Oour life just started to get back into a proper routine. We ate at least two normal meals a day, did our chores, attended to the garden, and continued to stock up on things we would need. Especially food. Food was always our main priority, especially considering how many people we had living with us. Jared and I were the main caregivers of the children, our mom just became so depressed she could hardly move out of bed. The only time she did now was to use the bathroom. I wanted to cry most of the time myself, but things needed to be done, and feelings can't get in the way of survival...

When I woke up, I did my regular workout session, couple push-ups here, a few sit-ups there, thirty second plank and I was done. I came out of my room and saw mom sitting on the couch feeding one of the kids. I smiled and looked at everyone getting along with smiles on their faces and truly enjoying themselves. I walked outside for some fresh air and I didn't see the military men walking up and down every street. This week is going to be different, I can already tell. Hopefully this will be a good different, regardless if this is the fourth month my dad will be gone. 

I made myself some breakfast. I made three slices of toast and made a triple decker peanut butter and jelly sandwich out of the toast. I looked around and didn't see Jared anywhere. It was nearly time for our daily walk. For the past month, Jared and I have been going out every day and stalking the guards. Mom doesn't like it, but we are usually lucky enough to overhear some infromation from them. Ii'm pretty sure we get some infromation that even our dad doesn't get. Considering he is working a completely different job than city duty I believe.

"Hey, mom, where is Jared?" I asked.

"In his room. Why?" She responded.

"I'm ready to go out and see what the guards are discussing today."

"You know I hate when you do that Liz. You could get in trouble, or hurt."

"Well, I haven't yet, and you know the kind of information we get could be important for us."

"I don't know Liz, I don't think it's worth it."

"We will be okay." I said, smiling, heading up to the room to get Jared.

I knock on the door a few times but get no answer. I wait, and then I open the door. "Hey, Jared." I get the door completely open and immediately stop in my tracks. "Oh my god!" I yell, closing the door. 

"What the fuck Liz!" He yells back. 

"I'm sorry." I say, from behind the door.

"What's going on in here?" Damien asks, opening the door before I could say anything.

"Get out!" He yells.

"Oh dude, next time put a sock on the door. Fuck man." Damien says, leaving the door open and walking away.

Jared puts his shorts back on and goes to the bathroom. "Don't masturbate in there please." I said.

"Shut up Liz!" He said.

"We need to go, I want to know what the guards have to say."

"Go down stairs, I'll be there in a sec."

I walk back down stairs to see my mom blushing. "You told her?" I said.

"Of course, that shits funny." Damien responds, laughing.

I sit on the couch and wait. The kids just started waking up and getting out of their rooms. Damien makes them breakfast. Aaron and Jakecub are still sound asleep. I sigh and look outside, the military are starting to come back. They are looking at each house as they look at their clipboards. I see them checking off something as they look at each house. I wonder what they were up too. They call over someone else and a coversation starts up. I yell out to Jared to hurry up, Damien got snappy and said that he better not be masturbating in the bathroom. I yell once more for him to get down here but decide not to wait for him any longer. I get up and go outside. Immediately one of the guards looks at me and asks me what I'm doing. I look around and see a basketball on the ground.

"Uh, I'm here to play basketball. I want to go to the park." I respond.

"Where's your buddy?" He asks. "I see you guys come out of that house every single day and linger around us."

"My friend is actually masturbating right now, and we don't linger around you guys. You are just in the way of the park. See, its down that street, where you guys are normally crowded around." I say, pointing to the road where they are at.

"Go back in your house. I don't give a fuck about your excuses."

I try continuing the conversation in an attempt to overhear the talking not too far from me. "No, why should I have to go inside?"

"Everyone is to stay inside their homes today. Get back inside!" He yells.

I overhear the word bomb, now I certainly had to stay and try and hear more. "Why don't you go back home?" I idiotically said.

"My home is dead. Get inside before I shoot you, how about that?" 

"Uh, I'm thinking you not shoot me."

He raises his gun. "This is your last chance, get inside or I shoot you. You obey me, got that."

"You aren't my dad bitch."

Before he can say anything, Jared, Damien, and my mom run out and pull me inside. My mom apologizes over and over again and Damien says I won't be a problem again. But he isn't backing down.

"Get her out here, if she wants to disobey me, she will die. If you don't listen, so will you. Ii'm not fucking around."

"You don't want to kill her." Mom says.

"And why is that?"

"Because my husband won't be very happy."

"Lady, I don't give a fuck about your husband."

"He is in the same line of business as you. Whatever you are, military? He will kill you if you kill us."

"What's his name?"

My mom says his name and the guy leaves for a moment, he walks over to his truck and calls someone. They talk for a moment, I can barely hear their conversation, but it sounds like they are yelling at him for giving us a hard time and that we are not to be touched by anybody. Which doesn't make sense if the other guys are talking about bombs. But if our dad isn't being relayed all the information, then he can't protect us from the bombs. I try walking outside again, but Damien pushes me back and gives me a 'Watch yourself' look. I sit back down on the couch and keep looking out the window. A few moments later, and the guy who was threatening me comes back. He looks very annoyed, he walks over to our house and sprays blue paint on our house. When mom asks him what that was about, he ignores her and walks away. Confused, mom walks back in and starts yelling at me and saying I can't talk that way to people and that I was lucky.

In the middle of her rant, a guy knocks on our door, it's another soldier. I sigh loudly and he comes in and introduces himself. Private dumbass, I mean Alex says he will be standing outside our house from now on and accomodate all of our needs. I sighed again. This was becoming ridiculous. Next, we will all be chained to our beds and only let go if we had to pee. I walk to my bedroom, not caring to hear another word from this guy. I start reading a book. I just want this day to be over with already.

"Hey, you okay Liz?" Jared asks.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I say.

"Are you sure?"

"Would you stop with the questions, god. This shit is stupid enough as it is. I don't need your dumb questions added onto it." I snap. He leaves the room, not saying another word.

I hated being here, I hated being controlled by somebody. By stupid soldiers. I just wanted to be allowed to do what I wanted. It's bad enough as it is, we live in this world full of death and killing and pain, they didn't have to add onto the misery. I sigh again, I wish there was something, someway I could take this feeling away. I hated feeling this way. Thoughts ran through my head all the time, my chest felt dark and heavy all the time. Things would just be easier if I were dead. One less person to have to worry about to feed I guess. I go to my art supplies box and take out scissors. I can't believe I was about to do this. I always thought it was stupid of people to do this. Yet, here I am about to do the same. I put it against my arm, it's cold against my skin. I start crying, I just want my pain to go away. 

I hold my breath as I hear footsteps, my heart is racing. They stop for a second, they sound right outside my door. I hold my scissors tight. But I hear them walk away and I sigh in relief. I look down at what I'm doing and ask myself why. I was just about to throw the scissors back in the box when the door swings open. Out of fright, I accidently cut myself, deep with the scissors. Jakecub runs to me and wraps a shirt laying down on the ground around my arm. 

"What are you doing?" He asks.

"I'm scared." I reply, holding my arm.

He hugs me tight and says things will start getting better. But I don't think that could be any farther from the truth. I hold onto him and I cry. This is the first time I've hugged Jakecub in a long time. He takes the scissors and puts them in his pocket and moves the hair out of my face. He smiles at me and picks me up off the ground.

"What?" I ask.

"Instead of hurting yourself, lets give you a change. Come to the bathroom with me." He says, walking towards the bathroom. 

I follow him in curosity. "What are you going to do?"

"Sit down." He says.

I take a seat on the toilet and watch him as he grabs some bandages. "You're going to clean my arm? That's not really a change."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

He doesn't respond, he grabs my arm and starts cleaning it in the sink. It burns, but he tries to do it as delicately as he can. He waits for it to stop bleeding and dabs it try before putting a bandage on it. He then looked at me and started cutting my hair without even asking me. Hair was flying everywhere, he told me to not move otherwise the haircut would look stupid and he would have to cut it all off. Freaked out, but kind of amazed, listened. After he was done, my hair looked amazing. I hugged him and thanked him. He took the scissors and put them back in his pocket and kissed my head before leaving. I sat there staring at my hair and playing with it. It was really short and stylish. 

I got up and was starting to head back to my room when Ii started thinking about Jared and what I had said to him. I sighed and walked towards his room. I put my hear up to the door and heard nothing. I opened the door and walked in to see him laying on the bed. He turned over to see who it was. When he saw the change, he got up and asked me why I changed my hair, and then said nevermind and apologized for asking a question. I frowned and closed the door, walking over to him. I stared at him for a moment and he stared back in confusion. He asked what I wanted and I smiled. I got on top of his lap and kissed him slowly. He grabbed my hurt arm to pull away and I yelled. He looked at my arm and looked back at me.

"What did you do?" He asked.

"It's nothing."

"Are you okay?"

"Of course." I said, smiling. 

Before he could ask another question, I had kissed him again. I kept kissing him until he stopped trying to ask anymore questions. I pushed him down on the bed and took off my shirt, putting his hand on my breast. He instantly got a hard on. He asked me if I was sure I wanted to do this. To be honest, I wasn't completely sure myself. But at some point you just stop caring and I nodded. And as you'd think, we continued. After we were done, he fell asleep but I stayed awake lying next to him. Eventually I sneaked out of his room and went to get some dinner. I just ended up making myself some cereal and I went back into my room. I shortly fell asleep after eating.

I woke up that afternoon to my mom on the phone. She told Damien that dad was coming back today, but that he may not be the same guy we knew. His entire unit except two people died. He got hurt though, his entire left leg was injured and he couldn’t walk the same way he did before, and his bone in the right arm was shattered. Which was his more dominate hand, so everything would be hard to learn again. But I guess it was something we would have to work through. As a team.

However, instead of it being the day we were told he was going to come back on, it became a week instead. He wouldn’t speak to us and Spike basically turned into his caregiver, and when Spike wasn’t caring for him, the gay couple and their young son did. The two men were always the one's who gave dad a bath. To be honest, I don’t think he liked gay men bathing him, but he just wouldn’t speak to anyone. He was just so broke and I’m not sure I wanted to know what was in his head, but at the same time, I really wished I did. Maybe I would be able to relate.

He also frequently had to do exercises for his leg and arm to get it back to normal. It was so stressful to try getting him to do them though. He would yell and scream, and make you not want to try at all. He would also throw the materials at you and when it was time to take his medicine, he refused. He was weak now, and childish. I wanted to hit him sometimes for being so disrespectful to me, to mom, to everyone. But I didn’t like it when he looked lost and afraid, like he was replaying the events over and over in his head a million times over, I wasn’t sure how to help him. So eventually I just stopped thinking about it and let it be.

Two months later, the Army, Air Force, and Navy along with the rest of the military pretty much died off trying to fight this never ending battle. It also became my seventeenth birthday. It was sad to know that a lot of good people died on my birthday. I hated today, all it really meant was that I survived another year of this bullshit. It felt more like a year closer to my death, and another year full of misery and pain. And every military man who fought had been ate to their bones. There was nothing left of them. It was becoming evident that the human race may not live pass this. 

As a result of the fallen, the Black military guys took half our rations and destroyed our garden. They were now in complete control and could do whatever they wanted as they wished. We couldn't leave because of them, we couldn't eat because of them, we couldn't sleep because of them, talk, laugh, sing, we couldn't do anything. We were prisoners of our own home. The Black military didn't care about us at all, just about power. As a result, we lost many more people and the wall started to be destroyed. 

Our population drastically changed throughout the next few weeks, more people were getting sick and more people were dying or being ate. I overheard a guard saying that the government needs to make the ultimate decision already and wipe out everyone. While the military left to a different planet. They said our survival wasn't necessary, and that other planets were much more evolved than us. They wanted to leave us to die. It made me so unbelievably angry, but there was nothing anyone could do. We had nothing and they had everything.

I didn't even want to try and think about what that meant for us. My mind couldn't take the thought of what they would do, I couldn't even comprehend the fact that they would just let us die without trying. Not just two days later we looked outside to see the dead crawling everywhere. None of us even knew what to do, we just threw the curtains back down and sat on our couch, not saying a word to each other. I knew all of us wondered if we were going to die. I surely didn't, not today at least... And I know everybody who has survived this long doesn't want to give up just yet. There was no military in sight, and for the next day and a half, all we heard was gunfire. We assumed it was from the civilans trying to take matters into their own hands. But the gunfire quickly died down. And I knew the fight was over for them.

Everything was quiet, you would drop a pin on the ground and everybody within a twenty mile radius could hear it. Nobody came out of their houses and nobody moved inside them it looked like. We all should be used to this by now, but none of us were. We all were still terrified of those things. We all knew the damage that they caused.

A month later, we all started to get use to those creatures again and our dad finally decided to protect us. He took a gun and sat outisde all day long, shooting at anything that looked even half dead that came near us. But as he was outside, he started seeing missles flying towards us. He yelled bombs over and over again, and just as he opened the door, they started hitting, knocking him down on the ground. The sounds made the house tremble and roar as they hit the ground. I just happened to be on the couch when this happened and when the first one hit, I fell to the ground. 

"Calm down everyone, it's alright. Nothing will hurt you." Damien said.

"W-what's going on? what was that?" I said.

The room fell silent again and Damien looked at mom with a worried look. "We will be okay." He said again. Although, at this point, I think he's just hoping we will be.

Dad gets inside and closes the door, he puts chairs up against it. "I guess the killing starts today huh."

We all look at him but don't say a thing. I grabbed my knees and put my head down, they kept hitting, one right after the other. He sat next to me and held me tight. We all started cuddling together, holding each other tight and hoping this wasn't our last day. Even though things were happening so quickly, everything was going in slow motion. This didn't seem real. I wished it wasn't real. The ground started to shake and break apart and smoke filled the air making it hard to breathe.

Mom screamed, and the babies cried, but their sounds got muffled in the loud booms. You couldn't hear anyone, you could hardly even hear your own thoughts. Then a plane went across the land and dropped gas bombs everywhere,  everyone started to get sleepy and we all were out. My last thought was that I wished they did that first before killing us, before we knew what was going on. All in all, it was absolutely terrifying and nothing was going to change that. We were living on hell called Earth. Perhaps, death called Earth now.