Chapter Nine: Carl II:

Location: Norfolk, Virginia

Diary Entry: Carl

Day Forty-Five

Ashley, Toby, and I have been moving north for forty-five days now. We don’t know why, but it was better than staying in no man’s land in Atlanta. I am sick of seeing the sand. Everywhere we go, sand. I would love to see grass again. Ashley grabbed onto my arm. I patted her on the friend.

Ashley and I were friends since in elementary school. I was surprised to see her come from New York again. She doesn’t know how it is now that the sand has taken over everything. Ashley can’t contact her friends or her boyfriend either. (I was a little crushed to heard about the boyfriend part.)

“Think they still might be alive?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. I stared at my feet. I couldn’t tell if my folks were alive or not. I was lucky to have Toby and Ashley alive with me. We have run into old neighbors that have managed to survive. They are pretty much in the same boat as we are. Some of them talked about going to the ocean.

“Hey Ashley,” I said this morning.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“What’s so great about the ocean?”

“I don’t really know myself. It just feels like we have to do it.”

“But do we have?”

Ashley, Toby, and I have been getting by. We find food whenever we can. Most of the fresh foods were eaten up on day one. All we’ve had to eat were canned goods. I wonder how long those will last. Last week, I had to fight with an old lady for cans of dog food. When I won, she snorted and spat at me.

“You’ll have to eat that dog one day!” she snapped. “He’s going to be dead weight!” It was all that I could do to not lash out at her. How could she say that I would have to eat my friend and that he’s dead weight? I bet she didn’t have any pets before this mess. I patted Toby on the head to calm me down.

“Don’t worry, boy,” I said. “I won’t kill you. I never will!” That old bitch stuck up her middle finger at me as she walked off. Ashley and I took all that we can carry. It was creepy to see empty supermarkets all over the South as we walked. It’s funny, in high school we were reading sci-fi books about the end of the world. I never pictured that it would look like this.

I about jumped when I felt a little cold nose against my calf. I looked down and saw Toby looking up at me. I reached down and patted him on the head. You know, I don’t know how I would’ve been able to make it without Toby and Ashley. We met many people along the way to Virginia. They are just like us now, struggling to get by. Some banded together and formed camps to survive. We’ve stayed with a couple of them for a night or two. The people tried to get us to stay, but it didn’t feel right.

“I don’t want to feel like I’m imposing on them,” I told Ashley as we left another camp last night.

“But what do we do now?” she asked. I put my arm around her shoulders.

“I have no idea,” I said. “I keep asking that question every day.” Toby looked up at me, whimpering.

“Yes, boy,” I said. “I know. I know.” I still had on a bracelet made of green beads on my left wrist that one little girl gave me from the first camp that we stayed in. The more that I think about it, the more that I had a crazy idea. This afternoon, I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. I turned to Ashley.

“Let’s go to New York,” I said out of the blue. Ashley turned to me with a puzzled look on her face.

“Why?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it be no different no matter where we go?” I shrugged.

“Anything’s better than wandering around, doing nothing,” I said.

“But why New York?”

“Maybe we might find something. Who knows?” I hoped in a way that she would shoot me down or say that I had lost my mind. Instead, she nodded.

“Alright,” she said. “New York it is then.”

“Great,” I said. All of a sudden, I began to regret saying that. Too late now…