Dreams of boats and radioactive cities

[the_fantastic_ms_fox]

There'd been a nuclear war and the Mid-Eastern United States and Canada have been hard hit. People flee the worst areas and, coming to a lake, were launching beats to row across. I was there, alone though, and didn't have a boat.

I asked the women in the A-frame cabin for help. They say I can have a boat. But you can't row a boat alone. I wait in the sunlit attic. A woman in her sixties surprises me. She gives me a hundred dollars Canadian and asks that since I really don't have anywhere to go, could I buy what I can in the city across the lake (Detroit? Scarborough?). I say that's awfully trusting of her.... But is a hundred bucks actually going to buy anything useful? There must have been a real run on supplies.

A man comes. We will row together, towing a boat behind us for me to return in once I've found something useful.