Cost of Survival

  ***

  Left, right, left, right, left, right. Oh, for the love, I almost fell over on that one. I shook my head to wake up. We had been walking for quite a while. An hour or two?

  The darkness of night had fallen to mask the majority of the scenery around us. There was no light anywhere – except in the sky.

  “I’ve never seen so many stars.” My mom’s whisper reached me as I walked forward, coming abreast of her.

  Glancing upward, even in my fatigue I couldn’t deny the simple beauty laid out over me like the thickest of blankets with no end in sight. “Yeah, me neither.”

  “Do you know God intended for His children to outnumber the stars?” Mom didn’t slow her steps, but spoke into the black void around us, with her head tilted back to view the skies.

  I didn’t answer. Everything she said would turn back to her beliefs. When Dad and Braden hadn’t come back home, I had looked away from the faith she held so close. What guiding hand would take a father and son who hadn’t done anything? During school at the time, I think we had been studying something from the Naturalist’s Handbook. The theories in those pages had been easier to grasp than the one which stated I “was loved and redeemed but my family didn’t get to stay.”

  Nothing seemed fair since.

  Changing the subject, I pointed at the houses in the distance – their rooftops stark against the well-lit night sky. “Looks like the electricity is out everywhere. Do you think anybody wasn’t affected?”

  “If not, it wouldn’t be for long. We’re too close to the Fairchild Air Force Base. Of course, our area would take the brunt of the attack. If we head too far east, we’ll run into the missile fields of Montana and the Navy bases of Athol and Sandpoint. Straight north of Post Falls? We’re looking at a richer option – one filled with others who think like us as well as a small community for the safer-group co-op – just north of here.” She didn’t even hunch over as she walked with the weight of her bag on her shoulders.

  “Can we use our flashlights?” My logic made sense. With no one around to see the light, we didn’t have anything to be in danger of. We could walk with a faster pace if we didn’t need to squint at anything we weren’t ready for. “Nobody’s out here.”

  “No, using them just wouldn’t be smart. Noises are already stupid, but add in lights? We might as well hold up a neon sign to our location. People are out there. Trust me.” She veered off the sidewalk and walked through someone’s yard.

  Suddenly we left the illusion of a safe fenced-in-mentality of a neighborhood and entered the forest. Hopefully, we would lose ourselves in the dark twists and turns as we located somewhere to camp.

  I refused to argue. We’d left the monotony of the sidewalks and landed on a smoothly packed gravel drive. At least the crunch of my footsteps created enough distraction I didn’t fall asleep with the cadence.

  Another thirty minutes or so passed in silence.

  Mom stopped abruptly and I slammed into her back. “Oh, sorry.”

  “Shh.” She shook her head and grabbed my arm. Pointing off the drive, she muttered. “We’ll make camp in there. Remember the rules, Kelly, and you’ll be fine.” She leaned over and squeezed me. I’m not sure what she was getting at with the pseudo-comfort, but her reassurances were there and I’m not too proud to admit it worked.