Dear Journal,
It’s hard to tell exactly without a clock, but they came looking for Rex around what I think was 10 AM.
My mom and Ben were still in the bathroom when we heard a knock on the door, and someone tried to open it. We’d kept it locked, though, and whoever it was apparently didn’t have a key, so they left. But after a little bit, someone came back, and these guys did have a key. When we heard them start to unlock the door, I saw Hansen and Garrett both grab one of the weapons that Rex had stored around the room, so I grabbed a large knife. I wasn’t sure if I could actually defend myself, at least not against the people who I saw like all the time who had never done anything wrong to me before, but I knew that if it came down to it and I had to fight, I’d rather be prepared. The door swung open and Hansen and Garrett tensed, but the people on the other side - a couple of people who had been workers in the power plant before the end of the world - didn’t immediately attack us when they saw we were in there. Instead, they just looked at us curiously, and the one in the front that I think was named Gordon was like “ummm, where’s Rex?”
I didn’t answer right away, journal, because I didn’t really know what my mom was doing in the bathroom with Ben and Rex, but I imagine that after all that, she probably wasn’t like taking care of him or anything, you know? But Hansen looked at the rest of us and realized that we weren’t going to say anything, so he stepped forward and said “he’s in the bathroom. What’s left of him is, anyway. He must have eaten something bad, because he was throwing up like crazy.”
Gordon looked at Hansen for a beat too long, as though he could easily tell that that’s not actually what had happened, but he didn’t call him on it. Instead, he just slowly nodded and was like “alright, well, if he’s in there, I guess I’d better check. He’s usually up by this time and the others have started to notice his absence.”
We stepped out of the way to let Gordon walk through, dodging the trails of vomit where we could, but it was really hard because they were like everywhere! But I also didn’t want anything from him on my shoes, even though frankly that’s kind of where he belonged. But anyway, when Gordon was just about to open the bathroom door, my mom opened it from the inside. Probably trying to make the reveal dramatic, which was totally something that I would have done too, but she really didn’t need to do that, because the reveal was dramatic enough on its own.
I didn’t look at it very closely, but I looked close enough to see Rex’s body, or at least what was left of it, curled up on the floor of the shower. The tile around him was all red, and it looked like a lot had trailed into the drain already. But it was enough to tell me that, even if he hadn’t already been super sick, there was no way he was getting back up again.
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“He’s gone,” my mom said, wiping her hands together. I don’t know if she was trying to clean them or what, but all it did was smear the blood around on them. “I understand that it wasn’t hand to hand combat like Rex had originally hoped, but I played his stupid game anyway. Whoever defeats the current ruler gets to rule.”
Gordon nodded, as though he’d expected this. Maybe he and my mother had seen enough of each other since we came here that he had a feeling that something like this might happen. But even if he knew it, there was still something like shock in his eyes as he clearly wasn’t totally processing it. Not that I blame him - I don’t think I’ve totally processed it even now! He was just like “well, I’ll let the others know then, and then we’ll get someone to remove the body from your suite.”
Which is actually pretty cool, thinking that whoever is ruling gets to have the big suite. Granted, with it being full of puke and shit and blood, I don’t think I’d want to stay in there anytime soon. My mom is more of a badass than I am sometimes, though, so I don’t think she’ll have any problem with it.
They’re cleaning it up now, and then my mom has already called for a group meeting when they get done. As part of the group meeting, she told me, they’re going to figure out what to do with Rex’s body. I hope they treat it the same way that he treated Daniel’s and just drop it off in the sun somewhere for whatever animals are left over to eat. Not that there’s a ton of animals, but I’ve been starting to see more and more bugs at least. Plus, if we managed to survive, some animals must have been able to.
And that’s going to be my mom’s next order of business - we’re going to go out on scouting missions and try to find more people. Kind of like Rex was doing, I guess, but we’re not going to try to bully people into coming to live with us. I think we’ve already got more than enough people for that. But I think she wants to find more groups so that we can trade and stuff, because frankly, we’ve got a lot of stuff that I’m sure a lot of people would want, and you never know what they might have.
And last, I know my mom was going to put a stop to the “you get to be a ruler by defeating the ruler” rule, which totally makes sense, because I don’t want people to randomly come up and try to fight my mom, either. She said she’s going to make it so that everything is going to be put to a vote, and if you don’t like the current ruler, you can just call for a revote. It might not be the best system available, but at least it might stop us from getting another dictator. Judging from the people at the power plant who I’ve talked to (who were surprisingly all fine with us just no longer being imprisoned, but apparently like nobody liked Rex anyway), it sounds like my mom is definitely going to keep the position of leader for at least a while, which would be great. My mom might be cringe, but she’s at least a good person.
There’s still a lot of getting used to in this new world, but I’m just glad that we’re going to be getting back to a semi-normal situation. It’s crazy how fast you can get used to the entire world changing, but when you’re willing to change with it, it’s not so bad.
I’ve got to head out, Hansen just stopped by my room (which is a different room than I was in before, because I sure as hell am not doing that again) - he asked me if I wanted to go with his as our first date because frankly, that’s about as close to like going to a movie as we can get. And I told him that we could go together, but we’ll just see how things go - I’m not sure that, after all the craziness, I don’t just want a little time to not have a huge moment. He laughed and agreed to just go as friends, with a rain check for the date, so now I have something to look forward to with him. I’m looking forward to a lot of things now. It’s kind of crazy - quite of a bit of the world being pretty awful, it’s starting to turn back around. Hopefully it stays that way for a long while.
Love,
Kayla