Legends of the Wasteland

Chapter 1: 2077

The pale faces stared back at the guards, clad in their blue and yellow jumpsuits with the black body armor. The room shook with the explosions, the silence only being broken by the slight yelps of fear from the group that the roof would collapse on them. No one dared say anything, for fear their voice alone would cause them to become the target, and damn everyone in the room.

It was times like these that I worried the most. The times in between the blasts, in between the sounds of death from above, creating a whole separate dimension of hell. This is what we had been coming to. Our certain knack for self-destruction would be finally overrunning us. Everyone knew it was coming, we all knew it since 1945, we just thought that after 132 years it wouldn't happen. Everyone knew it would eventually happen, we just ignored it.

So here we sat, waiting to die like a worm in the ground, waiting for a shovel to cut us in half. I sat here with hundreds of other people, all in the same boat as I. Scared, ignorant, many of us hungry. But we couldn't do anything. The silence in between blasts was defining. Occasionally, the sound of a poor baby pierced the air with its shrill squeal, or scream, or cry. One of the three. But it was quickly silenced by it's mother, or father, or sister, or brother, or by a neighbor that had managed to get in before the parents and this was the only way the child could survive. A parent's death for the life of a child. It was this way now, all over the world. We had gone to the brink, teetered for a moment, then fell into atomic fire. China threw nukes at the US. The US threw nukes at China. Russia threw nukes at China and Korea. Korea threw nukes at Australia and Russia. And China threw nukes at Russia. And here I sat, in Austrailia. I guess the stereotype was true, that everything in Austrailia was trying to kill you. My mother sat there, waiting for the cave to open, to go inside and start her new life underground, hopefully starting a family. They were letting everyone they could into a bunker, close to 1000 people. They said it was for their safety, that the nukes couldn't get them, that the lead lined roof would protect them from the radiation. It was true, it did.

 For 50 years, it kept them safe. In 2127, a Vault was introduced to our bunker, but it could only hold 200 people. Everyone knew what that meant, but no one wanted to say it. I was only 2 at the time, so I don't remember much, but I do remember a lot of gunfire.