Sacrifice

As has become their routine, they seated their morose and silent selves on logs and stumps by the campfire. After their last child’s unbearable death, due to what seemed to be a simple cold, they acted instinctively upon what every day allowed them to do, just like the inmate on death row just waiting for their turn to leave what had become an absurdly boring and meaningless world.
All elements known to civilized worlds had become absent to them. First it was the internet, then came the phones, gas and electricity followed, and lastly water. Money lost value and meaning and unless you had something valuable to trade you knew you’d starve to death.

[end of five minutes]

They had used all they had, including the trees from their yard, which they felled to trade for food or medicines. Most of the land was now useless and vegetation of any kind was harder to come by every day. In their desperation they had learned about good plants and really bad ones. They were burning their last chips of wood tonight.

"Don't confront her," Mandy advised. “Not planning to”, Tom answer carelessly, as if awaking from a stupor and trying to remember how to use language. The strange emaciated woman entered their yard weakly brandishing a metal pipe and went straight to where the last pieces of wood rested. “Easy, ok? You can have them. We have nothing else to offer.” Mandy said, looking intently at her surprised that there were still people willing to hurt others to keep breathing the stultifying air that reminded her that it was just a matter of time for everybody to suffer the same fate. “How many children do you have?” Mandy asked, with the confidence of souls linked by millennial of shared experiences.

Eyes got heavy, legs quivered, and the whole body of the woman collapsed with a flicker. Tom picked her up and heaved her closer to the dwindling fire. Mandy tapped her body over the ragged coat and opened it up to reveal a bulge accentuated by the woman’s skeletal frame.
She opened her eyes tiredly, covered her belly with both her shaky hands and said. “I don’t want this one to die. I am so hungry.” Mandy and Tom looked at each other with eyes that no longer could produce tears. Tom grabbed his knife and lookd at his wife decidedly. “You got to be strong this time. It’ll be ok. You have to live.”

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