Day 37

Josh leaves the building in the late morning after discussing our best way of finding the others. He is planning on visiting the surrounding buildings to see if they are waiting for us to come out, watching from a window. Essentially doing the same thing we are doing. We watched a group of protesters march down the street this morning, chanting something about how zombies are living creatures too and should be respected and not studied and dissected. They were marching and yelling near the building we had escaped from and so I assumed that they thought they captured and experimented on zombies. My first inclination was to blow it off, thinking that they obviously did not know what they are talking about. However, how were they able to test my bodies immunity and know that I am immune to the zombies? There must be some way to test it. And so maybe there were zombies in there.

The ignorance of these protesters annoys me. None of them, I am sure, has ever actually lived out there--outside of their borders--and experienced what these things are really like. There is nothing humane about them. They are evil and conscious-less.

I wait with Connor in our building. Continually staying by the window, watching for them. Connor is acting relatively normal, but I can tell that the experience is still fresh. We play simple games up in our room. He chases me and I let him catch me, falling to the ground as he laughs and as I laugh. Spending the day with him, devoted to him seems important. I think he needs it. I check the window less and less as time goes by. We continue to play, we explore the room and several others. I try to teach him some spelling and we both take a nap together.

Before all of this happened I did not have a lot of time to spend with my kids. It is not that I worked too much, but that I worked so that my wife could stay with them, and I went to school. There were times when I did not see Connor or Seeley for one or two days because of leaving early for work and getting home late from school. Those days were hard and lonely. I wish there had been another way to see them more often, but something about this day makes up for it. And I realize that when I wake up; Connor is next to me, resting his head on my right arm which is lying limply, cast still on my hand, supporting his head. He still sleeping. We are laying on the floor with blankets we'd grabbed from the Hummer around us. It is cold, but the building still seems to have some working heating system in it. It is moments like this when I feel like everything is going to be OK. That we will find a place to live and start over. Maybe the zombies will die. Maybe there is hope in this world.

After this week, after losing my family I feel as though I owe it to them to believe there was a way out of this. That there has to be somewhere we can go and live, and bring up a family. Somewhere we can start over.

Josh comes back just before sunset. He has some paper bags in his hands and drops them as he walks in. He is hurt.

I rush over to him but he waves me off. It isn't really anything. He is not bleeding from what I can tell and then I notice a bruise on his cheek and some blood on his hands.

"What happened?" I ask, grabbing the bags, noticing he'd brought back food. There are also several books in the bags, two of which are for Connor. He doesn't respond for some time and while I wait I dish Connor up some of the cold chicken he'd brought with a slice of bread. He starts eating as Josh responds.

"I was jumped. They got me from behind and knocked me to the ground. Started kicking me. I don't know what happened. I lost it, or maybe I was confused--" he pauses. Looking towards his hands. "There was one stepping on my neck while the others kicked me. I reached under me and pulled out my gun. I shot the man holding me down and the others ran away after."

I put my arm around him, "things are different now," I say, "they could have killed you, and then where would we be? Sometimes, Josh, you need to do what is required. I know it's hard, but it gets better."

* * *

He never saw them. They were not any any surrounding building. Nowhere near by. We make plans for tomorrow. Doing basically the same thing. I am nervous about leaving, but I don't want Josh to leave each time. It is too dangerous to have Connor out. There is something worse about having to fight people who are, at least in my, consciously aware of what they are doing. Suddenly Josh, who was laying on the floor sits up.

"We need to check the building. Uh . . . the place we came from."

"What?! Why?"

"We don't know if he was telling the truth about letting them go. He never told me anything like that. Only you."

I swear outloud. Josh is right. And for hours more, going into the night we plan on how we can get in and out. I will be the one to go. Josh will stay here with Connor. Josh is breathing harshly, and still shaken from the event. I use the machete, just before going to sleep, to saw off the cast on my hand. It aches and the fingers are stiff and obviously still broken, but I can move them. I grip the handle of my machete and test my strength. There is enough. I hold up a rifle and it is easier than I thought it would have been to hold it and pull the trigger.

I look at Connor. He is sleeping in his nest of blankets on the floor. Josh is sitting near him reading a book. He looks up at me and tells me to get some sleep. I'll be out most of tomorrow, checking the surrounding buildings again, and then, after dark, will be moving into the building to try and find the others.