5 Days

Day 1

Like a beautiful flower

A daughter is a joy for a mother to behold.

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Three months, I have been stuck in this 10x30 space for three months, I think... It's hard to keep track of how many days have gone by without sunlight. Sure, we have clocks, I just don't know if they're correct.  Anything battery powered was knocked out for who knows how long after the fallout hit us.

Here I am, another day in this bunker, sitting at the little table in one of the 4 small chairs looking over our rations. Originally, we had enough rations to last 4 people for a year if used correctly, but that was before the earthquake, before the flooding, and before we lost our fourth person.

You would think having to keep less people alive would make up for the ¾'s of the rations we lost, or at least keep us alive longer than a few days but I've counted, re-counted, and re-re-counted what's left of our supplies and have come to one conclusion...

We need to leave the shelter.

As things are now, we have maybe enough for three days. The natural disasters really took a toll on our supplies. The flood almost drowned us out, like rats trapped in a sewer. The earthquakes also hadn't stopped and besides the concern for food, was the concern for the structure of the bunker, from the look of the cracks in the concrete it had been severely compromised.

I really have no choice.

"Maybe if I cut my food completely-"

"Mommy?" Zinaida took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Don't look, don't look, don't look, I'm barely hanging on, I can't look at her, I'll lose it.

"Mommy?" I sigh in aggravation. I don't mean to direct my stress to my children, but things were starting to weigh me down.

"What Avani?" I say, I don't turn around, I can't. I can't acknowledge how bad her physical condition has gotten.

"Don't look at her. Continue making a plan, keep them alive, maybe I could- "

"Mari won't stop crying." Avani is upset, her own crying mixes with her sisters. 

How had I not noticed the screaming of my 2-year-old? God I'm a horrible mother.

I take a deep breath, "suck it up, do your job."

Rubbing my hands over my face I stand, officially distracted from my other worries and fully focused back on my daughters. They were struggling too.

"Here let me have her baby." I take the crying child out of my 6-year-olds arms, she's light, way, way too light, but I ignore it and rock her.

"Shhh, sweetheart, I know you're hungry, I know, I'm sorry mommy can't make it better. Hey, Ani, where's her sippy cup?" If there is one thing I can thank the flooding for, its water. It's pretty much the only thing keeping us alive.

She returns with the empty cup. I hand my whimpering child to her, "try to comfort her while I make dinner, please."

Handing the little cup in her tiny hands to me she walks to the bed we all share, her sister in her boney arms.

I watch them closely from my peripheral.

I examine their small bodies, what I see is not the work of just three months of malnutrition. The war has been going on for years now, food was scarce way before we had to take shelter. The girls are used to this, they think what's happening is normal. They've never known anything different.

Avani was 3 when the first bomb dropped, it had devastated Austin.

Marigold had only seen the sun, what? five? Six times? This was because the first super nuke was dropped a year ago in Seattle and it had obscured the skies for weeks.

It was a huge blow to America and less than three days later, full blown nuclear war was taking place on our soil.

I was angry when my children started to lose weight, I was angry when they started to ration food, like anyone left hadn't already been surviving from whatever was left in the mass of abandoned houses.

Of course I was angry, because I knew...

My anger was useless, what could I do?

Nothing, so I just stopped acknowledging it. I began to avoid the hard truths that were right I front of me.

At some point you stop really seeing.

You stop seeing the eerily empty streets, you stop seeing the ash, and the destruction, and the dead bodies, and eventually... you stop seeing how their bones stick out of their thin pale skin, their empty eyes, and their exhaustion.

You stop seeing your daughters slowly dying.

So just like the day before and the day before that, I pretend nothing's wrong.

I pretend my daughters and I are going to make it out of this, and I ignore the fact that again for tonight our meals consist of warm water and a single can of peas.