From the journal of Manny Stone, May 23

May 23, 2017

Today, we pulled into this little corner town in the foothills of the Rockies. There's only two businesses, the gas station and the general store/post office, and four houses in the whole town. I'm sure that before the pandemic, there would've been some houses in the surrounding area that were considered part of the town, but all we saw were the few buildings at the crossroads.
The buildings are still in good repair, so I told my companions that I would bet people were still living here until quite recently. We pulled out truck to a stop and honked the horn to see if any one or any undead came out to greet us. Nothing.
We decided on a building by building search, starting with the gas station and general store. We found some good supplies, food, water, maps of the area, blankets and clothes. Then we headed for the nearest house. The front door was closed and when I pushed it open, the smell of death wafted out. We all looked at each other and then I motioned that I would go in first, alone.
The house was dark, since all the curtains were pulled, so I cleared the living room and then pulled the curtains so I could see to get to the next room down the hallway. The whole first floor was clear, no one, no undead and no bodies, until I got to the back bedroom. I opened the door and the smell pushed me back into the hallway so I could get a breath. I made myself look through the door and saw a partially decomposed, naked woman tied to the bed. She had obviously been tortured and raped before whoever did this crushed her skull. I pulled the door closed and went back to the front.
I told Alex and Marney what I had found and they decided to come in and check the upstairs with me. In the first bedroom, we found four male bodies that had decomposed a lot farther than the woman downstairs. In two of the other bedrooms, we found a teen and a pre-teen, both tied to their beds and in the same condition as the woman downstairs. The last two bedrooms were empty but had been used and abused by more than one person for each.
I told them we needed to check the other houses to see if we could find one that had no bodies in it for the night. It took us two hours to figure out we were out of luck. The other houses all had dead men in one room and whatever women were present were tied to beds and tortured and raped.

We ended up back at the general store and talked about what to do. None of us wanted to stay in any of those houses. Plus, we needed to move the truck out of view just in case whoever had done this was local. We hid the truck in the garage on the gas station and decided to sleep in the storage room of the general store. Marney asked me who I thought had done this and I had to tell her that now days, it could've been anyone still alive. Then, I reminded her of the men who had taken them hostage and had been about to kill Alex and have their fun with her before they got away.
We ate our dinner and Alex and I went back to search the houses for any useful supplies. We left Marney in the store keeping watch with a pistol, just in case. The houses were all mostly empty of supplies, I would bet the guys who did this took everything good in the houses. Alex found a sealed enveloped in the bedside drawer of the first woman we found and I told him we would read it later.
It only took us the same two hours or so to check all the houses and we ended up with less than what we had found in the general store and gas station. They probably never went in these buildings because they were too busy having their fun with the women they found.
Tomorrow, we're going to have to be really careful when we leave here and keep our eyes open and searching in all directions. We do not want to run into whoever had their fun in this town.

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.