End of Days (An Apocalypse Sims 3 Fanfic)
Still debating on whether to beat my muse over the head or not. Here's attempt number 2. _____________________________________________________________ End of Days - Prologue Sunset Valley – The E...
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Sunset Valley – End of Days
Chapter One – "Laissez-Faire"
River’s Journal – Sunday, June 18th
We moved to a nice spot over-looking the ocean. According to Haruo it carries a lot of potential. Though what we’re going to do with it is still up in the air. Across the way there is a nice park that has a large pond in it. I’m sure at the very least, we can fish for our dinner. Which is pretty much what we might as well do since Haruo has gathered together enough wood to provide us with a camp-fire.
Fishing has to be one of the most boring activities someone can engage in. Fishing-rod in hand, one stands at the edge of a pond, after casting, just waiting for the fish to bite. It could take minutes...or hours. Meanwhile, you either turn your brain off or you end up lost in your thoughts until, if you are lucky, a tug on the line alerts you to the fact that you have been successful at getting a fish on the hook. I could think of better ways to while away the time than standing around waiting for a fish to bite.
But for us, this is survival. Sure, we have §18,623.00 but we need to have at least §100,000.00 to start building our first accommodations. And that is going to take a lot of work. We don’t have a gem-cutting machine nor any idea where the gemstones can be found, let alone where we can take them. For right now, the only thing that we can do is fish, sell our extras, pick flowers and make sure that we can make enough to make a hut of some sort that can fit five or six people, depending on if Bebe gets a boyfriend or something like that.
Right now, what we have is a property...that is going to need to be kept up. And that’s the hard part. It’s hard to do the things necessary to keep a property in tip-top shape when you have absolutely very little money and everything is being saved to build a home on it.
Our first day involved the move and then pretty much immediately we went into collecting mode. Haruo decided that he was going to start a garden for us, planting the seeds that he had in his pockets and then afterwards went hunting in order for us to have meat. Bebe, Clarissa and I went fishing since nothing beats hours on end staring at the water reflecting sunlight until you nearly go blind. Phil joined us down at the pond.
At this point, Sunset Valley was a placid town, not too large in any case, but a rather sizable one with enough amenities to satisfy those who wanted something to do. The beach was not too far away, and the town core, Central Park, was right in the center with the shops and the halls of town government bordering it. It was good enough of a town for us to not want to move away at any rate – at least, for now. For me, it was because Mom still lived here. For Haruo, it was because I wanted to stay.
Haruo’s truck was what was able to move things that were large for consignment. It was lucky that he had one or we would be very hard-up for doing much of anything. So he would be the one that would take large objects over to consignment. The rest of us were stuck to taking gemstones and smelting or collecting foodstuffs. But at least with five of us combined tackling problems that cropped up, we certainly wouldn’t be starving.
Haruo kept himself busy by planting things and finding seeds as well as locating gemstones that he would later cut. And there were things that he would be able to sell to the store. As he gardened and harvested, his skill with gardening grew more and more and he was able to find fruits and vegetables of higher quality, so he would sell the lower end quality food thus giving us a much better quality garden in the end.
We, less Haruo since he was busy at the time, took advantage of free food. With a sumptuous buffet set out in front of us thanks to a picnic basket...well, why not? It would take care of at least one meal. Phil and I had a hamburger while Bebe and Clarissa decided on hot-dogs. After all, if someone was going to make that available to us, then we were going to partake.
When we came back to our property on the evening of the first day that we were living on our property, we were so exhausted that we, the girls that is, laid out our towels on the ground and had a nice nap.
Phil decided that instead of laying out a towel and lying on the ground attracting grass fleas, he was going to go and fish some more. Well, whatever turns his crank.
For sleeping, we had tents. Clarissa and Bebe decided to take one tent, Haruo and I took the center tent – after all, Haruo was my boyfriend and well, nothing beat beating a chill in the air and keeping the cold of a morning away than a warm body next to me. Phil on the other hand took the third tent and had to sleep solo. With the five of us, there was one person who was the odd one out who had nothing other than the blanket to chase away the night chills and the morning cold.
Monday morning brought a cloudy morning, but by about three in the morning, the starry skies had returned and we woke up to a nice bright and presumably going to be really hot day, which seemed to be unusual since about mid-morning, I awoke to a thunderclap which was an anomaly in an otherwise cloudless day.
You know they say that sometimes a bolt strikes out of the blue. 😁
(to be continued)
Sunset Valley – End of Days
Chapter One – "Laissez-Faire" - Part IIRiver's Journal (Week of June 18 - 24)
Once we had breakfast, I went hunting for vegetables and fruits to help Haruo with his garden. After all the sooner we grew our garden, the sooner that we wouldn’t have to worry about starving. After all, we were conserving our monetary resources and saving up as much as we could gather. Raiding other people’s gardens helped with much of the resources that we needed in terms of food.
Phil, on the other hand, decided that he was going to continue his dumpster excursions and try to see if he could find us a kitchen table. So far all it’s yielded are gemstones that people have thrown away and some kitchen chairs. It’s amazing what people throw out. And most of what he found was perfectly usable with a little cleaning. I really don’t think that I could personally dive head-first into a dumpster without feeling like I was going to empty the contents of my stomach all over the ground, but Phil somehow manages. Clarissa, surprisingly, decided to join him in that escapade. Well, I guess, we’ll manage somehow.
After he came home, Phil mentioned that he went to see the guy over at the consignment store and he also talked to Sue Scotch at Aleister’s Elixir Shoppe. There he was able to turn in quite a lot of things including the toads that he’d had from yesterday’s fishing.
In between my hunting for harvestables and usable seeds, I got the urge to set off one of the fireworks over at Central Park. Luckily for me there was no fine for doing so, but it certainly was pretty.
Phil had cobbled together a make-shift toilet and shower so both Haruo and I were able to get clean. As well, it provided us a little privacy which was sorely lacking in having to live in tents and do everything right close by each other. It’s always reassuring to have other folks with us, but it also provides us with practically no privacy to be together and with the stressors that we have right now, time for just the two of us is what Haruo and I need.
But Haruo is saying that we have to get underground...soon. The broadcasts that we’ve been listening to on the radio have been unsettling to say in the least. The Soviet Politburo has been quietly maneuvering to take out Gorbachev and move their pro-old regime in which will result in the resumption of hostilities between the Western and Eastern blocs. And what Haruo fears is that the resumption of hostilities will go hot, in other words, armed conflict. And if two super-powers go at it, then we are royally screwed. I hope that Haruo’s fears have no basis in reality, but I fear that they do.Sunset Valley – End of Days
Chapter One – "Laissez-Faire" - Part IIIRiver's Journal (Week of June 18 - 24)
Bebe, Phil and Clarissa were over in the park making sure that they were able to fish in order to supplement our foodstuffs. Fish would be necessary for us in the coming days as the news grew more dire. The news was telling us that Soviet bloc T-72s and T-64s were massing on the East German border with West Germany. And the Soviet Union was massing for an all-out push through the Fulda Gap. It appeared as though the Soviets were deciding that now was the opportune moment to take over Europe and NATO was not going to allow for that since elements of the V Corps of the US Army, VIIIth Armored Division and the XIVth Armored Division were moving their M1A1s into place to combat the 8th Guards, and the 1st Guards Tanks of the Soviet Army. This was not a great time to be nonchalant about the world situation.
Meanwhile Mikhail Gorbachev was doing his level best to rout the hardliners in his cabinet who were making preparations to go to war. The Soviet General Secretary did not want war with the West. But his top military leaders did. Unfortunately, it was a matter of who was in a position to make decisions and that would ultimately dictate where the chips fell.We knew that Sunset Valley was a primary target since we had a military base not far north of where we were. CFB Gnome was the primary launch site for Canadian Space Exploration missions that weren’t out of Cape Canaveral down in the United States. That meant potentially that one of the big ones was headed our direction. And they probably wouldn’t hesitate to hit our seat of government power either. Sunset Valley’s city hall was bound to be turned into a baked charnel house.
With all this, all Haruo and I had were each other and despite the ominous news, we were doing what we could to remain focused on the task at hand which was to get underground as quickly as possible. Haruo was running himself ragged trying to accumulate seeds that we were going to need and fish that we were going to be able to eat.
+We would discuss things over a campfire while the others were off doing what they were doing. I knew I was in denial of the events happening half a world over and so were the others. But I knew that Haruo was focused on a goal for the first time in his life and that also galvanized me into action. We had no other choice. I could see the rest of the town had decided their own fate. Nobody was doing anything other than to say, “We don’t know what’s going to happen and by the time it happens, it’s going to be too late to do anything about it anyways.” Haruo, on the other hand, was focused on our survival in the days ahead and that he was going to make sure that he came out the other end of this pending disaster unfazed and intact. He was a far-cry from the indecisive, hen-pecked individual that had escaped his mother’s clutches.
I knew the rest were doing what they could and well, that was all that anyone could ask of them. As long as they didn’t descend into caterwauling madness due to the mental strain that was imposed on all of us, things would keep moving forward.
Our early morning meetings were designed to make the most efficient use of our day’s activities towards getting us prepared for what was to come. And Haruo was relentless in his goals. If we were not doing our part, he made it very clear as to what needed to happen for it to improve. I had never seen him like this, but I could feel the desperation behind it, the attitude that “I’m not going to die in this and neither are the people who are closest to me.”
We ate and got busy with the things we had to do. Clarissa headed to the Falls just over the hill from the military base to do some fishing while Phil went dumpster diving to look for usable furniture to give us something to sit on when we were tired. Haruo had to go talk to someone regarding the plans for the site that we were going to build our bunker on. Even though we had the impending doom to contend with, we still had to follow government regulations and building codes. Ridiculous though the bureaucracy may seem, it would serve to protect us in the end. Haruo, on the other hand, decided that he was building over and above code regulations. When the code dictated two feet for wall thickness, he insisted on four feet with inlaid lead sheeting to keep our shelter from radiation seepage from the outside.
I appeared to be coming down with a massive case of hay-fever. It was annoying, but one had to just work through it.
When Haruo came back, he had a great big pot, I recognized it as Lord Vladimir’s Conjuring Cauldron. He did say that on the other side, we could use it as a big pot for stew. But he also did some conjuring for gemstones. That was going to be our quick way to make money enough to build a bunker quickly. If we could get some very valuable gemstones, we could get them cut quickly and make some money on consignment.
Sue Scotch over at Aleister’s had gotten her hands on a RBG Gem Cutter which was an advanced gem cutting machine that also smelted metals. It was far more advanced than the Gem-U-Cut which helped matters immensely insofar as profit. And she’d already gotten back some of the money that she’d spent for it because it wasn’t cheap. Frankly, it cost §50,000.00 and that was a huge chunk of money to spend on such a machine.
Towards the late afternoon, early evening, Clarissa, Phil and Bebe came back and then headed across the street to the park to do some fishing to make sure that our stockpiles were large enough to make sure we had enough to eat while we were stuck in the bunker. I informed Haruo that we may have to use some of that money in order to make sure that we topped up our meat-stocks.
Towards nightfall, Haruo did some more conjuring to see what gemstones we could get and hopefully we would have enough that we could start building.
Sunset Valley – End of Days
Chapter One – "Laissez-Faire" - Part IVRiver's Journal (Week of June 18 - 24)
We were exhausted to the point where we all fell asleep rather quickly, the tents weren’t much more comfortable than sleeping on open ground but at least it provided a layer between us and the grass fleas which seemed to love quite a number of us and it made it very itchy. We found that we were scratching constantly to try and deal with the bites that we had received from them.
Morning was early. Going to sleep at around 8:45PM meant that we were up at four in the morning. The sun doesn’t come up until at least five in the morning so we still had an hour of pre-dawn and well, Haruo was up the earliest of all of us. At least as far as I knew since he was quiet slipping out of our tent.
I soon followed after he headed out to do some hunting to fill our meat-stocks. He was getting better at it and as such, was able to nail down quite a few steaks. Don’t ask me what animals they came from, but at least it was meat that we could utilize after some good solid cooking over the camp fire. We made sure that the meat was well-done.
We had more immediate concerns than the pending war in Europe and the potential for it to spark into actual conflict. Namely the fact that we needed to gather enough money to build us a deep subterranean bunker well out of the blast zone. We’d already known that Sunset Valley was a target for a nuclear attack, due to the military base’s proximity, so what we needed to do was protect ourselves.
Bebe and Clarissa were next up and got themselves breakfast from the make-shift fridge that Phil had managed to cobble together from stones and an old refrigerator that no longer had a door. Somehow even though it appeared as though Phil was a few bricks short of a full-load, he was a whiz when it came to making things work. For that we were eternally grateful. At least, if anything, it kept our perishables cold.
The sun rose on a rather cloudy day, but like most summer days, the morning mist and haziness cleared to bright sunshine. It was far better than rain as far as I was concerned which was mostly what consisted of British Columbia weather in the spring-time. At least rain during the summer was warm, but you didn’t want to be wet in the mornings. Mornings were still chilly above the 49th Parallel even at the height of middle of June.
Clarissa headed down to Central Park to do some fishing. Luckily for her, she was able to make some catches that stocked up our fish in preparation for the long sojourn in what would become our bunker. We would probably have no access to food and we would have no choice but to rely on fish stocks that we had in order to get us through the lean times, which meant that we had to fish enough for us to have proper fish breed-stock so that we wouldn’t run out midway through waiting for the radiation from all-out nuclear war to clear. Hopefully the Warsaw Pact wouldn’t be sadistic enough to resort to using territory-denial weapons such as salted nuclear arms (nuclear weapons laced with cobalt 59 that when detonated would release large amounts of gamma-radiation emitting Cobalt 60).
When Haruo came back from hunting he set about doing some conjuring with Lord Vladimir’s Conjuring Cauldron again. I had warned him about conjuring too much but, of course, males are stubborn and bull-headed and well, he rearranged his brain-cells again when he impacted the ground. Out of exhaustion thanks to conjuring too often, I assume.
When he recovered consciousness, he gathered up all the gemstones that he’d conjured and headed over to see Sue at Aleister’s in order to cut the gemstones and consign them. Evidently once five o’clock post-meridiem rolled around, the additional money that we’d received from the sales of the consigned cut gems was enough to purchase several new items that we were going to need in order to make more money.
Clarissa decided to take on the mantle of family alchemist. Conjuring and alchemy had a rather sordid reputation in the past with a lot of fakery, however, somehow, Lord Vladimir’s Conjuring Cauldron and Aleister’s Alchemy Station actually worked. How that collates with the Law of Conservation of Mass or the First Law of Thermodynamics dictating that an object cannot be created from nothing and if deconstructed, that said object would have to be reduced to components whose sum is equal in mass. Yet things were being created from nothing when the conjuring cauldron was utilized. Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson would be spinning in their collective graves.
The rest of the week went much like the previous days. We did what we had to. Some of us fished, some of us hunted and the rest tried to utilize the new items that Haruo bought so that we would have a leg up on what came down the turnpike. And Haruo’s cousin Masaharu joined us and I could see that Bebe was immediately smitten. Hopefully it works out better for her than the guy who dumped her in middle-school. None of us have forgiven Jay yet and probably never will.
