A lot has happened over recent days I barely know where to begin. I think he most important thing to note is the fact I’ve managed to find shelter, a home for want of a better word (but I have tried to make it homely though for the life of me don’t know why, it’s just me here now). It’s a simple one-roomed shack, the kind in a former life I’d probably have turned my nose up at and stored the lawn mower and garden tools in. But now it’s where I sleep. Where I eat. I can even bathe here (though takes ages to boil water on the wood-burning stove). Can wash clothes and dishes and feel almost human again. Almost.

Days have been spent scavenging. It’s all I do now. From the moment I get up and dressed I am going through someone else’s trash. I’ve become the crazy baggage lady no one ever saw on your average city street. Mostly I find things that were left behind of someone else’s life; books, old pots and pans, chairs, rags for curtains, you name it. I even found a teddy bear with one arm missing. I don’t know why but I had to take it. Saved it from the elements and brought it back to wash and hang to dry. It’s now here on the bed beside me. Such an odd thing but it’s company. The kind of company one has as a child, like an imaginary friend almost. Like my kids had. I’m not hearing voices or holding conversations with it, but that piece of stuffing and fake fur makes me feel less alone sometimes. Most of the time. The days and nights are so fucking lonely. So lonely. I almost want to give up. Pray I don’t wake up. I always do. To the same dull monotonous terrifying empty routine.

The Chapel has become like a kind of haven of sorts. I go there a lot. Father Frank and Sister Theresa have become like friends to me in such a very short space of time. I don’t know if I can say friends in the usual way, but they are company. They’re what we would have called once “good people.” With so much darkness and suffering them and their little chapel with its candles and framed icons of Jesus and The Virgin Mary have become a beacon almost. Comforting. I’m almost ashamed to say I broke down yesterday and cried to them. Cried isn’t the word. I lost it. The tears wouldn’t stop. Cried so hard I almost puked. For what I had done. Had lost. Pain. Grief. Shock maybe. I am convinced now that Bex and Jon and Kane are all dead. I pray they are peaceful and that I never see them again in this life. Not when being dead isn’t permanent anyway. Still have nightmares though; of Kane being there, one of them… the walking dead.

Father Frank told me that this was a test from God. He doesn’t think I’ll burn in hell for what I did to Kasey. I made up some crosses with the broken planks outside the chapel and hammered them into the ground with a rock. Jon, Bex and Kane are with me now, even if they are no longer with me. I try and keep positive. Talking to memories makes that hard to do most of the time, but I try. It’s what Father Frank and Sister Theresa would expect of me. Right now they are probably the only real things keeping me going.

After days of nothing really worth any actual value finally I found some clothes in real good quality in the trash cans near the overpass. I washed them and took them to the store in town to sell. I’d never traded before but had been past it so many times. It was quiet out and the one guy inside, Jim (?) had all the charm of a death adder, but at least he traded me for it. Well kind of. The clothes for a fishing rod. And a candy bar. Plus like 80 dollars cash. It was all I had on me but fuck did I need that chocolate. Was incredible. Gone too soon, in two bites. Such a waste. And expensive at that. Makes me sick to think of all the times I wasted opportunities… like any of us knew the end of civilization was coming.

So I’ve been fishing. A LOT. I used to hate it. Used to feel bad for the worm. Now am so hungry I could even eat the worm if they didn’t taste like… snot or… I can’t even describe it. Resorted to foraging and fishing like my ancestors. If only the PTA could see me now! The shack stinks of fish (and the water stinks of the dead) and I don’t even know if it’s safe to eat but I had to try. I think the second I start feeling really sick I will just throw myself off the cliffs (as if I could). Hunger and desperation make us do strange things. I grow plants inside so people won’t steal them. They grow slow because there’s little sunlight inside but I try. Hard not to kill them with kindness. They’re not growing fast enough to harvest already!

Well not much else to report. I’m tired again. Feels like I’ve moved house all by myself without the removalists. Kind of have. New “house”. New beginning. New direction. I’m going back to the Chapel tomorrow to help Father Frank and Sister Theresa continue the clean-up efforts. Maybe God will reward us. Is sending back Kane or Bex or my kids too much to ask? Hell, make it so this whole shit never happened? Maybe. I live in hope. And squalor. At least I’m alive. That’s something to be thankful for. Kind of.