“Well, let’s grab the truck and head out to explore the city.  Maybe we can find survivors here?  I mean, there had to have been something like fifty thousand people living here, right?”

“A little more, I think.  But yes, we should be able to find somebody, I think.  Unless they all locked themselves down in the bunkers.” Helen pointed in the general direction of the missile base.

They exited the mall, finding the wall outside had encompassed the entire land area belonging to the mall.  That included the parking lot, stormwater pond, and the grassy areas scattered about the edges.  The space was huge!   The walls were twenty feet high, with ramps on the back side every few hundred feet.  The two massive metal doors that were the only exit Allistor could see swung open as he watched.

Back in the truck, Allistor was driving this time.  Helen was literally riding shotgun in the passenger seat, her weapon in her lap as they exited the gate and she scanned their surroundings for threats or signs of life.  Fuzzy snored in the back seat, his snout resting atop the green doll between his paws.

Allistor was cruising through the airport, the closest major landmark to the mall.  His reasoning being that if he were a survivor here, he’d want a location with a view of the area.  The control tower at the airport would show them the entire city.  There were no skyscrapers in the city – the tallest buildings being about ten stories high.  Most of downtown was low to the ground, the whole city seeming to hunker down against the threat of harsh winter weather that came every year.

A quick stop at the tower turned out to pay off nicely.  They spotted movement in two different areas of town.  To the south, there was a group of people moving through a neighborhood foraging.  They had a horse-drawn wagon that was just beginning to be filled.  “Smart,” Allistor commented.  “Horses make much less noise than engines, and they don’t need gas.  I should have thought of that.”

Helen just nodded, using a pair of binoculars she’d grabbed from one of the controllers’ stations to scan the city.  She focused in on a faint pillar of smoke.  “Looks like a cooking fire over there.” She pointed, and Allistor followed, raising his own binoculars that he’d snagged from the gun shop.

Sure enough, there was a trail of smoke so faint he probably would have missed it.  It was rising from a warehouse district to the southwest of them.  Other buildings blocked their view of the street, and he didn’t see any movement atop any of the roofs.  “How’d you spot that?”

She lowered her glasses and smirked.  “Park ranger, remember?  I’ve spent hundreds of hours atop observation towers looking for fires.”

“Oh, right.”  Allistor blushed slightly, feeling foolish.  “So which place do you want to go first?”