Ana's Questionnaire

Ana runs into the forest, gunshots behind her making her ears ring. 

Voices shout, but her ears ring too much to know what they are saying. 

But they are getting closer. 

Her lungs burn, her little legs struggling to push her.

It has to be here. It has too.

A bullet sends a spray of wood shrapnel over her, stinging her face. 

There!

Ana throws herself forward, a shot flying over her shoulder, as she throws herself onto the sled her daddy kept telling her to clean up.

----------

A spray of blood. Screaming. Empty Yellow mechanical eyes
---------
It wasn't snowy. But it did rain recently, so there was a lot of slick mud. Ana slid down the hill quickly. The first 20 feet were smooth. Then she hit a rock, and started to spin. Then she hit a tree and blacked out.

When she came to, she was buried in mud. Freezing.

She could hear the river near her. The sled was cracked, fragments of it stuck on a rock. 

There was talking. 

"We're burning the place anyway. Child that small can't survive. We can't waste more time."

Ana stays quiet, barely daring the breath. She can hear their steps. Their breathing.  They are close. 

She stays quiet. 

It takes several more minutes of freezing cold... and then. They leave. 

Ana's fingers shake with the cold. 

She gets up slowly, shaking. She can see smoke in the distance.

She remembers where to go. 

She stumbles. Hurt, bleeding. Probably something broken.

She beats the fire to her parent's bunker, but only barely. It is hidden to look like a set of rocks.
"In case the end of the world was done by something smart."
Her father had told her.

"That way, they won't recognize that it's a door."

Ana presses her thumb into the dirt, at the scanner. And her bunker opens up.


Inside, there is a faint light. 5 bedrolls. Board games. Months of food. 

Ana slips inside, and managed to not start crying until the hatch closes behind her.

Ana doesn't know how long she cries. She hurts all over.  It is when her fingers are starting to go numb that she realizes she has been crying for too long. 

It takes 3 attempts to get up. Her leg isn't working right. Her chest hurts.

-------------------

"You need to be careful Adriana." Her mom scolds her. She had gotten lost playing in the snow, and they needed to search for her.

"Cold is dangerous. You could get sick. Or frost bite. We would need to use our medicine for that. When the world ends, we won't have a way to get more of that."

Her mom started a warm bath for her, and held her close, warming her up.

------------------

Her fingers stopped hurting. That was bad. The mud was cold.  She couldn't start a fire down her. She looks up the ladder. 15 feet. She would fall with her hands like this. 

She stumbles to the bathroom. Her hands won't grab the handle on the bathtub. So she uses her arms. Just the hot water nozzle. It takes minutes. Her shaking get's worse.

Then warm water comes out of the faucet.
-------------------
Ana stays in the bath for a long time.. She drains it multiple times. Scrubbing off mud and washing it down the drain. After her hands stop shaking, she manages to strip her clothes off. 

She doesn't want to get out. But she remembers.

-----------------
"Hot water takes energy. Either gas, or electricity. You need to be good at a rationing. We need to make this last until the end is over. And we don't know how long that will be." Her Daddy said with his serious voice. Then he hugged her close. 

-----------------

It is with robotic movements that Ana moves. She feels hollow. Physically and mentally. But she needs to do an inventory. 

Food and Water for around a year. Energy for 6 months at full power, longer if she rations. A backpack her daddy left, with some rope, a knife, and 20 dollars. 

It would have to be enough. 

She collapses into her bed roll, and falls asleep.

It takes a month before Ana can walk properly again. The bunker has some medical supplies. She knows enough to setup a splint for herself.

She was safe. Safe and bored, waiting for the world to end. 

She missed her parents. She missed her old friends. Her parents said that they didn't have enough money to take her friends with them.

"Their parents are responsible for them. We can't take in everyone in the world Adriana. They should see the signs and make their own preparations."

She didn't like that. She wanted to save them. Save everyone. Make a place for all of her friends so that when the world ends, she wouldn't be alone...

She didn't want the world to end. She didn't want to be alone. Alone in this bunker, she felt like she was already dead.