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Kurt Pankau lives with his family in St Louis, Missouri. He loves board games, dad jokes and stories about time travel. He tweets at @kurtpankau and blogs at kurtpankau.com.
The light was clearly visible at night, even from a mile away. Light meant electricity, and that meant someone lived there, which meant there would be water to barter for. So we went to investigate. We’d left New Chicago three days earlier — said we were ranging for supplies, but in truth I had no intention of returning. There was rumour of water shortages and rationing, which inevitably leads to self-preservation panic. Polite society disappears altogether.