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Welcome to Post-Nuclear USA

Prologue

In the year 2011 the world came to a breaking point. Even though the Middle East started to cool down for the first time in decades one extremist somehow, someway got his hands on nuclear material. Through an incredible act that would haunt the world for years to come, this extremist managed to send an ICBM to the United States. Nobody really knows what happened after that, only the aftermath. The aftermath was that every major city in the United States was destroyed by missiles launched by many different countries. In a strange event that only happens in really bad science fiction novels, the disaster caused a disease that killed off of what was left of the population of the United States. Many surrounding areas of the countries of Mexico and Canada were affected by both nuclear fallout and the strange disease. No attempts were made to rescue stranded survivors due to the fact that many areas were so irradiated that even with radiation shielding the levels were deadly. The entire world thought that there was no life left in the USA. This of course was not the case, in the USA there were survivors numbering in the hundreds, select individuals who all live in rural areas given that almost everybody that lived in a city was dead or so crazed from surviving they could no longer be called sentient. This is the story of a one of those survivors, a young fox who was living in a town in the middle of Illinois at the age of 17 when the strike fell, who has not talked to a single person since the day he buried his girlfriend Olivia.

Chapter One

It was a hot day for Dashed his clothes clinging to his fur was matted from sweating. His tail drooped ever so slightly. Dashed was a handsome fox with bright red fur. He wore a pair of faded blue jeans and an old band t-shirt of a band that he used to adore, he was also wearing a baseball cap that he picked up in the previous town and sunglasses. When the weather was cooler he wore his trench coat which was given to him by his father before he died. Around his neck hung a necklace that his late girlfriend, Olivia, gave to him and on his back was a backpack with several pouches that were filled with many different things that hung off the side: refillable water bottles, silverware, small pans, and two clips for his 9mm pistol. Dashed's real name was Mark Delman but everybody called the strange young fox Dashed for one reason or another. He used to hate the name but then a leopard, no older than 14, named Felix who died of The Disease, called him Dashed up to his last sentence,

"Remember me Dashed. Remember me, I don't want to be forgotten."

Ever since then he just thought of himself as Dashed. He walked, heading to the town of Bolder. Bolder was just another town on Dashed's journey to the north and is a town far enough from Chicago to not have any major levels of radiation. This was routine as every 6 months or so he would move to a new town in accordance to his fifteen-year-three-step plan. His hometown is a town that was known as Effingham. However it was entirely illogical to stay there as he buried pretty much everybody he knew in his town as they died off one by one and there was little to scavenge from the town, so he came up with a plan. His plan is a huge 15 year plan, which is now down to 11 years, that goes something like this.

Step 1 Learn to take care of yourself, this was already done as he spent 4 months living in a library learning how to do everything from what medicine would treat basic infections to the different types of edible plant, though he forgot those within a few months.

Step 2 Learn to detect radiation and avoid it. This was a little trickier as his local shop didn't sell Geiger Counters. However he was able to get a very reliable counter that saved his life that he found in a house on a last minute sweep, the next town that he was supposed to go into on his journey was an irradiated pit as well as some of the surrounding area, if he hadn't of been smart and picked it up this story would not be written.

Step 3 Reach Canada. This is his final goal, he wanted to reach Canada where no nuclear bombs fell. He was sure that he could find an area somewhere that wasn't completely irradiated where he could pass onto the boarder and start a new life and probably make a killing publishing the journal that he was keeping.

As he walked flies buzzed around him and the sun began to beat him down, the long hours of walking he got used to when living on his own but five straight hours of keeping this steady pace was a little much. He thought to himself, This would be so much easier in the shade.

_ _

Quit your whining and man up you pussy.

Dashed stopped suddenly scared. He knew he heard it, another voice inside his mind.

"Who was that," he asked voice trembling.

No answer, Dashed kept moving. As he walked along he began to notice that there were dark clouds up in the sky. He decided not to risk getting caught in the rain and began to look for shelter. Dashed's method of finding shelter was finding an abandoned house and just sleeping there. Enough time had passed that there were no remains of the previous residence besides the occasional dirty skeleton. An hour or two later he found a farmhouse and started to walk towards it.

Just as he reached the front door he drew his pistol. . After a close call in a different household with a feral dog he wasn't about to take any chances. His gun was loaded with hollow point rounds which meant anything his size or smaller was going down in one hit. He carefully looked in every room slowly opening the door and pointing his pistol into the room and checking each corner and hiding spot. Once he had found nothing dangerous he decided to look in the basement to see if the plumbing was working. Turns out it wasn't but, in the basement he found a few new pencils which he put into his backpack, he also found the previous resident's skeleton smiling right at him. He shivered and went back upstairs and checked the nature gas in the house. To his amazement the gas still worked he just needed to reconnect a few pipes and it should work no problem, for the stove anyway. Going back to the living room he sat down on the couch and took a drink out of his water bottle. He reached inside his backpack and reached for his girlfriend's necklace. It is the only thing he had of his Olivia. It was a strange necklace that was given to Olivia as a gift on her thirteenth birthday. It was made of pure silver and looked like a flattened teardrop with a strange emblem. The emblem itself is supposed to be a puzzle but to Dashed it just looked like prison bars with a paw in the middle of it, on the back side there was the Greek letter ?. After examining it for a few moments he put it back into its special pouch. Then he pulled out his most prized possession, his journal. He began to write.

April 5, 2015

Today was a very productive day. I was able to get 10 miles in before having to stop. With luck I'll be able to reach Bolder within five days, given my current speed after a small stop in a town named Jefferson's Point. There is only one thing that I'm worried about. Today I heard a voice in my head, this could present a problem because the last time and heard the voice I had to be institutionalized for a month because I was becoming insane. After several therapy sessions I was able to push back the voice and get on with my life. I think that it came back because I haven't talk to anyone besides myself in years. For obvious reasons I am worried, I really don't want to become just another psychopath in this lonely land.

_ _

He put away his journal and promptly fell asleep.