Dear Journal,
In case you were curious, we did manage to make it through the night without having any issues! As soon as everyone else started waking up, I went to sleep, and I sweat it was the best night’s sleep I’d had since the end of the world. Like, I didn’t like being on the run, but there was something freeing about not having to worry about Rex anymore either.
When I woke up, Garrett and Hansen were back from trying to figure out the next house we could run to. Hansen said that there wasn’t much in the direction he’d gone in, but Garrett said there was a potential building in the direction he’d run. The only problem was that it looked like someone had already picked over the nearby area, so that meant that either Rex had been there on one of his scavenging missions, or someone else was in the area. But Garrett said that he saw no signs of anyone around, so he was hopeful that it was something that was looked over a while ago and then abandoned again. The bad news with that, though, is that along with the risk, it meant there probably wouldn’t be anything left there for us to find, unless whoever looked through the area was as bad at finding stuff as most of the adults I know are.
My mom, Ben, Garrett, and Hansen all sat around for a while, trying to decide on whether we should go for the house or not. They all had kind of taken on a joint leadership role, and Jared, Bryce and I just kind of stayed in the background. In any other situation, I might have tried to fight that, because why would Garrett and Hansen be leaders when the rest of us couldn’t be? But they were also the ones who had originally come up with the idea to run away, so I guess they had proved themselves to my mom and Ben or something like that.
Anyway, they were trying to decide if it would be safer to go to the other house, or if they should rest for the night and go for another run in the morning. My mom was like “the other house might be dangerous, and we might run into worse things there than we would here” and Garrett was like “yeah, maybe, but we know that Rex knows about this place, and even though he hasn’t found us yet, there’s basically no doubt that he and some of the power plant workers are already out looking for us” and my mom was like “but we went pretty far, so there’s no telling how long it might take for us to find us,” and Hansen was like “yeah, but there’s not that many places that this big of a group of us could easily stay in for a while. Once he’s narrowed down a few of the smaller places, he’ll head right here.”
Ultimately, they decided it was better to move to the other house because this one was too much of a risk. We decided to go at night again for the same reason, which I think is probably smart, but also made it really difficult because while there wasn’t that much debris getting to this house, there was a lot more as we got closer to the new house. There were also a lot more broken down buildings and abandoned cars and stuff like that. It made me realize that we must have walked far enough to get to a nearby small town, which seemed crazy to me, because I don’t know if I’d ever walked that far before in my life. Luckily, though, Garrett and Hansen kind of seemed to know their way around - they must have run by it when doing their cross country training.
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When we got to the new building, my mom made Jared, Bryce and I stay outside while the rest of them went through the house and made sure there weren’t any traps or anything. I wanted to be like, what good is that going to do, because then if someone comes to try to get us, all of your weakest people will be outside, but I don’t think Jared would take too kindly to being told he’s weak. Not that it’s not true, but he and I are finally starting to get along. Kind of.
But anyway, after what seemed like an eternity, my mom called out the door for us and we all headed into the pitch-black house. It wasn’t very big - there was only one floor, and some of the rooms that were probably originally bedrooms had large holes in the walls, but what had probably been the living room looked in nearly pristine condition. We all decided to sleep in that room, and I volunteered to take first watch again, since I was asleep way later than any of them.
Not that I would be able to sleep even if I tried. I don’t know why, journal, but there’s something about exploring new areas right now that really has me on edge. Like, going to the power plant for the first time was fine, because I knew there were already people there, and one of them was Hansen. Plus, their showers were enough to get me to go just about anywhere. But coming out into the middle of nowhere feels different somehow. Now that the sun is slowly starting to come up and there’s light coming into the room, it really makes me think about how this was someone’s house, you know? And someone was planning on just coming back home after work, but they never got the chance to. There’s even a damn book with a bookmark in it on the side table.
I looked at the book, too. I never liked reading before the end of the world, so I don’t know what got into me, but it’s not like there’s really TV or anything for me to watch around here. Might as well act like I’m in Little House on the Prairie and a book is the height of entertainment. It was some really old thing, though, and even though I was interested enough to start reading it, there is alone so much I can read about ancient British popular people.
While the lack of entertainment is not the thing that I miss most from the way the world used to be, it’s definitely the thing that probably has the biggest issue on my day to day life. There’s nothing to remind you about how much TV you used to watch like never being able to watch it again.
I think I saw my mom stirring, so I might try to go to sleep, even though my mind is still racing. I hope they’ll wake me up for the discussion about whether or not we’ll stay in this house for longer, though. I know I don’t really have any say in the decision-making, but there’s something about this place that just doesn’t feel quite right. If I really focus on it, it feels like the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up. Like we’re being watched. But like Garrett said, there hasn’t been any sign that there would be anyone around to watch us. It was a small town even before the blast, and from the little bit we saw in the dark, it certainly didn’t seem like there was any shelter that could have withstood even a small fire, much less a bunch of bombs.
Maybe it’s just the ghosts of the town watching us, envious that we’re the ones who are still here. Or maybe it’s just my imagination.
Love,
Kayla