RJ noticed a drop of blood appear at the end of Draper's nose, and soon his nose was dripping. The General picked up a blood-covered cloth and held it under his nose. “Sorry about that. Many of us are experiencing this kind of thing. As I was saying, we still have contact with each of the emergency shelters. We've lost contact with all foreign governments. There are only two state governments we can still communicate with. To the best of our knowledge, all the hospitals are closed or abandoned. We've had to make brief trips out of the shelter to search for food and supplies, and consequently, we're all sick. Two nights ago, it was Matt Fitch's turn to go. He never returned.

“I know the original plan was for you to contact each of the shelters once you woke up; the problem is that they only had enough supplies for twenty years. It looks as if they're going to run out of supplies twenty to forty years before you wake up and start looking for them. They'll have had to leave their shelters many years before it was safe, so I don't know what you'll find. I wish you luck.” With one last, regretful smile, Draper signed off.

There had been no other messages for almost twenty-two years. Then a face RJ had never seen before appeared on the viewscreen. The man appeared to be about fifty years old and had unnaturally pale skin. “I'm Greg Daniels, site leader of Shelter Seventeen located in the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Over the past twenty years, we've lost twenty percent of our shelter's inhabitants to deaths from miscellaneous causes, or because they left the shelter of their own volition. In two instances, it was because the Senate voted to banish them because of crimes committed inside the shelter. These occurrences allowed us to stretch out our food reserves for about another eighteen months. Despite this, we're down to a two-day food supply. In three days, we'll have to head outside and take our chances. Our instruments show the radiation levels were much higher than expected and they've been decreasing at a much slower rate than we were expecting. When we leave here, we'll all be exposed to radiation levels that are still in the red zone. Good luck to you.”

There were messages from fourteen other shelters, all with similar stories. All had found ways to extend their food supplies for a period between two to ten years. Most were sending out foraging parties to look for food and bring it back. The more RJ listened, the more depressed she became.

Eventually, she stopped listening to the messages and closed her eyes, resting her head back against the chair.