Surviving

Chapter 5

The ride through the forest was wild. Caesar had given you one of his large, friesian horses to ride and the speed and power they were capable of was exhilarating. Two other apes had volunteered to go with you. Whether they were worried that this was all an elaborate plan you had made up in order to escape, or they truely wanted to help, you weren't sure. One of them was the ape you had saved, Rocket, you remembered. The other ape was one you didn't recognise.
You had only been riding for about 45 minutes before your hut came into view. It seemed exactly the same as you had left it almost three days ago.
It felt like a lot longer.
The rust-red corrugated roofing was still sagging toward the left side and most of that side of the house was missing, the forest claiming back what it had lost. You had tried to patch it up with a number of sheets of tarp you had found in the rubble of the city, but the hut had never been all that comfortable to live in during the winter. You shivered just remembering the long, cold nights you had endured in that wooden hell-hole.
Pulling your horse to a stop, you leapt off it's back, propelled by a sense or urgency you realised bordered on the ridiculous. Making your way across the barely-there front porch, you pushed the door aside and stepped into the familiar dankness of what you called home. The wooden floor had rotted away, leaving what little furniture was left to sit straight onto dirt and giving a large percentage of the insect population free passage into your shelter.
Grabbing your backpack from the solitary table in the middle of the room, you began to stuff it with essentials; clothes, spare hunting knife and medical kit. You hesitated over your drawing pad. Sketching things had been your passion before the virus and you had managed to keep the paper dry for the long three years you had spent in this hellish hovel, not a simple task considering the unrighteous amount of damp that had gotten into everything else you owned. Shrugging, you stuffed it into you backpack along with the pencils and eraser you had managed to save. "They may come in useful one day" you thought.
Remembering the reason you were hear, you headed towards the back of the hut where you keep the most important things protected in a cupboard that is mostly intact. Pulling the two tins of formula out, you stuff them into your backpack and go to head out the hut but something pulls you back.
With a trembling hand you reach into the cupboard and pull out the dogtags. They clink together softy as you hold them up, letting them flash in the early afternoon sunlight that floods through the holes in the roof, creating a dappled pattern on the earthy floor of the hut. They spin slowly in your hand, letting your brother's name become visible along with his blood group and military ID number. No matter how many times you had pulled them out to stare at them over the three years you had been here, every time still hit like a punch to the gut. He had never taken them off since the day he was given them when he joined the military. To see them dangling from your hand was an alien sight and pushed home the fact he really was not coming back. You scrunched the tags up into your fist, you heart aching painfully. You still missed them all so much.
You took a deep breath and stood once more. Now was not the time to wallow in misery. Coming to a decision you clipped the tags around your neck and tucked them under your shirt. You took one more deep, stabilising breath, slung your backpack onto your shoulders and walked out the hut without a backwards glance. You mounted your horse without a word and gave the thumbs up to the two waiting apes. The three of you headed off down the track in a clatter of hoofbeats, the hut blending into its surroundings before you had gone 10 metres. You turned the corner and it was swallowed by the forest it had once come from.
But you saw none of this.
You never looked back once.