We had been walking all day….again. We barely saw any of those things though. We arrived at shoreline after walking at least 10 hours..you’d think we would have been happy to see all that water but all that the water proved to be was contaminated with bodies everywhere. Therion asked me if I thought it was still safe to drink…I think he was hoping that the part of him that wanted to believe that there was nothing wrong with that water wanted to be validated by my hopes, but all I did was shoot him a look…he knew what it meant, it was the look of “come on you crazy ass…you want to put this shit in your mouth?”. He knew..he knew it was a bad idea. Desperation was starting to take over, that’s why when he swore up and down that he saw lights a ways out in the water…clearly I thought he was out of his fucking mind. Lights?? In the water?? Come on Therion…look where we are now..there’s no way there’s anything out there. He found this shitty little rowboat and kept trying to get me to get into it. He was out of his mind..that shit didn’t look like it could carry a feather across a puddle, let alone two people across whatever this body of water was…a river? An ocean? But, hell…what did I have to lose. Was I pressed for time getting somewhere? Was I late for an appointment, or late for work at Dr Bishop’s vet office? Was I late to bring Mama Delphie to the doctor? Time mattered not anymore, in fact…all we had was time. We had no food, water or shelter..but time..we had so much of that.

He was so convinced I couldn’t just mistrust him at this point. He’s saved my ass 100 times over and protected me, he’s kept me warm and has always given me a bigger portion of food than his own.  Therion is the strongest man I’ve ever met. They say Australian’s are crazy, but let me tell you..when the world turns to shit like it has now, you want one of those crazy Australians protecting you. He had no obligation to me, his sister Delphie was the one who took me in and tried to get me back on my feet after my life of chaos..ha, chaos, I like how I’ve thrown that word in there as if to express that my life as a young child on the street is somehow worse than this. Though if I insist on describing that part of my life as chaos, then this..this has to be the end of days. How else can you describe this world now? Therion though, he was solid. End of days or not, he took me with him. He didn’t have to and he could have dropped me at any point, but he never left me behind.

Of course I got in the fuckin’ boat.

The last few months of hearing next to nothing out there, only the crunching of gravel under our mudd caked boots and the low growls of those decaying flesh eaters. The silence was deafening. Yet on that shitty little boat, there was even less of a sound and I was not nearly as distraught by this silence. The oar hitting the water, the breeze. If you closed your eyes for a minute, you could almost imagine the world how it used to be, if only for a moment.

Therion stopped the little boat about 5 minutes from the shore. I opened my eyes at that point and holy shit, what do you know. He was right. There were lights here. Electricity. How did that still exist?? He looked at me and grabbed my hand, I’ve never seen him look so serious. He told me that no matter how this turned out, we go in together, we stay together and we leave together. If this place turned out to be a nightmare, if it turned out to be thugs of some kind who were just waiting for people like us to arrive, we would come out of it together, and he would do whatever it took to protect me from anything that came at us. All I could do was nod at him and give him a quiet “Ditto”. He grinned at me a little and picked up the oar.

When we got out of the boat we walked up the hill. We could hear people talking. To whoever is reading this right now, I can’t even begin to tell you how scared I was that this was a horrible idea. We approached this place like it was a military base and we were coming in behind enemy lines. The voices were coming from a building called “Coach’s”, what is this a bar? This can’t be a bar..

Oh but it was.

A man left before we even went in the door, he walked right by us. Therion went up to the door first and I stayed behind, watching constantly. A woman who’s name would later be known as Kali waved us in with a huge smile. Was it a trick? What the fuck is going on here? Is this life? Did we finally find more survivors like us?

Therion spoke to her a bit, she offered us cola. The water apparently is no good here, something about a dam. I didn’t really hear her because I was so tired from keeping watch the night before, I could barely keep my head up. Therion later told me that they’ve done quite well for themselves here. They have food, shelter..even jobs.

Jobs, can you imagine? The world has come to an end and yet you still have to report to a boss. Guess some things don’t get destroyed with the rest of the world. There’s always going to be an asshole in a suit ready to bark orders at you.

When we left Coach’s, we found a spot in thick brush and trees and slept there for a while. We only slept for a couple hours and then started wandering around the city. We found what looks like an old gas station/garage. Still thinking as people who have been out there fending for themselves for so long, we climbed up on the roof and sat up there for a while. Therion passed out. He’s obviously fairly comfortable here. Confident he wouldn’t wake up, I snuck off the roof and started sneaking around the city, peeking in windows of old buildings.

I came across an apartment complex. “The Eights” the sign said. Do you have to pay rent too? Work and pay rent, I guess those are the first things to come back after the world goes to shit. I was approached by a woman named Serena and her husband, a man named Jim. I didn’t trust these people. Therion wasn’t there to protect me, I left him fucking passed out on a gas station roof. What the fuck was I thinking?

They went on to tell me that they were “rangers”..I’m still not sure what that means but after listening to them talk, and giving them a few answers muttered under my breath, they ended up giving us a place to sleep and some hot food. I went back to get Therion and we’re here now, in an aparment, on cotts. I just had stew. I’m pretty sure the last thing I ate before today was a rat, that was at least a week ago.

I’m still not sure about my feelings on this place. Is it safe? Will anyone try to harm us here? I guess we’ll talk about it after getting some sleep, Therion can sleep just about anywhere but I think tonight will be the first time I won’t be waking every few minutes to make sure we’re not about to be awoken in the most vicious and bloody way possible. I’m about to sleep on some pillows, with some blankets. I can hardly believe it. Someone must have been listening to me beg for hope. I begged so hard inside my head I’m surprised the flesh eaters didn’t hear me while we were out there.

Welcome to Arklay, indeed.