Olethros road

 Caldwell sighed as he saw the missile impact over wilmington. It was early september.
It wasn't a huge nuke, it was more like a tactical one. The burst of light was short and terrifying. The blast and abrasive well of shattering and ripping. He dived on his sofa and turned it over himself, a few seconds before the explosion burst in through the window pounded the opposing wall with debris as if shrapnel and left the room burning at a cozy 120 degrees celcius. 
Caldwell tried not to breathe as oxygen was replaced with smoke and fumes.
Wilmington was a small city in North Carolina. Caldwell imagined if this was the response from the enemy powers on such a small town like Wilmington, what had happened to the rest?
What must have happened to New York, Boston, Atlanta?

Caldwell packed his bag with tins and bottles of water, and started his journey out of the city. His first stop was to his friend James house, he found him unconscious on the floor. His wife and son were dead in the back yard completely blackened from the initial blast wave. But his daughter Anne was shaking James as if to try to wake him up. Anne was only 8 and seemed a slight girl. Caldwell picked him up and comforted Anne who started screaming.

He got both of them in the car and continued driving out of the city. He stopped by a gunshop just outside the city limits, the front of the shop was blackened inside some of the ammunition had exploded. but he was able to get 4 kevlar vests, 2 sterling smg machine guns, a Howa hunting rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition for both. He picked up a very ugly Taurus G2C pistol. 

Caldwell calmed Anne as James started to come to in the back seat.
The sun was setting on perhaps the worst day in human history, as James sat up and both Anne and James looked at the smoking city on the horizon they were leaving behind.
James directed Caldwell to a farm surrounded by high fences and patchy forest.
It was abandoned so they knew they would be able to use it for survival accomodation as things hopefully one day came back to normal.

Five weeks past and Anne learned how to shoot rabbits with hunting rifle albeit with a lot of support for the kickback was rough on her shoulder. James and Caldwell built traps and reinforcing barbed wire creating a kind of compound within. They planted some greens and harvested some of the local corn crop. Taught Anne to look after the chicken coop. And life went on.

After the fifth week there was a strong subtropical like storm that ran through the region. A raiding party turned up on the rural road, and was using the storm to mask their arrival and scope out the nearby farms. they had spotted the reinforced fences and candle lights coming from the kitchen inside. There were six men all armed with assault rifles and all of them were completely motivated to murder anyone on the farm and claim all supplies for their own, whatever it took.

The commotion happened when one of the raiders inevitably fell into one of the many traps that had been set up severing a vein in his foot as he stepped right into a shallow hole vested with rusty sharpened metal at its base. The man screamed and did a better job than an alarm would have.
Anne was placed in the attic with a small open window opening onto the flank of the house. she didn't look very excited at the thought of having to kill a man. But the last few weeks conversation had been orbiting around the fact that this day would come, she sat anxiously with the hunting rifle and started testing the sight in the dim light surrounding the house.

Caldwell jumped into a ditch near where the other raiders were still attempting to enter, the chaos of moving their friend back to the pick up truck, and the insistance that the man be quiet was more than enough distraction for both Caldwell and James to position themselves. Firstly Caldwell opened up on the raiders as they cut through the last wires of the fence, He emptied the whole clip onto the 3 visible men hitting them all over but only mortally wounding one. Two of the other raiders had broken through 50 meters away near some trees where James was hiding. James opened up on one with a short burst to the chest killing him instantly and using the short awkward butt of the smg on the side of the head of the other men.

The next day was one of sorrow, four dead bodies, one prisoner but alas the man with the injured foot had escaped, which meant they would be visited again.
The prisoner Paul was younger, about 18, for that reason James had not openly shot him to death. They tied him up but helped him recover and fed him. talked about the state of things, and didn't really blame him for the situation hed found himself in.
Anne learned more and more about shooting and was now walking around armed with the pistol.
They had created booby traps and sound traps to make sure when the visit was to happen, they would be able to respond appropriately.

Except it didn't happen, whoever was behind the raiders outfit seemed to have forgotten about Caldwell James and Anne. Though the three of them drilled every morning just in case and did perimeter checks inside and outside of their boundary fences.
Three weeks later in the dead of the night The raiders returned. By now ex raider Paul their captive had been helping the group make conserves and peel corn and potatoes, but at night they still locked him up. James was responsible for him. They treated him very well and improved his quarters in the basement which was the only area within the house that could be locked and used as a cell.
The raiders broke into the compound by exploding a bucket full of fertilizer gunpowder and a grenade, inside it was steel knives and forks which shattered into shrapnel some of it hitting the house and setting off all of the traps in the vicinity.

Caldwell was the first to the window, but he couldn't see anything except the burning remains of the security fence. He ran outside with his smg at his hip, ready to spray the new space where the fence used to be. He had no chance, one of the raiders hit his leg severing a small piece of his calf with a rifle bullet about 30 meters off. Caldwell screamed out and tried to hold himself up against the door. James came and carried him inside narrowly escaping a second shot that would have hit him in the upper body. James took him into the basement with Paul who looked concerned. Caldwell kept the pistol. James went back up to the main door, Anne was at the top of stairs training the sight from the hunting rifle. A flash grenade went off as James approached the open front door, blinding him pretty well. James backed down to the stairwell, three raiders entered, Anne wasn't seen but the raiders saw exactly where James had gone, Paul helped James into the basement a second later the raiders came racing down the basement stairs firing. Caldwell stumbled toward the door and emptied all fifteen bullets into the door ajar and the racket of boots thumping down toward the basement. Two of the raiders fell down the third opened up with Ar15 Hitting cladwell's wrist and sending Paul and James diving for cover in a corner. James' dropped his Smg and felt like the day was lost.

Paul grabbed up the smg awkwardly but in enough time to aim it toward the door and shoot 4 rounds into the entering raider two shots on a bullet proof vest, one missing completely and one hitting his neck and draining him of blood in seconds. Five more raiders approached. Anne was ready and shot into the middle of them killing one of them and wounding two others, the uninjured raiders turned and ran. James and Paul both brandishing smgs now chased them down and killed both of them. They found the raiders vehicle and brought in another 2 assault rifles, a shotgun, 3 handguns and 2 uzis.
Caldwell had most a lot of blood now. Paul seemed trustworthy though now, which meant James and Anne could focus on treating Caldwell's wounds.

One week later, The group became tighter and decided to start to make trips into town, usually just James and Paul. Their mission was to locate the old raiding HQ and find more supplies.