We just knew.

“Are you seriously doing mindfulness during the apocalypse?”

“The apocalypse is when we need mindfulness the most!” Milly replied with her characteristic combination of snark and cheer. She ignored the dull ache in her chest and got up onto her feet, “besides, I think we’ve turned a corner…”

“A corner?”

“Yeah, I think we’ve moved beyond the apocalypse and now we’re living in a post-apocalyptic future!”

“So that’s like, being further into…hell?”

“Ha!”

The two siblings fell into an awkward silence, both feeling a sudden discomfort at the brevity of their tone.

“So…how far did we get yesterday?”

“Only about 5ks,” he said it like he was confessing.

“We’ll go faster today Jason. Yesterday we got a lot of good information. We’re so close now”.

He nodded, as the two of them continued their journey toward home.

The day before they had climbed a twelve-story building. Painfully slowly, making sure they were alone at every level. Waiting in the stairways to see if they could hear any rumblings, then cautiously moving through step by step. Thankfully, the worst they found were a few rats.

When they reached the roof they saw a few signs of life ahead of them - light, movement, some makeshift structures. They also saw signs of death. Their descent was faster, but it took a lot of their energy.

Once they recovered, they waited until evening before leaving the safety of the empty building. Communicating in gestures, keeping to the shadows, moving along as quietly as possible. It was a good thing they were now in increasingly familiar territory.

Neither of them knew what was going through the other’s mind, but they probably could have guessed. Milly kept her imagination alive, pretending to be a ninja assassin creeping through an ancient town. Or a secret agent dropped into a war zone, needing to deliver a special message. Never mind that she was actually living through a real-life action-adventure apocalyptic event.

Jason on the other hand, was remembering. Remembering what everything used to look like, what everything used to mean to him. The traffic lights that he would never wait for. The golf course that kept getting sold and re-sold. And pretty soon, they saw the high school where they both spent their teenage years.

They went to a small hill to observe the school.

“Surely there’s got to be people in there…”

“Unless they all ate each other alive…”

That came out grimmer than he had intended.

Milly couldn’t hide her grimace at the comment, but picked up on his instant regret.

“It’s not year 9 anymore…”

It broke the micro tension between them.

“Maybe Mum and Dad went here for shelter.”

“Maybe…I still think we should check the house first.”

“Agreed.”

Their family home was only two blocks behind the school, which was an unavoidable landmark. They considered trying to cut across the nearby motorway, but their 12-story reconnaissance revealed that something dramatic had happened there, and it wasn’t clear if they could get across the damage.

Going through the old state park was also too risky. It had been developed into housing way after both of them had left town, so neither of them knew the area. Too much room for error. The school also held a lot of unknowns, but at least it was direct and familiar.

It was a collection of two-story structures, connected by overhead walkways and odd pathways on the ground. Years of adding bits of building to cope with the growing population, it had lots of design oddities. Little spaces where students could hang out and get up to no good.

The school was bordered by student farm plots on one side and sports fields on the other. They decided to go the sports route, wanting to avoid any surviving animals as much as possible.

Ironically neither of them spent much time on either fields or plots.

For Jason, sports were played on a court, basketball specifically. For Milly, sports were played in the dojo or in the gym.

The fact that the school had so many farm plots seemed stranger to Milly the older she got. She knew no one else who grew up in suburbia but went to a school that kept cows, alpacas and sheep. The closest she ever came to them was when she was walking to school and found an escaped sheep on the side of the road. He wouldn’t admit it, but Jason went to the farm plots once when he was in year 7. He ate some questionable berries and was sick for a week.

“When’s the best time to go down there?”

“Now”

“Now??”

“Well, we still have a few hours of dark. We could make it home tonight. Anyone who is there is probably sleeping?”

“They probably have a few lookouts…”

“Maybe. But it’s not like we know for sure that people are sheltering there. And if they are, they might not be like the others we met.”

“I still think we have to assume the worst.”

“Mmm…me too. Let’s get closer and see if we can see any spotters. If not, we’ll start walking towards home, staying close to the side of the building. That way we won’t be completely out in the open but we might be able to hide in some of those weird bits if we need too.”

“Let’s hope the school didn’t get any major architectural upgrades.”

“When we were there it took them 6 years to get a recycling bin.”

“Fair call.”

They got closer and mapped out their path and contingency plans in more detail. They waited a few hours to see if they could track any movement. After so much travel and exhaustion, neither of them thought it through enough to observe for an evening and delay moving until the next night. They both felt the urgency to get home.

“You ready?”

“Yep.” She could hear the hesitation in his voice.

“Come on, just. Follow my breath. We’re almost home” she whispered.

He could only just hear her breathing pattern, 4 seconds in, 4 seconds out. He copied her and they began walking.

They were about halfway when they were met with blaring lights.

Neither of them could make out the sound they heard, but they took off running. Matching each other’s instincts, they ran from the sports fields into the main part of the school. It was a weird moment to realise it was the first time either of them had been there in about fifteen years.

They ducked behind the nearest brick wall and paused for a beat. They were right next to a stairwell leading to some classrooms. Jason grabbed Milly, opened a door and quickly closed it behind him. Thank god, they were still alone.

They looked at each other slowly.

“You brought us…to the English staffroom?”

“I guess I always felt safe with literature.”

They looked at each other more seriously.

“What do you think that was?”

“I don’t know…felt like, two lights? Torches? I’m not sure…”

They stood their frozen with their backs against the door.

“It doesn’t look like anyone has been in this room for a while…”

Milly was right. The staff room looked like teachers had just left it on a Friday afternoon…half marked papers, some proteins bars, half a soda.

Jason very gingerly peeled himself away from the door. His mind was usually focused on what could go wrong, but he found himself examining each desk. Milly started doing the same.

There were so many things in that room that reminded them of a different time.

Usually they would scavenge for things that they could use, or clues as to what happened, but they found themselves treating the place like a museum. They had both left the school fifteen years ago, but what a feeling it would be to see a name or a photo they recognised.

“Huh” Milly sounded surprised. She spotted something shiny on the floor, that had dropped between two desks. She reached down to pick it up, a small heart shaped necklace.

“This was mine in like year 8. Wonder how it ended up here?”

With that they heard voices in the distance. Their minds pounced back to the dangerous reality they were living in. Jason’s eyes darted to the desk next to the door. Milly noted his cue, picked up the other side, and they pushed it in front of the door. Milly started looking for anything they could defend themselves with. The PE staff room would have been a better hiding spot.

The voices became clearer and for the first time in a long time, they heard someone else shout their names:

“MILLLY” “JASSONNN”

It wasn’t just hearing their names being called, they were being called in the most familiar of all tones.

Jason threw down the desk they had used as a barrier and swung open the door. They both raced downstairs.

Their parents.

“We just knew”.

They had turned a corner.