***


    Back in Valea Iasului, on the community run by The Organization military and medical members, in the Cafeteria, a survivor, Daniel, enters the place, and he walks toward the counter where the person put in charge to be cashier is sitting. Daniel is looking at the food that is displayed for a moment, then he asks the cashier a serious question.


    "Am I dreaming?"


    "This is real." says the cashier as a joke. "The food is real. Although, it is not hot."


    "I don''t care if it is even expired with cockroaches. I want a …" he looks for a moment at the food displays. "Tochitura and potato soup."


    "Great choice sir. And drink?"


    "Drink?" asks Daniel surprised. "What do you have?"


    "Pepsi, Lipton, Coca-Cola and Water."


    "…Lipton, please."


    "Sure, sir."


    The cashier goes over to the display, where the food is placed. There, the cashier takes a usual plastic tray, first puts a normal looking bowl made by ceramic material, then a ceramic plate. The cashier puts Tochitura first, then continues to pour the potato soup to the bowl. Before he was about to hand it to Daniel, he puts a big piece of polenta to use for eating tochitura because how else would a person eats tochitura. Then the cashier places the bread on the tray and hands the tray. Then he goes to the working refrigerator, opens it and hands a plastic bottle with Lipton to Daniel.


    Daniel is looking at this food like he is looking at gold. He never thought he would get a day like this, where he would taste an actual food, rather than bread crumbs and brown water from sewage. And as an instinct, the man, holding the food tray with the bottle of Lipton asks the cashier.


    "How much it costs?"


    "It is free." says the cashier with a smile.


    "Free!?" says Daniel too excited to hear this. "Thank you very much! Thank you so much!"


    "Don''t worry." says the cashier sounding pleasant. "But you should taste it, and you should thank the chef, not me. I am just a simple cashier."


    Daniel bows his head a little, and walks with the food to an empty table of this big place. Even if this is a big place to eat, there aren''t so much people in here, only elder people, people older than Daniel.


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    As the man sit on the table, and was about to take a bite of the Tochitura, he sees the door of the Cafeteria is opening. A familiar face of Daniel entered the building, that familiar face is Mihaela, the nurse who immediately was put in the community medical team. The woman came here to eat her breakfast, after months of missing it since the beginning of this new time of humanity.


    "Good day!" says the cashier to Mihaela. "What can I get you?"


    "A coffee and cereal please?" ask the cashier.


    "What kind of cereal?"


    "You actually have cereals?" asks Mihaela surprised.


    "You''d be surprised how many brads we are having here. But what would you like?"


    "Nesquik."


    "Sure."


    Mihaela used to eat this in the morning on her college times for the medical assistant degree, classes that she was going only at the end of the semester because she was feeling lazy and would spend days on her college campus partying hard. But at the end of her studying, she managed to get a good degree on these courses, get a job, then the apocalypse happened and become jobless. But now she is hired as a medical assistant on this community, but now she has to learn more than what it used to be back then, due to the apocalypse and missing working force.


    Mihaela gets her order on plastic tray, and walks toward the table of Daniel because this was the only available table with a known face in there.


    "Hi." says Mihaela.


    "Hello!" says Daniel after he has taken a bite from tochitura. "This food is amazing."


    "Really?" asks Mihaela. "Wonder how lunch would taste like."


    "Why you ordered only this?"


    "It reminds me of simpler times." says Mihaela taking a small spoon of the cereals with milk, feeling nostalgic of the simpler and good times she was having back then.


    "Ah… Alright." says Daniel, and he looks at his order, who is almost eaten. "Any plans for today?"


    "Work." says Mihaela sounding happy.


    "Yeah. I also missed the working morning." says Daniel happy drinking from his Lipton. "Oh, I''ve missed this sweet Lemon taste."


    "You are a tea person?" asks Mihaela.


    "Yes. Although, I would''ve preferred a hot tea. But I thought they wouldn''t have."


    "If they have coffee, I am sure they have tea."


    "Probably asking for this later." says Daniel.


    The two survivors are eating their breakfast in peace for a few minutes. Then, when they finished it, they are taking their plastic trays, walk them to a table where other plastic trays are put, walks out of this cafeteria while taking the cashier and the cook who were at the desk talking about their menu.


    When Daniel and Mihaela got outside, the two are walking toward a truck who has recently arrived in this community.


    "Come on in. Come on in!" says a soldier who is on the back of the Mercedes-Benz truck cabin. "Come here and take your jackets!"


    "What are these jackets?" asks a woman having a bandage on her left eye.


    "For cold weather."


    "Thanks." says the woman after a while, taking a piece of jacket and walking off.


    Daniel is walking a bit further to the cabin entrance. He sees a sign that says the following in Romanian and English language: "1 person is allowed to take 1 jacket by his size". Daniel looks at the different models of jackets displayed.


    "Have any 3XL?"


    "Only three." says the soldier who is taking from a box from backside a jacket that is 3XL side and hand it to Daniel.


    "Thank you." says Daniel taking that jacket model and leaving the truck, heading with it to the house he is sitting.