A Life Sentence

June 4th, 2026

June 4th, 2026

These past few days have been a complete nightmare for me. We got to my parents' without any trouble. When we pulled in I expected Dad to come running out with a shotgun, in fact I even warned Lucas that it would happen. It didn't.

Their cars were there and the house seemed OK. It didn't look like anyone had broken in or anything like that. I told myself and Lucas that they just knew it was us and were just waiting for us to come in. We both knew I was full of it.

We found them both in their bed. They had been dead long enough to go cold, but not long enough to start rotting. We had to spend most of the first day there giving them what funeral we could. At least Lucas's parents died early on and we were able to give them a proper funeral. I served as pallbearer for both of them.

Lucas tried to get me to take some time, but that just wasn't possible, it just wasn't. Not with my car out there loaded up looking like Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve in full view of the road. We spent what daylight we had left unloading the most important things, the two generators we had, the propane, the gasoline and a few other things.

We decided to keep working into the night even after the critical things had been unloaded. By the time we decided to quit we had unloaded almost the entire car. We both went to bed. Neither of us took the master bedroom.

The next couple of days we spent taking stock in what we had. My parents had planned well. Mom had canned enough crap herself as well as supplies they got from the army to feed us for months. Dad had enough guns squirreled away to fight an entire army.

Lucas and I decided to move dad's truck and my car to a barn dad had at the very back edge of the property. It was hard to see from the road by daylight and impossible to see at night. It is also very sturdy with only one door which we locked up pretty damn tight. We also put up a locked makeshift gate to further block it.

We kept mom's car out front. It was smaller and easier on gas. We would use this for when we needed to just go somewhere.

We boarded up the house and spray painted biohazard signs as well as put up some quarantine signs that Lucas had stolen from a couple of the other houses nearby. We decided not to cut the grass. We wanted the place to look as abandoned as possible. We hoped that between the signs and the tall grass no one would come snooping. It was widely believed the virus could live outside a person for months. Of course that was total nonsense, but we didn't care. The ignorance of people would help us out.

I came up a pretty good idea on how to collect more water. We rigged up the gutters to drain into some kiddie swimming pools we stole from other houses that we set up in the basement. We should be able to get some drinking water out of them once we filter it some and maybe a drop or two of bleach. Dad also had some big tanks like they would use to water fields from tractors. Not sure why. He had the damn things for years and they were always in the way. Now they were going to come in handy. It makes me feel better to know that we have a water supply to least flush the toilets and have a backup water supply to water plants in case we have a dry spell.

We also set up a deer blind in a tree on top of a hill that overlooked the road. We couldn't man it all the time of course, but every little bit helped.

During the night all I thought about was Elena and my parents. No, my parents and I didn't really mesh well, they were all about whatever conspiracy theory the pundits tossed their way, not to mention racist as hell, but they were still my parents. Maybe if I had just taken the time to drive out here earlier. They would have been happy to see me, of that I am sure, even if we couldn't stand each other's company all that much. Maybe I could have saved them, or at least said goodbye. That wasn't possible now. My own stubbornness makes me feel like an ungrateful bastard.

Elena was a different story. I knew where she was. Not only that, I was convinced that Rod could not keep her, or her sister, safe. What should I do? Do I go after them and bring them here? Did I think they weren't safe just because I think Rod is a moron? They could very well be in better shape than we are. I just can't get her out of mind.

I think Lucas is about to knock me out if I bring her up one more time. He finally told me to go get her or stop whining about it. I think more or less to shut me up, but hey, I'll take it. He even offered to come with me, but I think that was just because he wants a chance to beat the hell out of Rod, or shoot him. He will have to wait his turn.

Would she even come with me? Could she forgive me for letting her go? Yeah, I still love her, and it hasn't been that long at all since I last saw her, but we had been strained lately. I suppose that was to be expected, times were hard. I always thought that once we got out of there and got some sort of normalcy going it would get better. Maybe I am a fool. Maybe she hates me now. She has to feel like I abandoned her; that's how I feel. But I can't help but believe I am leaving her to die if she doesn't come here.

Maybe it should just be about survival, and any kind of distraction is a danger to me. You know what? I don't care. I am going after her.

Before he gets back he would be happy to see that you left a comment, voted and follow =)