꧁𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝐾𝑛𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑆𝑢𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑣𝑜𝑟𝑠꧂||Tpn

Chapter two

What day is it again? Who cares.

"Emma."
A faint voice called out to the girl. She had actually been sleeping peacefully until she was awoken by someone. She was still in a subconscious mindset, due to just waking up. Her head was pounding as if someone grabbed a hammer and hit her head. Emma groaned slightly and held her head in her hands, slowly rising from the ground. Oh, that's why. Sleeping on the ground is sure to give you a headache, but wasn't Ray holding her head on his arm? That's what she remembers before falling asleep. It didn't make sense to her, but maybe he got up and when he pulled his arm out from underneath her, she hit her head on the cold, dusty, stone ground. It sure was a theory, but still. Her head was hurting pretty badly. Not to mention her whole body was feeling weak after the catastrophe when she fell, and the stinging memory of the rubbing alcohol wasn't helping. Back to reality though, that someone was calling her name. The redhead had a hard time seeing, and hearing, who it was. The girl shook herself awake fully and had a better understanding of who it was.
"Oh hello, Norman."
She spoke up finally. The white-haired male approached her and took a seat on the ground. "What happened to you? Jeez, you look terrible." He stated. Emma spaced out again. She didn't mean to ignore his question but there were other things on her mind at that second. We're still in the same location, right? Has anything moved? Where's Ray? We're the questions she asked herself. "Well, Emma. Yes, we are still in the same place. The only thing that has moved is a couple of weapons, and Ray is currently walking around a bit to see if we can make this place any safer. Like maybe use some of the rubble to cover up areas that are missing in the wall." He answered. Emma turned red. She didn't realize she was talking out loud. "Sorry, I thought I was talking to myself." The girl mumbled slightly, embarrassment taking over her. "Hey, don't worry about it. I woke you up because we have a couple of things to discuss. First, I want to apologize for acting like a complete jerk earlier. These past few years haven't been easy on any of us so that's not an excuse I get to use for the way I acted. I'm owning up to my mistakes and I'm only asking if you will forgive me." He sincerely apologized to her. Emma adjusted and hugged him. "It's ok, Norman. I forgive you. Me and Ray went through the same thing, the only difference is we never apologized unlike you. This means a lot to me. So, thank you. Please accept my apology as well. My very late apology." The girl sort of spaced off again, but this time she didn't say anything. "It's alright, Emma. I'm just glad you accepted my apology. In return, I will accept yours." He states, hugging the redhead back.

"Now we have a serious matter to discuss."
He pulled her away and reached for an item he had stored away in his pocket. Moving back to put space between them, Norman laid out a map. "Take a look at this, Emma. I found it a little while ago in this place. The more I looked into it I realized something great. There's another town. Can you imagine? We could possibly find resources there! I checked the map more closely and memorized the layout. If we get to that town there are houses with bomb shelters! We could keep everything there. Plus, we would finally have beds and maybe blankets. No more sleeping on the hard floors at night! Oh, and get this! If we continue from there we will reach a hospital, I don't know if there's anything useful at that place anymore but it never hurts to check! What do you think Emma? Ray's down but if you want to stay here longer I'm fine with that. I know we just settled here and your injured. So the choice is yours."

Emma went silent.
What was she supposed to say? The place he described, sounded so nice. She wanted to see if it was real but like he said. She was injured, what if she just slowed them down? This honestly didn't sound like a good idea but what else was there to do? If there was this town, and if there are resources. There was no doubt they needed it. After a long while of thinking, Norman believed she'd spaced out again. He nodded and got up. "I'll talk to you again later. You probably don't want to be bothered right now." The male sighed. He knew Emma tried her best to pay attention but if things were just too much. She couldn't help but space out. It was her happy place she would go to anytime things felt too much to handle. Norman and Ray just wished she'd pay better attention to the important things. No matter how many times she tried to go to her dream world it just wasn't real. The actual hell they lived in was really the only thing she needed to be taking into consideration, but of course, they never told her that. Instead, they were patient. If nothing serious was happening they let her daydream away. Though, if something life-threatening was happening they had to snap her out of it immediately. It wasn't always easy and the two boys felt terrible when they had to slap her. Of course, it was light and didn't hurt for too long but still. They felt bad. Just as Norman was about to go look for Ray he felt a little tug on the back of his shirt. "Hm?" He questioned and turned back around. Looking down at the girl sitting on the ground.