Fallout: Terror Australis. November 2160.

Chapter 1: No worries, mate.

It was dawn, the fierce summer heat already beginning its daily pounding on the corrugated iron rooftops of the Bridge, last stop on the dead road to old Adelaide. Lizzie Uradla glared at the water tower and the patch of red clay mud beneath its rusted frame, her gaze harsher than any mere solar body. Some idiot had shot a hole right through the bloody thing and slowly but surely the towns lifeblood had been pissed away overnight. If it wasn't empty yet it would be well before she could rouse Johnno, the towns second most skilled repairman, to come down and consider clambering up the rickety ladder that led to what passed for a water tank. If he was even sober enough to make it up the ladder. There was no chance of getting his father Barry – the towns official tinkerer and odd job man – conscious before noon. There'd been a piss-up in the bar the night before to welcome the last caravan of the season and everyone who was anyone had been there. Barry may not have been anyone, but he was anyone's once you got a few in him. He'd be out cold in any bed but his own.

She sighed and cursed whichever incompetent had used the tower for target practice. "Fucking drongos" she muttered "they haven't shot an emu in weeks. Not even when one of the feathered mongrels walked right down the main street and took a nap outside the bar. Probably thought it was one of their drinking buddies. But get one tinnie into them and suddenly they think they can shoot a magpie off the bloody tower."

Lizzie scowled once again. There was nothing else for it. She'd have to drag Johnno out of his bed and force him up the ladder while there was still a drop of water up there. Then she'd have to break the news to the Mayor. And then, if she still had her head, she could bunk off somewhere quiet for a smoko once it was safely somebody elses problem.

Finding Johnno wasn't going to be the hard part, Lizzie realised. The old caravan (a pre-war model Barry swore he'd restored himself) just off the main street, attached to a workshop of cinderblocks and corrugated iron, surrounded by old junk and failed ideas was where he could always be found. Quietly aloof from the slow drawl of the town, pondering over this and that, endlessly experimenting with some new gizmo he'd thrown together out of scrap and sweat. He kept his distance from people while the occasional explosive malfunction of his homebrewed machinery and slightly more common explosions of his homebrew still made the townsmen all the more thankful for it. Indeed the sight of his stocky, bald form, hair burnt off and skin tanned almost black by a life in front of the forge, ambling genially towards you was generally considered the second most terrifying thing the Bridge had to offer after the ever-present threat of a giant Mulga lurking in your outhouse. Making her way through the figurative – and sometimes literal – minefield of spare parts between the dirt street and his front door wasn't even going to be the hard part, Lizzy thought, as she carefully wound her way through the piles, being sure to jab any particularly threatening junk piles with a long stick before stepping close. Getting him to just do the job and not try to improve on everything would be the hardest part.

The front minefield successfully navigated, Lizzy made a beeline for the workshop. Even at this early hour with the sun still lazily peaking over the horizon, Johnno would be out in his shed pottering away. Except that he wasn't. A cursory peek through the parts of the shed not completely obscured by debris failed to turn up any part of the tinkerer. Unwilling to risk life and limb combing through the mess of tire piles and discarded instruments, Lizzy settled on the next best thing: Yelling at the top of her lungs.

"Oi, Johnno. Grab your tools and get out here. Some drongo shot up the water tower and I need you to fix it". Silence followed. Giving in to her frustrations, Lizzy lashed out and kicked over one of the smaller junk piles, replacing quiet with the resonant clang as ancient odds-and-ends scattered over the floor. Some seconds later, that sight of a small bald head peaking over one pile at the back caught her attention

"Elisabeth, how many times do you need to be told? Don't disturb me when I'm in the shed. This is all very sensitive work. You could ruin a months effort".

"Right now Johnno, I don't care. Get your shit and go fix that tower before we get to spend all summer drinking Brahmin piss."

"Get Barry to do it. This is important."

"I'm not turning over every bed in the town looking for Bazza when you're right in front of me. Get your shit, climb up that ladder and fix our god damned tower before none of us have any water left".

"You'd still have my beer. People pay for that." He said, eyes lighting up.

"John, piss and piss isn't a choice. A month on your grog and I'd rather go bother the Brahmin. Now move before I grab this rope and drag you out there" she snarled, gesturing at a loop of thick, rough fencing rope.

"Fine, fine. I'm going:" he muttered. A few minutes later, he emerged from the stacks with a heavy leather bag slung over one bare shoulder.

Half an hour later, Lizzy was leaning against a strut of the water tank, drifting in and out of sleep as Johnno alternated between quiet muttering and bouts of thumping sheet metal with one of the many strangely-shaped tools he'd taken up in that seemingly bottomless leather bag. After one particularly foul staccato bout of profanity, Johnno began to timidly clamber down a few rungs and yelled out, startling Lizzy back to wakefulness.

"Are you going to let me down now?"

"That depends. Have you fixed it yet?"

"That's a complicated question to ask, Elisabeth"

"That's a no, then. Ok, look, tell me what the problem is and maybe I'll let you down while I go fetch the Mayor."

"In laymans terms? Its fucked. The bullet didn't just go penetrate, its ricocheted around perhaps seven times and accrued significant structural damage to the whole tank. Maybe eight times, might have been more than one bullet. In short" he shook his head in dismay "it'll have to be scrapped. You fill it again and the whole thing could rupture at any moment."

"That bad?"

"Would I still be at the top of this precariously rusted ladder if it wasn't? "

"Fine, get down in one piece and I'll go find the boss"

Finding the Mayor was, of course, the simplest task you could give a native of the Bridge. The ramshackle government of the city had, in the years after the Great War, simply taken up residence in an old stone cottage near the centre of the town (no doubt over the objection of anyone living there are the time) and never left. Now one of the few perks to being responsible for the last town on the dead-end traders route from the east was getting to live in the last building that had yet to need patching up with wood and sheet iron. Ancient stone, a relic of centuries before the great war, had ridden out the ravages of time better than any of its inhabitants. Lizzy smiled as she looked over the side door, one hinge hanging loose. There had to be some upside to running this place or they'd be back to electing people at gunpoint, but even the face of the town had developed its share of beauty marks. Three sharp knocks rapped out on the door, a pause, and then three more. Universal signal for 'let me in, this is important'.

"Come in" came the voice from inside, a smoky voice raised on home whisky and raw tobacco "but whatever you're here for better be important. Its too bloody early."

Liz carefully propped the door open, feeling a wash of stale beer and cigarette smoke mingle with the fresh air outside. The back room of the council chambers stank like the aftermath of every piss-up. People must have come back here after she'd closed the pub last night. Taking a deep breath of the dusty air, she braved inside.

Mayor Stephanie Bo was sitting back on an old rocking chair, legs sprawled over the ancient slab of battered wood that passed for her work desk, poking with her foot at a large glass still half full of some brown liquor. The heavy curtains had been pulled shut and a small candle flickering bravely did more to cast shadow than it did to bring light. Which did little to make her look approachable, for Stephanie was a tall, hardbitten women with an angular face and rough hands that spoke of many scorching days outside and hard nights around the fireplace passing whisky and snuff. She'd been a Brahmin herder before her two loves – yelling at people and brandishing firearms – had led her into a position of something approaching responsibility. Even five years on, It showed in every inch of her demeanour.

"Out with it, kid" she said, shielding her eyes from the light skulking in through the open door. "I'll be a lot happier when you shut the door and let me get into my hair of the dingo."

"Do you want the bad news or the terrible news first, auntie?" Lizzie answered, standing well back.

"Unless one of the traders managed to choke on his own vomit again, I'm don't care. Gods of the River, Lizzie, you saw everyone at the pub last night. You ought to know better than to come thumping on the door at dawn"

"Dawn was an hour ago, Auntie. Besides, I rolled everyone onto their sides when I closed up so they'll live. Even if they might not want to. You know, they got into Barry's special stuff. The one that sticks glasses to the table and catches fire if you leave it in the sun. But that's not why I'm here. We've got something of a problem with the water tower."

"Somebody pinch an extra ration again?"

"Not quite. It's a…. " Lizzie paused "….rather big problem. I've had Johnno come out and take a look but he hasn't been very helpful".

"Elisabeth" the Mayor said, drawing out every syllable like a teacher calling out an unruly student "stop rambling and tell me. I promise, whatever it is, its not as bad as you think."

"Someone put a bullet into the tower. It's fucked."

"Fucking hell" Stephanie exploded and Lizzy took a quick step back "how much did we lose?"

"Almost all of it. Johnno thinks we've got maybe a tenth of a tank left." That had been an interesting few minutes, hearing the bald man snarling curses and calculations under his breath as he tried vainly to work out just how little remained in the ramshackle tower.

"Shit. Fuck. God fucking damnit. Right at the start of summer and all we've got is a giant fucking mud puddle. We won't get any water back from that, sun'll bake it dry." A swipe of her bare heel sent the glass hard into the stone wall behind Lizzy as her hands began harshly rubbing at her temples, almost gouging motions as she thought. Minutes passed in utter silence before Lizzy found her voice.

"It gets worse. Johnno says the whole insides are a mess. He can patch it, but it'll just tear open again. The whole thing needs to come down",

"For fucks sake" more vigorous rubbing "maybe we should have let him go over it last winter, Not that it matters now."

"Right, I know how we're going to handle this. Get Johnno and bring him here. Then round up everyone who can still stagger, tell them we're holding a council meeting at midday. Attendance isn't mandatory, but I'll come round and put a boot up the arse of anyone who doesn't show, less they're on their deathbed. But before you go, grab me that black bottle off the shelf behind you. Don't worry about a glass. Its not a day for that sort of thing."

As the sun climbed closer to its noonday blaze, Lizzy sat slumped under the big eucalyptus tree in the town square, taking a well deserved breather. Finding everyone had been hard, sweaty work. There were perhaps a hundred people in the town not counting any transients (and they were all staying out in the rooms behind her brothers pub, easily found if anyone ever cared to do so) and normally a muster of that size would have taken all day to draw in the stragglers from the farmsteads dotted around the Bridge, on both sides of the narrow river it sat beside. But everyone had come in for the pissup, celebrating – or perhaps mourning – the arrival of the seasons last travellers. None would bother braving the broken tracks amidst summers heat, so the Bridge would be left to its own quiet isolation until summer broke. And that made finding the both much simpler and maddeningly frustrating. No-one would go to the effort of stumbling home when there was a warm bed closer to hand, but the denizens of the Bridge – indeed of the burnt land in general – had a very loose definition of bed. Most had curled up under a friends roof but for the unlucky, the stubborn and the completely inebriated, the empty dilapidated buildings that occupied most of the town were good enough.

Trouble was, they were also good enough for Mulgas, Giant Redbacks, Blueys and the odd Spiny Devil curled up for a snooze, amongst many other critters that uneasily made their home on the edge of what passed for civilisation. Mulgas were peaceable enough if you didn't tread on them, preferring to slither off under whatever cover could hide their bulk. Redbacks were hard to miss from a kilometre away unless you were colourblind (and if you were, the bush had far worse surprises in store). But Blueys were never a welcome surprise and, while normally content to amble along in their own world, a Spiny Devil could be relied on to attack anything when roused. Small wonder that the citizens of the Bridge considered themselves naked without a weapon to hand. Down here, you don't even make a visit to the outhouse unless you've got your stick in hand. You never know what might be lurking in there.

And so going from house to derelict house became a slow march, striking hard on whatever was left of the door, stepping back in a hurry in case the occupants weren't happy about being woken, yelling through the door about the town meeting and moving sullenly to the next building where it'd all be done again. But she'd managed it well ahead of midday and now Lizzy took the opportunity to take a quick nap beneath the ancient dead eucalyptus in the town square.

The dull buzzing of the gathered crowd gradually pulled Lizzy back to consciousness. People were talking anxiously, having little idea of why they'd been dragged out or how it mattered more than their prodigious collective hangover. But the people of the Bridge could read moods as well as any station man could read his Brahmin. And they knew something was off. To call a town meeting on no notice, the day after the holy day of the public, meant that things were serious. And nothing worries an Australian more than being serious.

It was almost noon now, the dull summer sun beating down upon the heads of the townsfolk wisely hidden by heavy felt hats with broad brims. Realising her vantage point up the back left her unable to get a glimpse past the crowd, Lizzy did what any bored and short lady would do: She poked the tree branches savagely with her spear and, satisfied any potential surprises had been warned off, scrambled up the rangy tree for a better view. Just in time, she realised, to see Stephanie begin her ascent up the wooden stairs to the worn stone platform that served as the speakers corner. The crowd grew hushed as they caught a glimpse of the mayor clambering into view. If the boss had something to say, people were damned well going to hear it.

Having successfully negotiated the battered stairs, Stephanie Bo paused for a moment and motioned the crowd to step closer. It wasn't a large crowd, the Bridge had bled people figuratively and literally over the years, but it was still perhaps the largest gathering many of them had seen in months. They pressed in towards the stage and, Lizzy noted with some disdain as she felt the tree branch dig in uncomfortably, left plenty of room to see from her former vantage point.

"Brothers, Sisters, Fellow Travellers." the Mayors voice boomed out "You know I would not bring you all out here without a bloody good reason. Well, I've got the best one we've seen in years." She paused, motioning to someone in the crowd.

"Now before I stop and talk everyones ear off about the problem, I just want you all to understand we have a plan in place. It isn't pretty, but it will work if everyone does their part." She paused again, this time pointing to someone buried in the crowd.

"Truth be told, some drongo shot out our water tower last night. It's a right mess. We can't live off the river water less we want to be glowing like the dead center and we've all known for years our wells ain't deep enough to last forever. So we've got two options." Stephanie stopped again, scanning the crowd for someone or something. A few seconds too long, and Lizzy could see the frustration flash across Stephanies face for the briefest of moments.

"I don't know about you lot, but I'm not ready to leave the old place. Which gives us only one option, less you like the idea of an early coffin. We need to dig our wells down and for that we need machinery for the job. Only one place we're going to find that, course. Old Adelaide."

A bottle flew through the air, a country mile wide of the platform. Some brave soul yelled out from deep within the mob.

"Which poor souls you gonna send down there, Stephie? Ain't no-one come back the last three times. 'S why the traders don't go no further no more".

The mayor shot a withering glance into the crowd, though Lizzy couldn't see if she was glaring at the speaker or the world in general.

"Keep running your mouth, Kevin." a wry grin flashing across her tanned face "There's only a few we could send."

"Bet it ain't none of your kin" came the barked reply.

"If only, Kevvo." Stephanie sighed theatrically. "We already know who's going: Johnno, because he's the only one who bloody well knows what he'll need. The idiot who got us into this mess, he's going too. Earn his redemption afore I hang him by the balls. And …" she gestured up towards the tree as Lizzy felt a frozen knot the size of a mulga slither into her gut "my niece Lizzy. She volunteered, weren't nothing I could do to talk her out of it."

And with that, a great cheer went up from the relieved crowd, completely drowning out the bellowing curses of Elisabeth Uraidla.