If you find this, please share my story.
It’s bad now. The power is out for good. There are people in town still. It’s getting awful and I don’t know what to do.
I didn’t write yesterday. I suspect I won’t write every day. I just got more water and went through what I stole from the drug store (mostly aspirin). Today, I went to visit Mr. Trainer’s neighbors. They’re not home either. The raiders in town pilfered most everything here, but I found a few things I can use for the bunker. It’s mostly tools that I brought back with me.
Tools were always my dad’s thing. Every year for Christmas, he got me some kind of tool. My graduation gift was a power drill. Last year, he got me a set that… I honestly don’t even know what they are. I live in a small apartment. But I’m such an idiot. I opened the gift and said some nasty things. I meant it as a joke. For fun, you know? He took it wrong. I asked him why he kept getting me tools when he never taught me how to use them. I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings. He never taught me, or he never got the chance to teach me, and I called him out on it.
It wasn’t his fault. He never really knew how to talk to me, or how to treat me. Mom always said he wanted someone to talk cars and engines with, or to sit and watch football with him all weekend. For the longest time, I felt like he got stuck with me instead. I resented him because he resented me. It wasn’t until he was gone that I realized he didn’t resent me at all. He just never really knew me. Tools were how he talked.
This is too much right now. Let’s just forget about it.
I biked on the highway back home, looking for the kid again. If I pass by the same place every day around the same time, could I find him again? It’s actually hard to tell what time it is. My phone died last night and I’m not wasting the generator and batteries to charge it. There’s no Internet right now anyway, so what good is it?
Later, I ended up going into town again. Without power, I had no fear of alarms anymore. I got a lot of good things from the drug store, and I found a gas station with some food still on the shelves. Next, I thought about trying one of the fast food restaurants. Maybe they had something still cold in their freezers. As I went to the burger place at the edge of town, I saw the most horrible thing I could ever have imagined here.
The girl was my age. Her hands and feet were tied and her clothes were ripped. She had blood on her forehead just below the hairline. She seemed so scared and helpless. When she saw me, she cried and flinched. To her, I was one of them. One of the raiders.
I’m a bad survivalist, but I would like to think I’m a good human being. I ran to her immediately, not careful to look around me. My pocket knife freed her, but she backed away, still afraid. I tried to tell her that I wasn’t with them, but she just ran down the street away from me. I got on my bike and for a moment thought about following. Thinking better on it, I turned and raced back to the bunker and Mr. Trainer’s farm.
A week ago, the world spun peacefully. I was going to my boring office job, dutifully fulfilling the tasks laid out for me, and wishing I had enough vacation time to visit my sister. Today, I saved a girl from something awful. Who knows what they were doing with her? It took just one week from business-as-usual to abducting women and…
Yeah, I’m not recording that.