5 Days

Day 2

          Being a mother is learning about

        strengths you didn't know you had,

and dealing with fears you didn't know existed.

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3:23

3:23

3:23

3:24

At least that's what the clock says, I can't sleep. I've been laying here staring at this stupid clock for 5 hours and 25 minutes.

I'm not sleeping tonight, not with the heavy realization we have to leave.

The soft breathing of the girls is the only sound other than my own heartbeat. Never before have I hated silence this much, I need a plan, a plan.

What would mom and dad do?

That was a stupid question... they'd pray, duh, they didn't name me Zinaida without biblical reason, they were religious...

Me?

I don't know what to think any more, I hate to think that 'our lord and savior' would do this to us but I also hate to think he's not there. I hate to think there's not a better place to go especially when my daughters die. where would they go if there was no heaven?

I quietly get up, that's enough over thinking for tonight.

I walk back to the little table and turn on the lamp, checking over my shoulder to make sure I didn't wake the girls, their little blonde heads reflect the light casting a light golden glow.

My little angels.

A plan, I need a plan, ok, start with basics.

I've already checked on our rations, 3 days if we push it.

Where do we go?

I grab the two red and two orange emergency backpacks from the hooks in the corner, obviously I knew we'd need to leave eventually. Taking the United States map out of my orange backpack, I spread it across the ground, taking a black marker from the pack I look the map over.

The earthquake cut all communication four months ago so the information I have is four months old. A lot can happen in four months.

I'll just have to work with it.

Drawing an X over Austin, I continue drawing X's over every bomb that has fallen in the last 3 years.

New York, San Antonio, D.C., Seattle, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Santa fe, Phoenix, Dallas...

You know what, anyone with a brain knows you just don't go south... ever. Same goes for the west, they might not have dropped as many nuclear bombs, but the radiation is still a concern there.

The main reason to avoid going west?

Well thanks to the continued bombing of the San Andreas fault, an earth altering earthquake ripped through the United States starting in California and felt all the way though Canada.

California was split in half and it put most of the west coast under water including large parts of Oregon and Washington. Living in the west end of Washington had really screwed her family, the flood had devastated an already destroyed state.

So no west and no south.

I draw a line from Idaho down to Utah, cross it all the way to Iowa and back up to Minnesota, this I have decided, will be our safe zone. I would head north to Canada but that's where literally everyone went and I have yet to hear anything from them so I'm not taking the chance. Heading east towards the great lakes was our best option.