dark was the night

He shoved some necessities into a pack. 

He heard footsteps approach.

“Going on a run. We need more supplies. There should be a small town a couple miles north of here. Figure that’s the best place to start.”

Her body shivered uncontrollably as she held her jacket over her head, trying her hardest to block out the harsh rain that pelted down on them. She, like some of the others, had managed to find a bit of make shift shelter beneath the branch of a tree. Still, some drops seeped through and thoroughly left them soaked. 

She turned to Abel with a worried frown on her face. He had a point. They were equipped for something like this. Walkers? Sure. Hostile survivors? Definitelu? Mother nature? “We’ll be okay.” She told him, not sure if she was trying to reassure him or herself. She refrained from reaching down to rub her belly worriedly, instead focusing on keeping herself dry. “We just…” Her teeth chattered as she tried to get the words out. “We just have to get through tonight.”

This world was fucked up. Unbelievably fucked up. There she was, very much pregnant, shivering under a tree branch. 

Abel felt a twinge of guilt. Women and children needed to be protected in this world. 

Maybe he was making up for the camp that he was previously at. Abel walked away from her, momentarily, to dig through his pack. He grabbed an old sleeping bag that was no longer usable. He tore it open down the side before walking back to Alivia.

He handed it to her.

“Put this around you. Gotta stay dry. Temps below freezing. We need to find some place dry, to build a fire or take cover.”

Cold rain and snow flakes were falling uncontrollably from the sky. Just like everyone else, Raven knew this was an impossible situation for them to simply wait out. Biting her lip, she wished her aunt was back from the run she was on - she would know what to do. She always did. That thought made Raven remember the next best thing.

Her aunt’s ex husband. Swallowing hard, holding her thin jacket against her body as close as she possibly could, Raven walked over to the distraught looking man. “Didn’t you like learn how to deal with stuff like this? Isn’t there a handbook on what to do?”

Despite not really knowing her, Abel felt some sort of obligation to look after Raven. She was his ex-wife’s niece. And she was naive, still a child, even in this new world.

“...If there were a handbook, it’d say to stay out of this fucking weather and find shelter.” He was shivering now, couldn’t imagine how cold she must’ve been. “Bet we could find some place dry to stay if we looked hard enough.”

The firewood that he had gathered earlier was useless at this point. He stood beneath a branch, shielded from some of the heavy rain. 

"Won’t make it through the night if this weather doesn’t let up.”