September Minus a Year ... Journal Entry for End of August ?, 2009

"It seems like forever ago, not 365 days.I came to get you, even everything going on, your still my only reason for breathing. You have questions, I just never put them to paper. Now I wish I had, because there is probably not alot of time. If we get through this, I promise to continue .. and maybe let you write some, too. In the hope that I get to read this to you when I'm an old man man and a better father........"

But I wanna start with now, September,2009 -


The Campian virus is no longer an airborne virus, but the damage really already has been done. Up here in NE Pennsylvania, we held out the longest to be only completely overrun by late 2008 ..... I just wanted a safe place for you. Month upon month, not anywhere near leaving the valley. Scranton seems to have sunk lower in the ground, Almost a true valley now, getting out beyond Moosic is almost impossible, going the opposite direction ... you can't get past Vanding, So we settled on a place i used to work to get there fast. The abandoned Network ambulance building on Green Ridge Street in Scranton. The ambulance bay has one working bus with three tires!. If your mother could see you helping me move the cars in the old lot against the fence enclosure, I swear she'd shit ... but we did it. I don't have to tell you how proud you've made me, especially with everything that has and continues to happen. I have to make you more of a fighter, and to me, thats sad in a way. I will make it up to you tonight, after the hunt. I found a book in one of the offices. I will read you a story, by an old oil lamp I found, and I will try to make you feel safer so you can sleep. I kiss you on the forehead and try desperately not to cry too loud after you fall asleep. I can pretend just for a little while that I am still a normal father with a loving daughter. That this is not hell, and that you forgive me for bringing you into it.

Anyway, me and you, at least for now, help me to scout the next days shots to thin the herd of ever growing dead - but they've seem to slowed - still deadly, but you'll help me pick the ones to rekill tomorrow and i will do this and you will do your homework.(No other teachers and no detention, just me hunny!) And then maybe tomorrow night you can hunt with me again. But it reminds me of something that happened when we 1st got here ..wait..ok..here it is":

"Is there time to remember?"

"Sometimes she asks me where everybody went ..... Jesus, honey, I wish I knew. How do you tell a child the truth of a situation that scares the shit out of you? Why she'll never get to play with her friends again, and care about things like where to go swimming in the summer?

Whatever I was before all this happened is a memory. As an adult, it's hard to take .. but a child? My kid?

She knows the she'll never see grandma and grampa (both sets), cousins, best friends, uncles. She won't talk about her mommy yet. She clings like a marmoset, sometimes, when I stop shaking sometimes I can feel her hearthbeat, going too fast for me to count, but a measure of silence and calm on the outside. She's starting to get angry with them, not so scared anymore. Don't get me wrong, she's still terrified - peppered with large amounts of rage now. Pissed off at them for taking most of her life away. The people she loves, gone too fast, I don't think she'll give them anymore. I can feel when she thinking this way. She becomes like an ember. No doubt your my child, sweetie. I feel when she is thinking this way, and it makes me smile. It makes me believe we'll survive this .... Sept.10, 2008 ... next entry ............. Dec.25th , 2008...."