The Rifleman: The Bubble City

Prologue

In the year 2057, the 55th President, Jane Hilthroe was sworn into office after winning by just a couple thousand votes. There have been riots in the streets for the past month protesting the abolishment of the electoral college. The mall was swarming with heavily armed policemen. Jane looks out at the skyline, admiring her country, when a bullet pierces her through the neck, spraying her vice president, Horris Genten, with crimson blood. The secret service leap forward just as another bullet hits Jane in the forehead, nearly splitting her skull in two. Horris is surrounded by secret service members and is ushered into a predetermined safe room. Horris sits on the couch, staring blankly at the wall ahead of him as he is wiped down. Chief Justice Jacoby Walker comes forward with a bible in hand. "Sir, you know what needs to be done." He says, straying from properly addressing him. Horris nods and gets up, reciting the oath and slumping back down in his chair. Horris looks at the blood on his sleeve and realizes something must be done. And something is done. In the next hour, three snipers were rounded up and put into interrogation rooms. Over the next two months they are relentlessly tortured until one breaks, revealing that he was sent by Adrian Putin, President of Russia. Those few words may have been the very things that ended the world. The next day most of Russia had been reduced into a nuclear wasteland, with the U.S. following suit soon after. After that all hell breaks loose, with nearly every country letting loose volleys of nukes, sending the world into a nuclear ice age that lasted the next 21 years. About 4 million people across the world had been able to bunker up and survive the nukes, 500,000 of those being Americans, as they had the most knowledge that it was going to happen. After the surface had warmed up, most people moved out of the bunkers and started construction on the bubble cities, far away from the radiation zones of the nukes. They surrounded their cities in bubbles to help keep out the cold, as the surface temperature was still stuck in the negatives. Inside the cities, what was left of the government, including President Genten, took power and held onto it with tight laws and heavily armed police forces. Some people didn't like the strict rules and population control though, so they moved out into the Old World, ready to reclaim it. Though most didn't survive the harsh temperature, and mutated wildlife, the ones that did thrived. That brings us to me.