"It's been a year and a half and I still haven't gotten used to dumpster food," Izibele murmured, dropping and empty can of fruit salad. "What have you found, Marrie?"

I looked down at my can of chocolate pie. If I told Izibele she would hog the whole things. Well, not this time she wouldn't. I hurridly stuffed the can into my pack before Izibele could turn around to face my response, just as she always did.

"Oh, nothing without mold and a heafty helping of bugs...except," I dug a little deeper and a fire ignited in my heart. "Izibele! Get over here."

Izibele came over to the opposite site of the ally, and joined my side. We dug together, to find a stash of over 100 canned foods, and water bottles. This was somebody else's hideout. My gut twisted a million ways to Sunday.

"You grab the food. I got the water."
A year and a half we had been our own people, and Izibele insisted on ordering me around. Do this, do that. Marrie, you can't go there alone. Marrie, grab me a leaf. Empty the bathroom bucket. I loved her, but too much is too much, no matter what way it is looked at.

I did what she asked me to. I was in no mood to fight her. Besides, she always got loud when she fought. That would just attract our followers...

"Drop...those...cans..." A masculine voice demanded from behind us.

We hadnt heard anybody come up behind us. Not the cocking of a gun, nor the kicking of a can. Either they had been in the ally with us the whole time, or they were master sneaks. Not havign to be told twice, I dropped my cans, but Izibele gripped the water bottles firmly. I didn't dare turn around and face our challengers. Part of me knew this could end, very badly, and this year hadnt made a pessimist. I wasnt lucky enough to get out of this myself.

"This is our food!" Izibele exclaimed. "Finders, keepers. Losers, weepers. Go find your own." It was a good thing I could rely on her.

I stood still. Either they were going to kill us, or Izibele was going to use her vocal cords. Not taking a chance, I covered my ears. I could feel a hand reach towards Izibele, but there was nothing I could do. I wasnt brave or stong enough to deny that hand its own persuits.

"Touch me and I'll scream. There is a big herd of Gods Hands less than a street down. They've been tracking us for months. Do you want to get butt raped in one of their holding cells? No, then leave us alone!" Izibele flung around, and dropped the water bottles. "Go away!"

I closed my eyes and pretended that I was somewhere nice, somewhere like the old days. This wasn't supposed to happen after I graduated. Why was this happening? For what seemed like forever, I blocked out all the noise, all the chaos. Then, somebody touched me, and I froze.

"Come on, Marrie. Shove the cans into your back sack, and let's get out of here."
Izibele looked down at me. Her pack hung low on her back from the weight of the water bottles. The men were gone.

"Izibele, what happened?" I shoved everything I could fit into my bag, and carried the remaining three. “Where did  they go?”

"I will tell you later. We've got to go, it's getting dark."

I looked at the sun, how dangerously close it was to the land. My heart started thumping, and I was thrown into survival mode.

"If we run the whole way, maybe we can make it."

I picked myself up and took off at a dead run. Izibele close behind me, I leapt over and dove under anything in my way. We came up on our hideout, an abandoned home, just as the sounds of the jungle began. Shadows began morphing into living creatures. We locked the doors behind us, and covered our windows, and filled the cracks with our rags. This was our third close call that week. Something had to change, or we wouldn't survive the next hunt cycle.

I could tell when Max was going to wake us, even before he began to bark. He was our alarm clock everyday, and I didnt know what Izibele and I would do without him.

In the Old Days Izibele liked to sleep in until three in the afternoon. In the New Day, if we slept that long, when we woke we would either have been captured, or murdered. I was usually awake by ten in the morning, but even that wasnt early enough.

‘Rororooo! Rooo!’

“Max, enough!” Izibele hollared from the stiff matress right beside mine.

‘Rororooo!’

“Who trained this dog!?” Izibele flung up to see me already dressed and ready. “Oh, never mind. I know. I’m being prude.”

“Oh, good job,” I laughed.

When our school had to take the practice SAT she had gotten that word wrong. She still wasn’t using it right, but I wasn’t going to break her spirits. That was the only thing we had left in the New Days.

I turned—while Izibele was dressing—to grab out food and water boxes from the cupboard right next to the door.

I stopped for a minute to look around. Our hideaway was an abandonded house we had spent a year making nearly impenitrable. We made sure we built over the entraces we did not want to be entraces any more, and made sure the ones we did had two heavy, metal doors to go through. We had the only key to unlock the normal door locks. The only other way we had it locked was at night, when we were inside—we put metal bars up and down to keep The Creatures outside. This was a fort I was proud of building, thank you Construction class!

“No peaking,” Izibele laughed and joined me by the box. “Grab and go.” Izibele covered her eyes and pulled out one can of food, and a water bottle. “Fruit Salad, my favorite.”

I did the same. I was never lucky enough to get my favorite cans of food, but atleast we had real meat. I opened my eyes and looked down at my chocolate pie can. Maybe, this week would turn around. I pulled out one more can for Max, opened both and the three of us ate half of the can. It was Sunday, the day for us to plan the rest of our week, my favorite day.

On Sundays we spent all day at our hideaway, unless emergency called—it rarely did. We planned out week, organized our supplies, and repaired what we could. For the day, we could forget about New Days, and feel like actual human beings, beings that haven’t murdered before, beings that didn’t have to literally eat the sloppy seconds of another creature in order to survive.

“First off, tell me about what happened yesterday,” I demanded in a light tone, putting away my can for dinner.

Thats the way our meals went. Half of the can for breakfast, one sandwich with some sort of vegitable and meat for lunch, and half of our can for dinner. There were days, true, that we did not get the chance to eat, and there were days when we were running too low on food to eat every meal. Now, we just barely kept our face above the water. Our toes just barely scrapped the sandy bottom.

“I wish I could do that,” Izibele whispered, and smiled at me. She set down her can next to the bed, laid her hand on Max’s back and continued, “I wish I could just block out everything for a moment, just a moment, and forget everything that happened.”

“You don’t, believe me. Blocking everything out is more than just a skill. It is the fear that engulfs your heart and pushes away the danger...as if that really helps.”

I let out a long sigh, and laid back down. Izibele let out a mocking sign, and joined my side. This was why she was my best friend. Even in the apocalypse, she cared. That was more than I could say for others.

“There isnt much to tell. I screamed, and they ran.”

“They?”

“It was an older boy, probably about our age, and a younger boy. They were probably brothers, or atleast some sort of immediate family.”

“Probably brothers,” I agreed.

We laid there for more than an hour, or as close to that time as I could predict; in the New World  there was no real  way to track the time. All the watches had run out long ago, and neither Izibele nor I knew how to use a sun dial clock.

There was no speaking, no sound at all. Just the heavy breathing of Max and Izibele’s soft allergy sniffles. Never had the world been so quiet. Even in the Old World  the computer would hum, and I would hear cars pass by my bedroom window, but this was true, blissful quiet, something we didn’t get often in the Jungle.

“Okay, get up,” Izibele order in a calm tone. She pulled out  a pad of paper, a practically empty pen, and looked at me.
We spent the next hour plannign and organizing our week.

Monday took up the most time, it always did. We never knew what we would have to do on Monday—or anyday—but Monday especially because we didn’t know our supply levels or the actual damage done to our hideaway. Eventually we stopped the arguements, and reached the same agreement we did every week. The plan hadnt changed in a year and a half, but I looked it over anyways.

Sunday:
1. Plan the week
2. Organize and count supplies
3. Reapir damaged hideaway areas
4. Wash clothing down at the river
5. Bath in the river
6. Start new pots of water in the boiling room
7. Cardio
8. Gather extra supplies for Maxs new outside potty house
Monday:
1. Reclear our the houses in the neighborhood
2. Gather extra supplies
3. Clean and restock guns and ammo
4. Repair immediate damage to hideaway
5. Muscle strength
6. Gather extra supplies for Maxs new outside potty house
Tuesday:
1. Look for signs of the God’s Hands group
2. Gather supplies as needed
3. Repair hideaway as needed
4. Agility
5. Gather extra supplies for Maxs new outside potty house
Wednesday:
1. Supplies as needed
2. Reclear out homes in neighborhood
3. Repairs as needed
4. Cardio
5. Gather extra supplies for Maxs new outside potty house
Thursday:
1. Reclear out homes in neighboring neighborhoods
2. Supplies as needed
3. Track down threats
4. Find a girlfriend for max ;)
5. Muscle Strength
6. Build the outdoor potty house
Friday:
1. Track down threats
2. Gather intel
3. Agility
Saturday:
1. Supplies
2. Repairs as needed
3. Take out threats
Sunday: plan the next week...

“I guess if we have to do it, then lets do it,” I whimpered quietly, following Izibele.

We walked around our hideaway and recorded all the weak areas that we would need to refortify. Any and all repairs that needed to be done was recorded, along with the supplies they would take. After we gathered the information for out hideaway we went about fixing them. There was no point organizing and writing down the supplies we still had if we needed to use some to repair our hideaway. It didn’t take us long to make the fixes. We had been fixing the place for a year and a half and we had developed the knowlage to fix even the smallest bumps in our protector.
We took our clothing and gathered what we would need for the river, and headed down. The river wasn’t much of a river, just a perpetual puddle in the middle of the neighborhood. It was small, but as clean as we could get it.

“Do you think they will ever figure out how to get rid of this virus? Those scientists I mean, up in the mansion, past the forest?” I asked, dumping my clothes in the puddle while Izibele covered my back with her gun.

“I think, those scientist fellows were stupid to go into the woods. I think they didn’t even survive the forest.”

The forest was where The Creatures went during the day. Sometimes if you got close enough, you could hear them breathing. Nobody had actually seen a creature on account that they ate anything that moved. But, we knew they were in there, and that they didn’t come out during that day. When you hear noises that ghostly, and that terrifying, you knew something monsterous was where it shouldn’t be.

“Marrie, pull over the tarp,” Izibele whispered.

Without questioning her, I pulled the tarp we had built—covered with sprayed grass, and dirt to match the ground—over my body and clothes. She was quick to join me.

“What is going on?”

“They are out there...”

She didn’t need ot say who, for me to know what she was talking about. Gods Hands were a religious group that prowled the Earth for people...demons, to lock away, so paradise on may happen. 

Every survivor knew who they were. They were The Creatures of the day.
A month ago they had spotted, and tried to capture us. We barely made it away with our lives, and since then, they have been looking for us.

I covered my ears as my heart raced.

“Hello Lassy...”