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Kellie’s Diary #6 Written by Thomas Jenner and Angeline Perkins Cover Artwork and Chapter Artwork: Angeline Perkins Copyright ©2014-2015 Survive Entertainment. Published by Survive Entertainment. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Available Titles by These Authors: Kellie’s Diary #1 (e-book) Kellie’s Diary #2 (e-book) Kellie's Diary #3 (e-book) Kellie's Diary: Decay of Innocence (e-book & paperback) – An omnibus of Kellie's Diary #1-3 with three additional short stories. Kellie's Diary #4 (e-book) Kellie's Diary #5 (e-book) Kellie's Diary #6 (e-book) Kellie's Diary: Death of Innocence (e-book & paperback) – An omnibus of Kellie's Diary #4-6. This story is entirely fictional, and all characters and events are creations of the authors’ imagination. Any resemblance or similarity to actual persons or events, alive or dead, is purely coincidental and unintentional. CONTENT ADVISORY: LIGHT – SOME ADULT LANGUAGE, DESCRIPTIONS OF VIOLENCE. Special Thanks to our family, friends and our ever-so-patient fans. Together we will conquer! *** Dedicated to the memory of Butch Jackson – your friendship has meant so much to us, and we're grateful for knowing you. We will carry with us your kind spirit and love for life in everything we do. December 31, 1999 Chapter 1 I lost count of the days that went by. The withdrawals still popped up now and again – nowhere to the degree they were when I first got out of the Pit – but when I had a fit it made time slow down dramatically. I spent most of my time trying to rest, but I still had a hard time sleeping. My nightmares had come back, and they had gotten worse over time; the odd thing was that I woke up barely remembering them, and then a few hours later they screamed back into my head. That first week out of the Pit was a roller coaster. As soon as I thought I felt better I had a bad day, and then I was okay again after that. I had no clue how long I'd be stuck dealing with it, and it drove me nuts. I threw up anything I ate, which was never much anyway, but if I didn't eat I felt like I was being torn apart from the inside. I couldn't stop thinking about Lydia. Who knew what Victor was doing to her. If Lydia was still alive, she was in serious trouble. I had to stop thinking that way, and it took a serious effort. I needed to stay strong for her, even though it had been months since I'd seen her. She could have already been dead for all I knew. Then again, Victor wasn't the type to just kill you. If he had any ounce of caring for someone, he'd make them suffer long and hard before finally killing them. It was a toss-up for me: I didn't want her dead, but I didn't want her to be in any pain. The problem with Victor was that it was only one way or the other. I wondered if anything I remembered about Victor and The Pit was even true. All that crap I was drinking, smoking, shooting up... who knows how much of it really happened. Sometimes I could think clearly, but then five minutes later it felt like a bad dream. Then it finally happened: the day came that I had to go back to Victor's town. It was the only place we had a chance of finding some clue of where Lydia was. My head spun when Sarah told me about it the night before. She tried to reassure me by reminding me that we would have Jonathan, Joe, Luis and Helen with us for the trip. Jonathan had gone ahead with a few others from camp to scout the area before we went, and we had to wait for him to get back – it was about a two-and-a-half hour drive from where we were. At the time I thought maybe the whole town had burned to cinders after that night. I hoped, anyway. All I could do was wait for Jonathan to get back to find out the real state of things. I had everything in my bag that I needed: water, paper and pencil, bullets, and a 9mm on my side. It took me a while to get packed – I kept getting dizzy every time I thought about setting foot back in there. Once I finally got everything together, I sat outside the tent and watched the others get ready. It was very early morning, the sun was just starting to come up and I was enjoying the peacefulness of the rest of the camp still sleeping. Sarah was always efficient, no matter where we went. Never missed a beat, always knew where things were and exactly where to put it, she never wasted a second of her time. I rarely told her, but I did look up to her a lot. Joe was a hunter, long before the zombies ever came. He was a skinny guy, probably in his 40's, and missing a few teeth. He was an incredible shot, though not as good as Sarah in my opinion; those two were the ones that went out for food. He was nice enough; a little quiet, but he seemed like an okay guy, even though he preferred to be by himself most of the time. Most people like that might have creeped me out, but I didn't feel threatened by him. Luis used to be a cop. He loved talking and was usually in a good mood. Sometimes he'd tell stories of the criminals he stopped; he had all these scars on his face and he said he got them in a knife fight with a gang member about ten years earlier. He used to have a family, but he didn't talk about it. Can't really blame him for that. Helen used to work in a library. She even wore glasses, but she wasn't some old lady – she didn't look much older than Sarah, to be honest. When the zombies came, she was at work and she escaped through a ventilation system. Her family is gone too; she said she used to live with her mom and her previous husband, but found them both as zombies when she got home. She was a nice lady, and she spent her time learning how to do medical stuff. She told me she read books about it whenever she got the chance. There was always something off about her though, like she kind of lived in her own world. She wasn't dangerous by any means, just... odd. Helen and Luis were married. Well, they said they were. They met a few years earlier in another group, and stayed together ever since. I didn't think you could get married after the end of the world. I guess the idea was weird to me. Love was the last thing on my mind at that time. I suppose they made a good couple – they got along great, never argued, and helped each other all the time. It reminded me of my mom and dad... the little I remembered of them, anyway. I just sat and waited as they kept packing – which was always bad news for me, because I started thinking too much about stuff. The guilt was itching, decaying every bit of me. The more I thought about Lydia, the more I realized I should have done something. ANYTHING. I should have tried harder. I was willing to die to get her out of there, but I kept feeling that I didn't try hard enough. Victor's bullshit kept me so busy that I didn't do anything else. Then when he took her... I couldn't do anything anymore. Luckily, Jonathan got back to camp right before I started getting too deep into my mind. He gave us all the rundown of what he saw, and it sounded kind of like what I thought. The place was empty and abandoned, except for a few zombies roaming around, and a lot of the buildings were burned up. They said there was no sign of anyone alive for at least a few miles around the place. "We still need to bring extra firepower, just in case," Sarah said. Luis stretched. "Well, let's get whatever else we need now, it's time to go." That sentence kept echoing through my head as I got in the truck. If I ever wanted a chance of finding Lydia, I didn't have a choice. I had to go back and face hell. Chapter 2 Wikieup, Arizona. That's where Victor had Lydia and me held up all that time, and that's where we were headed. Luis showed me on the map where it was. It was strange for me to think this hellhole actually had a name, or that there was possibly a time in the distant past that decent human beings lived there. The only part of the ride there that I enjoyed was the breezy, cool morning. I was glad it was a bit overcast, the sun had been glaring really bright in the days before. The desert wasn't flat and boring to look at, it actually had hills, rock formations, saguaro cactus, joshua trees, and a few rabbits and coyotes. The winding roads kept my attention for a little while, but the further south we headed the less interesting the highway itself became. I remembered that when I was younger my dad always used to make me pay attention to the roads, so I'd always know where I was. It was difficult to do when there weren't exactly any defining features. Still, it gave me something different to put my attention on. Other than that, the growing sense of dread kept poking into the unstable calm I was trying to create for myself. I sat in the back of the truck with Sarah and Jonathan, while Luis and Joe were up front with Helen driving. Sarah spent most of the time preparing her rifles and trying to talk to me about Las Vegas, which was apparently severely overrun with zombies. Those undead bastards had a bad habit of showing up at the most random times. Truthfully I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to Sarah's ramblings, since I didn't think it was important enough. It wasn't like we were driving through Vegas – in fact, we were avoiding it completely. I just chalked it up to her being protective again, and I resolved to ask her about it later on the return trip. Most of the time I was mentally preparing myself for when we got there. I knew nobody was going to be there, I trusted Jonathan's scouting. I seriously doubted that any of Victor's goons would have stuck around after that night. I kept rewinding my mind back to before The Pit, when I was at Victor's house. I tried desperately to remember anything he talked about, any notes I'd seen, conversations I'd overheard, but nothing was coming to mind that was any help. He was very careful about who he brought around me, except toward the end when he brought over his friends to... have their fun. I obviously didn't learn anything useful from them. Most of his important conversations must have happened when I was away from him. Then I started thinking about those other six girls that were rescued with me. Two of them died a few days after we were brought to the camp, and Sarah told me later it was from their addiction withdrawals. I didn't find that out until after I was calm enough to talk normally after my own struggle with coming off that stuff; Sarah said she didn't want to scare me. I'd rather people tell me things right away, but in that case I was okay with her waiting to tell me. I didn't know how I would have acted, it might have made me worse for all I know. Those other four didn't come with us, and I didn't blame them. They had no reason to go back there, they didn't have a little sister whose life was on the line. The Pit was nothing but a bottomless hole of nightmares, and I was hoping for all our sake that it was burned to a crisp when I got there. The majority of the trip we only saw a few groups of zombies around, but they weren't going in our direction. We still had to watch it because we didn't want to get their attention, and none of us were in the mood for an ambush. We needed to save our bullets for when we got there, just in case there were more than what the scouts saw the night before. Even though we trusted their scouting, things could always change. We came through a larger town called Kingman, but it was empty. According to Joe, who'd been there months earlier, a huge horde had come through and wiped out what was left of that population. I almost never saw ghost towns, but it was definitely eerie and unsettling driving through. At one point I thought Jonathan was staring at me. I kept catching him looking over at me from the corner of his eye. I don't think he knew that I saw him. Part of me wasn't sure if that was what I really saw; I was starting to think I was going crazy. Not being able to trust your senses can get to you after a while. I started remembering how Jonathan and I used to hang out together back on the train. He was always so upbeat no matter what was going on, he was a fantastic scout and a fast runner and fighter. It took me a while, but I recall that I finally admitted to myself that I liked him. He hadn't changed much from before my being stuck with Victor; he still had those bright green eyes and awesome smile, and I was positive he'd grown even taller. As cute as ever, basically. I found out he'd already had his 18th birthday since I'd been gone, and I was now a few weeks past 16. I didn't think he ever felt the same way I did, and I definitely didn't think that was the case at that moment. I was convinced he just felt sorry for me. I remember the way he looked at me when he found me back during my escape... he seemed scared, sad, angry, and happy all at once. Time and time again I'd catch this pity-type glance from him, but then if I looked back, he'd turn away. It didn't make any sense to me; I thought maybe I didn't see him clearly. He seemed confused when he was around me. We still talked, but not like we used to. Jonathan was usually talkative, but for those couple of hours he was pretty quiet. The few times we chatted during the ride, he looked like he wanted to tell me something, but he never did. Jonathan finally spoke after another long, uncomfortable silence. "We're about 15 miles away now. You going to be okay?" Jonathan still sounded much older than he was, which was another thing I really liked about him. I breathed in deep, knowing that there was no going back. "I'll be okay," I said. "I'll tell you one thing though, it feels good to have a gun and knife on me again. I never realized how helpless I felt without them." He nodded, and he had that look again, like he didn't know what else to say. I decided I'd confront him about it later. I didn't say much else either, since my stomach was burning up. I started thinking about finding a stash again. I was sure that urge would never go away. Before I could think about it any further, Helen slammed on the brakes, knocking us around the truck bed. "What the hell was that?" Sarah asked, irritated. Luis pointed in front of the truck. About fifty feet ahead of us coming around a rock was a pack of a few dozen zombies. I swore that these packs were being sent out after us. They always came out of nowhere. We were in the middle of the desert and there was a huge mess of zombies headed right for us. Granted, this wasn't the worst I'd seen, but having to blow through our ammo to get them out of the way was just a pain in the ass at that point. If it were just a few we could have stabbed them and saved our bullets. We weren't in the best position to drive around them either, so we were stuck having to deal with it. We all got out of the truck and opened fire, except for Sarah who climbed on top of the roof, took a lookout position and started shooting at them. I missed a few times, which pissed me off, but I finally got a few good shots in. Sarah was great, as usual. Helen, Joe and Luis weren't bad either, After seeing them in action, Joe was definitely best of those three, and Luis was second. Jonathan was okay with guns, but he was actually better up close because of how fast he was. When the zombies got closer, he started kicking them and shoving them back into the others, then shooting, and then slicing them up when they got close. He was impressive to watch. I had to re-load at one point, but I think I was going too slow because the zombies were closing in fast. My mind kept getting foggy and I had a hard time concentrating, but I managed another clip. One got really close, but then Jonathan jumped forward and tackled it! They fell down next to me and I was able to shoot the other two getting up close. Jonathan took care of the one he knocked down, then got up and started shooting again. Sarah's rifle sounded like it was keeping a rhythm, a shot every few seconds. She shot at different spots in the pack instead of the ones up front closest to us. I've seen her do that before – she told me once a long time ago that it was to "thin them out" so they weren't coming in too close together and we'd have room to move around. It did make things easier. Then she turned around and started shooting behind us! I looked where she was shooting and she was picking off a few roamers that were by themselves. It felt like hours, but it was probably closer to ten minutes. We finally killed them all and we got back into the truck. We recounted our bullets; luckily we weren't into our stock too deep, so Helen started up the truck and we kept driving. I never would have imagined that killing zombies would be as routine as cleaning up my bedroom as a kid. Jonathan was right – it wasn't long before I saw the big gates of Victor's camp up ahead. I felt sick, but there was no running away. I knew I was a step closer to finding Lydia, and that was all that mattered.