Hannah

We woke up on our tenth day in the cabin to the sight of snow falling outside our windows. We had enough deer meat left for just one more meal and we were concerned about animals taking shelter from the snow and Kevin not being able to hunt any for us. Kevin was more concerned about that than the rest of us. He threw on one of the big, thick jackets from the closet, took the gun and went into the forest to hunt while there was still a good chance of finding animals. By then he knew the forest well enough to know where the best places were for finding animals and was confident of being able to get at least one relatively quickly. While he was gone Lisa and I went out and gathered and stockpiled firewood—she used the axe to chop logs into smaller pieces and I used the hatchet to split them. The arrival of the snow delayed us from embarking on the rest of our journey to the outside world and we weren’t entirely disappointed by that; life in the cabin was a completely new experience for us and the transformation we were undergoing would serve us well when we reached the outside world.

My reservations about the gun, I hated to admit, had for the most part evaporated. Kevin had learned how to use it safely and without a reliable source of food the ease with which it allowed him to provide for us was crucial. In Prospera we never had to make such serious decisions about accepting things that were uncomfortable for us because everything was always provided for us. The skills we were learning for how to fend for ourselves could only serve us in good stead.

Kevin had returned with another deer having not taken nearly as much time as he previously had to bring something back. Before heading back out to try and bring back one more animal he took a break to eat the plate of food that Miranda had prepared for him for when he got back. The food was cold; Miranda offered to heat it up for Kevin in the fireplace but he said not to bother, he wanted to get back out into the forest as quickly as possible. When the snow fell in Prospera it usually lasted about three months. Even if Kevin was able to bring back another animal it was going to do very little to ensure our survival during the coming three months if all of the animals took shelter from the snow for those three months, nonetheless he was determined to do all he could to get us through the upcoming months. It was turning dark by the time he returned, this time with another boar. It had been snowing since morning and a sheet of snow had already accumulated on the ground. Despite being exhausted from his exertions Kevin refused to leave the carcasses outside out of fear that they would attract wolves that would take our food away from us again. He skinned and carved the carcasses while Miranda, Lisa and I dragged the freezer outside so the snow could keep it cold and it could keep the meat cold and safe. Miranda came up with the idea as a way to take advantage of the snow outside without the meat being accessible to wolves or any other predators. The meat from the deer and the boar, once we’d packed all of it into the freezer, looked like an extremely healthy amount, enough to last us for weeks, especially with all of the canned food that we had that we could use to stretch it out.

The winter months that had just begun were going to test us, possibly more than the forest did. Our ability to see our way through them would reveal a lot about our resolve and our ability to fend for ourselves, attributes that were essential in the outside world.

* * *

The winter months proved to be every bit as challenging as we anticipated they would be. The temperature dropped like a stone, and the cabin with its broken windows and only one fireplace was no shield against it. We spent nearly all of our time in the living room close to the fire. We moved our beds into the living room and moved the sofas into the bedrooms. At night we took turns sleeping so that at least one of us would be up to feed wood into the fire. We reverted to wearing our thick winter robes from Prospera and were chopping and stockpiling firewood every day to keep up with the voracious hunger of the fire that we never allowed to go out.

The snow and the accompanying precipitous drop in temperature forced us to change the way we did several things. We had to start getting our water from the lake again because the pipes froze up, and that was no longer a simple matter. The surface of the lake had frozen over just like the surface of the lake in Prospera did, to get water we had to either melt snow in the metal bucket over a fire or use the axe to break the ice to get to the water in the lake. Breaking the ice involved less work so we went with that, and after a few days of the lake being frozen over we made a discovery that eased at least one of our big concerns. There were fish in the lake, lots of them. Kevin’s theory was that they had all swum downriver to avoid getting trapped in parts of the river that had gotten frozen. Whatever the reason was for the fish in the lake being there we were all enormously relieved to have found a source of food right on our doorstep. Kevin used small pieces of meat from the deer and the boar as bait and caught fish with one of the rods that we’d found in the dining room cabinet. The fish were big; one was enough for two people to get full on. We stored the fish in the freezer along with the boar and deer meat, which was remaining perfectly preserved.

We had developed a plan for getting through the winter months that included eating less to prolong our food supplies, bundling ourselves up in warm clothes and making sure there was always enough firewood. Our discovery of fish in the lake as well as our ability to combine our Prospera winter robes with the warm clothes in the closets diminished the rigidity with which we needed to adhere to the plan, but there was one aspect of life in the cabin during the winter months that became increasingly difficult for us to deal with: boredom. The cabin, in particular the living room where we were spending all of our time, started to feel suffocating and we were increasingly having to go off and have some alone time. Kevin went fishing; Lisa and Miranda went to their bedroom, and I took walks out in the snow. There was no danger in me doing so since we were used to the snow from our days in Prospera and the combination of my winter robe and clothes from the cabin did an excellent job of keeping me insulated. Most of the time I walked down the path that Kevin said would most likely take us to the outside world, trying to get a feel for how much further we had to travel. I had a lot on my mind and needed time away from the others to process it all. It was inevitable that we were going to reach the outside world and that gave rise to many questions whose answers were unclear. Were we really going to be able to survive in the outside world? Prospera had been founded so long ago that it was hard to see how we were going to adapt to the changes the outside world had undergone given how primitively we’d been living in Prospera. More and more I was questioning if we were doing the right thing. Weighing on my mind more than anything else though was the fact that my cycle had stopped. This meant one of two things: it was a symptom of a medical problem or I was pregnant.

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I didn’t even want to think about what I was going to do if I was pregnant. I hadn’t said anything to the others about it, not even to Kevin. The possibility that I might be pregnant was causing me enough added worry; I didn’t want to add that worry to the cabin which was feeling increasingly congested. If I was pregnant it would bring with it added difficulties at a time when we were looking ahead to times of great uncertainty. For that reason among others I’d been thinking that the best thing to do might be to go back to Prospera. I knew that wasn’t going to happen; we were committed to our goal of reaching the outside world and having gotten so close turning back was not an option, the others wouldn’t have it.

We waited a few days after the snow had thawed to set off on the final leg of our journey, to give all of the snow time to melt and to gather supplies. Food wasn’t going to be a problem. In addition to the fish that Kevin had been pulling out of the lake he had been able to find animals in the forest and we still had meat left from them in the freezer when winter came to an end. What we did need to worry about was water, which we’d never had to worry about before. Having reached the end of the river we would no longer have easy, direct access to water. We filled up some bottles that we found in the cabin along with the canteen and hoped that it would be enough to last. The clothes we’d found in the cabin we’d also be taking with us, along with the gun, which we were taking for protection and in case the journey turned out to be longer than we anticipated and we ran out of fish and meat before we reached our destination.

When the time came to say goodbye to the cabin we were all more than a little sad. It had been our home for months and even though there were times when it had felt suffocating it was the place where we had successfully lived independently, proving to ourselves that our survival didn’t depend on Prospera providing everything for us. Leaving the cabin meant going back out into uncharted territory, into uncertainty, and also that there was officially no chance of returning to Prospera.

In the time since my cycle had stopped my body hadn’t displayed any of the symptoms associated with pregnancy; no morning sickness, no larger than usual appetite, no mood swings. I hoped that this meant that I wasn’t pregnant and that my cycle stopping was my body simply reacting to something, like our change in diet since leaving Prospera.

We left at noon having spent the morning getting all of our things together. The tracks that led to the cabin that we followed when we once again set off for the outside world kept us out of the forest; we travelled in-between the trees and vegetation on a path that was relatively clear. There were a few shrubs coming up here and there but we were able to proceed without any course deviations. The walk was easy going; with our well rested and well nourished bodies and a clear path before us we ate up the ground. A tingling sense of anticipation took hold of us all as we could feel the outside world drawing tangibly closer with each step. We ate our lunch of fried fish quickly and got back on the road travelling at great walking speed the instant we were done. Despite the speed at which we were travelling we weren’t able to reach the outside world before the sun went down. We camped out overnight for what we hoped would be our last night under the stars and got going again the next morning after a breakfast of pork and canned peas and carrots. Our pace was relentless. With every step the distance between us and the outside world felt like it was being shredded; we walked purposefully expecting to find ourselves in sight of our goal at any moment until, later that morning, we were.

The path that we’d followed ended at a black road with white markings down the middle and yellow markings down the sides. We were looking down on the road from a slightly elevated position, a vantage point from which we were also able to see a few houses spread out over large distances, fields, and a few of what I had to explain to the others were cars. After over a week of trekking through a forest that had driven us to the extremes of what we were capable of enduring by subjecting us to untraversable terrain, forcing us to chase after evasive animals for food and placing our mortality in peril by sending wolves after us and an entire winter spent in a cabin that had given us our first taste of independence and the first opportunity we’d had to gain deeper understandings of ourselves and each other, we had arrived. Before us was the world that no one else in Prospera had ever seen, the world that we had been told had been reduced to rubble by a nuclear world war. In the very near future we would be exposed to truths that would violently disrupt everything that we thought we knew and transform us in fundamental ways. A few more steps and we’d be there, in a completely new and different world. Kevin led the way, as you’d expect him to; I followed directly behind him and Lisa and Miranda, holding hands, followed behind me.