Surviving the Smoke

Ch7 - Surviving

Chapter 7 - Surviving

We stayed in that small shack that they had built for about 6 months when Alexa and I finally told them that this was NOT private and we needed some space for ourselves like a girls room and a guys room, or even if we went bigger we culd do everyone gets their own room. The boys liked the sound of that until they found out that they had to build it and we would direct them and supervise, lol. So we explained our thoughts and after about 3 months of building (we ended up helping out too) our beloved house was finished. Jack had stolen saws and axes, also knives and other tools that help us A LOT. We had a system – Dustan chops down the trees, Andrew drags the tree to our “lumber yard” where Alexa saws them into planks (they weren’t all perfect but its home-made right?) and then Jack brings the planks to Chris and I where we put everything together and basically build the house with rope, planks and tree sap. Now, I know we sound like savages or something, but we do live quite non-savage like lives. We just utilize everything in nature. Jack is the expert on that. He goes all around the borders of our forest which stretch up to 7 kilometers away in search for any new things like any survivors (which have never come but you never know), picks berries, sets traps and all of that stuff, which Alexa and I do more of the near-home things like managing the garden that was once REALLY sad when the boys were on their own, but now its nice and big and producing most of our crops. The other three boys either go out hunting or wood cutting or scavenging with Jack. We have a really great system going on.

Our winters are really tough but we manage. After the first winter we learned lots of tricks to surviving and getting food. For one, there is a small house that people have been living in since the boys met in the forest. Apparently, a Chinese officer lives there with his family because he needs to be close by to the jail just in case. When he goes out once a week he brings his wife and 2 kids with him to the jail, leaving the house wide open for anyone to take things. We limit ourselves to one tool every other week, 3 pieces of fire wood every week, a few of and vegetables and meats they have in there and as much fresh water will come out of their well. Well, (see the pun I did their? Get it?) Every other day we will go to their well during the night time to get fresh water. It’s our only way of getting it so it’s very important. We wouldn’t be able to live without it.

Anyways, everyone has their own small room in our new house, which has a makeshift shelving unit and a wooden bed, each bed with sheets and pillows stolen from the officer’s house. We had to be REALLY careful about taking them because it was something that they would notice, so we decided that to be safe, we would only take one blanket every 2 months and make due with animals skins or woven blankets that I would make from the tall grass and sometimes giant frilly leaves. They weren’t the best in the winter time, but on our first few weeks of the freezing cold, we all decided to drag out beds into one room and sleep together. Now that we are 14 and 15, it’s kind of awkward sometimes sleeping in like the same room with connected beds with the guys, but you gotta do what you gotta do to survive.

We also really wanted to put a fire place in but it would be kind of dangerous with all the wood so we built another room that was finished a few months ago that was made of wood then lined with stones that we kept together with tree sap and ‘crazy glue’ that we stole from the house every now and then. In the center of the room is a contained fire place, with big flat stones we find by the river as the base of it. We are all kind of excited to see how it works in the winter time.

All in all, we survive and are living great lives… Just we all want something more. Will we have to live like this forever? Will we eventually have KIDS here? Will they live here? It’s all just so confusing and sometimes.