From the journal of Sarah Richards, May 13

May 13, 2017

Yesterday morning, we convinced Mom to go with us to the Port to search for a place to stay. We packed up what gear we think we'll need and left this morning with the guys. The plan is to take a car and drive through the port from the tunnel to the outskirts of town. There, we'll look around at the places we find, both house and other type of buildings, and choose the best one of the ones we find.

We left just after the sun came up this morning. It was chilly in the tunnel and we moved as quickly and quietly as we could to the Port end of the tunnel. I motioned everyone down and quiet, then Matt and I crept up to the end of the tunnel. When we looked out the our end of the tunnel, there was a small group of undead just a few feet from the entrance we needed to go through.
We moved back to the others where there was a quiet discussion about how to handle the small group. It was decided that we would go as a group and take them out with out knives. I called out to them quietly and they turned and moved towards us to find what had made the sound. Matt, Jeff, Alan and I took them down, making as little noise as possible and then we moved towards the closest vehicle, a delivery van with the sliding driver door open, keys in the ignition. We piled in, started the truck and pulled away.
It took us a good twenty minutes to get through town without drawing too many undead in our wake. Before we made it to the streets we were going to look at, we stopped and took out the undead that were close enough to follow us down any further. Then we parked the truck and walked down the last couple of blocks before turning onto the last street.
We searched through houses and buildings for hours. The first place was a beautiful old Victorian that was way too open with too many doors and window to defend and without a fence around it to help make it secure.  Next, there was an old brick carriage house but it was too small and again didn't have a fence.
After that, some of them started to blur together. We stopped for lunch in this cute little adobe house and then gathered what little was there that we might use. While searching the master bedroom, I found a journal from the lady who lived there. I took it with me and might read it. We didn't find any undead in the house, so maybe she was still alive, somewhere.
After hours of searching, we found this nice old brick house that had a fairly strong iron fence and gate. The fence was made of iron posts and rails, but we can make it stronger with other fences in the area. Mark and Alan both know how to weld and there is a place they can get the equipment a couple of blocks from here.

The house had been turned into a museum at some point and they had installed shutters to cover the windows in the off season. This makes it perfect, we can leave the shutters on the windows on the first floor to keep us out of sight of any undead who come down this way. But we can open some of them on the second floor and in the attic, but we still have to be careful not to be seen.
The inside was beautiful. Period furniture and kitchen. They had put a cast iron oven and stove in it and even an old style ice box, perfect for the current circumstances. The house was large and perfect for what we need. We settled in for the night and had a quiet celebration for finding a good place to live.
Tomorrow, we go back to Buckner and start getting ready to move over here. The guys are going to get a big truck and we are going to  take the old road out to the building. It will have to be a four wheel drive and we are going to stop to get a couple of chain saws on our way out of town. The road hasn't been used in years and we know it will take extra work to make it passable. If we're lucky, we will get all the way back to the building. But even if we can just get close, we can walk through the trees to Buckner and back to the truck with the supplies. Just in case this happens, we're going to get a bunch of metal carts with big tires made for working outdoors and left them in their boxes in the back of the truck.
At least, that's the plan. Hopefully, everything will go well. Time for bed.

As a writer and artist, I appreciate any readers and their comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please, come read the other blog I write for our artisan collective, Raven's Castle Creations, on our website at www.ravencastlecreations.com. It includes posts on art, the mythology of symbols we use in our art, history and more! Also, come see the art we produce in our Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/RavenCastleCreations. Follow us on Twitter at @ravencastleart and on Facebook at @ravencastlecreations.