"We need to pack up and go. The weather's not as bad now that almost two months have passed. We've cleaned out the reserves we had."
John didn't look over, but was sure he had caught her off guard with his words. He didn't know yet where they would end up, or if they would even be able to make the trip. It definitely wouldn't be a blow off. He only knew that their hometown of Rawlins - the place they had both been born - was no longer safe, and even if it was, the temperatures were still falling, were below freezing right now. They couldn't stay here much longer or they'd stay forever.
The lonely echo of his wife's shoes on the bare wood floor as she moved toward him, had John wondering what it sounded like as it floated down to the dark, flooded tunnels of their barricaded basement. Was it a dinner bell to those open dark ways and everything that might now be calling that nasty area home? They heard noises sometimes, never sure if it was the moment they would have to defend themselves, but never went down there. They also didn't remove the boards he had sealed it up with, only hammered the nails back in regularly, but they did occasionally tense and look that way, and he was glad she knew how to use both the shotgun and the rifle he kept by her chair. Not that a firearm would be very effective against sewer rats.
"But why should we, Johnnie? We get along here."
"We've seen no signs of anyone coming to save us…and because of the basement."
Scratch... sniff… sniff.
As if to prove his point, they heard the curious, hungry rodents clearly. The grates at the other end of their treeless grazing land kept out the bigger problems, but the rat populations had come in by the hundreds after the War and they'd had to seal off the unused parts of their home. The rodents were big, much too wide to get under the floors, but their pups wouldn't be, and John expected to start seeing them in great numbers soon, considering they could have a litter a month.
"Where would we go? Other than those men with the guns, we ain't seen a healthy person in nigh on two weeks."
John forced his hand away from his aching stomach, eyes still on the yard. He wished that ugly green twilight sun would finish setting and hide the view so she wouldn't see it and get upset.