When things started getting serious in the cities you were wise enough to realize that getting the heck out of Dodge was the best option. So you got in your car, which ironically enough was a Dodge and managed to get out of town through a combination of luck, wisdom and even more luck. Still you had no where to go, really. All your relatives lived in major cities or in suburbs surrounding them. You decided to simply drive and see what you'd run into.
You ran out of gas on a dirt road that didn't look as though it'd seen regular traffic since...well...ever. You pushed your car past the fence of a farm and cautiously approached, expecting to be confronted by an angry man with a shot gun.
You were mostly right. The man did have a shot gun, but he wasn't so much angry as he was suspicious. His name was Mel, and he'd already heard about what was going on via the news on the radio, so he could accurately guess why you were there. Fortunately, he had a deal for you. He was getting on in years and farming, even on a small farm like this, wasn't easy. His children all lived in the cities and he'd stopped hearing from them. His wife had passed some years back and he was trying to farm alone.
That's where you were to come in. Since you had a strong back but knew nothing about farming, and he had old bones but knew precious little about anything else it would be an even-up trade; work for knowledge.
It worked that way for four years before Mel passed away. You had no idea he was particularly ill, but then Mel wasn't the type to complain about things. He'd often told you his arrangements. He wanted to be buried on the land he worked on with no big fancy "hullabaloo" as he would call it, and so it was.
For a few months now you've been living on the farm alone. Mel didn't keep livestock, preferring to get meat and eggs by selling his crops or by direct trade, so outside of an occasional cat, too suspicious to fully trust you enough to become a true companion, you've been alone. Still solitude is better than slavery, so you persist.
Still it would be a rather boring story if you spent the rest of your days like this. Events conspire to pull you out of the relative comfort of rural living to once again tread the streets of a city you would hardly recognize.
