Page 53 of Hunted By Fae

Emily had to drop her bag.

That’s when we encountered the men.

Masked men.

They didn’t see us.

Emily ditched the bag to better roll under a car.

That’s how we hid from them for the hours they were on the street before they finally moved on.

So we are here, now. For food, meds, all the supplies we need to keep us going for a while longer.

I pack a lot of antibiotics, then turn for the counter.

The light glares at me.

I squint against it.

Bee mumbles a ‘sorry’ before she drops the light to the floor.

Takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the shift, and I squeeze them, once, twice, before I watch lights dancingall over my vision, as though stained by the torch. I huff a breath, then start to slide to the next aisle. One more stop.

But as I turn the corner, I realise I don’t need to go all the way into the messy aisle to find painkillers. Packets are all over the floor.

I drop into a squat, and carefully pick through what the light illuminates.

Always better to have painkillers before they are needed than to have to go out looking for them when things are rough.

Emily gets migraines.

So I grab a few of those pills.

And—as my gaze latches onto a familiar box—my shoulders soften.

More bronchodilators. Inhalers.

Just two, but I stuff them into the bag without a grudge. All up, that’s five.

Not bad.

Not great, but not bad.

One more would even things out, two for each of us. Emily, Ramona and me.

The three of us got the sickness.

The plague that infected the world, an airborne virus, and before the blackout even reached us, I fell to it.

Now, the three of us carry the remnants of that virus in our lungs.

The ache isn’t constant anymore. But it swells from time to time, and when it does, it’s like an elephant’s foot pressing down on my chest, and I can’t breathe, I can’t suck in more than an inch of air, and I feel my insides swelling, closing over.

I’ve passed out from it before. The inflammation. The suffocation.

Sure, inhalers help, but cold, icy air is best. Nice and sharp.

That’s hard to come by in a world without technology, no running freezers to stick my head in. I only know it helps because of those few cold days we endured about a week after leaving quarantine. We slept outside, in the woods, rugged up in sleeping bags we took from the campervan.