They arrived just before the sun set in Adam's old neighborhood.
"I don't know what i was expecting…" Adam mused quietly as he walked through the streets of the small borough he once lived in. It was surreal to see all these houses and cars now broken shells of their former selves. For Adam it had only been a little while ago when he was here, he remembered driving his car down the street towards his house along the same path they were walking now. The roads were paved, not broken and cracked, people were having barbecues and setting up for Halloween, his neighbors were living their own lives and he was ready to sit at home on his couch and watch some TV. It was all so… strange. He knew the bombs fell, he knew the world had ended, he knew that his old life was over. He had made peace with this. But seeing the street as it was now, it just didn't sit well with him. Disheartening was putting it lightly, he was heartbroken.
"Don't let it get to ya, kid. World's just like that." Salvatore said, sensing Adam's distraught.
"I know… it's just… I feel like I was only here a few weeks ago, I remember it so clearly." Adam sighed and watched as they came around the bend and his house came into view. Or rather, what was left of his house. It was destroyed, beyond recognition. Merely a pile of wood and rubble remained where his house once stood. It hadn't even survived to the extent that some of the other houses had, it had completely collapsed. His dreams of walking through his house once more were immediately crushed, he had no hallways to reminisce through, no medals to dramatically stare at framed on the wall, no closet full of clothes destroyed by time. Unless he was willing to dig through rubble it was all gone.
Adam sighed again, louder this time.
"I assume this was your house then?" Salvatore asked as he looked at the destroyed building.
"Yeah, it was." Adam said, staring at it for a moment.
"Sorry, kid." Salvatore responded, a bit more somber now for Adam's sake. Adam stood there for a few moments more, just drinking in the sight of his house now gone before he started moving again, now, to the backyard.
"Where are you going?" Salvatore asked as he watched as Adam seemed to be wandering off in a random direction.
"To my backyard…" Adam said as he kept marching. "I have to check on something back there." He walked behind the ruins of his house, about 20 feet past his back porch where a metal sheet was sitting partly buried by dirt and dust.
"What is it?" Salvatore asked, now curious.
"My old self-made fallout shelter." He said as he dug up the door a bit and uncovered the latch he would have used to pull it open. "I doubt anyone would have found it, I mean I know it's uncovered now but it was covered with dirt before. And only I knew the way inside.
He pulled the latch up and revealed a small staircase leading downwards. The stairs were small and cramped and Adam had to duck to walk down them. Once he was at the bottom he turned on his pip-boy light and was met with a surprise. The door to his shelter, a moderately thick metal door with an interior lining of lead he had installed himself, was wide open.
"What?!" Adam said with some shock as he looked at the door that revealed the entrance to his shelter. He hadn't even inspected that yet. He looked at the door, it didn't seem broken into. There were no signs of forced entry or that the door was broken. He gently moved the door away from the wall a bit and looked at the small keypad installed at the front of the door for security. Curious he punched in the code and the pad responded with a satisfying beep, confirming it worked and even still had power. What the hell was happening?
"Everything good down there kid?" Salvatore asked from above, not seeing the need to go down into a one man fallout shelter in cramped quarters unless he had to.
"Yeah i'm just… confused… the door is open, I can't say with certainty that no one would have ever found it but it doesn't look like the door was broken open, it was just simply opened…"
"What does that mean?" Salvatore asked.
"I… don't know…" Adam admitted quietly. He got over his initial confusion and entered the shelter, seeing the small one room bunker he had built for himself. If the worst happened, which it did. He just never got a chance to come here.
The shelter was about 7 feet high, enough that Adam was able to stand up comfortably but it still felt a bit claustrophobic. Downside of having made it by hand. The walls were lined with concrete, then lead, then wood to keep the interior not looking like a metal box, the floor and ceiling was much the same. Adam wouldn't care too much about aesthetics but when he built this place he had thought of spending upwards of a year in this small metal box and if it wasn't the least bit nice in here he figured he'd go crazy.
On the left side were two metal shelving units which used to be full of food goods, now picked clean, not a grain of rice remained. Past that was a desk with a computer. The computer had a big hole through it, like someone had taken a shotgun to the screen. Further past that was the toilet, sink, shower combo. Very modular. Space was a premium down here so he took what he could get.
On the right side was first his large bookshelf full of magazines and books and games he had planned to play with while stuck down here. It too was as barren as the food shelves. Whoever came through here was thorough. Past the bookshelf was his bed, spartan and simple but it served its purpose, and then past that was his advanced water collection and purification system. He was proud of this one. Not only would it recycle his grey water, the water used in cleaning and washing his hands, purifying it for drinking after some time, but it also collected water from an underground stream that flowed through his property. The stream was incredibly small and he had found it by accident when he was digging, but if he had rationed his water, in theory, he would have been able to live off it indefinitely. Of course it was only a theory.
Finally, on the back wall in between the shower and the water system was his generator. It sat inside a small box he had made for it, above the box was a small cabinet meant to house the energy cells used to power the generator. Of course, like everything else, the energy cells were picked clean, all gone. The generator too, surprisingly.
That was the whole shelter. Truly utilitarian, nothing that wasn't important to survival or sanity all crammed into the small space. It was only ever designed for just him after all so asking anything more of it would have been too much. He wasn't vault tec after all. He was a guy with a bit of know-how and a shovel, he did well all things considered.
But self-aggrandizing aside, the place held nothing for him. Not a speck of food, not any books or games. Not even his guns he would have placed under his bed stand. It was mildly infuriating too to be honest. He put in all this effort and there was nothing here.
With a sigh he turned around and left the hole, coming back up the stairs to meet with Salvatore who had been patiently waiting, smoking a cigarette.
"So find what you were looking for?" He asked casually.
"No." Adam sighed again. "It was empty. Looks like, somehow, someone beat me here. Not like I had a secret stash of bottle caps or something, but it would have been nice to get something from my home." Salvatore nodded and then looked up at the sky.
"I understand. But we should probably find shelter for the night. Your house is gone but there are plenty of other still standing structures here, I'm sure we can find one to sleep in.
Adam stared at the hole he just came out of for a moment before he nodded.
"Yeah, I guess you are right. Let's find a house to commandeer." Adam said before looking around himself.
"There." he said, pointing to a house only a few houses away. "The Pickerson's. They were neighbors I knew. Went for a barbecue once. The house looks in decent shape from here and I know where the bedrooms are."
"Alright, then let's stay there tonight. Make the rest of the trek to Midway tomorrow."