After dinner, we all retired, but I couldn't sleep. My
thoughts wandered. What would Haven be like? Would it be
better there? Or would all of this be in vain? What if there
was no Haven? What if it was all just a myth? Is it really
necessary to take this risk, to risk my children for perhaps
only a dream?
I have to go. We can't afford to stay here in Appleton any
longer. There's nothing left here, really. It was a small town
to begin with and everything has been used up that's useful,
at all. Oh, we had managed to survive. We could grow
fruit--that's what the city was famous for, after all,
apples--and we had a few good crops of corn and melons, but
the soil here isn't very good and the climate sucks. It's too
hot in the summer and too cold in the winter to grow any
decent crops and it's gotten too hard to maintain ourselves on
just canned supplies, alone.
I guess that's what happens when you live in the desert.
It's been good in some ways, though. The mountains have kept
the Unlucky Survivors from getting too close, until recently.
But, water is hard to come by and the supply of bottled water
is just about gone. I was lucky enough to get quite a bit of
it when this whole thing started. People stopped drinking it,
so I was able to stock up and after everyone else was gone,
well, there was plenty, for a while.
But, we're down to our last couple of drums of fresh water
and we have a long way to go. With six people drinking a
couple of liters a day, what we have won't last all that long.
And, it seems the Unlucky Survivors have made it to the
outskirts of Airepseh. It took them a long time to move up the
hill and over the mountains, but in a few months, they will
have overrun what's left of that town and will head this way.
So, we have to move on, whether we like it or not.