Notes: Apologies for any grammatical/lexical inaccuracies you happen to stumble upon, since English is not my native tongue. I do know good English, but I'll unavoidably make small errors. Any feedback appreciated.
First chapter describes pre-war Nora, as I have imagined her.
I'll be posting chapters as soon as I translate them from the original Greek text.

Thanks for reading this :)


They had found shelter in an old garage and had pulled the iron door shut. It was pouring irradiated rain outside and they couldn't leave.

Nora pressed the button on the side of the pistol, removed the empty magazine, and sloppily slid the full one inside. But she must have done something wrong because the magazine did not click properly and ended up on the floor, all bullets scattered out.

It was a sad sight.

"Again," muttered the mercenary who was seated on the floor, facing her.

"Do it again 'till you learn. And pick up those bullets; what a mess." He was sitting with his head stooped, half his face hidden under the brim of his torn military cap, and was surveying the loot from the Raiders: a box of .308 bullets, three flasks of water, one can pineapple slices (in juice), and two devices that looked like those old asthma inhalers; he told her they were 'Jet' and when she'd asked him what Jet was, he'd said simply, "You're gonna try it."

Nora set to pick up the bullets from the floor, frowning. Loading a pistol wasn't that hard – at least that's what he was always saying, but then again he thought that loading weapons was hard only for stupid people, so she had a good idea what he thought about her, too. She kept loading and unloading the magazine then, trying to do it a little bit faster each time. "Every second you miss loading your gun might cost you your precious little life," that's what he'd told her.

They hadn't eaten since the previous night and, strangely, she had a craving for vanilla milk shake in Mr. Hawthorn's diner. There weren't milk shakes anymore, nor diners for that matter. When was it when she was having a milk shake, sitting on those tall stools next to the bar, and dangling her long legs back and forth, with her white angle socks and light-blue Mary Janes? Might have been when she was in high school.

She had met Nate in that same diner, a day of July, after her college exams, when she had returned to Concord for summer holidays. But on that day she wasn't sitting on a tall stool next to the bar, dangling her bare legs, because she was a college student by then and she had taken a seat on the booths with her friend, Lory. And Lory had said to her, "You know, Nora, a friend of mine is coming along, you know, that guy I met at Sarah's party, and he's bringing his pal, too, and, you know, I'm crazy about him, I mean, I really like him, and I forgot to tell you, they're a bit older, they're soldiers, but they're on their leave now…" and she kept on bubbling, all in one breathless swoop, and Nora laughed because she really liked Lory.

So on that sunny, hot day in July, people were strolling about happily out in the stores, or at least that's how it looked to Nora, because she was happy herself. Now and then, you could hear the news anchor's voice from the TV set that was hanging over the bar, describing the progress of the war in Alaska. "One more victory against the Chinese menace." The odd advert would also come up about those who wanted to go to the war as mercenaries to fight against the 'Red Devils'. Despite all these, Nora felt safe in Boston and her Daddy's business was going well and they weren't so much affected by the oil crisis, at least not to the degree it had stroke the European Commonwealth, whence Nora's family had moved to America when she was still at primary school. So Nora kept drinking her milk shakes at Mr. Hawthorn's diner, almost oblivious to what was happening to the rest of the world. And the rest of the world – because she had to recognize this eventually and face the truth – wasn't doing very well.

It was the summer of 2076. Nora was a second-year law student, at Boston College.

When she was accepted at the school they were all so excited, Mom and Dad and auntie and cousins, everyone except perhaps Nora herself, who had locked herself up in her room after that party for her success, with tears in her eyes, because she wasn't so sure – after all that studying – that her calling in life was to study law at Boston College.

However, and because she was the good kid, the promising one, she put on her usual sweet smile and traveled to Newton to start her college life. 'At least I'm gonna meet boys,' that's what she'd thought.

And then, before she had even started to feel the thrills of the first college kisses, she met Nate at that diner, six years her elder, tall and dark-haired, with a slight sadness in his eyes that made him so attractive to nineteen-year-old Nora. She couldn't imagine that that sadness was coming mostly from what Nate had seen – and probably done – at the Alaskan war, which sometimes brought him nightmares and he would wake up covered in sweat next to her in bed, but back then Nora was somewhat ignorant of his problems, because she was pampered in her spouse's arms just like she was in her father's.

Of course, our relatively pampered Eleanor (because this was her given name) had also problems of her own. In August 2076, she found out that she was pregnant and, half-terrified and half-excited, phoned Nate to tell him, after he had already left for one more semester in Alaska. He finally managed to take his final leave from the army three months later and come back to Nora – when their wedding took place – looking for a job as a computer programmer.

Meanwhile, Nora found herself pregnant and married at her 19, which was a pretty scandalous thing. On the fifth month of her pregnancy she had to quit the school, though this didn't worry her too much, since it was obvious that law didn't really interest her, nor did it go well with her introvert self. She and Nate rented a pretty two-bedroom bungalow at Sanctuary Hills, with the help of her family, who were better-off than Nate, given that the latter hadn't yet found a steady job, though, fortunately, had saved enough money from his army time, and their wedding gift was Codsworth, a brand new Mr. Handy, robo-butler.

During the last few months before her son was born, Nora caught herself pacing up and down in their house, all alone, with only Codsworth to keep her company. She would look absent-mindedly at the idyllic Sanctuary Hills countryside outside the window and, now and then, at her round belly. She felt sad. She felt that everything had gone wrong, but didn't know what to do to make them right. She'd spend her time within a haze of dullness, changing channels on TV and blaming herself, her timidity, and her 'Yes, Daddy'. She'd look at her bloated belly in fear. She'd drink lemonades and sometimes ask Codsworth to tell her a joke.

Meanwhile, the TV was broadcasting the suppression of the angry and famished mobs in California, Texas, and other states, by the soldiers in those power-armors that looked like tanks. Unemployment and inflation had skyrocketed. The company where Nate had, finally, found a job was making mass layoffs and he was afraid that his turn would eventually come, too. Fallout shelters, called 'Vaults', had already been built in various places, one even a few miles away from their own neighborhood, Sanctuary Hills. China, said the anchorman, was preparing a strong nuclear attack after the defeat in Anchorage. But so was America.

Nate's parents' wedding gift, who were practical folks, was a place for the three of them inside the Sanctuary Vault. It had costed them too much and Nate had scolded them and told them it wasn't necessary, but that same night, on their wedding day, lying in bed, he had told her that it wasn't such a bad idea after all. He had placed his hand on her three-month belly and had told her that he wanted a future for their son or daughter and that things were tough and were likely to get tougher. Vault-Tec gave rooms in their shelters to those who paid and also to a few others through a raffle, so they should feel lucky. While he was telling her all these, Nora was thinking about the end of the world with a pleasant excitement.

It was an October morning – Shaun was then 6 months old – and they were getting ready to go to a dinner party for the Alaskan veterans, when their doorbell rang and a salesman came up their door to sell them a set of encyclopedias. The day outside was sunny, they were running late, and Nora was trying to think of something polite to get rid of him as fast as she could. It was at that moment that an emergency broadcast was heard on TV and the anchor kept saying, "this is not an drill" and "head to the nearest shelter, you and your family". The salesman picked up his encyclopedias and hurried away. Nate grabbed Shaun from his crib and started running with all the rest of the neighbors towards the little hill where the Vault was built. Nora had thought then that she wasn't a very good Mom, because it was Nate's first instinct to take their son in his arms and run and not hers. Perhaps she wasn't a very good Mom after all, but now the end of the world was near so it didn't really matter so much.

At the Vault's entrance there were quite a few people gathered, yelling "Let us in!", but there were soldiers there and had formed a line and pushed people away, telling them, "Only those whose name's on the list". And their name was on the list, hers and Shaun's and Nate's, so the soldiers opened the line and let them in, but a neighbor with platinum blond hair was pulling Nora's arm, shouting, "Take me in, take me in", and then Nate grabbed her other arm and dragged her towards him, and the neighbor was left behind and she was crying, shouting still.

When they finally gathered up with a few others on top of the platform with the number 111, which was going to take them down, underground, they were able to see the bombs falling in the distance, for just a few seconds. Then the platform lowered and dived underground, and the surface world faded into darkness.

It was October 23, 2077.