2nd Earth: Shortfall Read Online Free Page A

tells me that they usually light a fire outside and light the candles from that before coming in. I ask her, “If you don’t have matches, how do you start the fire for cooking?” She says there is a flame that burns all the time, everyone goes there to get fire. She doesn’t seem to want to leave my side for more than a minute or two and wants to hold my hand or arm as much as possible. Tim teases me that I seem to have found someone who may actually be attracted to the strong, dumb type. I tell him I will ask her if she has any sisters that are blind that wouldn’t mind someone as ugly as he is. He tells me that’s pretty cold, true, but cold nonetheless. We ask the older man what happened to the city. He says he doesn’t really know much, but will be happy to share what he does know.
    He says that when he was a boy, he and his parents lived in the city and were very happy. Then one day everything changed and there were explosions all over the place. His parents had built a bomb shelter in the early sixties just in case of nuclear war. Well, when the explosions started they went into the bomb shelter and waited for it to stop. His dad had a radiation tester in the shelter and they waited until the radiation levels were at least in a livable range. I didn’t think there was such a thing, but apparently there is because he is still alive. He says he was in his teens when all this happened. When they came out of the shelter, there were others, although not many. There were dead people all over the place or at least skeletons of what had been people. There was very little damage to the buildings except where some of the bombs had actually hit. He says his father told him that most of the world had developed a bomb that would destroy people and leave the land and the buildings pretty much intact. That way when there was a war it would not cost so much to clean up after it.
    He doesn’t know what year this is, but figures it must be in the 1980’s or early 1990’s. That doesn’t help us, when we left on leave it was 2009. Where did the last twenty years go and about eight million people, not counting the rest of the world? He tells us that the young people we see are the generation after his. We ask how most people die thinking that he is going to say radiation poisoning. He says mostly when they are too slow to outrun the predators, they die. He adds that most of the predators are two legged. He says he heard we met some of them today and he thanks us for helping Dayna. She is his daughter and he worries every time she goes out because the other families, as they call them, want her for breeding. If they catch her, the life she would have would be a living hell, being passed from one man to another until they finally kill her. I’m glad we came along when we did.
    Tim and I are speculating whether we have walked into some parallel dimension or another world somewhere. It can’t be a time warp because this never happened on the earth we live on. According to history there was always a threat of nuclear war for most of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, but it never happened. The governments are too civilized for that. They prefer to kill people in smaller bunches over several decades. Apparently much of the technology that helped people thrive back then has been lost. It’s not the people’s fault. They have just never been shown how to use what is all around them. We feel sorry for these people, but like it or not we have to try to find our way back to the world we know. The only place we can think of that we may be able to do that is to go back to the subway station and back-track our steps. We are getting very tired again so we ask Dayna where we will be able to sleep tonight.
    She smiles, and says that her sister would like to sleep with Tim and she and I will be using the section at the end of the room. Tim smiles like a cat that got the canary. I tell her we shouldn’t sleep together. People should be