Post by Clementine on Jan 10, 2018 4:46:15 GMT -5
Now 5'2", Clementine was officially taller than Dakota. It was barely an inch, but Dakota had always had a couple inches on Clem since they met. It was kind of weird the first time she noticed it. At 13, Clem hadn't quite spent half her life in a post-apocalyptic world, and she had come to share a growing attitude among the children of the Vampire Bunnies. It was less and less a post-apocalyptic world, and more simply the world.
The Old World was no longer the end of all things, but almost a fanciful time of legend, especially to the younger children of their little ragtag family. Little Lee had never even known any other world but as it was now.
Around Motunui, a ranch near Lakeport, CA, the usual dangers of avoiding dead and the living had taken a backseat to surviving Nature's wrath. They had arrived to find the land scarred by seasons old wildfire, only for some of the worst wildfires to strike south and back around the ranch again around the end of their first year at the ranch. A hot dry summer left fire danger high well into October. Their cabin was left untouched by the local wildfire, but the air was heavy with smoke for weeks on end from that fire and all the fires to the south in the Old World wine country.
The Clear Lake area was always a hot bed for geological activity too, though thankfully Motunui had yet to be rocked by anything greater 4.4. Nothing strong enough to do anything more than knock loose things off shelves. The onset of their second rainy season at Motunui put to rest further worries of wildfire, but brought its own worries as flash floods struck the scarred earth, and fresh worry with a few minor mudslides in the area.
Clem had known the relative quiet they had from the their first rainy season at the ranch on through the past summer was too good to last. Yet she was not sure if she was glad to have traded running from people, dead or living for running from firestorms.
Maybe the only bright side she could see to any of it was just as the threat of the living and maybe walkers growing higher in the Lakeport area again, Nature again thinned out the numbers of dead. The people behind the biplane they had seen that one extra hot day in summer had just started sending more planes and even scouting parties. The FCSF, or as Clem would learn after a combination of wildfire and mudslides wiped out their newly established base of operations, the Free City of San Francisco.
From equipment and notes scavenged from teh ruins of their camp, it appeared the FCSF claimed to be the surviving municipal government of the Old World city of San Francisco, founded from an old government camp set up on Treasure and Yerba Buena Islands in San Francisco Bay. It now encompassed Alcatraz, Angel Island and old agricultural levees in the San Francisco Bay Delta. After managing to survive the firebombing of the cities around them, they spread out to other islands in the bay.
Clem couldn't help wondering what they were doing way up here around Lakeport. Clear Lake was a couple hours north of San Francisco by car, so it seemed like a whole lot effort for what little food could still be found up here, and the girls didn't have the best of luck with her experiences in what passed for post-apocalyptic larger scale communities. Clementine didn't see why there wouldn't something equally dark behind the FCSF as well. As far she was concerned, they were to be avoided at all costs, and she was more than relieved when they didn't immediately return after the loss of the new outpost.
The girls had finally declared that it must be Christmas, so the children of the Vampire Bunny gang had set up makeshift decorations around their cabin and the old fallout shelter that formed its basement. There was much celebrate, though Clem suspected they were kinda more late than usual in declaring it to be Christmas. So she had conspired to try and throw in a surprise party for Dakota's 15th birthday to start after everyone exchanged their homemade gifts and scavenged treasures. They still had to get through all that without giving away the surprise.
The Old World was no longer the end of all things, but almost a fanciful time of legend, especially to the younger children of their little ragtag family. Little Lee had never even known any other world but as it was now.
Around Motunui, a ranch near Lakeport, CA, the usual dangers of avoiding dead and the living had taken a backseat to surviving Nature's wrath. They had arrived to find the land scarred by seasons old wildfire, only for some of the worst wildfires to strike south and back around the ranch again around the end of their first year at the ranch. A hot dry summer left fire danger high well into October. Their cabin was left untouched by the local wildfire, but the air was heavy with smoke for weeks on end from that fire and all the fires to the south in the Old World wine country.
The Clear Lake area was always a hot bed for geological activity too, though thankfully Motunui had yet to be rocked by anything greater 4.4. Nothing strong enough to do anything more than knock loose things off shelves. The onset of their second rainy season at Motunui put to rest further worries of wildfire, but brought its own worries as flash floods struck the scarred earth, and fresh worry with a few minor mudslides in the area.
Clem had known the relative quiet they had from the their first rainy season at the ranch on through the past summer was too good to last. Yet she was not sure if she was glad to have traded running from people, dead or living for running from firestorms.
Maybe the only bright side she could see to any of it was just as the threat of the living and maybe walkers growing higher in the Lakeport area again, Nature again thinned out the numbers of dead. The people behind the biplane they had seen that one extra hot day in summer had just started sending more planes and even scouting parties. The FCSF, or as Clem would learn after a combination of wildfire and mudslides wiped out their newly established base of operations, the Free City of San Francisco.
From equipment and notes scavenged from teh ruins of their camp, it appeared the FCSF claimed to be the surviving municipal government of the Old World city of San Francisco, founded from an old government camp set up on Treasure and Yerba Buena Islands in San Francisco Bay. It now encompassed Alcatraz, Angel Island and old agricultural levees in the San Francisco Bay Delta. After managing to survive the firebombing of the cities around them, they spread out to other islands in the bay.
Clem couldn't help wondering what they were doing way up here around Lakeport. Clear Lake was a couple hours north of San Francisco by car, so it seemed like a whole lot effort for what little food could still be found up here, and the girls didn't have the best of luck with her experiences in what passed for post-apocalyptic larger scale communities. Clementine didn't see why there wouldn't something equally dark behind the FCSF as well. As far she was concerned, they were to be avoided at all costs, and she was more than relieved when they didn't immediately return after the loss of the new outpost.
The girls had finally declared that it must be Christmas, so the children of the Vampire Bunny gang had set up makeshift decorations around their cabin and the old fallout shelter that formed its basement. There was much celebrate, though Clem suspected they were kinda more late than usual in declaring it to be Christmas. So she had conspired to try and throw in a surprise party for Dakota's 15th birthday to start after everyone exchanged their homemade gifts and scavenged treasures. They still had to get through all that without giving away the surprise.