Sudden Meltdown

For some of us, the world hasn’t changed at all since the war.

“Daddy, I’m hungry.” I tugged on daddy’s leg, but he didn’t want to look at me. His hand just weakly brushed across my hair once.

He had twenty dollars crushed within his grip… It was all we had left to our names, and he was desperately staring at a machine that gave out lottery pull tabs.

“Daddy, momma said you need to buy us food with this.”

“D-dd-don’t worry…sweetheart…” his head tilted toward me, a struggling smile on his face. “Daddy won’t lose. We’ll be millionaires after this. I can feel it…”

“Really?” My eyes went wide with hope.

“Yes. Then we can buy all the food we want.” he turned back to the machine. “We can restart our lives. We don’t have to live like gutter rats!”

He inserted the money into the machine, all of it. Exactly twenty tickets came out. Each pull tab had five peel back slips that gave you a chance to win money if you revealed three matching items.

Daddy was crazily peeling back the slips, trying to find the one that was going to give us our million dollars. He burned through five of them so quickly.

To speed up the process, he handed me ten of the tickets.

“Come on… Come on…” he chanted. “God, give me one win! I just need one! Just one in my life!”

Daddy was crying. The more the tickets dwindled away without a winner, the harder his tears fell. I’d never seen him so sad.

I was all the more determined to get us a win now. If this made my daddy cry, I needed to kick its butt and take its money.

With all the goodness I’d been storing up for Christmas time, I channeled my willpower into my hands as I peeled back those slots!

“Cherry… Apple… Banana…”

Not a match…

“Star… Banana… banana…”

Closer, but no match either. I kept trying, but none of these were looking like it was going to work. I was down to my last ticket, and so was daddy.

“Come on!” Daddy shouted.

“Come on!” I joined his battle cry.

“We have to win!”

“We have to win!”

He feverishly peeled the slots back… But he didn’t get anything.

“Damn it!” he shouted in epic defeat. “Goddamnit…”

We weren’t out of this race yet. I still had my last ticket…

“Banana… Banana…” My senses hyphenated as I slowly peeled back the final slot. By sheer willpower, I was determined to make a win for us. I spun three times exactly just to increase my chances.

“Banana!” Three bananas in a row! I jumped up into the air, hopping around like a zoomy rabbit. “Daddy, we win! We win!”

“Huh!?” he stood to his feet, grasping at the card as if it were our ticket to the highlife. “Three bananas is…” he laughed, lowering his arms, tears still fell down his cheeks, “Twenty one dollars…”

We were one dollar closer to a million!

Daddy pulled me in close, hugging me tightly. “My little lucky charm.”

“I’m lucky!” I cheered, doing a power pose once daddy released his embrace.

***

I was staking it out on a hill, watching drone bots patrol around a once upper middle class neighborhood. Dozens of the little metal orbs floated around in search of any thieving scavenger like myself to merc off.

Not far in the distance was a thorium power plant. I didn’t think there were any still operational in the whole state, but it did give a little more insight as to why the Feds left such a large bot presence here.

“Damn…” I blew a bubble out of frustration. “Guess things are about to get interesting.”

If one of those bots spotted me, that meant I'd have all of them for about six miles on my ass in minutes.

I loaded up my rifle with a clip and carried it at the ready.

Using the tree line as cover, I snuck my way down into the neighborhood. I did my best to avoid any of the patrolling bots, but some of them veered off course and kept me on my toes.

Usually, bots didn't change patrol patterns so quickly, so they likely had a control tower nearby updating their systems to act spontaneously. If I had to guess, that was probably set up near the power station.

“This'll be rad…” I smiled as I hid behind a bush, checking to be sure my spray cans were with me.

It would be awesome to sneak into the station and spray things up. Imagine their surprise when they saw my name splattered all over their nice clean walls. It was dangerous, but that’s what made it interesting.

But first, I had to check at least one of these houses for some items. I had a grocery list and needed to get some ‘tributes’ for people.

I needed to be careful when breaking in. Seeing as the thorium power plant was still operational, that meant these homes probably still had their security systems still active as well.

A phone was on my belt. I flipped it open and booted up a hacking app. With a few quick clicks, this house was safe to enter into.

I dove right inside and immediately started inspecting the place for traps or any bots. When I confirmed everything was clear, I got to work scavenging.

Since I’d already worked my way upstairs, I took a look in the first room to my left, which was some kids' room. There usually weren’t many good items to scavenge in children's bedrooms, since kids didn’t have very many valuables. The little Russian doll toys were cute, but they didn’t have much of a market.

There was a different type of toy I was keeping my eye out for, and I found it on a nightstand by the little bed…

“This is a 2-E-S…” In my hands was a tiny portable game console with two screens, one of them being a touchpad. Back when I was little, we all wanted one of these, but I was too poor to own one.

This wasn’t for me though. It was a gift for a little girl named Sadie. One of Rick’s employees.

She was a kid, but a surprisingly fantastic scavenger. Her bite size helped her get into places most of us adult scavengers could only dream of. She was smart on her feet, but easily distracted. Rick kept her on his payroll by dangling shiny things in her face.

“This game system should make a great bartering tool,” I smirked, pocketing the console and a charger for it.

Seeing as this room was pretty empty otherwise, I moved onto the next one, which was the master bedroom and bath. These were the most exciting to dig through, because you could usually find some great things in medicine cabinets and stashes of family jewels…

“Cigarettes?! Hell yeah!”

I didn’t smoke anymore. It was too rough on my singing voice. Bubble gum was a much better alternative. But these babies were going up for sale right away when I got back, because people paid big money for them.

Coupling those sin sticks, there was also some beer in the garage fridge. And thanks to this place staying powered, it was still good… I think. People didn’t care much for expiration dates anymore. They’d chug this stuff even if it made them throw up, that’s how desperate they were for a buzz. They’d probably drink it all and throw up anyways, so who cares?

Since I was in the garage, I marveled at the nearly five car size it was. Who the hell had this many cars? My family could barely afford a clunker that spit up toxic smog every time you hit the brakes. Rich people pissed me off.

One other thing about this room that I actually had to consider taking was the decorations. You’d think this was some sort of American themed museum with how many flags they set across the walls.

On that note, the next person on my shopping list was a patriot guy named Ben. His job for Rick was to inspect and repair broken items that Sadie brought back.

Usually, us scavengers leave behind damaged crap, since it was just dead weight and wouldn’t sell. But Ben turned that junk into something that sold, drastically increasing Rick’s potential range of profit.

Like I mentioned, he’s a patriot for the good ole’ USA, and was very vocal about his desire to bring back the American dream he remembered before the war. Decorating my shop with all these flags would probably get him pretty excited for an interview.

I took down a few of the flags, properly folded them up, then neatly placed them into my backpack. There was a copy of the constitution too, so I rolled it up and placed it next to them.

With a good sense of how patriots usually worked, I inspected the garage a little further and found a cabinet with a pistol and plenty of ammunition for it. If my memory serves, this was an Akarov pistol. I think this thing was a cold war era gun. Regardless, it was worth holding onto.

“So far so good…” I popped another bubble. The flavor was starting to run out.

Suddenly there was a huge explosion outside. The force felt like an earthquake, shaking the world to pieces. It was so loud, that I swore to God I thought a nuke just got dropped.

Bot siren’s started wailing loudly following the blast. I ran outside and saw huge plumes of colorful smoke rising up near the power station.

“Oh shit… Oh God…”

My heart stopped. If that reactor was having a meltdown, I was dead. No wonder nobody wanted to come here. Who’d want to explore a place that could go nuclear at any minute?

“-Target sighted!-”

“-Lethal force has been authorized!-”

Crap… They spotted me and a swarm of drones was blocking my way out of here. I was between a real rock and a hard place.

There wasn’t any time to think. I just started sprinting in whatever direction seemed the safest.