Nuclear Winter

That day, news rippled through the community: the military units stationed to the west had retreated following a mutant onslaught. A mid-sized group was assembled to scout the area and perhaps scavenge what they could. Vitaly Sergeyevich was appointed leader of the expedition. Their group consisted of ten people. For the first day, they trekked toward the military base, fending off mutants and battling the biting cold. They made camp about 2.5 kilometers from their destination. Some went to sleep, while others went on reconnaissance; and indeed, the base was a graveyard of countless corpses—both soldiers and mutants alike. Whatever attack had occurred had been devastating. It seemed only the mutants roamed those grounds now. At dawn, a cleanup crew set out. For four hours, they fought off the creatures to clear even a third of the base. Most importantly, they managed to gain access to the warehouse. And there... there was a nearly full stock of supplies: food, ammunition, weapons, and everything else imaginable. It wasn't an infinite supply, as they hadn't received shipments in a long time, but it would sustain their group for the next six months. All problems with food, weapons, ammo, and medicine would vanish. Driven by curiosity, Dmitry and Artem descended into a basement. It was a labyrinth of iron doors—some locked, some kicked in, and some surrounding corpses. Behind the doors were cells: bare walls, a makeshift bed or, at best, a filthy, old mattress. In some places, there were even chains bolted to the walls. Every door had a small viewing port. Dmitry peered through them one by one. But when he looked through the second-to-last door, he saw the body of a girl, about sixteen years old, lying on a mattress. She looked battered; her jacket was torn, and a bandage on her arm was soaked in blood. Then, Dmitry noticed a faint cloud of steam escaping her lips as she exhaled into the freezing air.

— Is she... is the girl alive? — Dmitry spoke aloud, before turning to his son with a hint of panic: — Artem, go get help! — The boy rushed off without a word. Dmitry pulled the girl out, handing her over to the medic. She was alive, but unconscious. She was carried to a tent, where she slowly began to drift back to consciousness.