Hey friends! 

So, I did some thinking and decided that I’m going to go ahead and post the rest of the original journal entries as blog posts. Might as well. This is the super secret insider information club blog after all. Imuna share the good, the bad, and the ugly here…and boy are these journal entries ugly. Bwahahahaha! 

But thats how writing goes. The first draft is just telling ourselves the story and it’s supposed to be ugly. Then we make it better with each following draft. This is The Fall went through 4 full drafts and one extra pass to improve pacing before it went to the line editor/proofreader…which turned out to be a waste of money. lol! PSA: make sure your line editor has several books under their belt before you hire them off of Fiverr because they’re cheap and you’re poor. I literally could have done better all on my own. 

But I digress…

As I’m writing this post and rereading these journal entries, I’m cringing and laughing and reminiscing about all the hours I spent taking this section and changing it to read like a novel. It was such a fun exercise and I’m so proud of this rough group of journal entries that eventually became Chapter 7, Chapter 8 and part of Chapter 11.

So if you happen to be writing and are seriously doubting yourself, just read through this mess. If I can take something this disjointed and turn it into a coherent story, then you can too.

Big hugs to everyone!

-LynnErin

PART TWO:

March 15

      I’m glad I stayed here. There is definitely something crazy happening in the little town down the road. I saw flares fly up...and I’ve heard gun shots. 

      I’ve started a pretty good pile of gear to take with me whenever I can get outta here.  I’m honestly too scared to leave right now.  Like, what if people leave the town and head for the hills?  If other people came here would they try to hurt me?  I mean, if things are getting bad in the little town, I wonder how bad is it going to be back at home?  We live in a pretty decent sized city.  Tons of apartment buildings, tract houses, strip malls, big box stores.  Hundreds of thousands of people. 

      I can’t freaking believe this.  I really can’t.  It’s just…so messed up.  I’m getting lonely and all I can think about is my mom and brother.  Today I cried for the first time since the world turned upside down.  I sobbed like a baby.  Gasping, snotty, drooling wailing.  I don’t know what to do.  I just feel so damn lost.  I don’t want to do this anymore.  It’s like being stuck in an awful dream and not being able to wake up.  But it’s real life and one way or another I’m going to have to try and do something or I’m going to end up starving to death up here.  Cause, ya know, chips and candy just aren’t satisfying at all after eating pretty much nothing for the last ten days. I gotta find a way to make something else to eat. 

March 16

      I found potatoes in the deli bar. Real whole russet potatoes.  But I don’t know how to  cook them with no electricity. 

     Also, I wasn’t going to mention this cause it’s embarrassing but who cares at this point…I found out the hard way that this place is on a well for water…and the pump is electric.  That means no running water in the building at all.  Yeah, I pooped and couldn’t flush it down. Thank goodness there is a manual hand pump next to the pumphouse shed.  I filled up a bucket and dumped it in the toilet tank and got it to flush.  I guess I’ll be digging cat holes outside from here on out.  In a world that now has limited access to water, it just seems wasteful to be literally dumping gallons down the toilet just so I can poop indoors.

      I need electricity for everything here. This place is full of canned food and dried goods...can’t open the cans because the only opener in the place is electric.  The stove in the house…electric.  I don’t know what the heck I’m going to do.   I wandered around outside and pried open the locked shed hoping to find something useful.  It’s full of yard tools and all sorts of outdoor entertainment things.  I didn’t think there was anything good in there but then I spotted a huge generator!  There were no gas cans to be found, probably taken by the folks that lived here, so I siphoned gas’s out of the lawn mower and into an old water jug.  After fighting with the thing for more than an hour, I figured out that the generator doesn’t work either...nothing freaking works!

     I did some more wandering and found an exterior entrance to the basement below the store but it was locked up tight.  I’ve got to figure out how to get in there, but in the meantime, ya girl is still freaking hungry.  If I eat another crispy rice treat I’m gonna vom.  I will legit eat cold canned anything at this point, I just have to figure out how to get one open.

March 17

     I opened a can of baked beans with a knife last night.  Cut myself pretty bad, cause I’m a clumsy genius.  But I had beans instead of sugar junk food for dinner.  My hand is pretty sore today though.  I washed it and slathered it with triple antibiotic but the cut is pretty deep.  Like, probably needs stitches deep.  I grabbed some butterfly bandages off the shelf but they’re going to be kinda hard to use one handed.  I’m going to figure it out though.  I’m just hoping that it doesn’t get infected. 

March 18

     Today I found an old mountain bike behind the tool shed.  I’m gonna try and fix it up and get out of here.  Also, in all my digging around for tools, I found a “hide-a-key” box with three keys in it.  I now have keys to the store front doors and the basement.  The third key?  I’m not sure yet.

March 20

      Scratch that. I’m going to have to stay a while longer.  I’ve been trekking away from the camp store during the day when the weather is ok.  Ya know, I have never been afraid of the forest but now?  There is definitely something out there.  I felt it yesterday when I was about a half mile down the road from the camp store. There is a lookout area there that I had forgotten about until I was looking through some paper maps in the store.  Anyhow, the clouds had begun drifting in the night before and we’re getting thicker while I was headed to the lookout. They were still fairly high though.  The light gray kind that never drop any rain but always show up a few hours before the real clouds do.  I figured I had some time.

      When I made it to the lookout, visibility was still good and I could see for miles.  What I saw shook me to my core.

      The small town in the distance was on fire.  The whole place was engulfed in black smoke that blended with the clouds.

      So much for heading to that town.  It was obviously not safe.  Dan’s saying, “There are only nine meals between peace and anarchy.” Echoed in my mind.

      Were people rioting? Looting? I was going to have to avoid towns if I could.

      What if some people decided to head up to the hills? Would I be safe here?

     I sat up at the lookout for hours feeling sorry for myself and missing my family and home.  I thought of my poor mother and my kid brother. Were they ok?

     The clouds thickened and with denser clouds came the rain.

     I headed back to the camp store at a relaxed pace, mostly moping and just listening to the rain patter the new leaves and the asphalt.

     The rain got heavier and with heavier rain came darker skies.  I picked up my pace not wanting to end up soaked to the bone but something made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.  I turned to look down the wet road just in time to see something large dart off into the bushes a few hundred feet away.

      My stomach tightened and panic bloomed in my chest.  Could my eyes have been playing tricks on me?

     I didn’t want to hang around and find out. I doubled my pace frantically scanning my surroundings as I went. 

      The blood smear.

     The bag of Jerky.

     Dan.

     What had happened to him?

     Something got him.  Something terrible.

     What living thing could have hauled off a grown man that was over six feet tall without a trace?

     Through the sound of the rain I could hear something moving in the bushes beside the road and I chanced a glance over my shoulder.  The foliage rippled as something moved through it. Whatever it was had closed the distance between us by half.

     I leapt into a terrified sprint.  I couldn’t even feel my feet as they pounded the pavement. 

     The swishing of the bushes got louder and I pushed myself to run harder. Faster. Don’t look behind you. Just run.  Run!

      As the camp store bobbed into view, a feeling of warmth and relief washed over me and I sped toward the door.

     Once inside, I locked the doors behind myself and peered out the windows puffing from exertion and shaking with adrenaline.

     What the hell was that?

     My gut told me it didn’t matter and it was just all bad. 

     Ok then…no traveling on rainy days. Great.  That aught to be easy right smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Northwest.