And no I'm not sitting in a cage made up of the bones of my comrades.... that would be gruesome, who could even think of...especially suspending it off a cliff... that would be silly.
So the last 7 days has been us more or less getting used to socializing with other people again, anyway the people Cheyenne don't celebrate the new year... Well not on the first of January, they decided to do that in march after their first winter after the bombs dropped.
Regarding the town full of kids over in Wheatland, that's an experiment the highschoolers started during last march. One of the more influential kids at the school basically decided that the end of the world was the fault of the adults, and so they and a small group one night headed to Wheatland which had been abandoned in favor of everyone moving to Cheyenne. Left notes to their families and whatnot, the next day there was a standoff, since some of the older highschoolers had taken rifles with them, and the parents decided, after a couple days of talking it over to let them play their own version of "civilization". All the kids in Cheyenne got a choice to go or not, and well.. so far it hasn't turned into lord of the flies...so there's that, and I suppose they also know that if they so chose to, they could always come back to their families down here.
That's basically the short form of the story between Cheyenne and Wheatland right now...or at least that's what the people we've spoken to so far have said.
Anyway, so it was kinda tense for a bit. Axel, Rogan, Wade (finds humor in EVERYTHING and cracks bad jokes, he was staff at the bunker, he also likes knives and explosives, and has spent at least 3 months of the trip trying to combine the two) and Scout (Scott actually, but he's basically been acting as a long range scout for us for the last 6 months since he's somehow figured out how to run through the ash without getting exhausted. He's from the other team that we were the distraction team for.), those four were the ones that initially made contact on the second. Considering we didn't hear gunshots or see them leave till nightfall we were expecting that yes the town was full of cannibals, something that Wade immediately cracked a joke about as soon as he was in town. To be fair four, heavily armed folks walking out of the ashfields from the north did leave the people who met them first a bit concerned. Their first questions were not about who we were but rather Wheatland, thankfully Wade did not make a bad joke and Rogan explained that since it was a town full of children and only children we'd chosen not to visit since we had no context for why they were only children living there. So after a few hours, and a hot meal Scott headed out to make a report with those of us that had stayed out of the town, what was interesting that he was followed, however the guy who tried to follow him got lost off the beaten path and we ended up having to rescue him since he fell down a hole hidden by an ash drift.
On the third we ended up heading into town, the rest of us along with the guy we'd rescued. Other than that, the last few days have been spent getting used to civilization again and linking up with the air force guys who were stationed at Francis AFB and catching up with what we missed.
So I'm pretty certain most anyone that's reading this is aware that the war ended after the bombs dropped, and the military has split up into factions and micro peacekeeping forces with only a hint of a unifying structure remaining since it was a few months before communications were restored.... so we're more or less free to do what we want. We can "re-enlist" or try and go home.... we're mostly considering the "home option"... Though a few of us might have more trouble with that than others.
That's about it for today. I'll keep updating my travels, and also finish recapping the trip from Sherridan to here, though really I can sum it up as the following: "A lot of walking, a lot of praying for the dead in towns we walked through, and hoping things would get better."....So kinda pretty similar to Frodo's journey in lord of the rings now that I think about it after Boromir tried to steal the ring and he and Sam split from the fellowship, however all twelve of us got to walk to "Mordor" and back.
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