With Our Own Eyes

Day 44

Sept. 8th, 2013

Dear reader,

Keep yourself clean in times of survival. Build up on bacteria can be deadly.

I fell asleep in the shed-again. I wake up, cramped. Jackie is beside me because I brought that 50 pound animal up here for comfort. After finding out that Nick was in love with me, I ran out of that house as fast as I could.

Am I scared? No. Its just that I'm deffenitely not prepared for a relationship anytime soon AND my first priority is to make sure my family is safe. That means keeping Nick safe as well. I won't fall in love, thats what a self obsesed s.o.b. would do in a time like this. Instead I will help Nick until his health gets better and then I will go from there.

Looking out the hexagon shaped window I spot a few corpses heading toward the house. There hungry and there hands stretch out tracking the smell of human carefully. One zombie falls to its knees and slowly its head turns to dust. The next zombie does the same. Now the only living zombie is eating the remains of its dust friends until it too, turns into dust. Starving or not, this apocalypse was ending.

Jackie scratches a paw on the ground, her nose pointed toward the hatchet. From what Kieth told me, they taught her different ways to tell her human companions if someone was coming and whether they were good or bad. From what I remember him saying, this means the person coming is friendly.

I open the hatchet and below is Carmen.

"I kinda figured you'd find me." I say, helping her up into the attic, then closing the hatchet.

"Well. I saw you come up here last night...so I wasn't exactly looking for you. Anyway, why are you up here again and not sleeping with your family in the living room?" Carmen asks, leaning against Jackie.

"This quiet room helps me think. Like, right now, I'm thinking about this-" As I say this, I hand over the torn journal paper that Nick gave me.

Carmen reads it over in silence. Afterwards she looks at me and laughs, "Ha! Nick isn't even going to stay with us once we get your side of the family back with Izzy. He's bound to go off somewhere on his own once we get survival under control. Why would he even write this?"

I laugh too. Now that I see the irony in it. "Gosh, I don't know. Nick is.... I don't know. I really can't focus on Nick at the moment. I need to focus on the present and get everyone fed by evening."

Carmen places the paper onto the floorboards and I crumple it with a foot. "Love. Stinks." I laugh, even though I'm screaming inside with all the sudden emotions in my head. Happy, sad, confused....

"I will go talk to him if you want. Make him back off and keep away. Teach him a lesson." Carmen teases.

"He won't understand. Boys will never understand." I sigh.

"Ofcourse! They're all butt-munches." Carmen says, using the word we used for boys in fifth grade.

"I think...I need...to go take a walk." I sigh, lifting the hatch and jumping the few feet down, making my feet ache when they hit floor.

"Well, I'm coming too. I need to take a breath of fresh air too." Carmen says, landing beside me.

"Okay. I just hope everyone will be fine while we're gone-" I take that back because I know Kieth will take care of everyone- "because I'm not coming back until midnight."

"In that case, I'm going to be right beside you the entire time."

"You just don't want me to run away, do you?"

"Maybe....Lets just hit the road...maybe we can check on that plan Nick made with those rope tied meats hanging from trees Kieth told me about."

     ***