It was the trip of a lifetime, yet it was getting harder and harder to find shelter. The acid rain started in May and burned through the camper's roof within a month. No amount of reinforcement would stop it. When it hit your skin, it felt like nothing, but the boils and red rashes would rise within a few minutes, and the itching was unbearable. If you scratched, the skin would come off in mushy ribbons, hence the bandages and the very unsightly appearance of the brood. Dad thought a trip across what was left of America would do them all good—one last hurrah before the rations ran out. It was dangerous, sure, but so was home, so was everywhere. So they went forward in the souped-up camper, something scavenged together from bits and pieces of what was left after the barrels went cold. The Eisenhower Interstate System was still mostly intact and passable for huge stretches.
Who wants to see the Grand Canyon? Who wants to see the big hole in Hoover Dam? Who wants to see the five presidents on Mount Rushmore, tour the blast zone of the capital? Who would like to take a dip in Lake Erie and catch one of those 1000-pound fish, wrestle it into submission? You wouldn't be able to eat it, but it would make for a great memory.
Last stop: to visit the vault, where the leaders were sealed off from the rest of us behind a ton of solid steel, where the automated sentries fired at anything that moved within 1,000 yards of the front gate. But just outside their range, a camp, the largest box city on earth. Yes, sir, they could make a new start there. Out in the desert, where people are still free and find safety in numbers, where the Vault People fly in rations on the first of the month on big black buzzing drones, and the Box Cutters distribute to supplement whatever the Rag Rats can dig out of the sand. They are adapting out there, making a go of it. The next big land grab happening out there amongst the cactuses in the blast furnace of Death Valley. With the radiation everywhere else making life expectancy plummet, it's the best deal around.
But first, let's see some sights, let's take some pictures with the film camera we scavenged. No way to develop them, so for now, we dump the rolls in a shoebox and hope that one day we'll see those good times again.
FIGHT EVIL
Sam Drog
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