Eli was barely staying afloat before the apocalypse. Working long shifts, taking care of his younger brother, and just trying to figure out what to do with his life.
When he finds his mom trying to take a chunk out of her youngest son though, Eli...
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Days go by quietly. The peace is welcomed, but at the same time, we are all on edge waiting for something to go wrong. Amelia has been testing her limits as she would limp from place to place before the pain put her back into a chair.
And Ember, I frowned glancing over my shoulder at the child whose body was quivering as she struggled to drag in breaths to her weakening body. I turned away from the depressing sight, my lips pulling further down at the sight as Javier and I were looking over the map on the picnic table between us.
Its been too long since the two of us had done a run together, we weren't as weak as we were when we first arrived at Haven. We have a better abundance of food in the untouched lands of this expanse of forest.
But we were leaving to find Ember some medicine, one moment she was fine and the next she was like this. It was worrisome, but Red explained that children were easily susceptible to illnesses, especially seeing as she has no vaccinations, something we wouldn't be able to provide her in this new world.
She was so small and vulnerable and something as small as an illness could take her from us. It was terrifying. My daughter could be teetering on the brink of death right now, and there was nothing I could do about it but try and find different types of medicine made for children.
Red was struggling, she was struggling trying to find out what was wrong with Ember and she couldn't figure it out. She had hit a dead end. I think the only reason she hadn't pushed for this search sooner was that Ember was still feeding regularly.
Something we were all on our wits ends about. I was constantly hovering back between worried and not. Mason got sick a lot as a child, it just comes with the weaker immune system, but I always had medicine and doctors I could take him too when he wasn't up to par.
"If we take this route, we can cut through here. It looks like there was a small town here, they might have an apothecary."
Shaking my head at Javier's input, I voiced my own. "I want to stay away from roads for a while longer, we don't know how far we got from Haven and they stuck to the roads." Trailing my finger across the woods that were between us and our destination, I nodded.
"If we cut through the woods we will get there quicker and have more insurance we won't be seen."
"What about those people you heard in the woods, Eli?" Amelia called out from her seat, Wolfe bent at the knee helping her clean the wound that was slowly beginning to heal.
"They were more South than East, if we pay attention and move fast hopefully luck will be on our side." Focusing on the map, I went through every alternate option that was available.
Our only viable, safe option, was the woods, making a clear-cut path to the small village where our solution hopefully laid. I could only pray it laid there because if it didn't anything else was too far to travel on our limited time we could give Ember before either the cold passed, or she died.
