text: As I layed on the ground, the grass touching my face. I could feel the wind blowing. I could hear the birds flying. “Why am I here? Why do I keep going? And how do I keep myself alive?” I heard a rustle of leaves behind me. "That must've been Clara" I thought, as I heard her calling my name. “Mark? Where are you? I found some food! We should gather some berries and eat before we move on again.”, I wanted to stand up, I really did, but my legs didn’t want to move. “I'm so tired Clara, can't we just lay on the ground some more. We got a few more hours before it gets dark. And I think the shelter must be nearby?”, “No, we must eat now and move on. You know we said we'd reach the shelter before dark. John is waiting for us there”. I stood up. And grabbed my bag and knife and walked towards the bushes to join Clara into gathering some food. Clara walked towards Mark and gave him the basket she found earlier. "Put the berries in there. And remember only the black ones not the red ones those are poisonous.” Clara said as she pushed Mark towards the other side of the berry bushes. A couple of minutes later Mark could hear Clara struggling to walk between the bushes without tearing her clothes on some of the thorns. "Becarefull not to tear your clothes. We don’t have any more thread to fix your clothes like the last time.” yelled Mark at Clara. “Oh, shut up, as if you're the one fixing anything, you can barely do anything let alone fix my clothing” she scolded and laughed whilst pushing aside the big rose bush she almost leant into. “oh nooo.” Mark heard Clara scream. “what's happening?” mark yelled at Clara. No answer came back, Mark quickly ran to the other side of the large bush and searched around for any sign of her. He pulled aside all of the plants and cut his wrist on some of the rose thorns. "CLARA WHERE ARE YOU?” Mark yelled around before hearing a faint sigh coming from behind a large fallen tree trunk that lay on the side of an overgrown path. “Nothing wrong. I just looked at this frog and before I noticed I stumbled on some rocks and fell over that log.” Clara answered whilst trying to stand up again and brushing dirt and leaves off her clothing. "Oh no.” She gasped and Mark quickly ran towards her in shock “What's wrong?” Mark asked worryingly, "My last favourite shirt is thorn.” She said sadly whilst having one hand in the air and the other feeling around her side trying to determine how big the cut was. “You had me worried there for a second.” Mark yelled at her and throwing a berry towards Clara's face. Clara bent down and scooped up a few hands full of berries and placed them into the bucket she had and walked around the long tree trunk. She pulled Mark by the back of his pants towards her. "Sit down here on the tree trunk and eat.” She said, as she brushed some dirt of the log before sitting down herself. “How long before we reach John and the others you think?” Mark asked whilst shovelling down hands full of berries in his face. “I hope within an hour or two, I really want to sleep on a bed tonight instead of sleeping in that disgusting two person sleeping bag you brought.” Clara groaned at Mark and giving him a dirty look. "Well, it was either the bag or nothing so be grateful would you.” Mark snapped at Clara, as he began gathering his belongings around him and putting them in his bag Mark pulled Clara up and they both walked towards a large cell phone tower they've seen in the distance that was marked on their map following the direction towards the shelter. As the light of the sun began reaching the end of the day and the sound of crickets in the long grass could be heard. Mark and Clara stood on top of a large hill looking down at a ruined city that used to be their homes. They both looked down on the destruction that was caused after the fallout. "Remember how we used to go to the shopping centre every weekend.” Mark said as he pointed towards a dark place of shops and houses on the other side of the town. “And how we used to argue for hours that we didn’t actually want to go and we just wanted to stay inside and watch tv, yeah I remember, those were the days.” Clara sighed and stared at an overgrown sign announcing the name of the city, and painted with trees. “How funny how there used to be so little green around town but now everything is overgrown.” Clara sighed. “Out of all things you find THAT, the funniest thing?” Mark laughed, “It's Kinda beautiful, maybe one day. Soon I hope, we can live there again?” Clara mumbled. "But for now, let's just hurry to the shelter, it’s a few minutes this way into the wood. Look. If you look there you can kinda see the smoke rising amongst the trees. You see?” Mark babbled on and pointed towards the tree line in the distance. “Yeah, lets hurry, I don’t want to be out in the open like this. It feels unsafe. We should walk along that line of trees there and rush towards those boulders there.” Clara declared and reached for the map that stuck out of Mark's bag. And showed him where they would enter the woods. She pointed at the sun that almost began to disappear behind the large field on the other side of the town. "let's just hurry and run. But don’t stumble and fall again.” Mark chuckled as he looked down at Clara's left side of her shirt that she quickly tied together with a string so it wouldn’t hang loose. Clara gave Mark a dirty look bit smirked as she pulled on his hands and rushed left towards the tree line. As they ran along the trees keeping to the shadows and watching to see if no one was around they hid amongst the bushes and high grass and ran to the boulders. They looked back at a few fences and houses in the distance and saw a few vague shapes. They didn’t know what they saw. But they definitely didn’t want to wait and find out. Mark grabbed Clara's hand and they ran into the woods. Quickly leaving the town behind and looking for any sign of the shelter. “Two life forms detected.” They heard as the walky talky Mark had in his bag turned on and they heard hissing sounds and people yelling and talking. "I think we are almost there?” Clara stammered as she ran out of breath and saw a large metal door in the far distance. Mark reached around his bag and felt around for the walky talky and found it. “It's us, Mark and Clara!” He announced. A moment of silence and a voice could be heard repeating their names on the other side of the line. “Mark? Clara? It's been weeks? Are you all right? we're opening the doors right now. Hurry!” hollered a voice out of it. As they both ran towards the metal door that now slowly slid open. She could see people around the fence and heard someone yelling around giving orders to the others. They reached the door. And Mark bumped Clara on her shoulder and pointed at a large watch tower to the side and she saw a familiar looking face. It was John. He waved and beckoned them inside. Walking past the metal door and hearing it slide close again and huge metal locks being closed they looked at each other with joy in their eyes. Finally made it after all those weeks. They could finally relax, a sigh of relieve came from behind them as they both turned around, they saw John slowly walking towards them with his hands out as to hug them "You must tell us everything! We haven't heard of you for weeks. And we are so glad you are still alive. Ill quickly inform the others of your arrival and prepare a huge feast.” John simultaneously pushed them towards the canteen and ordered a few people around him to make things in order As more and more people joined them in the canteen, they all sat down and a huge feast was set. Everyone grabbed plates full of food and the canteen fell in silence as everyone was eager to hear the stories of beyond the woods. Mark began telling them about how peaceful it actually was. "We haven't really seen one of them for a while. We sometimes heard a group of them moving amongst streets or roads. But they rarely venture into woods or anything.” Clara continued telling them "As we rarely walked near towns, we didn’t come across them much. We did have to hide often in cars or sheds to avoid detection.” Mark concluded “It was actually quite boring, we didn’t have much food after about two weeks, and we had to forage around a lot. Scavenging around houses or quickly running into stores to look around but as expected they were almost empty, after exploring about half the map we decided to come back and maybe in a few days we'll try to explore the other side of the map.” As people began murmuring around and talking about what they just heard. John could be heard saying “But why risk going out again when you just said it was boring. It's not worth the risk getting caught by those things when you can stay here and.” “And what...? Die of old age hiding in these shelters whilst our old world is just crumbling away next to us. We need to fight... we need to go back... we can't just hide for the rest of our lives. What's worth surviving if you aren’t truly living life to its fullest...?” Mark snapped back.