June 23, 2023
Dear Journal,
I didn't sleep last night.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Sarah. The way her hand slipped from mine. The scream she didn't finish. The sound of tearing flesh.
We've all seen it before—people getting taken, turning—but it never gets easier. And when it's someone you shared food with, talked to, laughed with… it cuts deeper. Makes you question everything. Why her? Why not me?
This morning, no one said much. Naomi boiled water and made what passed for coffee. It was bitter and burned, but we drank it in silence. Nora sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, rocking slowly. She used to be a preschool teacher. Now she barely talks.
Marcus spent the morning reinforcing the back windows with metal sheet scraps we scavenged from a collapsed shed. He's good with his hands, always has been. Doesn't smile anymore, but none of us really do.
We buried Sarah behind the barn.
We wrapped her in one of the old sheets we found in the upstairs bedroom and dug as deep as we could with the tools we had—mostly shovels and broken fence posts. The soil was hard and full of roots, but it felt important, sacred even, to give her something more than just abandonment.
We marked the spot with a cross made of two branches tied with shoelaces. I said a few words. I think they were words. My throat was tight. My chest felt hollow.
Then the wind picked up, and we heard the moaning again.
It's always distant—like echoes carried through the hills. But it's getting closer. You can feel it now, in the ground, in the way the birds don't sing anymore. It's like the world is holding its breath.
We took turns on watch this afternoon. I sat on the roof for two hours with the binoculars, scanning the horizon. Nothing moved. Nothing alive, anyway. Just the sun crawling across the sky, and shadows stretching over what's left of the world.
But I saw something strange—smoke. A thin line of it rising from beyond the tree line, maybe two miles northeast of here. Someone's out there. Someone alive.
I told Naomi. She doesn't like it. "Could be a trap," she said. "Could be raiders, or worse." And she's right—we've heard stories. People doing unspeakable things just to survive.
Still, part of me wants to go. Not tonight, maybe not even tomorrow. But soon. If there are other survivors out there, we should know. We need to know.
Sometimes I wonder what we're even surviving for. Is this really living? Or just existing? Scavenging, hiding, waiting to die. Sarah deserved more than that. We all do.
But I'm not ready to give up yet.
Not today.
Yours sincerely,
J.K.