Chapter 4 THE FLARE
Alana walked through the blistering heat. What used to be her home was an endless desert. She had to care for her mother who had caught the terrifying plague that had killed so many innocent children so far. She knew that soon she would not be able to stay with her mother as she would become dangerous, and then Alana would leave to travel to the only place possible she knew, a cave 40 miles North.
Alana was immune to the plague like the rest of the new generation of kids. Sometimes she wished she could get it, to escape from this hell on earth to be with God. Even now she wondered if God still watched over her. She wondered if God still looked after her and kept her safe. It didn't seem that He was helping her through this burden, but every day she still prayed for her mothers and her own survival.
She carried the water towards her house. You couldn't really call it a house. It was a shelter made of wood and cotton. It wasn't very big at all but it didn't need to be waterproof, it just needed to keep the sand out and the sun off their skin.
Her mother was getting worse. She was forgetting everything, to eat, to go for a pee, that she even had a daughter. Alana hated caring for her but at the same time loved her mother and wouldn't leave her side until she had to for her own safety. One day her mother would forget that humans were not food. That's what The Flare did to your brain.
"Hey mum, how are you doing?" Her mother was burnt from the sun. Her skin was permanently burning hot. You could see her ribs because of the hunger and the fact she sometimes refused food. Alana had heard of people refusing human food until they would only eat humans themselves.
Her mum was lying suspended off the sand by wooden planks Alana had dragged from a ruined shack near the well where she gathered water. Her mouth was open slightly, her lips cracked. Her hair was down to her shoulders and pulled back in a sweaty ponytail. Clothes consisted of underwear, a large brown shirt and a thin blanket covering her waist and legs.
Alana poured some water from the bucket she had been carrying from the well into a smaller cup. She held it to her mother's lips.
"Mum, it's water, do you want some?" Her mother didn't reply, just breathed with short breaths.
"Mum you have to drink it, you will die. Please." Alana gased at her mother with tears in her eyes. Her mother still didn't reply.
"Do it for me. I'm your daughter Alana. Please drink the water." She shook her mothers shoulders. She was sobbing uncontrollably now. She knew it was almost time to leave. Her mother wasn't responding to anything she said. Alana took the water for herself and cried as she gathered all of her few possesions.
