Victoria's Journal

May 18th 2020

I am glad that it’s May, but I’m also torn. It was raining when we woke up this morning, not a little bit of rain either. No, when I say it was raining, it looked as if someone was dumping a bucket of water on the windshield of the truck. Shaking my head I knew that driving in this would be near impossible, and walking, that was completely out of the question. I had to think of Robin in this too. She was only six, she might get sick.

Couldn’t ask her to walk in a storm like this, wouldn’t ask her to in a storm like this. But I couldn’t just sit here on the side of the road and wait for our deaths. I had no choice, starting the truck the windshield wipers started back and forth. Each pull cleared the window for a moment, then the waters came flooding back into the line of sight. Which really in the dark of the storm wasn’t very far to begin with.

Looking at the waters flooding around the truck I shook my head, “Best to just sit.” My voice was softer. I didn’t want to wake up little Robin. So now I sit here writing about this, the way that the rain is hitting against the hood of the truck. Watching the dead out the truck window is funny, like saturday morning cartoons. They don’t know what way to go, the thumping on one side of them then the thumping on the other side. It was all too much, they just couldn’t choose what noise to follow. Stumbling back and forth between a car parked not to far from where we were. Then they turned walking towards another car, they just shuffled back and forth between them. I watched this for several hours before Robin sat up, her eyes wide with fear as she looked at me, “Vicky?!?”

Her shout worried me, “Robin, Robin.” I pulled her into my lap with a softer sigh and a smile, “Shhh, I got you..we’re safe, still safe. I promise.” I hoped that my voice was calm enough to calm her down. That it was enough to pull the panic out of the air around us. “I’m alright, you're alright, everyone is alright.”

Robin looked at me with bright eyes, “I’m sorry, and hungry.”

I nodded, I didn't know what else to do. We were both hungry, I knew that. We hadn’t been able to get any kind of supplies, nothing. “We will find something.”

I knew that we needed to get moving now. The storm was starting to clear up, the rain anyway. It seemed to be breaking up, the buckets that had been falling on the windshield had stopped. It was a normal pattern with the rain. The wipers actually did their job, wiping the glass clear with each swipe. Now pulling away from the show of the biters I was glad to be on the rode. I was glad when I came upon the gas station, attached to the truck stop. It looked clear. And for the most part it was stocked from what I could see. First I checked the pumps, it was working. This was a grand day, then I started into the store. Wonderful, Food. Yes, Robin and I started to fill the back seat of the truck, along with the bed. Anything that we could get into the truck was going into it. I was also filling the tanks. Also filling a few extra fuel tanks that I would store in the bed of the truck.

If I had learned one thing in my life it was packing a truck, and that is just what we did. We packed that truck with everything that we could get our hands on. Blankets, chips, candy bars, the bottled drinks. We found our way thru the building to the back storage which we cleaned out. We had made out like queens, a full truck,. It felt good to know that we had that much food, that much water, that much of it all. Getting Robin back into the truck it was easy to pick which way we were gunna go.

A path to the next city, keep moving. Keep putting space between us and that monster of a man. There wasn’t much else that we could do, except for push on, keep fighting. We drove for hours, untill Robin spoke up, “Vicky! I have to go potty!”

I looked at the girl and at first didn’t know what to do here. Nodding, I looked at the nearest road sign with a nod, “We can try there.”

She nodded, then smiled, “Okay!”

With that we started off the off ramp into a shopping center, this should be easy to handle, easy to tackle. There weren't any signs of anything but what had been sold in the store. Old clothing and shoes it seemed, nothing much of use here. Walking through we made it to the bathroom, let Robin use the restroom and even got a few of the old shirts together. Spare clothing, and Robin would grow. I would need stuff to put her in as she grew. That is what kids do is grow, right, that's what I did. I know that a Zombie outbreak like what we were facing wasn’t going to stop the growth of a child.

Once we had packed up a few more things from that store we started back for our truck, it was nice to have clean clothing on. It was also nice to have Robin’s weight on my hip. It felt right, even if she wasn’t my kid, I felt that I needed to make sure she was alright now. That is what I was going to do, if that meant that I would be her mother, then I would be her mother. It had been a nightmare and a half anymore, and someone needed to stand for the child and protect her. Stopping just after loading her in the truck, I finally took notice to the store with the baby and child stuff in it. “Oh, Robin..Lets go shopping.

My voice was softer pulling her back onto my hip and starting for the store. A booster seat for her, even a few things for her to wear, then all the baby food I could get my hands on. I knew the baby food was something we really didn't need, but it was food. Anything and everything that I could get my hands on, even a video game for her. "Robin, do you like mario kart, or do you want animal crossing?"

"Animal Crossing, do they have Minecraft?" Her voice was light seeing as we really had not talked much during all of this trip. It was nice to talk.

"I am not seeing… Oh here we go!" Grabbing a few of the games and a Nintendo for her to use. It was the easiest thing to grab and we could charge it in the truck.

Something to take her mind away from the hell around us. It took me a few minutes to get the car seat to sit in the truck right, these things were a pain in the ass, that was for sure. "This booster seat is a pain." I was about to throw it out of the car when Robin screamed.

My first reaction was to look up at her, seeing what she saw from where she stood in the driver's seat. I know that there wasn’t any time for tossing it out, it was time to leave. That group of the dead was the largest I had seen and now it was looking right at the truck. It was almost instinct as I jumped into the front seat pushing her into the passenger's seat and starting the truck while climbing over her to the driver's seat. Throwing it in reverse and slamming on the gas the tires started to squeal. That squeal rang in my ears for a good amount of time before it settled, before it was enough for me to stop. I drove well into the dark. When I did stop it was too dark to get out of the truck, too dark to know what was around us, not even a moon in the sky to show us any light.