– Fall 2030 Washington D.C.

Grady Vance is in his early fifties, lean and wiry due to his self-sufficiency. His face is deeply lined, not just from age, but from a life lived outdoors, and now sometimes underground, with a permanent squint that suggests he’s always calculating something. His beard is thick and sun-bleached, streaked with gray and his hair is tied back in a rough ponytail. As a practical man, he has no time to spend worrying about his hair.

He wears a patched-up canvas jacket over a faded flannel shirt; both layered for utility. His boots are heavy, worn and dust caked. A wide-brimmed hat shades his face, and a pair of tinted goggles hang around his neck; used when he ventures out during peak sunlight. A worn, frayed backpack to carry the essentials is supported by his shoulders. Grady’s shelter is a testament to his ideology built by hand, off-grid and fiercely independent. It’s reinforced with salvaged steel, buried deep, and powered by a mix of solar panels and a wind turbine he scavenged and rebuilt himself. Inside, it’s cluttered but functional; tools manuals canned goods and a shortwave radio he uses to monitor the world, though he never speaks to anyone. The one thing he brought for pleasure was his prized collection of books. Primarily consisting of books written by Ayn Rand, though a mix of Robert Heinlein and Neil Stephenson were added for good measure.

Grady is skeptical of outsiders, but not cruel. He believes in personal liberty, self-reliance and minimal interference. He keeps a rifle slung over his shoulder, whose intention is not intimidation, but because he believes preparedness is a virtue.

He is also a man of contradictions, as evidenced by the fact that he once worked for the federal government, an entity that he hated. And as he has discovered recently, despite the gruff exterior and the strong belief in self-reliance, he has found these last two years since “The Event” incredibly lonely.

Feeling a bit stir crazy on this morning, Grady decides to head out from his shelter to look for salvageable metal, or game, or anything to keep his mind off the fact that he is alone. These feelings are driving him crazy!

First, he cautiously lifts the hatch, peaking out with shotgun at the ready. Though he has not met any raiders to this point, he still feels they could be out there, getting more desperate as the days, weeks and years go along. Satisfied that no one is around, Grady pops quickly to the surface, with a nimbleness that belies his age.

He sets off, in a randomly chosen direction. At this point, Grady has explored in all directions from his shelter. He hasn’t found much hint of other humans, though he suspects that there are other shelters near to his own. Perhaps those people were better prepared for “The Event” than he was. In this case preparedness didn’t matter much, Grady’s background, first on the family farm, then in the military as an engineer, had left him with the requisite skills to survive.

His shelter was makeshift, and hastily assembled, but with the amount of free time he had on his hands he had made it respectable. It was clear that he was less fearful, indeed he wasn’t fearful at all, than others to spend time outside in this wintery hell hole. That made scavenging for necessary parts much easier. He had even found stores near to his shelter that had many HEPA filters for his makeshift air filtration system!

As he walked haphazardly across the snow, the thought of his unpreparedness crept back into his mind. How had he not seen this coming? He had several friends around the country that might be best described by the term “preppers”. They continuously nagged him about the end times and how he should have MRE’s for long term food supply, and of course an underground shelter. He had always laughed it off. In fact, he had always felt these guys were a bit on the crazy end. He didn’t think that anymore.

Fortunately, Grady has all he needs for some time. Game is certainly getting more scarce as time goes on, but there are plenty of canned foods to satisfy him once the meat runs out. The excess meat is properly stored in a hidden location about a quarter of a mile from the shelter, while the cans, primarily of Chef Boyardee, lie within the shelter. The constant winter helps to keep the meat frozen.

So, Grady is fine in that respect. And of course he is able to keep himself sheltered from the elements. But the lack of human contact means he is constantly in his head, which is often itself a scary prospect. All sorts of deranged thoughts enter his mind, and there is no one available to ground him in reality.

It is because of this that he is contemplating potentially hazarding a journey to see one of those crazy friends of his. The danger is ever present, but each day that passes makes the rewards seem so much greater than the risks. Of course, he knows that the greatest risk would probably be when he arrives. Would his friend think he is there to steal supplies? He might be shot at first sight, hell it is probably what he would do if he were being honest with himself. Would his friend even recognize him at this point?

Grady stopped and looked around. He realized this was further than he had ever ventured from the shelter in this direction. The snow-covered buildings looked different than what he was used to. How long had he been walking on “auto-pilot”? Normally he was quite deliberate in everything he did, he generally carefully monitored the sky to get a sense of time and made mental notes of landmarks on his journey’s. Today he had done no such thing.

If he had to guess, he had probably been walking aimlessly for about 3 hours. If there had been any game, or usable materials on this journey he hadn’t noticed them.

“Damn!” Grady shouted aloud, fully aware there was no one around to hear him.

How could I have been so foolish? Wandering about without a purpose is how people get themselves killed. He turned around and saw the clear path from his boot prints in the snow. He looked up at the darkness of the sky. At least there was no storm on the horizon. He would easily be able to make his way back along his tracks.

“Well since I am here, I might as well explore. I am sure there must be something of use in these buildings.” He said aloud to himself. Sometimes it felt good to hear a human voice, even if it was his own.

He walked to a building with a shattered window and carefully used his boot to knock away the shards of broken glass. No need to get unnecessary cuts this far from the shelter, though he certainly could make camp for the night if he needed to. He maneuvered his way inside and pulled out a flashlight. The lack of power and the soot filled sky meant the building was quite dark, so he pulled out his flashlight for the first time today.

As he poked around, he found a gold mine of sorts. This building had been a store of some kind, the signs were hard to decipher, but it didn’t matter to him what chain store it was. He reached down and grabbed some brand-new packs of lithium-ion batteries, carefully searching for the C and D batteries to go inside his collection of flashlights he had in the shelter. He quickly slung the backpack off his shoulders and stuffed a few of these packages inside. He preferred the lithium versions because they seemed to perform better under the winter conditions than the older alkaline type. His stash had been running low as of late, since he had scavenged most of the ones nearer to the shelter.

He also found a creature comfort, some Reese’s peanut butter cups. He grabbed a few packs of those to sling into his backpack as well.

While he was happy with his great luck in finding this place, it also reinforced his loneliness. If he was able to walk 3 hours away from his shelter and find a place that was untouched by human hands for all this time, was he truly alone? How many people were there around that had survived “The Event”?

At least he had the comfort of his radio, he knew for sure that he wasn’t the only person who had survived, but it sure felt like there wasn’t anyone around him for miles on end. Maybe people were simply too afraid to come here because of “The Event”. Maybe he was the only one foolish enough to stay. And maybe that was a good thing? It did make survival easier by not having to deal with other people. And for God’s sake this was his home!

Grady removed himself from this line of thought and went back to looking around to see what useful things he could carry out. He found plenty of things, some that were simply too large to carry. He did have a nice makeshift sled stored near his shelter, but that wasn’t going to do him any good now. This made him wish he had paid closer attention to the direction he had been heading in. On his way back home, he was going to have to keep a close eye on the directions so he could back track later.

Once he was satisfied with his haul, Grady found his way back out of the building. He had loaded himself down with snacks and batteries and was ready to look around to see if there were other stores that had anything of use to him. He walked a bit further, maybe another half a mile or so, and he found what had once been a large box store of some kind. As he got closer, he realized that it must have been either a Lowe’s or a Home Depot. The name was all covered with snow at this point, and it really didn’t matter to him. It was what was inside that would be of use.

Grady started imagining what he would be able to do with the lumber and hardware that was sure to be available inside. Perhaps he could give his shelter a makeover? Maybe he could build a proper storage unit for his game? Plenty of ideas came to mind. And it also made him wonder why he hadn’t ventured further before. All this time spent cutting boards out of old buildings and such probably hadn’t been all that necessary.

As he got closer to the building something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. Off in the distance something seemed to be half sticking out of the snow. At first it looked like it might be some game that he could add to his “freezer”.  Grady quickly grabbed his gun and raised the scope to his eye and took aim. But as he was about to pull the trigger, he realized something that wasn’t game, that was a human.

Grady kept his gun aimed at his newly found target, but now he crept closer. He shouted out to the person, telling them to raise their hands. There was no response. He continued walking closer, cautiously and with his gun aimed, half expecting this individual to pop out of the snow and shoot at him.

Once he was in close range he shouted again to the individual. Still no response, no movement whatsoever. He continued onward, now within an arm’s length.  He reached down; gun still trained on the person and grabbed ahold of the arm he could see. The arm was limp, no response to it. Immediately he realized this person must be dead, though this was a recent occurrence.