Ruins pt. 12

Nora had fallen asleep next to me. 

I sat up; listening as the three others talked. 

“We have to leave the city.” 

“We can’t.  Over the bridge there is no cover. We’d be wide open.”

“There are no supplies left, and those things… there are more of them every day.” 

“We have no choice.”

“What about the kids?”

They glanced at Nora and I. 

I wasn’t a kid.  I wasn’t as old as them, but I wasn’t a kid.  Twenty-two meant I was an adult, just as much as they were. 

I had survived just like they had, I had fought, scrounged and hunted just like they had.  I had lost, just like they had. 

I spoke up.

“We should go.  This place is a wasteland.”

My opinion seemed to matter.  Two of them, Paul and the woman, nodded. 

The third, a man not much older than me, looked away.