"Oh, and me?"

My mother asked, turning her face the other way as she pretended to be hurt and then giving a little pout.

Lincoln, understanding what his mother was getting at, looked at her, who was still looking the other way and, with an indifferent smile on his face, replied.

"Good night, Mom."

Lincoln replied, trying to give his mother a sincere smile, but unfortunately, he couldn't because of everything he had been through.

After Lincoln greeted his mother, who was throwing a tantrum, she turned around with a calm, gentle smile on her face and began to face her son, who was sitting in the chair next to his younger sisters, Lola and Lana.

"Good evening, darling. How was your day?"

Rita said, with a warm smile on her face, and then asked her son a sincere question, really wanting to know how his day had been, since she wasn't at home because she had gone to work.

"Your sisters tell me you've been out almost all day. What have you been up to?"

Rita added, staring at her son, only this time with a look of curiosity, but without any intention behind it.

Lincoln, not wanting to reveal too much, just forced another smile on his face and answered his mother's question.

"Oh, nothing much, Mom. I was just at Clyde's, talking about games and our presentation assignment, which is due at school next week."

"Oh, I see."

Lincoln's mother said, not noticing any visible change in her son's expression. After that, she turned to feed Lily, the couple's youngest daughter, who wouldn't sit still for a second.

"I'm glad you had a good time at Clyde's."

She concluded.

While feeding her youngest daughter, Rita remembered that her son didn't like peas very much, let alone liver.

"Son, I'm sorry. Mom forgot that you don't like..."

That was the last thing Rita managed to say, before turning around and seeing a few tears, almost imperceptible, flowing from her son's eyes as he took his first spoonful.

For Rita, who was watching that scene of her son almost crying, for some reason she thought that he was probably in that state because he was forcing himself to eat that food he didn't like. And Lincoln really didn't like liver and peas. However, that scene had another meaning. Lincoln wasn't crying because he didn't like the food, but quite the opposite. After so long having to eat stale food that was more like canned shit, in addition to his palate no longer being able to differentiate between what was good and what was bad, there was still the joy of him finally being able, after so long, to taste a dish that, even if he didn't like it that much, but at that particular moment, was a five-star dish.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

And as you could imagine, my action ended up drawing the attention of everyone at the table to me, attention that I wanted to avoid at all costs. However, I managed to get around it all with a few lies.

After a long conversation, with a little manipulation on my part, dinner finally began to take its normal course, as did the evening.

December 4th

21 days before the apocalypse...

The next day, I decided to put the plan I had devised with Clyde into practice. Basically, he and I pooled the money we'd managed to earn by selling a few things and, incredible as it may seem, we managed to raise a thousand dollars very easily.

After putting the plan into practice and raising the necessary money, Clyde and I met in front of my house.

Clyde looked tense, as if he was worried about something.

"Do you think this is going to work?"

Clyde asked nervously as he looked around, afraid that someone would overhear the conversation.

"Trust me, man. Apart from everything working out, what would be wrong with two pre-teens going to the market to do some shopping?"

Lincoln replied nonchalantly, wanting to speed things up as soon as possible.

"What's more, we're not doing anything wrong... yet."

Lincoln said those words, but sort of whispered the last part, so that his friend wouldn't be able to hear what he'd said, but also not caring too much if he did, and that's exactly what ended up happening. Clyde, who was next to him, ended up hearing what he had said. Lincoln, not giving his friend a chance to ask any more useless questions, walked back towards the market so that he could buy some non-perishable food. However, Clyde was still a little confused by his friend's comment.

"Wait a minute, Lincoln... What do you mean 'yet'?"

Clyde asked as he followed his friend.

Clyde, still confused as to what Lincoln meant by those words, continued to follow his friend towards the market. As they walked through the busy streets of the neighborhood, Lincoln, with an indifferent expression, tried to reassure his friend.

"Relax, man. I just meant that so far, we're not doing anything illegal. We're just going to buy some groceries, like any normal person would."

Lincoln explained, with a serious face, which Clyde didn't notice because he was still behind his friend, who never looked back.

HALF AN HOUR LATER...

I'll be quite honest with you: I knew it would be a difficult task to do all that with these fragile bodies, but not that difficult. Just so you know, we had to make several trips to carry everything we had bought. Luckily, my family wasn't home today, so I took the opportunity to hide everything in a place where hardly anyone would go. The place I ended up choosing was the attic inside the garage, and since Vanzilla was outside the house, hardly anyone used the garage except Luna.

And, as I said before, we ended up spending almost the whole day carrying those heavy bags from the market to my house and, incredible as it may seem, after all that we still had a hundred dollars left over to spend on something else. But, as we were very tired, we decided to leave that for another day. After we'd finished everything, Clyde went back to his house and I organized everything properly in the attic. After finishing everything, I took a cold shower, lay down on the bed and, because I was very tired, fell asleep soon afterwards.