet wasn’t either. “We was just mindin’ our own, when this little fuck comes up to us accusing me of stealin’ his shit.”

Jason knew the rules here.

Stealing was forbidden in the shelter. It was met with severe punishment. First time offenders lost their rations for eight days, only being allowed water. Second-time offenders were given the same treatment plus a day in the stocks above ground at the end of it. Third time offenders had one hand amputated. A fourth time usually resulted in execution, since amputating the other hand would make them useless, anyway.

On the other hand, falsely accusing someone of stealing would result in a week in the stocks with only water if the accused is found innocent of the charge. This guy obviously knew that, and this would be his third charge.

But then again, he was also spotted instigating an assault against a fellow shelter member. Brawling was an offence usually met by forceful administrative punishment, starting with ten lashes for the first offence.

What the big guy was about to do to Jason counted as intent to commit permanent bodily harm. Very few people ever did that in the shelter, because the punishment, if determined guilty, was a swift execution.

“You seem to forget," Janet replied tersely. "We reported yesterday, that the monitoring and camera systems in the shelter were repaired. Weren’t you listening?”

The big guy looked shocked, but the small guy looked at Jason with a look of pure hatred. “You’re gonna die for this,” he said in a very quiet, low tone, probably hoping that Jason would be the only one to hear it. Most likely, the small guy intended to intimidate Jason.

Jason’s anger flared up. “You know what-”

“Don’t retaliate, Mensar,” Janet snapped out, just as one of her guards fired a round from his pistol into the small guy’s head. The loud snap from the pistol’s loading chamber made everyone jump as the round was fired, and Jason noticed that Janet visibly swallowed just after.

He hoped he was the only one, because strong leadership relied on people believing you were invincible, and even he knew that. If anyone else thought that Janet was affected by the execution that took place, the shelter would be in chaos.

“Let that be a reminder to you all,” Janet continued after a moment’s pause, glaring solidly at Jason for a second, as well as casting a steady gaze around the hall. “Any threats of harm to anyone in this shelter will be met with immediate execution. Got it?” she waited for affirmative nods from everyone in the hall before she continued. “You,” she said to the big guy on the floor, still clutching his wound. “Trying to harm a fellow shelter member, threatening behaviour, trying to steal from someone this morning, your third offence as well, and then trying to hide what you did.”

Everyone waited for her verdict, since she inevitably decided on guilt or innocence based on immediately available evidence. She also decided punishment or sentencing.

“Anyone have anything to add?” she asked of the others. “Mensar, you’re party to this, so keep quiet.”

“Yes sir,” Jason replied with indifference. He also knew how much it annoyed Janet to be called ‘sir’.

“Do I look like any ‘sir’ you’ve ever come across, Mensar?” She turned to the crowd. “Anyone wanna tell me what happened here? I doubt you all fell asleep as it was happening, so don’t be bullied by this thug any more.” That last comment caused a ripple of answering comments from the crowd, all attesting to Jason’s innocence and that he only acted out of self-defence. “Guilty as charged. Execute him,” she told her guards as she walked out of the room. Jason noticed that she did so rather quickly, as if to get away from the scene before the execution took place.

Jason stayed to watch. It would be good to see this fat bastard get his justice for what he was doing to him and the others. And it was good to see the pistol being fired at point-blank range straight into the guy’s head. One of the other guards was fetching a blanket from the stores in order to throw it over the two bodies.

Jason walked out and began setting up his cross-bow for the next salvage mission.

Janet Fletcher stalked into her corner office, overlooking the main shelter complex. She was hoping that those two bodies were covered up at least by the time she got there, because as much as it had happened so many times in the shelter, she hated it each time. She hated to see so much death around her in a world where there was already too much of it. And she hated the idea that people had to be killed in order to protect the majority of the shelter population. It was often a necessity, as it was today, and if hadn’t have let the guard execute them both, they might have bided their time and waited for an opportunity to slit Jason Mensar’s throat. That would have sat even worse with Janet, simply because he had acted only in self-defence.

She had only ever killed people twice in her life. Both times, she had been physically sick and dreadfully distraught as a result. The first was when someone in the shelter tried to attack her while she was still a child. He had forced her up against a wall and threatened to slice her open with his knife if she screamed out. He had managed to get his sordid way with her and still he would not let her go. He led her to his own private little hidey-hole in a part of the shelter that had been abandoned years before. After three days of non-stop assaults against her, she had taken more than she could handle, and fear and rage fuelled her into acting. She managed to break some glass in the room, and was just using it to cut the bonds that tied her hands behind her back, when he returned from wherever he was.

Having witnessed her trying to escape, he then tried to scare her into obedience by threatening to kill her if she tried to escape again.

The intimidation hadn't worked.

Instead, he ended up with the glass shard in his throat. Janet was convinced at the time that he would kill her when he was done anyway.

Still, the act of killing another human being sickened her.

The moment she took over management of the shelter, she had made sure that all abandoned areas of the shelter were either put to use again or were permanently sealed off from access by anyone. There was no way she would let anyone go through that.

The second time she killed someone was when a soldier on her watch died during an attack several years ago. She did not like to think about who or how too much, except that his killer was standing over his corpse, gloating. Rage again, filled her like it did before, and she shot the guy to pieces with her weapon, stabbing him with her knife when she was close enough, and she continued to do so until she was stopped by Edward Mensar.

Again, once rage died down, she was physically sick, made ill by her actions and the disgust they caused in her. Even now, thinking about the actions of killing that soldier, made her feel sick to her stomach. And she also didn’t want to think about the circumstances that led to her killing that soldier in the first place.

She hated to kill, even though it was necessary sometimes. She did not much like the idea of issuing an order to kill either, but she had witnessed the results of doing otherwise, when her predecessor was assassinated by the very people he exercised leniency over.

Therefore she ruled over the population with an iron fist, while trying not to be too unfair. She kept others at a distance, deliberately so, while requiring obedience to any order she gave. She maintained rule over the shelter by getting things done as she said she would. There was no time for games or foolery as far as she was concerned, and the population benefited from a system of shared resources. She saw to it that profiteering within the shelter was eradicated, even down to making sure she got the same as everyone else, no more. Anyone gaining by any means other than genuine kindness, any measure of additional wealth, food, materials or time away from work would be severely punished. Those two she just had executed were prime examples of the kinds of thing she worked hard to eradicate. Thankfully, they were few in number now. Everyone else worked to survive.

There was a knock at the door.

Well, it was an excuse for a door, since it was hanging off of it’s hinges and half of the wood in the frame was rotten. It was also unimportant, since the only door securing the office from the general population of the shelter was made of steel and was a metre thick, and protected by two of her most trusted guard. The only people allowed on this level besides herself were those two guards, Edward Mensar, and two other trustworthy aides.

“Yes?” she asked, inviting whoever it was to come in.

She turned to see one of her two guards walk in. “We’ve finished armoury detail now, Ma’am. Everyone going on salvage detail are either armed with standard issue rounds or are taking their own fashioned weapons,” was his report.

“Understood,” she replied punctiliously. “Where’s my side-arm?”

“Here,” the guard replied, and in one swift motion, produced the silenced pistol, grip toward her. It was a model adapted for battle use and modified to use less penetrating, but more easily produced rounds. She often carried it with her on surface missions, but rarely within the shelter. “Fully armed with two spare clips.”

“We leave in ten minutes,” she told the guard. “Let’s join the others.”

The Arizona Outskirts, North America.

A sand-storm had been raging across the sands of Arizona for several hours, preventing any penetration into the city ruins themselves. The salvage detail had been ordered to search the outskirts of the state, some distance away from the shelter, for abandoned weapons and other discards while the storm made its course.

Since the second nuclear attack over thirty years before, the weather systems on the planet had become far more intense. Some in the colony debated the reason and the likely outcome. Maybe it was a direct result of the warheads and their radioactive contamination of the atmosphere. Others, like Edward Mensar, debated that maybe it was more indirect; the planet’s way of trying to undo the damage that humanity had wreaked upon its’ surface. Possibly the storms were an attempt to clear the skies enough for some sunlight to get through and maybe to eradicate the poisoning in the atmosphere. Whatever the reason, there were now fierce storms that once would be a rarity, and they occurred almost weekly.

Meteorology was one of several areas of knowledge that no-one required in their existence post-Exodus, so no-one could really be sure why the storms were so intense.

Jason had just about had his fill of these storms. He had experienced a large number of them while on salvage details over the last few years, and there had been some real nasty Ion storms, caused because of the ionisation of the upper atmosphere. They could knock out power to the shelter even though they were hundreds of miles away, and even a strike of lightning some tens of metres distance away from a person could kill that person outright.

Jason counted himself fortunate that today was a comparatively mild lightning storm with moderate winds. It made for difficult travelling, but since him, his equipment and his salvage partner were not wearing nor were made of any conductive materials, their chances of being struck were minimal.

“Saw what happened to you in the shelter,” The guy, Dave, said to Jason. Dave was a thin, wiry guy, about the same age as Jason, but he was fast, and had a knack for survival. He also sometimes had an affinity for mechanical and computer based items, which Jason ignored out of gratitude for having his life saved a few times. “Glad the guys got executed.”

Jason merely grunted.

“Yeah, I can tell you are, too.”

Jason nodded. Dave knew him well enough to know that his lack of speech sometimes was because he felt it was unnecessary to talk. Not like some of the idiots back at the shelter who assumed, as they always do, that he was being intentionally pig-headed.

Neither of them said anything until they reached the edges of what once was a small city. There were the usual ruins, dusty concrete tombs, warped and twisted metallic supports that no longer had the buildings they were supposed to be supporting, and the usual depressing fare.

“Hey, what the hell’s that?” Dave pointed out to Jason, who looked in that direction. “I’m surprised to see anything in such good shape these days.”

Jason was about to make a sarcastic comment about seeing anything in the gloom of this depressing world when he took in the building that Dave was referring to. Surprisingly, it was intact, with some scarred walls and other bits and pieces of damage from the explosion and the devastation surrounding them. Why there was a building that wasn’t totally destroyed was a mystery to them both, indeed to anyone that would have seen it. To see one that was in such good condition with only cosmetic damage was worrying, and Jason’s first instinct was to get the hell out of there.

That was unusual since he was never normally scared off by anything. After all, those two thugs earlier could’ve killed him but he still challenged them. Why then, would this building cause fear in him enough for him to consider returning to the shelter without investigating first?

“I got a bad feeling about this, man,” Jason told Dave. “Let’s leave it alone.”

“What?” Dave asked, his expression puzzled. “Why?”

“I dunno man, you don’t think it’s odd that there’s a building that’s still standin’ in the middle o’ all this shit?”

Dave gave Jason a sheepish grin. “Dunno man, but I bet they got a lotta good stuff in there worth grabbin’!”

“I don’t like this,” Jason replied sharply. “It’s too freaky.”

“Well I’m goin’ in and takin’ a look. You can wait here, if you want,” Dave said as he took toward the building without any further delay. Jason decided he’d better go along too, in case there was trouble.