Terri woke up well before morning. Mike was already up and had turned the lantern up, its bright light picking out every crack in the age-worn walls around them.
“Breakfast?” Mike asked, handing Terri a ration bar.
Terri wrinkled her nose. “One thing we’re getting is a kitchen,” she muttered. “I am not spending the rest of my life eating these.”
“That’d be great,” Mike said. “But… where would we get the food from?”
“Farms I—” Terri fell silent. Do you have any idea how to farm? She’d never even thought of that question before. After all, Terri had only seen farms on the TV with her mother… “We’d have to make a farm, with animals,” Terri finally said.
“Or we could hunt,” Mike pointed out. “We don’t eat a lot, so we wouldn’t have to hunt a lot…”
Terri felt disgusted. Hunting? Killing some poor animal… But you would have to do it on a farm… Terri swallowed uncomfortably. The pets of home had been animals also; would something they killed for food be that smart? Feel pain? She put the last of the ration bar back in the pack, no longer hungry.
“It should be getting light soon,” Terri said. “Let’s get started.” She was suddenly eager to get moving.
Mike nodded, munching on his ration bar. “Okay.”
Packing their things took only a few moments, and soon the pair were outside of the ruined building, watching as the first rays of the sun started to touch the very tips of the trees. Terri took a deep breath of the pure air, happy to be out of the dank interior of the building. It had felt too much like a tomb.
“What if we can’t wake them up?” Terri said. “We can’t carry them back…” Read the rest of this entry »