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interest as his thoughts
turned to survival.
    ‘Sorry, it’s just…’ He took a deep breath, ‘…I want to keep you and
Chrissie safe, to get us through this.’
    I nodded. ‘I know.’ I raised a hand to his face and brushed his cheek
with my thumb. ‘We’ll be fine.’
    ‘I’m not sure how long we can last out here.’
    ‘We’ve got enough food for a couple of weeks,’ I replied, ‘thanks to the extra
I bought for the Women’s Group.’
    ‘Can’t it last longer?’ He held my gaze and the concern was apparent in
his eyes.
    ‘We could probably stretch it.’
    ‘How long?’
    I shrugged and my hand fell away from his face. ‘I don’t know. Maybe
another week, two at the most.’
    Bob shook his head. ‘We’ve got to leave,’ he stated after a moment.
    ‘What, now?’
    ‘Soon. Once people start to realise the importance of food there’s going
to be chaos.’
    ‘There’s already chaos.’
    ‘Worse,’ he stated, his tone grave. ‘People will do anything to survive.’
    A chill arose in response to the gravity of his words. ‘You think it
could get bad?’
    He nodded. ‘Very. We need to go somewhere safe.’
    ‘Where?’
    He looked down thoughtfully and then returned his gaze to mine. ‘The
mountains.’
    ‘The Adirondacks? How will we survive?’
    ‘I don’t have all the answers, I just know we need to go somewhere safe,
or at least safer than we are here.’
    ‘Do you think there’ll be another attack?’
    Bob shook his head. ‘It’s doubtful, but what we have here is a shell, a
relic of what we had before. It won’t be long before we have to leave it
behind. Better now than when everyone else comes to the same realisation.’
    ‘Surely there’s some way to stay. We could plant fruit and vegetables,
collect rainwater. The yard’s big enough to grow plenty.’
    ‘And what do we do in the months between planting and any yield? What do
we do when the rain doesn’t come or if it’s radioactive and we start to become
ill.’ He shook his head again. ‘No, we have to leave, and the sooner the
better.’
    ‘There’s got to be a way we can make it work,’ I responded. I’d already thought
about the need to leave, but it was hypothetical, a what if? Now I was
confronted with the direct reality and fear arose in response.
    ‘There isn’t,’ said Bob fatalistically.
    ‘How’s it going to be any better in the mountains? At least we know Burlington
and have friends here. If we help each other out we can make it through.’
    ‘Through to what?’ he asked pointedly.
    ‘To…’ My mouth hung open as I found myself without an answer. ‘To after
all this.’
    ‘After all this?’
    ‘Surely the government will be working to get things back to normal? The
army will be called in to keep order and the infrastructure will be rebuilt.’
    He looked at me soulfully. ‘Leah,’ he said softly, ‘this wasn’t some
localised catastrophe or terrorist attack, this was nuclear war. There may be
no government, no army, no one left to hold things together when they start to
go bad.’
    ‘Go bad?’ I said fearfully. ‘What do you mean “go bad”?’
    ‘You’ve watched enough movies with me to know what happens when
everything falls apart. When society collapses order collapses with it and
people become a law unto themselves.’
    ‘You really think it’s that bad?’
    ‘I think it will be.’
    I stared at him, my heart pounding as the truth of what he’d said sank
in. I already knew it in truth, but just needed someone else to say it to me in
order to confirm my fears.
    ‘We could make this place secure,’ I suggested weakly, feeling nauseous
as my stomach churned.
    ‘From fallout as well as from people?’
    ‘How do you know we’ll be safe from fallout in the mountains?’
    ‘I don’t.’
    I looked into his eyes and wished he’d lied to me, wished he’d told me
that we’d be fine in the mountains, would find shelter and a way to survive. I
needed Bob to tell me he was in