The Tender Harvest

Chapter 1

Clarisse

“Do you think this will work?”

Clarisse studied the pale face of the young woman sitting in front of her. Marcy was strong and healthy, snappy and feisty, but of all the survivors, she appeared to be the most vulnerable. Not because she lacked the skills to fight should the enemy ever resurface in soul-destroying numbers again, but because of her secret. Clarisse had seen it before. A woman reached her thirties, and her body clock started ticking… Even in this unrecognizable world in which survival was the invisible word in everyone’s mind.

Should she be honest? Should she tell Marcy that it was all down to her and Mark now? Despite the medical science behind the fertility-boosting injection Clarisse had recently administered, the ovulation charts, and the meds that were as close to folic acid as Clarisse could get given the dwindling and aging supplies, there were no guarantees that any of it would work. And the longer the situation went on, the more disheartened the c…