Dear Journal,

I don’t think I can be around Rex anymore. I already thought he was kind of a weird old man, but even though people kept telling me otherwise, I never pictured him as someone violent.

But this morning, I got up super early, even before the 8 AM alarm went off, and I went outside to meet Garrett by the doors. He was already there, waiting for me and smoking a cigarette. I don’t know where he even found any that weren’t just ash by this point, but I still told him that he shouldn’t smoke because it was bad for his lungs. He said that he knew, but being out in the ash from the world had to be ten times worse at least, and it was hard to argue with that.

Anyway, we headed off in the opposite direction from the coffee shop, which is a way that I don’t think I’d even gone before the end of the world. It must not have been a very popular place either (which I get - a power plant is probably going to ruin the vibe of any mall or whatever) because while there was some debris lying around, but it wasn’t so bad that we had trouble walking in the semi-darkness. Luckily, the moon looked like it was close to full, so that helped us a lot. I never really thought about how much that lit up the night before there were hardly any lights anywhere, but it really does a lot.

Even though we were up early, Garrett must have been in a hurry, because he was going so fast that I almost couldn’t keep up with him. He kept looking over his shoulder, too, and even though I was panting a bit, I asked him what he was looking for and if it had anything to do with why we were basically running. God, I used to run all the time before the bombs, but I guess I lost like all of my stamina. It’s not like there’s anywhere to run anyway.

But anyway, Garrett said that he wanted to get out of the view of the building, and I asked why, and he said he didn’t want anyone to follow us. I asked who would even know we were gone, much less try to follow us? And he was like “well, Rex is your breakfast buddy, right? As soon as he figures out that you’re not going to be there to join him, he’s going to start asking questions. I had to make sure Hansen knew to be very visible today so that his dad didn’t think you two had run off.”

I tell you, journal, the thought of running off with Hansen almost made my heart pound harder than the running, but I tried to ignore it. I told Garrett that even though Rex would notice that I wasn’t there, he probably wouldn’t do anything besides ask me about it the next morning, and Garrett just laughed and said “I don’t think you understand our great leader as well as you think you do.”

I can’t help but notice that Garrett laughs a lot, but he never sounds happy when he does it. It’s more like a reaction to something that he can't believe is happening than any sort of humor.

Anyway, I could barely keep up with Garrett as he ran, so we didn’t really talk that much after that. Garrett didn’t seem to be having any problem with breathing, which I guess makes sense because he was in cross country and all that, but I sure was. But as soon as we crossed over a small hill and the power plant was no longer in sight, he slowed down enough that I was able to catch my breath. I feel like, if it hadn’t been for me, he would have sprinted the whole way.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Anyway, Garrett was like, this is as close to the powerplant as we can get without being seen, unless we want to walk the whole way around and come at it from the other side, but he said he didn’t think a little extra safety would matter that much if we were gone for a couple of days. He said we should try to find something to bring back while we’re out, so we could always just say that we were scavenging. And I agreed with him, but I didn’t know how we were going to find anything, since we were headed away from the city. Maybe that’s why they never ended up bringing anything back.

There was a lump of something a bit in the distance, though, and it seemed like Garrett was headed straight toward it. Whatever it was, it was blue, which was such a weird thing to be seeing at this point in my life, because if there was anything that wasn't just the black ash from the burning of the world, it was the green of the grass that was starting to poke through in places. Who would have thought that the most resilient thing that humans would have left was our landscaping?

As we walked, Garrett started telling me about Daniel - about how he was the best runner of their group, but how he’d always encouraged them to get to their personal best times. He told me about a time when he’d found out that one of their other teammates was failing algebra and because of that, they might be kicked from the team, and he’d stayed way late after practice every day to help him study so he could at least get a C. But he also told me that Daniel had never liked Rex - he thought Rex was too harsh on the team, and even if Rex was definitely doing everything he could to help them get great times in every meet they entered, he often did that at the expense of the runners. And about how Daniel had thought that Rex was doing the same thing at the power plant - making them more powerful, but at the expense of the people living there. And while some of that was probably necessary - like having the ability to refrigerate and freeze the food that they brought back from scavenging, he thought Rex took it to such an extreme that they were barely able to keep up. Rex was having them go out for runs on their own daily, trying to bring back anything they could find, and eventually Garrett had tripped on a body and injured his knee, and wasn’t found until the next morning.

After that, Garrett hadn’t been going out much, but Daniel was trying to force Rex into instituting groups to go out instead of individuals, which at the time, Rex didn’t want to do because he didn’t think we’d have time to get all of the food from the surrounding area before it went bad. But Daniel said that it was too late, and every food they’d been able to bring back was canned anyway, because all of the fresh food had already gone rotten. Rex didn’t agree, but when he tried to send Garrett out again, even though he was injured, Daniel couldn’t take it.

Daniel had woken up one morning, before anyone else was awake, and went to talk to Rex. Garrett wasn’t sure exactly what went down, but by the time he woke up, Rex had a black eye, and Daniel looked like he’d been beaten so badly that he could barely stand. And yet, Rex was there saying that Daniel had an issue with the group and had decided to leave the power plant, which Garrett said he knew was bullshit. Even if he hated it there, Daniel would have never left. But that’s what Rex kept saying until Hansen had asked him again weeks later, and he’d said that Daniel was a problem that needed to be taken care of.

As we got close to the blue lump, I realized what it was - a jacket. And there was a body in it - or at least what was left of one. It looked like one of those bodies that we’d found in the first days after the blast, where they’d been killed by the heat, but not been burned. Except for, those bodies were practically all bone by now, and this one still looked newer. And there was nowhere around here that the dude could have hidden from the fires. And the head was completely gone.

I knelt close to the body for a while, just absorbing what I was seeing, too tired to even react. I cried when I got back to the bunker, but for that time, I just sat there and witnessed until Garrett told me we should head back before someone started to look for us.

We didn’t talk on the way back. I’m not sure I’m ready to talk even now.

Love,

Kayla