The Time After

About Kelly

Thanks for leaving the paper. Great idea, by the way. Now we can write to each other easier. Should we limit the length of our letters to save paper? I think 3 sheets per letter is more than enough, don’t you? It's a good thing there hasn't been rain for awhile, too, or this stack of paper would be destroyed, pock marked with acid holes if not completely dissolved. I'll have to find something to put the paper in to protect it.

I loved your last letter, Alex. Thanks for telling me your name. It's nice to put a name with the words I've come to look forward to reading. My name's Danny. Of course, only my sister used to call me that. Everyone else calls me Trinket, on account of all the things I find and sell.

I'm a scavenger. I have a knack for finding things other people are going to want. Food, clothing, tools, trinkets, you name it. If you want it, I can find it. And with so few humans left in the world, there's a lot of stuff to find and claim, since so much was left behind. I'm surprised no one like me found your parents' house. I imagine it's a treasure trove of valuable stuff. You might want to put your mark on the doors, though. Most scavengers know that a small mark in the top corner of the door means someone has claimed the house and everything inside. We'll leave it alone.

A couple weeks ago I got caught in one of those storms. You know, the kind where you can't tell up from down because the wind is so strong and the rain is biting into your skin through your clothes. It came up so fast I couldn't get inside before it hit me. By the time I made it inside the closest building, my shirt and pants were shredded and I had burns all over. I had used my hands to protect my face, so my face was fine aside from a couple spots. But at least I didn't get it in my eyes, nose, or mouth. It hurt like crazy, and took me over a week to finally feel like myself again. There was so much of the burning rain on me that I got sick. Luckily the place I hooked up in was one of my stockpiles, so I didn't need to go anywhere to find food. Otherwise I'd probably be dead, and you would think I just didn't want to write back. That thought made me fight harder to get through it. I don't know why, but I felt a need to make sure you knew I was still writing back.

I haven't had anyone else to motivate me to survive for a long time now. Kelly kept me going at first. She refused to let me give up. At first we stayed in our apartment. The power didn't shut off for a couple days, so it made sense to stay put. Where would we go, anyway? Even after there was no more electricity, we still had food and clothes and everything else we needed right there. The violence hadn't started yet, either, and we had always walked to school. So even though there were no teachers, Kelly insisted we go to school. I think it was just because she didn't know what else to do, and it was such a habit. It made her feel safer to continue with the routine my mom had established.

Two weeks in, we were on our way to the school when we saw the first signs of things turning bad. A kid jumped from the window of one of the tall buildings. He landed 15 feet in front of us. Kelly covered my eyes, but the sound of flesh hitting concrete still haunts my dreams. We didn't know it at the time, but it was only going to get a lot worse from there on out.

When the gangs of crazies started hunting kids down, we knew we had to get out of the city. It has only been a month since The Culling, but it got dangerous fast. Kelly was so smart. She taught me to defend myself, and how to make sure no one had messed with the food we scavenged. Sometimes the crazies would do things to cans and boxes of food that would have otherwise lasted a long time but, because of whatever they did, the food would make you so sick you would literally puke up your insides. She saw it happen once. After that, we checked every box and can and package we found.

It took 5 weeks to finally get out of the city. Portland is much bigger than I had realized when my mom drove us around in the car or we rode the Max. On foot, we couldn't travel half as far as we could have with Mom's car. Kelly tried to drive one, once, on the way south out of the city. It didn't end well because she was too short to reach the pedals and still see out the windshield well. After that we hiked and didn't try again.

We had to move only during the day. The gangs roamed the streets at night. It wasn't that they were afraid of the light, but that they knew they had the advantage when they were sneaking up on people if it was dark. So we had to still be slow and careful during the day, but we didn't dare try to travel at night. As soon as the sun started to go down, we found a place without any windows where we could block the door with furniture and stuff. Because if they saw any light through a window, or heard any noise through a door, and it wasn't blocked tight? You'd be dead. Locks didn't keep the crazies out. Since they didn't care about pain anymore, they would pound against the door until they broke it down. The only sure way to be safe was no windows, and heavy stuff against the door.

When we finally made it out of the city, it was so quiet it didn't feel real. We stayed on guard for the first few nights, since there was nowhere we could hole up with no windows and a door to block. There were only the dying trees and open ground. Luckily it was summer by then, so we didn't have to worry about the rain. In the city at least we'd had buildings to hide from the rain. It took us awhile to build a shelter, but by the time the storms came we had managed to make something that would work.

By then, I had lost track of time. Kelly didn't, she made marks in a notebook so she would know how long it has been since we lost Mom. She was so much stronger than she realized. I'm sure she was scared beyond belief, but I rarely ever saw her confidence waiver. I only knew how hard things were for her on the rare occasion I heard her crying when I woke in the night. I would get up and go hug her, and she would hug me back and cry until she couldn't anymore. Then she would fall asleep and so would I. When we woke in the morning after one of those nights, she was always extra cheerful, as if the cry had recharged her batteries.

I miss her every day. Until I found your letter, I was starting to lose hope. Getting up and surviving everyday was getting harder, and I was losing my will to go on. Having you to write to seems to have given me enough to look forward to. So thank you for that, Alex. I hope I can be the same for you.