Dear Journal,

Holy fucking shit, journal, you would never believe what we walked into!

So we got up as soon as the day was light enough that none of us would probably trip on a pile of bones, and we started heading straight for the sound of the river, which totally made sense. And when Hansen had originally said they were in a hydroelectric power plant, I was originally picturing like one of those old water mills that they had in like ancient times - you know, the one little wheel that runs on the river that’s right next to a little wood cottage or whatever. But the power plant was nothing like that at all. It was huge! Like probably at least the size that my high school had been, which was super crazy. And Hansen had been totally right - while most of the area around the power plant was all burnt up, everything close to the river looked like it was doing pretty good! It made me wonder if someone could have just survived the blast by staying underwater, but then I realized that you probably would have had to have been in full scuba gear, because it was so hot for so long that you probably wouldn’t have been able to hold your breath, and as soon as you came up for air, you would have fried.

But we walked up to what we assumed was the front door, which had a large dude, and Ben was just like “hey, I’m from the group that Rex found, we’d like to talk to him.” The guy looked so serious that I thought for a second that he was going to turn us away, which would have been so lame because I seriously wanted the chance to take a shower, but then he grunted at Ban and opened the door for us. Imagine being so large that you have your own guard!

But when we got inside, I could totally understand why they had a guard. The building looked huge from the outside, but the outside definitely didn’t do it justice! The place was huge and open, with what looked like a huge sitting area right next to a cafeteria sized kitchen. I know they had brought up the prospect of a bed, but I would have been plenty happy with just a couch myself, after having had exclusively hard cafe chairs for so long!

Jared must have agreed with me for the first time in his life, because he pushed past Ben and immediately flopped onto one of the couches. I kind of cringed at that, just because he was kind of disgusting, but none of the other people in the room batted an eye.

On some of the couches on the far end of the room, there were a bunch of adults who just kind of looked at us for a moment, before one of them got up and approached out group. He was all like “Ben, right?” as though you met so many people in the apocalypse that it was hard to keep track of their names, and Ben was like “Yeah, that’s us, and I brought people with to show them around.” The dude was like “okay, cool, go ahead and show them around then, Rex is busy right now so he probably won’t be able to see you, but I’ll let him know you were here.” Part of me definitely wondered what he meant by Rex being busy, because like, it’s the end of the world, it’s not like he was probably in some big meeting or anything, but whatever, maybe in this place they constantly liked to have meetings. I was fine with that, as long as I took a shower and somewhere to sleep that actually had a cushion of some sort.

Stolen novel; please report.

Ben led us through the giant building, and I was admittedly kind of impressed that he already knew the way after having been here like all of one night, but I guess it wasn’t like there was a ton for him to do other than learn the layout.

The kitchens themselves were pretty impressive - like I said, they were like cafeteria style, so there were giant refrigerators and freezers everywhere, and a ton of space to prep things on! If my mom had been able to make a kitchen like that in the coffee shop, she would have been in heaven. But Ben even opened up one of the freezers for us, and it was like about as full as it could be, so I totally understand why the amount of food they have was a selling point of the power plant, now. We probably had enough food at home to feed us for like a couple of months, but if it were just our small group, I’m pretty sure the amount of food in their freezers could feed us for years. Not a ton of vegetables, of course, but I guess even here, you had to take what you can get.

But the coolness of the kitchen paled in comparison to the bedrooms, journal! So after we got done looking at all the fod, which took forever because honestly my mom looked like she wanted to move into one of the walk in freezers, Ben led us down this kind of small steel hallway with a ton of doors. Honestly, I was wondering where the hell he was taking us for a minute, because it felt kind of like a scene from an old horror movie, but then he opened one of the doors at random, and oh my god. The bedrooms were small, which made sense, because they were made more for just sleeping between shifts than someone actually living in them. But the beds were actually pretty big - I’d guess they were queen-sized, which I never would have expected - and even though the rooms were pretty sparse, there were still some pictures hanging on the walls, and a chest of drawers over in the corner of the room. If it was still before the apocalypse, I would have looked at the room and been like “what the hell, you actually expect me to live in this sort of a dump?” But now, the rooms seemed like heaven.

And then, Ben walked into the room and opened a small door on the side wall, and it was a bathroom! They weren’t individual to the room, but to adjoining rooms shared the same bathroom, so it wasn’t like we’d really have to be fighting over them or anything. And there was a shower!! I could have cried, but I didn’t, because my face was still dirty and I didn’t want to have tear streaks on my face while we were still walking around or anything.

Ben showed us the rest of the power plant, including where they actually make the electricity and stuff, which Jared was SUPER into, but honestly, I wasn’t really paying attention to any of it. Like, you show me the first shower I might be able to take in what feels like decades and you expect me to care about science? Absolutely not. But finally, after walking through every inch of the power plant and hearing Jared ask a ton of questions that Ben didn’t know the answer to, Ben was like “well, we’re not going to be going home tonight or anything, so we might as well get some sleep.” There weren’t a ton of empty rooms for people to sleep in, so because they’re old, Jared, Bryce, and I decided to let my mom and Ben sleep in the actual beds while we slept on couches in the living area. But before that, I hopped into the shower in my mom’s room, and let me tell you, I don’t know if I’ve ever had a better feeling in my life! The water was cold, but I’m cleaner than I’ve been since the day the bombs dropped, and I changed into the cleaner set of clothes that I brought with, and we were able to throw our dirty clothes into the washing machine that they actually have! It feels like this is all some crazy dream and I’m going to wake up covered in my own filth again.

We’re supposed to leave tomorrow morning, early enough that we can hopefully get back to the coffee shop without having to sleep outside again. But I’m really dreading it - I just kind of want to stay here forever. We’ll see.

Love,

Kayla