Yellowstone

The year is 2116, and the sky is grey. Colour is a thing of old, in this world. The tumbled ruins that were once a city seem monolithic, a moment of panic and terror frozen in the jumble of rusting cars and dead trees and the thick layer of ash, ash, ash. A single figure picks her way through, wrapped in layers of gray and black. Her name is Brianna. Dusk hangs like the dust in the air. Her footsteps are the only sound, as her boots crunch through the ash.

She slips through the door of a shop, and scanning about for anything useful. She finds a shovel, Tristan'll be pleased, and some small packets that rattle when shaken. She puts them in her bag. Maybe Mabe will know what they are. Mabe knows all sorts about the odd things Brianna finds out here in the ruins.

Mabe tells the best stories, stories about times when the dusk used to lift, and light used to come from the sky. But her stories end the same way, with the flaming rock from the sky that hit on the other side of the world, and threw up all the dust. And then the impact rattled the Earth, and the huge volcano blew up, and the world was very dangerous for a bit.

There used to be food growing in the ground, but that's all dead now. All the food they have back at Shelter is grown on racks, with special lights. Brianna hasn't known anything else, so she thinks it's pretty tasty. Old Mabe doesn't think the same.

Brianna stretches, her hands linked above her head, and uses her foot to scrape a circle in the ash outside the shop. She has a whole street more to search, and not long to do it.

She walks on. Behind her, the doors of shops and homes and offices hang open, nothing left within but shadows and dust. Behind her, there is nothing but death, but her steps still bounce. The motion rattles the pumpkin seeds sealed safe in her pocket.

The year is 2116, and humanity is still plodding along, in bunkers and hollows and underground caves. Life is awfully persistent, after all, if not even six mass extinctions can't drive it out.