6.20.2015

I’ve been busier than I anticipated. Arklay isn’t what I expected. Unrealistically, I think I thought there’d be…more. Maybe government, maybe a fence, but Jon was right. There aren’t any fucking unicorns and there never has been. We’re all just people trying to surive here, and even the infected still manage to creep into town.

I saw someone shoot a dog last night. There’s a bar here. I think it lets people feel almost human, but we forget it’s not safe to gather, not safe to make noise — and sometimes it feels like we’re being punished for laughing and dancing in the face of all of this death.

A rotter was attracted to the sound. I hate that term, rotter, but creeper and crawler don’t work for whatever the hell this was. It was a girl. Fuck, I’m not much older than her. Her face was cut to pieces by glass — I wonder if she’d face planted a windshield in the frenzy to escape. But she didn’t crawl. She leapt. I’ve never seen one of the dead move like that and she was far far too gone to be fresh.

She’s not the last I’ve seen move like that. Two more this morning, around the same place. Arklay’s a little more together than most places, but I secretly wonder if it was worth the long ass fucking trek up here for all of this.

The dog had just been trying to protect us. Her owner. And the crawler ate her face. Someone at the bar put it down. I wish they hadn’t have done that, but what else was there to do? Watch it die slowly, in agony, from infection and in pain? I don’t know. Logically I can convince myself it was the right thing to do…

But it still fucking sucks. It fucking sucks that I have to tell myself that this type of thing is ok, and it sucks that life boiled down to decisions like these. I wonder if the end of the world would be as bad if there were no longer any people are to suffer.

The hospital isn’t what I expected either — no one is researching the virus here, just scraping by and offering a little more than first aid. Surprisingly, they do have a doctor. He taught me how to throw a few stitches into someone. By a small miracle, they held. Hopefully they don’t fall apart or get infected. That would be my luck.

Bleh. Bad few days. Self pity doesn’t suit me. And I’m still fucking hungry.

I gave that can of stew away to people who needed it more than I do. I’m fucking kicking myself for that decision. My stomach is growling so loudly that I can hear it and I silently wonder if it’s trying to digest itself.

I know this is not possible, but still. I’m going to go to bed. Maybe I’ll fucking dream about that can of stew.

~Oliver