Dear Journal,

Hansen came back today! Isn’t that so cool??

As you might have guessed, it is not, in fact, the next day, which I’m really sorry about, but I think after spending like all night worried about the possibility of someone coming to kill us, my mom was super on edge, even though I told her that Hansen was super nice and she was worried about nothing. But she apparently “didn’t like my tone,” which meant that I am whatever the apocalypse version of grounded is. The only difference I can tell is that I have more chores, which fine, whatever. Bryce has been sneaking to help me with them anyway so we can hang out more, so they’ve been getting done super early anyway.

But yeah, as I was saying, Hansen came back already, and it’s only been like four days, so he must have basically gone straight home, talked to his dad, and headed straight back, which is crazy to me. My mom would never!

But this time at least, my mom was actually home when he showed up, so she got a chance to meet him. She was still super freaked when he knocked on the door of the coffee shop (which we keep closed all the time now, which sucks because I really miss having any amount of fresh air, even if it does make everything smell like ash). She even grabbed a brick that she had brought back to the coffee shop for some reason and started holding it like she was going to throw it at him! I went up to stop her before she did anything like that, though, because that’s like peak crazy - like I get that we’ve probably all gone a little crazy in some way by this point, but we don’t need to be throwing bricks at people just because they come to visit!

Luckily, Hansen didn’t seem to care that he almost got hit with a brick. He just happily smiled along and said that he wanted a chance to introduce himself to my mom since she’s our leader and all, and since he’d missed her last time. My mom was totally not going to introduce herself, though, because I could see she was still super paranoid about him being there in the first place, so I jumped in and introduced everyone for her. She, Ben, and Jared definitely didn’t seem happy about that, but everyone else seemed fine, including Mr. Williams and Hattie, and they’re even more adultier adults, so I’m guessing my mom was just totally overreacting as usual.

Anyway, along with coming to introduce himself to my mom, Hansen had actually come with a message from his dad, and I honestly think it’s so cool that his dad would be willing to actually give him a mission like that whereas my mom doesn’t even want me to walk around the block by myself. But whatever. I asked what his dad wanted because my mom was still refusing to talk to him at all, which is pointless because if there’s only a few more people on the earth and they seem friendly, why wouldn’t we want to talk to them?? But Hansen said that the message was that his dad wanted to meet all of us, and he would prefer if we came to him.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

That actually got my mom to respond to him, if you can believe it. And it wasn’t in a pro “let’s go and meet this dude who seems to have a really nice son” sort of way, which I’m guessing that you could already imagine. But no, my mom was like “what the fuck, no, we’re sure as hell not going to see your probably pretty cool dad.” To which Hansen was like “oh, okay, no biggie, he said he would prefer you to come to him since he’s super busy with running our group and stuff, but if you can’t he says to tell you that he’d just come to you instead.” Which, honestly to me, sounded like the perfect arrangement, because then we don’t have to go anywhere and we still get to meet him, but my mom kept freaking out anyway.

So I talked with Hansen for a bit because it was clear that my mom wasn’t going to, and I found out that before the end of the world, he was big into cross country, and his dad was his coach! And basically, when all the bombs dropped and stuff, they were in the middle of this long, long run with just him, his dad, and a couple of people on the cross country team. They heard their phones all go off, so they stopped quick to check it, and they obviously had the same alert that we all did, so Hansen said they kind of panicked and sprinted for this large building up the road in the hopes that they could find some sort of shelter there. Well, they were like super ridiculously lucky, because you know most of the buildings either were destroyed by the blasts or were burned to the ground, but somehow, that building was fine. The building they had ended up running to was this hydroelectric power plant facility that the bombs missed, and Hansen said that he thinks that the water that sprayed off the river next to it kept the building damp enough that it didn’t catch on fire, and the water that constantly runs through it for the electricity part apparently kept it cool enough that they didn’t die (he said it wasn’t even that hot in there, which I’m super jealous of). I don’t know how it all works, but he’s still alive, so apparently it just did!

But anyway, they’ve been living at the power plant ever since with the classmates he was on the run with and the workers who stayed at the power plant. They’ve been trying to keep the plant up and running so that they can still use electricity in the plant, and that’s been keeping our lights up too, so I really think we should be thanking them for it instead of being all suspicious of them like my mom is.

So like he said last time, his dad is kind of the leader of his group, which made no sense to because wouldn’t one of the people who were originally running the power plant be the leader of the group since he and his dad just kind of showed up? And Hansen said yeah, that that was how it originally was, but the the leader at the power plant was starting to be a real dick to everyone, and everyone in the group convinced Hansen’s dad that he should go fight him to try to put him back in line. And I don’t really like violence of any sort, but I can also see why, especially right now, somebody might go crazy and need someone to put them back in line, and Hansen’s dad looked really huge, so I can see why they would have wanted him to do it. But anyway, apparently Hansen’s dad fought the guy, and the guy was like “forget this, if you guys don’t want me around anymore, then I’ll just leave!” And he actually left, which is crazy! I don’t know how anyone could survive out there on their own, especially not with how little stuff we’ve actually been able to find.

Anyway, from the way that Hansen says it, it sounds like his dad is a really cool guy. I’m excited to get to meet him, and if all goes well and my mom stops acting so crazy, maybe we can all start to work together. With the way she’s been lately, I highly doubt it, but you never know.

Love,

Kayla