A JAG-Sims3 Story
Author: Haruo Chikamori
Rating: M
Classification: Angst, Romance.
Spoilers: N/A
Summary: Continuity of Government (COG) – a stark term for starting over after a holocaust the likes of which is hoped will never ever happen. This is a what-could-happen if the button was ever pressed.
DISCLAIMER: The characters Harm Rabb, Jr., Sarah "Mac" Mackenzie, Meg Austin, AJ Chegwidden, et al. belong (in concept if not name) to CBS/Bellisarius. Animal and all OC characters are the property of Heather and Hugo Chikamori. No profit is being made from this story, nor is any infringement intended.
------------------------------------------------Chapter Twelve - Making It Through Winter
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We were well into winter when the chicks arrived and between that and making sure that we were able to take care of them and our own selves, we were kept quite busy. We were still able to find time for our hobbies; Matt painting and me writing. It kept our minds off our predicament and allowed us to allow our imaginations to run free; although whether that was a good thing or not, it remained to be seen. We were living in a "nightmare" and every time we went topside, it was apparent. Luckily we were fenced in and that took care of the wild things that were running around and we were safe; evidently they hadn't figured out yet, how to burrow underneath the fence.
At night we could hear the wind howling in the distance with an eerie call; one could believe that they were restless spirits of those lost in the war. We could spook ourselves by looking up at the sky and seeing the greenish tint of the clouds going by. Was it the Aurora Borealis caused by electrically charged solar particles hitting our magnetosphere, causing the sky to light up as particles in our atmosphere collided with the incoming particles to produce this eerie lightshow or was it the result of spectral spirits? The love of science in me warred with my more primitive reactions. Either way, Matt and I figured that it probably wasn't in our best interests to hang out topside at night.
When Matt and I became an item, all our cautions and inhibitions fell away. We only had each other to lean on and well, life became a series of wake-ups; go to sleeps and in between it was eat, paint and write and make the most of each and every day.
And I became a lot more forward with my wants and needs than most women. In my dad's day, it was the man that made the moves, but there were times when we needed to take comfort from closeness and I made no hesitation in making sure that Matt knew what I wanted and needed from him.
Besides...it did keep us clean too. ~smirk~
Living in Nightmare City; we trusted no-one outside our immediate fenceline. In fact, when I went to see the proprietor of the consignment shop, he was making noises about coming back within the wire as well, since we and a handful of others appeared to be the only ones frequenting his shop and he was getting nervous.
The tourists were in and out of this town, however, no sign of the criminal gang that was running this town was visible. Maybe they were intimidated by the fact that we had automatic weapons, but things were peaceful; within the wire and when we went outside the wire, we were always armed. Warm Springs; post-apocalypse, was a nightmare and not a place to make a permanent home in. And it certainly was no place to raise a family in, either.
We generally kept a low profile, we stayed underground, with daily trips topside to collect eggs and milk. Since it was winter and the pond was frozen, we couldn't fish, nor could we harvest apples. We had made a huge dent in our apple quota that we had set to move from here. The big hurdle was the number of rainbow trout. That would determine just how long we stayed in this place.
So we just did what we could and worked our tails off doing what we needed to do. When the weather was too bitterly cold; we painted and wrote. Evidently some publishing companies survived the war and were still publishing books. Since we had lost so much in the war, we were just lucky that there were people still willing to indulge in a fantasy or two, it kept us in simoleons and thus, in turn, in food, since the market-owner could then earn himself a living. We were just lucky that they had decided to set up shop here. Whether they were going to turn Nightmare City back into Warm Springs; I don't know, and frankly we were out of there the first chance that we get.
During one of our armed excursions we managed to appropriate a weight machine from what used to be an encampment of militia who had a very interesting bunker setup, when we broke through the wall (Matt of course had rapped his knuckles on the wall just to check and see if it was a false wall), it led to a set of stairs leading down into a well-developed maze of bunker rooms. And it was there in that bottom floor that we found the weight machines; we just opted to take one, because that was all that we needed. It would get our fitness level up and I needed to work on my upper body strength if I was going to lift that one hundred pound pack. They may have had graded physical requirements in the military according to gender, but in the aftermath of the war, everyone had to do what they could.
One of the highlights of our week was finding out that the sink decided to spring a leak. I had to laugh watching Matt sweat and swear over fixing that sink. Well it was a good thing that he did, because the last thing that we wanted in the dead of winter inside an underground home, was to be flooded out.
Meanwhile I figured out more chemical responses to enemy attack, like Stink Juice. That would send them running. Nothing like the gastro-intestinal juices of a skunk ramped up one hundred percent to make the general area smell like the back end of a skunk's rectal-crevice.
Matt was ramping up his cooking skills and made us some delicious repasts. Ah...I'm so lucky; a guy that can cook, clean and fix things. A rarity in this day and age. Or perhaps not so much since we all seem to be getting back to basics...as of late.
And I whiled away the hours (when it was too cold to do much of anything) by writing tomes. It also kept the ghosts at bay; or the thoughts that lingered about the way my parents died.
Though of course all that writing on a low-end computer caused the machine to crash and crash hard it did. Luckily for me, my man was able to fix it. Lucky me. Not only can he cook, clean, and fix things; he's also a computer tech. How lucky can a girl get?
Ruggedly handsome, muscular...and artistic. Wow, what a combination.
Lucky for me, I was smart enough to snap him up while he was still on the market.
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