Why are doomsday preppers so good in bed?

Everyday news from the front would trickle into our village via fleeing refugees, radio, and telegram.

Our army was being beaten from what I could tell, and were in full retreat from the invading Easterners.

The Easterners, savage men according to all the adults in my village, and the man in the television. Beings who were rather more beasts than men, beasts that ate babies and burned children alive. My father would tell me stories of these Easterners, stories that made me terrified for my life.
Some days at school during play-time, me and my friends would gather under a tree and wonder what an Easterner even looked like.

*"Probably like bears!"*

*"No! like giant ugly wolfmen, with big teeth! Grrr!"*

*"Maybe big angry bulls! With horns!"*

We were children, and we knew nothing of the horrors of the war that had been raging across the world for the past 5 years.

*Curiously enough to the west of our village was a large forest, that no child was to ever enter. Just like the stories of the Eastern soldiers, our parents told us that there were horrible things in the forest, things that would love to eat a child.*

For a while things suddenly died down that is until Winter came.

On 1 snowy morning a column of tired looking men with torn clothes and covered in bandages marched into our village. These were soldiers of our Army? Far different from the textbooks and pictures I had seen years ago, when the war first started, these almost half awake men looked like a stiff breeze would blow them over.

....


Papa told me that we would have to flee to the West, the Easterners were near, Nearer than anyone in the village could've even anticipated.

*"But the soldiers will protect us Father!"* I begged as He and my mother frantically began packing our belongings onto a wagon, but he seemed to ignore me.

My infant brother cooed in his crib at all the commotion to which he was ignorant too. As I looked out the window I saw all our neighbors were already either packing or making their way on the main road which ran North and out of the town.

*"Everyone is leaving Mama!"*

**"And we will have to go too dear"** My mother replied tiredly

*"Where?"*

My mother sighed as while she folded one of my dresses

**"I don't know.."**


The tired looking soldiers that came this morning had opted to leave as well, and were traveling along the same road North as the people from our Village. My Father picked me and my brother up and loaded us onto a wagon which he pulled himself. I took a last look through the window of our house and saw how bare and empty it was, before we trodded off Northward.

...


I was excited to leave the village, and get to see what was outside of it, but the sights I saw were less than exciting.

I saw trees and houses blackened by fire and shattered by bombs. There were dead dogs and horses covered in flies that lay at the side of the road, and my heart felt, sick. The earth was covered in frost and bare, parts of it were upturned and shallow graves filled them.

I looked to the East of the road and saw the forest again, it's tall dark trees seemed to be untouched by the carnage that I saw. Father had drawn our wagon for hours, and I saw as the sun set in the horizon and nightfall came. We opted to make camp for the night with several other columns of people from our village and soldiers, and wait until morning.

The night was silent and dark, there was no campfire, and there was no sound of crickets or birds. It seemed like we were the only living things left in the world.

...


When I did fall I asleep, I was woken shortly afterwards by the sound of a man's scream


I soon heard loud booms, and the popping of rifles.

More screams and more booms.

*My father cried out to our mother before something cut him down.*

Shadowy men on horses yelped and screeched as they rode into our camp.

Easterners

They yelled out in their horrible tongues as they cut down men and women alike

The world devolved into chaos as torches began to be thrown onto the wagons and tents, and fire consumed them.

*I looked around for my mother in the dim light, but she was nowhere to be seen*

In a panic, I grabbed my baby brother and fled to the shelter of the trees in the woods to our East.

The sound of hooves, guns, and screams was deafening, and my infant brother wailed in confusion from the carnage.

....


My lungs and feet burned, and my knees bled from scraping up against the foliage and bushes. I fled until the noise of the battle died down, and I was alone in the dark and dead silent forest.

*Silent, save for the distant sound of a what appeared to be crow's cry*


My brother by this time had somehow fallen silent and asleep, and I looked up to see that the moon was all but blocked off from the trees which looked taller now that I was actually in the Forest.

My fatigue hit me like a running horse all at once, and I found that I was incredibly drowsy. I carried my brother and myself over to a nearby tree where we fell asleep under its canopy.


...

When morning came, I still felt tired, and barely any sunlight was able to make its way through the dense canopies of the trees.

There were no sounds of chirping birds in the trees, and the wind seemed to be dead. The forest was dark and silent just like it was at night.