2nd Earth: Shortfall Read Online Free

running for her life she looks quite nice. I see a newspaper box on the street corner. I go over and can read the paper that is still in the box.
    The headline says that Russia, Korea, China, the United States, and several South American countries have all developed a neutron bomb that will destroy people, but will not destroy as much property as a conventional atomic or hydrogen bomb. The paper is dated July 6, 1969, that’s forty years ago. The cars parked on the streets are from that era and the clothes these people are wearing are from that same time. Now Tim and I are starting to worry, the young lady, whose name is Dayna by the way, tells us that we really have to be getting back to the group before dark. There are some really bad people running the streets after dark. We need more information to figure out what is going on, so we decide to go along with them. Dayna asks me if I would mind going with her to another place where she can get some food for her family before dark. We all follow her to a store that looks like it has been abandoned, but there is still plenty of food on the shelves. Most of it is canned goods. She seems to be looking for jars or bottles. When I ask her about this she says there is always lots of food in cans, but they don’t know how to open the cans to get the food out without destroying it.
    Tim and I are both carrying P38 can openers from our military rations. I tell her we can show her how to open cans easily. She seems to believe me because we carry as many cans of beef stew, spam, and corned beef hash as we can get into the bags we find. She is so proud when we get to what she calls her family with all the food. Some of the others complain and tell her they can’t open this food, so why did she waste her time bringing it here. I show them how to open the cans and they think it is some kind of magic. When Dayna tells them how I fought four of the attackers they back off like they are afraid of me. We are in the basement of what appears to be an old insurance office. There are dividers separating it into what looks like five rooms, there are four girls and six young men in this family.
    They are starting to eat the food cold. I ask why they are not heating it up. Dayna tells me they have no way to heat it, if they build a fire inside the room will fill with smoke. She says if we would have gotten home earlier we could have cooked the food outside, but now it is dark and way too dangerous. Tim and I both have flashlights in our bags along with ammunition and two more pistols each. That’s one benefit of flying on a military hop instead of a commercial airliner. I tell Tim to cover me while I check out the area to see if I can find some way to cook our dinner. Dayna is scared for me and wants to come with me. I tell her to wait here, I will be right back and she has nothing to worry about. She comes with us anyway. Upstairs in the insurance office we find a propane stove and a large propane tank out in the backyard.
    We can hear the noises of people prowling the streets, but no one comes near us. Outside we find a street sweeper, that is also powered by propane, and it still has about half a tank full. I take the propane tank into the basement and then Tim and I carry the stove down to the basement and hook up the tank to the stove. The stove is an older model with the pilot light, we are happy to see it is not an electronic model. We just happen to be carrying matches in our survival kits that we never go anywhere without. We found some pots and pans in the kitchen upstairs and some spoons and forks that will work very well. We can tell that the family doesn’t believe that it will work, although when we start heating up the stew and frying some spam they become believers fast. While the food is cooking an older man, whom I would guess to be in his forties, comes out of one of the rooms farther back. For light they are using candles that they were able to light off the stove.
    Dayna