Treasures - date unknown

There were problems right from the beginning. 

Signs that set off the gut you should have listened from the start.

No point in thinking about that now.  All that’s worth worrying about is our next move. 

We started with 25, there are 13 of us left. 

On our way back from the raid we got cut off by a horde 50 bodies thick. 

We had too many people with us.

I knew it was a fucking bad idea.

I tried to warn them, but we needed every hand we could get.

There was so much to carry, and we didn’t want to miss our chance before someone else cleaned it out.  But on our way back, while trying to go around the mass, we were hit with more runners than I’ve seen in years.

It took everything we had to put them all down. 

We were caught off guard and there’s no excuse of it. 

But those runners, there had to be almost a hundred, they were fresh, and they were fast.

The fight drew the horde and we had to make a run for it. 

That’s when people start to die.

When you run.

When you have no choice but to turn your back on a fight and run for dear life.  We made it back to some high ground and put distance between us and them.

But we lost everything we came for. 

We’re going to hold up for the night, try to make it back in the morning. 

But I don’t think anyone knows where the fuck we are, and I’ll be surprised if more than 5 of us make it back.

Ft Churchill - date unknown

I sat at the foot of her bed and smoked a cigarette. 
The end becomes something you think about more and more, while the reminders of hope come by less and less.  You might say, all that’s left is hope for an end, but even that in itself is misleading. 

An end has always been expected, but our expectations have been taken away. 

In the wake of all this, there is a void left behind, a chasm in which these thoughts plummet into, all in an attempt to satisfy its bottomless hunger.  All that is left is a restless wait for the unknown to cease, for rest from the fear of uncertainty. 

The problem is, people wait around thinking the end is going to fall onto their lap.   
That someday it will make its way around here. 

They wait for something that is never coming.  Because it is out there, in the world, waiting for us to find it. 

We can’t stay here. 

I know it won’t be long before others find this place. 

I’m not interested in sharing with anyone, because that gets you killed.   
They can have it all.  
We’ll take what little we need and be gone before they knew we were here. 

It’s so hard to think about these things while she lays there in the kind of peaceful sleep we used to enjoy before all of this.  I can’t remember the last time she looked so beautiful.
So happy.   
But we can’t stay, no matter how safe it is.  
As hard as I would fight to keep all of this for her, from what we’ve seen, it would take a small army to hold the whole place.  
As much as I want to give her a thousand peaceful nights of sleep, it’s not worth dying over.   
Clinging is what gets you killed.  
It’s the ones who can let go, cut and run, without hesitation. 
They’re the ones who live to see another day.

We only have two cigarettes left and I am planning on saving them until it gets cold or until things get bad.  
Everything else, we have plenty of.
We’re going to need all of it. 

It’s 50 miles until we get deep enough into the country, and that alone could take us up to a  month to travel at the rate we’ve seen.   
The city is lost, and the chaotic singularity that was born from it is starting to spill out. 

We have to stay ahead of them, and though that doesn’t take much, we’re only coming across more and more of peoples horrifying resolve. 

I will let her sleep one more night after this.

Then we have to leave.

The Fires - date unknown

His face was weathered and ashen and covered in the soot of what’s been burned.  Nothing but its dry empty remnants smudged under his eyes and pushed deep into the cracks in his face. 

“How many?” I asked him

“Too many, you’d better get out of here.”

He ran with the good instinct of the coward, so in form with the fool I kept following the howls. 

They had spent enough time getting ready, digging moats, stocking up on food and weapons. 

I never doubted they’d be able to put up one hell of a fight, but fallsview had it better.   
Everyone always used to talk about it like the last stand, the one place we knew we could fall back to and hold until the end of time.  When you get comfortable in these thoughts, you slip up… 

They had gotten comfortable, and each step I take towards them is another march into anxiety.

People already started to jump ship, and I can’t be sure she won’t be one of them.

The Dance - date unknown

Like all the rest, I am out here searching for a sense of peace from this. 

I’ve seen many go out in search for it and never come back. 

They only leave behind the kinds of legends that make us think somewhere out there, it’s waiting for us to find it. 

So we can finally breathe easy.

The sad things are always the simple ones. 

The very thing they are chasing after is the prison they’re doomed to live in. 

The only place you’ll ever find peace, is within yourself, and the idea that it is somewhere out in the world, that it’s not already a part of you, is a threat to it being found.  It’s the horrible dance that always keeps it out of our reach, yet it still keeps us dancing.