Well the meeting of the last people left in post-nuclear Illinois hope you enjoy! <<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>

Chapter 9

When Dashed woke up sometime during the afternoon and looked to his side to see Olivia eating a mouse that she had recently killed.

“Good afternoon Olivia,” Dashed yawned.

At the sound of her name Olivia sprang up, stretched, and walked next to Dashed. Dashed laid belly down on the ground to write. Olivia plopped next to him and laid on her back. After a good scratching Dashed got his book out and started to journal

April 8, 2016

A lot has happened within the last day. For one I discovered a note that is absolute proof that someone else is still alive and I also know where to find her. All I have to do is find a town called Bolder then meet the person at the post office at 12. The girl’s name is Carla and she apparently has nothing better to do than fix up houses and provided supplies to people. However not all news is good, I ran into a town filled with feral foxes and they nearly killed me. However a brave fox lead them away from me and I was able to escape with my life. This same fox awoke me after I passed out on the road. I decided to name the fox Olivia. We are now housed up in a house not far from Bolder we can probably get to it within a day or two.

As he wrote Olivia jumped on his back and put her front paws on his back. It was nice to finally have a pet again.

“Ok Olivia, I’m going to need to get up now.”
In response the fox just laid down entirely on his back and nuzzled the same way a cat does.
“Seriously we need to get going now.”
Nothing, no response, no movement, nothing.
“Come ON, I know you can understand me.”
Once again, nothing.
“Ok that’s it, I’m going to get up in five second whether or not you’re on my back. Five, Four, Three, Two,….”
And just as Dashed was about to say “ONE” Olivia jumped off his back with the equivalent of a fox smirk on its face.
“Very funny.”
The fox just scratched her ear in response and looked at Dashed once more.
“Look we need to get going, I need to get to Bolder to meet Carla.”
Olivia twirled around and wagged her tail. Dashed took that for a “Sure let’s get going.” Dashed headed to his pack and refilled his bottles with water and headed out. As he started to walk the voice talked to him once more.
Only 2 more miles till you find out if Carla is a guardian angel or raging psychopath.
On second thought it might have been the voice of reason; nevertheless Dashed kept walking with a new buddy right next to him. The sun was a little more forgiving today, even with this though Dashed would have killed for some AC or at least 5 seconds in a working freezer.

As Dashed and Olivia walked the sun seemed to set rather early, a lot more early than usual, just another sign that Dashed needed to find shelter and stock up on food for the winter months. It was time for Dashed to face the facts, summer was ending and he needed to be ready. If Dashed could find Carla and she had supplies he might be able to make it through the next winter. The first winter he spent alone hadn’t been planned very well, he was down to half-rations by the middle of winter and that was something he did not want to repeat. He sat in that house in Field for days being cold, hungry, and sleep deprived because there were some nights he didn’t trust himself to go to sleep on the fear he might not wake up in the morning.
After a few hours of walking slowly, watching Olivia go into bushes and thinking each time she would never come back, and a gentle breeze guiding him the whole way he finally reached an old sign with this imprinted on it: Welcome to Bolder home of the Buckaroos.

“So we’re finally here huh?”
The town didn’t look like much it had three maybe four businesses and the sign said that only 2000 people lived here before the nukes so not much going on here. The few towns that were there had broken glass and one had a caved in roof. He started walking down the street, looking for the post office. Finally after five minutes he saw the post office. It was the one building that didn’t have anything wrong with it at all. It was kind of strange that the girl didn’t have arrows pointing at it but he supposed she had her reasons.

He sat down and started to pet Olivia he sat there for what seemed to be hours although it was probably just a few minutes when he heard, “I told you so”
Dashed growled and stopped petting Olivia
“I told you that you would find nothing here and did you listen? Noooo you just had to believe she was real.”
“SHUT UP, she’ll be here I know she will.”
Oh really how do you know that she won’t try to kill you? If she really wanted to keep you alive she would’ve told you about Engin
“No I don’t think she was trying to kill us just shut up would you? I’m pretty sure that last night was a huge mistake. I bet she even didn’t know about all those animals.”

“Stop right there!” shouted a female voice

Dashed turned around, pulled his gun out of its holster and saw that right in the door way was a girl pointing a shotgun right at him, her fur was wild and unkempt, her shirt was dirty, and her body was one that had been developed through hardship and full of lean muscle; she was the most beautiful thing he had seen in over three years, her steely eyes were complimented by the shotgun she held in her hands and her ears laid back. Her face however was heavenly; the face was now painted with anger but her angelic like features still shown through. He heard Olivia growl at the poor girl, he knew had to take control before things got out of hand he struggled to say something, all his hope and sanity was resting on what he was about to say, to his utter horror he heard himself say to the one person left in the United Sates and possibly the world was, “Nice gun”
“Stupid, Stupid, Stupid,” he though, “Now she’s not only going to kill me but probably think I’m some sort of psychopath.”

“Thanks,” he heard Carla say in utter amazement. “it’s a Winchester 12 Gauge, loaded with a fifty cal. Slug, more than enough to blow your head off. What about yours?”

“It’s a Browning 9mm semi-auto, loaded with hollow point rounds that basically turns to shrapnel the moment it touches your body. Are you Carla?”

“Oh thank GOD,” Carla exclaimed, she lowered the gun, exhaled with visible relief, and then slung the gun over her shoulder. Dashed lowered his gun but didn’t holster it just yet.

“You have no idea how happy I am to see you,” Carla exclaimed, “ I was worried this whole time that I was just wasting my time fixing houses and painting billboards”

“Ya,” said dashed, “I stayed at one of your houses, thanks for the plumbing by the way, I needed a shower.”

“No problem, but I did want to ask you a question.”

“What’s that?”
“Who were you talking to?”

Dashed looked to his left and saw Olivia staring right back at him. Suddenly he was kindof hesitant to tell her about the voice in his head, after all he was probably the first thing that hasn’t tried to kill her in a long time and he didn’t exactly want her to feel like she got the short end of the stick.

“Oh, that? I was just talking to my fox, I got kind of stressed so I yelled at her, sorry if I seemed insane for a second.”
“Well anyways, let me show you around town, you have no idea how long I’ve waited for this day!”
“Yes I do Carla,” thought dashed raising his head to look up to the sky, “More then you could ever imagine.”