Trip

I wake up and look around the room, the same room I have seen many times. I was sleeping in a classroom together with another two boys because it was easier to warm up two rooms instead of eight. Our beds were simply a mattress on the ground, the mattresses were used for PE classes before the apocalypse. The school was not too big and it had two floors. The rooms we used for sleeping were on the second floor and the baths on the ground floor so I get up from my bed and I start walking down the stairs, when I got down I went to the bathroom. After I used the toilet I wanted to wash my hands, but I realized there was no hot water, it was weird because I was sure the fire was burning last night. I went to check the boiler room and I saw Akira standing there. Akira had long brown hair and was pretty short, she was very smart and understanding. She was looking pretty confused at the boiler.
"Good morning," I say
"Good morning"
"Do you know what happened with the hot water? I tried to wash my hands and the water was cold" I said
"I was wondering the same thing, when I woke up the radiator was kinda cold. " she replied
"Did you tell Mei about it? maybe she knows how to solve this."
Mei is our classmate and does the repairing thru the school. She invented the flamethrower and made some devices we could talk to from some radio parts, she called them stations. From what I heard her dad worked as a mechanic and Mei picked up some knowledge from him.
Akira leaves the room to look for Mei and came back five minutes later with Mei and Yuzuru. Mei looked like she has just woken up and Yuzuru came just because it sounded interesting.
After we told her what happened, Mei started inspecting the boiler. After some time she said:
"It looks like we need a new pipe, there should be one in the Maceni School."
We lived in a mountainside village named Pesani, there was a village near to us named Maceni. Because of the small number of kids, the schools from multiple villages decided to send the elementary school kids to the Pesani school, this was also easier for the teachers who had to go to different schools on different days of the week. That's why not all the survivors are from the same village. The schools were made pretty much at the same time with the same materials so certainly there was a pipe identical to the one we needed.
"Because it's pretty cold we need to fix this as soon as possible, there is also the option to group everyone in a room and make use of the fireplace. " Mei said.
"But that will be very inconvenient for everyone" she added."
"So we need to get that pipe" I said.
"But we can't take the car, there is not much fuel left, we need that fuel to travel to the nearest gas station" Yuzuru said.
The nearest gas station was not near at all, about nine kilometers away to be exact.
"What size does the pipe have?" Akira asked
"It's not big at all, about twenty centimeters" Mei replied.
Akira stood there thinking for a moment and then said:
"Then the most efficient will be to send two people to get the pipe from the Maceni school"
"But there are about four kilometers, there are also the monsters" Yuzuru said.
"But we don't have much of a choice here" I added
"I guess you are right" Yuzuru said.
"So who should we send?" Mei asked.
"Don't count me in, I do not like the idea of walking four kilometers " Yuzuru said.
"And I need to supervise the boiler" Mei added.
"That leaves Akira and Hiro, I don't trust other students with that pipe" Yuzuru said.
"I am okay with it but Hiro has a pretty bad injury" Akira said.
"I am ok right now, I think I can go too" I replied.
"Then is settled I guess" Mei said.
I go back to my room to get ready, I was not sure about the plan but we did not have another choice. I dressed up in the warmest clothes I had and started packing some stuff up in a backpack. First I put in a knife, we would avoid combat because we were at a clear disadvantage but if it came to it we at least had a weapon, and then the station for communicating with the base. After I got prepared I met up with Mei, Yuzuru and Akira at the gate. The original gate was made out of steel but it was not very tall, so we added some wood to make it taller. We did the same thing with the majority of the walls.
"If you have any problem contact us" Mei said.
"We hope that will not be the case" I replied.
"Bye!"
And so we went. It was very cold outside because the winter is approaching, which also meant that the sun will set sooner, we had to hurry. This will be the first time we will see our houses after the disaster. There was definitely some good loot there but we could not bring ourselves to step inside.  The village was as I said before on a mountainside, so the road was very steep.
I and Akira were the single students from Pesani, the rest of them were from other villages, and going thru that village was both nostalgic and painful. As you remember a nice thing you see a corpse near you, being a small village we recognize most of the people, but some of the corpses were so destroyed you could not recognize the person. When we walked past Akira's house Akira started crying, I tried to act brave but five minutes later when we got to my house tears started flowing from my eyes too. It was truly painful to look at the place you once called home while at the same time knowing that there was no one the welcome you inside.
We kept walking silently. There was nothing to talk about anyway so we both thought that it was better to say nothing. The silence continued until the school was in sight.
"We are here" I said.
The road took us like an hour and forty-five minutes, we left the base at 1 PM so we needed to hurry.
We enter the building and started looking for the room where the boiler was kept.
"Looks like this is the pipe" I say while looking at the confusing arrangement of tubes.
"It looks like it" Akira replied.
"Give me the wrench please, it's in my backpack"
"Ok"
I started disassembling the pipe but the whole thing was pretty old so it was needed for both of us to take it out of there.
"Let's pack this thing up and go home" I said.
We started going down the road but the thing that worried me was that the sun started to set.
When we got near my house again there was not much time before we would be in total darkness.
"Hiro?" Akira whispered
"Yes?"
"I think I see some monsters up ahead" she said.
"I was hoping she was joking but it was true, there was a group of five blue wolves like the ones I saw with Yuzuru the other day. I knew we did not stand a chance against them, so there was no other option but to spend the night at my house.
"We don't stand a chance against these guys, we need to take cover at my house" I say.
"Ok" Akira said.
We slowly get close to the gate and I open it, I close it very carefully and we make our way into the small yard.
I first check the door and as expected it was locked.
"I think the key is in the shed" I say.
The shed was a very small building where we kept out wood, we also hid the key in there.
We make our way inside and I smell something horrible. I look down and I see a corpse dressed in a shirt. Even if the only remains are bones with some rotten flesh on them I recognize that person as being my dad. He was probably trying to unlock the house when the incident took place. I was petrified, I just could not move. Akira grabs the key, unlocks the door, and pushes me inside.  The electricity was still working because we had the battery in case of blackouts. But that battery only works for about eight hours. After I calmed down a bit we decided to contact Mei. 

"So we have to spend the night here? "

"Yes, we can't send anyone to get you" Mei replied.

"How are things back at the base?"

"We have no choice but to group everyone in one classroom and use the fireplace to warm up"

"We will come back tomorrow then" 

My house had three bedrooms a living room and a bathroom but because it was very cold, the best option is to sleep in my room because it was the warmest. Going back to my room felt very weird, I had not been there in a long time.  Seeing the state my dad was in I started wondering how much time our little base was going to resist, how much it will take before all of us will end up a corpse.