The First Day

Day 1

I work silently at our oily wooden desk in the dining room. A map spread out in form pinpoints crudely placed in different areas on the map. Today we are searching for the first time since it began. I labeled he London Central into 8 different sections, we will explore section 8 (closest to us) first.

I run upstairs to where my brother Joshua is silently packing his belongings so we can move to a more established area, (once we have found one). He is slowly finishing as I wait at the door for him to zip up his bag. I need to explain a few things to him first before we set out.

I lead him downstairs to a set of screwed up pieces of paper lazily placed around the kitchen bench. "Okay here is our priorities for when we set out and the guidelines." I tell him as he glances nervously between me and the paper.

1- Food up to 2kg.

2- Fresh water.

3- weapons and tools - up to 3 each.

4- Camping gear.

5- Fresh clothes.

6- Herb and vegetable seeds.

Joshua looks back at me, "How long are we allowed out for, Tom?" I love how he looks to me as a leader, I have helped him through the tough times over the past month. I'm worried that he might get hurt if we go out, or get sick. But we are running low a

On supplies and there aren't many survivors in our area so hopefully there are some bits and pieces hanging around in the abandoned shops. "6 Hours, set a timer on your watch." I watch as he sets the alarm. He's looks so smart in his 10kg backpack, a pair of sunglasses hanging limply from his neck.

"How hot is it out there?" Joshua asks as a precaution. I run upstairs to check the thermostat that we stole from a nearby hardware store. Checking the UV is important as The heat is slowly increasing but it drops every year so we should be fine for a while. I press down the button which reads the current air temperature, 29c. It's hot for an early morning but it will hopefully only get up to 33c max.

While I'm here I check the water monitor, the rainfall has been limited and last came 4 days ago. I scurry back down the stairs, I'm worried about our inbuilt water system. "What are you doing?" Joshua asks. I ignore him jogging step by step down the stairs to the entrance door to the garden. I check the amount from the rain, only 2 litres. That's not good hopefully our water supply to the house is still running.

We set up a drainage system and water supply when the sickness hit. We set up some pipes so we can leak other peoples water supply's from the street into our house, this works surprisingly, but the water won't run forever there's only limited hydro around the area. Sooner or later it will be shut off.

The water's still running, from the street pipes but it isn't at its average peek of a daily, 7 Litres. When we first hooked it up we were getting at least 19, but water is scarce. I walk slowly back to Joshua, he's sitting on the round chair in the kitchen.

"We better get moving," I tell him, I open the door slide my sunglasses down over my face and breath in the wave of heat.