Victoria's Journal

May 20th 2020

The steel door that held between us and the biter was dented from the night of banging, the biterer had found it right after the sun had set. It had been one of the noisiest nights of my life, the constant banging, bang, bang, bang. It was just after sunrise now and the banging was starting to fade, it only sounded like it was half hitting the door. When I heard it, the shatter of the glass, the window that led from that little room into the shop with Robin and I.

I sat up with a bolt looking at the window in horror, “Oh...Fuck!”

I couldn’t think of saying anything else, there wasn’t anything that I could say, it was now climbing through the half broken window at me. The biter’s face slammed into the floor, its hands already moving to push it back to its feet as it started to stumble at me. My only instinct was to hop out of the truck bed and grab the nearest tire iron. My first thought was the overhand swing, then I remembered the golf lessons that I took, and underhand swing to the jaw would have more power against one of these things than an overhand.

Stepping back I lined up my swing and with a long driving underswing I nailed the thing in the low right side of the jaw snapping its neck back. The cracking noise that followed nearly made me sick as the thing stumbled backwards. Almost as if it were meant to happen that way the walker tripped over a car jack and fell head first backwards into glass that was left in the window. This split its head open with a horrid cracking noise.

I watched in complete amazement as the glass slid through its head, I was relieved. I turned looking at the truck, Robin was watching me with wide amazed eyes. Her eyes beaming with the amazed learning look, she had learned something from watching me here. I could see that in her expression. I sighed heavily walking over to the truck and climbing up into the back seat with her dropping the tire iron there next to the truck. “Robin…”

“I know it’s a monster.” She was so sure with how she spoke looking at me. It was like she was an adult. Like I was a child, “I know that you had too...Protecting us.”

It scared me slightly how she had changed in this, but I could only imagine what her parents had said to her. We hadn’t talked about it, I didn’t feel that it was something that needed to be discussed. Not yet, she was still only a child, only six I could see in her eyes the understanding, she knew that the world wasn’t safe and that sometimes our lives would be in danger. I couldn’t help but let this understanding soak into my own mind. That’s when I sat down and wrote this all down, then I handed the pen and notebook to Robin and said, “I would like for you to tell me what woke you up.. And I will write it down.”

I didn’t sleep last night, the banging was too noisey. The glass in the window breaking made me sit up to look around. I thought it was gonna get Vicky...Then Vicky hit it in the head and it stumbled and fell. It stopped when it fell, the glass in the broken window killed it.

I read her words the way that each thing came together, “Robin, you’re a fast learner.” I had to be in a form of shock at this moment looking at the six year old that I was traveling with, “Your sentences are complete. You have to be…” I shook my head then started to search through the car shop. I was looking for anything that we could use as reading material as we drove. I was going to have her read chapters while I drove.

She was now outside the truck watching me with wide eyes as I tore through the building, until finally I found a book. No, a book about car parts wouldn’t do, we would need to find a library or an old book store that would find something that is worth reading. Maybe a few coloring books, with some crayons. That should keep her mind working and growing.

There wasn't any schooling anymore, but I wanted her to learn what I could teach her. We would have lessons once I found a library and or bookstore. Maybe a school that would cover all those needs in one shot, get school books for her. Then a few other books there were always something to learn in a school library. It was then that I made the choice we were going to go a bit deeper and find a place to get some books.

It was easy to back out of the car shop and get back on the road. We drove around the outer edge of the town for a minute before we saw signs for a school. Robin had used the time to change from a black tee shirt to a bright yellow hoodie. Her brown hair falling around the hood of the hoodie with a softer smile on her face. Her eyes locked on me as I drove. “Vicky, can I drive?”

This question threw me for a loop now as I looked at the six year old that sat next to me in the truck.

“You want to learn?”

She met my question with a nod, “I do, I want to help more than I do already. I want to learn everything you can teach me.”

I nodded now as I turned my attention back to the road and the signs. The school is what I was looking for, first and foremost. Teaching her to add and subtract, even to multiply would be better than one thought it would be. After a few minutes I nodded to her, “Not today, I am looking for something special for you, maybe when we are not in town.”

She grew excited with this as she jumped a little bit in her seat pulling at the seat belt. Oh how I wished to have that kind of childish excitement. Pulling into the parking lot the place looked empty, and it was an elementary school. Wasn’t sure of the name just yet seeing as this was a newer town to us.

Looking at the sign in the front of the building I nodded, “Oak Crest Elementary school, Seems like it would have been a nice school to go to.”

Robin was out of her booster seat and standing on the floorboard of the passenger's seat looking at the school building, “It’s quiet.”

With a nod and pulled her to my lap, “That might be a good thing, little Robin.” Her gleaming eyes looked at my face with a softer smile on hers. We then stepped out of the truck starting for the main office building. It wasn’t hard to find the main office, it really wasn’t hard to get in either. The building was completely unlocked, unguarded, and empty. The empty was good, it made things seem so much, Better. That is the only word that I can think of to place there seeing as things have really gone to s**t. That there was no returning to what were were, the chances we have to survive this were looking great at this moment. But in the long run I knew that soon we would have nothing, that everything that we were trying to keep would fade.

This wasn’t what I wanted to write in these pages, actually I was hoping to write how I survived my college courses and became the law major that I wanted. Those pages will never be written now. So now I find myself sitting here in the old principal's office looking at their nick nacks with a heavy sigh. While Robin sat on the floor with crayons and a math workbook from kinder. It wasn’t what I wanted her to be doing, believe me I would have rather her been writing in the other packets that were found.

The ones about English, I know that with all the books I have packed in the three backpacks she will be learning for a few weeks. She would have something to do at night when we stopped, when we set up camp. Tonight I was thinking we might just stay here in the school. See what else we could find for the trip, what else we could find to keep ourselves alive.

There was a moment of complete silence in the building, there was that moment that you wanted to hear others. That you wanted to even hear the sound of the dead shuffling through the halls. But it was nothing, nothing but silence that rang in your ears. Shaking the feeling off and looking at the clock I figure that 5:30 pm is a good time to settle.