The cave system was dark but lit enough for passage. And it was efficient for the hundred or so survivors on this side of the Mexican border. The air above was toxic still to this day and the people who had been lucky enough to be in the Houston tunnels survived as well as they could down here. Luckily there was an aquifer here at the old cistern and enough skylights throughout the old network to grow plants. It was enough to have a semblance of life while everything above in the maze of empty quiet highways collected radioactive dust. But two factions had slowly formed, those who felt like they had enough, and those who didn’t. The have-nots grew discontent and started slowing causing trouble. The haves at first didn’t even notice. Not until their food supply began getting smaller.
One of them decided to make an example and ordered a few farmers to be rounded up. It was a gruesome day but all it did was fan the flames of revolution.  It was on this day, in the middle of chaos that Mirabel Annette Julian Jones was born. Born of fire, and in thirty years time, the savior of the human race. But that’s a story for another day. We have a long way to go first.