Ground Zero by EndMaster R

“Hey Nina get up.”
“Huh, what? Not tonight I’m tired.”
“No it’s not that. It’s about the surface. I think we need to start taking precautions and possible steps to expand above. The surface doesn’t look that bad and…”

Nina immediately sits up.

“YOU WENT TO THE SURFACE? After I told you not to fucking do that?! YOU ASSHOLE!”
“Calm down look you can see nothing happened to me. It doesn’t even look like there was any bombs that landed anywhere near the area.”
“You could be radiated! The wind blows your know or have you forgotten? Or maybe it was a biological weapon! A disease could be floating in the air! You ever think of that? You could be infected with god knows what right now and spread it to the whole shelter! And our baby!”

Another surprise.

“Baby? You’re pregnant?”
“I just found out recently from Brenda a few days ago. I was going to tell you soon, I should’ve told you yesterday before you went to the surface, but I THOUGHT you respected my wishes! I can’t believe you…”

Nina gets up and starts pacing. She’s very upset. You get up and try to fix this mess.

“Look that just makes this idea even more vital, this place can’t support all these people having babies. Even GZS mentioned in their delusional guideline statement it was the intention for people to eventually go back up to the surface and repopulate it with their families. We can’t live like a bunch of crowded sardines; we should make preparations now, before it becomes a problem.”
“But it might be dangerous up there.”
“It probably won’t be a picnic, but that’s another reason why we should start getting ready now. The more we’re prepared the better off we’ll be to defend ourselves.”
“But the radiation…”
“Look, the fact remains this place IS going to get overpopulated one day and people are going to have to start going up to the surface and any background radiation isn’t going to disappear within that time. So we’re just going to have to roll the dice and deal with that fact. Like I said I think we’re okay, we’re in a fairly isolated area away from an important major city. It’s not like we’re located on either of the coasts which were probably bombed the shit out of. And to the response to biological weapon thing, I highly doubt those were used, we were the only country that had the capability to launch such weapons from a long distance, except maybe Russia and I’m sure they probably just used nukes on us. Besides any virus or germ used in such a way would’ve died out long ago after it killed off the immediate population.”

Nina still doesn’t look so sure, she still look worried about you. You hold Nina to reassure her.

“If it’ll make you feel better I’ll actually go see Kyle and have him check me out. And you know how much I hate going to see doctors, especially one that’s got all his knowledge from the GZS info files. I’ll be here for a long time… for all of us.”

Your words seem to relax her a bit. She smiles and embraces you more closely.

“Okay, I’ll bring it up tomorrow…I still think it’s funny that you of all people would be advocating going back to the surface.”
“Pfft! WE’RE not going to the surface to live. We’re staying here! I just want get the rest of these fuckers out of the shelter and on to the surface! This place is too damn crowded as it is!”
“Now that sounds more like you!” Nina laughs.

Five more years pass…

It’s been ten years since you got here. It almost seems surreal to think about. Nina’s still the shelter leader and you’re still looking after the central computer. However a lot more things have changed, and just as predicted the population grew significantly, fortunately the implementations ahead of time allowed everyone to adjust with little problems.

There was some apprehension at first when Nina first suggested the surface thing, but eventually people did see the point in it. Some even wanted to go up to the surface. The first step was to make a fully functioning elevator that people could go up AND down on without any problems. (Of course that job fell to you again)

The next step was to create small “huts” with the cars outside as well as using current shelter material. This went quicker than expected as most people pitched in to help.

Nina gave birth to a son Jack, and almost went back to her duties immediately, leaving you to do most of the “Mr. Mom” work. Nowadays you split your time between monitoring the computer and monitoring Jack. Thankfully Charles and Todd have learned a lot more now and don’t require your supervision lessening your workload.

Now its time for the next step.

Nina and her council have been discussing plans for the even farther future. Contact with others and exploration. Within the past five years of the return to the surface, there has been contact with a few wanderers here and there, but they tended not to talk too much about their travels, they just mentioned that they’d seen other evidences of civilization, not all very civilized of course. Most of them just seemed to want to keep moving after doing a bit of trading and resupplying. One even hinted at some other “things” lurking around on the surface which didn’t sound too promising.

However, the shelter needs to start finding a stable trading partner, or at least a place to find more supplies, because the vital ones are starting to run out. Some people are asked to volunteer for this exploration mission

It wasn’t surprising Leon volunteered, but Brenda and Todd also volunteered. They were given as much supplies as they could carry and armed with the most “dangerous” things in the shelter. Leon and Todd carry some crowbars and Brenda carries a scalpel. You wonder if that’s really going to be enough though. Chances are some people out there (Quite possibly a lot) are carrying guns on them. Todd and Brenda aren’t going to be much good in a fight anyway, and while Leon is a fighter, even he can’t stop a bullet.

You’re the only one with an “equalizer” around here. Maybe you should hand it over to them to give them a better chance. Though you really don’t want to do that, for various reasons.