July 10, 2023
Dear Journal,
We left the house before dawn.
There was no decision. No discussion. Just movement. Like our bodies had decided before our minds could interfere.
Clara didn't wake up.
Nora sat with her all night, murmuring to her like a mother whispering through a dream. But the girl never stirred. Her breaths grew shallower by the hour until we couldn't tell if she was breathing at all.
By morning, her body was cold.
No twitch. No convulsion. No transformation.
Just… stillness.
It was like the fever burned her from the inside out—and then left. Left nothing behind but an empty husk. And no answers.
Nora refused to leave her at first. We tried everything: logic, pleading, threats. Marcus nearly dragged her out. Naomi finally got through with the quietest words of all:
"She won't be safe here. Not even now."
And that was true.
Because sometime in the night, something had knocked against the back door.
Not a fist. Not claws.
A knock. Rhythmic. Measured.
Three slow taps.
Like someone checking to see if we were awake.
We didn't answer it.
We just packed.
By the time the sun crept above the treeline, we had Clara wrapped in one of the less blood-stained blankets. Nora carried her. Didn't speak. Didn't cry. Just walked like someone who'd forgotten how to stop.
We moved east. Naomi swore she remembered a map from the radio station—said there was a safe zone, maybe fifteen miles from here. An old community college that had been retrofitted into a defense camp.
"No guarantees," she said. "But it's something."
We didn't have anything else.
So we walked.
And the sky was gray again, but not like before.
This time, it wasn't the storm.
It was smoke.
A long, trailing streak of it on the horizon, rising straight and slow like a ghost ascending.
Naomi stopped cold when she saw it. "That's the college."
Marcus squinted. "You sure?"
She nodded. "Too far east to be the town. That's it. Has to be."
We picked up the pace.
Hope makes fools of all of us.
Even now.
Even after everything.
By midday, we were climbing the ridge overlooking the valley where the campus used to be.
I wish I could erase what we saw.
But I won't.
Because someone has to remember.
The field was scorched black. The guard towers—two of them—had collapsed inward like someone crushed them between fingers. The perimeter wall was half-melted chain-link and crumpled cars. The main building was a skeleton of charred brick and steel, its windows blackened, roof caved in.
Smoke still curled from the rubble, even though the fire had died.
It hadn't been accidental.
That was clear.
Explosives maybe. Grenades. Something military.
But that's not what stopped us cold.
What stopped us—what made even Marcus suck in a breath—was the bodies.
Dozens of them. Maybe more.
Not torn apart.
Not turned.
Just shot.
Lined up in rows.
Execution-style.
Some still had zip ties on their wrists.
I threw up in the grass.
Naomi just stared, face blank.
Nora whispered, "They weren't infected…"
Marcus nodded slowly. "No. They weren't."
We crept down to the ruins like trespassers in a graveyard. The silence was suffocating. Even the flies didn't buzz.
Inside the main building, the air was thick with soot and melted plastic. Naomi moved ahead, flashlight in hand. There were signs everywhere of what this place had once been: hastily painted signs that read MED BAY and FOOD RATIONING SCHEDULE. A chalkboard still listed a "Hope Circle – Thursdays, 6 PM."
Someone had tried.
They really had.
We found the command room near the center. Burnt papers. A shattered monitor. The wall was cracked from heat, but one word had been spray-painted across it, in all caps:
LIARS
Nothing else.
Just that.
Like a last curse flung into the flames.
We spent an hour searching the ruins. Found a few half-melted supplies, but no ammo. No meds. Just smoke and shadows.
When we came back outside, Nora was digging.
She'd found a spade.
And she was digging a grave for Clara.
Right there beside the fence.
Nobody stopped her.
Marcus just joined her.
Then Naomi.
Then me.
The dirt was black and heavy, but we made the hole deep enough. Nora lowered the bundle herself. Didn't say a word.
I wanted to.
I wanted to say something holy or meaningful or right.
But what words are left?
We covered her.
Nora placed the teddy bear from the basement at the head of the grave.
No marker.
No date.
No name.
Only silence.
And smoke.
We camped near the ruins that night. Not out of safety—there's no such thing anymore. Just exhaustion.
I climbed one of the hills to keep watch.
That's when I saw it.
Far to the north—beyond the woods, maybe fifteen miles away.
Another tower of smoke.
Fainter. Not black.
White-gray.
Controlled.
Like a chimney.
Like life.
I scrambled down, heart pounding.
"There's another camp," I told them. "There has to be."
Marcus looked up. For the first time in days, something flickered in his eyes.
Hope.
Even Naomi didn't argue.
We'll head there in the morning.
We don't have another Clara to lose.
Not again.
Not ever.
So I'll keep writing, even when it hurts.
Even when the pages feel heavier than the pack on my back.
Because this is still a chronicle.
Still a witness.
And tonight, the smoke carries memories.
But maybe tomorrow—
It carries a sign.
—J.K.