Snippet #1817327

Jemima had been on the verge of drifting off to sleep, lulled into slumber by the smooth rasping of the charcoal brazier set up in the corner of the room. Huddled with her legs up on a plastic chair, her cowl-neck sweatshirt pulled up over her chin, her mood was so low that she almost couldn’t muster the energy and will to eat. She especially wasn’t hungry for pierogies, but that was all she had. Another soiree in search of supplies would be required soon, but she’d need to wait until something happened to disrupt the regular patrols on the streets at night. Like some sort of attack or uprising.

In the early days after she’d taken refuge in the old telecommunications building, she’s taken advantage of the military regularity of the patrols to time her expeditions out to find food and other necessities. But lately there were more soldiers, more frequent patrols, and her only hope of getting out at night unseen was to have the militia’s attention focused on something else. The CB radio she’d salvaged was good for picking up on when that happened. The building had long since been stripped of anything the invaders could use, and had been supplanted in function by the army’s own communications array in their makeshift barracks; meaning that nobody ever came here.

The room she’d taken up residence in had formerly been a server room. There were no working machines or telephones anymore, but it had a dedicated power supply which had not yet been found and cut off by the garrison. That meant she’d been able to set up an ice-box to keep food fresh, a microwave, but those were the only ‘mod cons’ she had anymore. Just the brazier, some pots and pans, the chair, a duffel bag full of clothes and a roll-mat for sleeping on.

She also had a police issue 9mm pistol with a full magazine; she’d not had to use it yet. It wasn’t like she was going to take on the army by herself. It was there just to force any intruders to take cover, giving her time to dive into the duct system and escape. It was a drill she’d rehearsed plenty of times, and if she ever had to do it for real, it would probably mean a do-or-die attempt to escape the village. Without this place to hide in it would be no time at all before she’d be found and enslaved. Or put in ‘prison’...if indeed that’s what the jail was anymore. Nothing had been heard of anyone who’d gone there. And Jemima knew the jail well enough to realise that it wasn’t big enough to imprison all the people who’d been sent there. The likely reality was far more grim, and the question she asked herself every day was whether her mom was actually being held there, or whether she was one of the people she was sure had been executed by the brutes who had invaded the village a few months earlier.

The pierogies in the pan on the brazier were just starting to brown, and enough of an appetising fragrance began to rise for Jemima to rouse a little. She leaned forwards slightly to check the progress of her ‘dinner’, and nearly toppled off the chair as there was a noise from somewhere near the building entrance, followed by a female voice calling out something indistinct with a clearly frustrated, anguished voice.

Jemima stood up and grabbed the pistol, hoping to God that she wasn’t about to be forced to go on the run on a cold night on an empty stomach! Tiptoeing over to the doorway, she flattened herself against the wall and listened for any further movement.