From the journal of Marie Costa, June 13

June 13, 2017

     It's been a while since I a last wrote and a lot has been happening. We expanded our search of the building and houses near us. We're up to a circle of a mile out from our cabin and have mostly found undead residents. But, we did add 7 more people to our group that we found in our search. Our team, Jake, Frank and Danny, found Jessie King and her two children, Max and Madison, stuck in their house while 15 zombies pounded on the outside. If we hadn't found them when we did, the racket the zombies were making would keep drawing any other undead that got close and they would have eventually been overrun.

     The next time out, they found an elderly couple, Evangeline and Richard Crusher, and their son Jason. Jason had gone to his parents house when the world went crazy and they had been hiding out and living off their survival supplies since then. They kept quiet, stayed out of sight, and had been ok so far. Jason had to take out around 10 undead since he got there, but they'd come into their yard solo or in pairs. Later that same day, Frank stumbled onto a guy, Brian Masterson, while the team was searching a trio of houses.

     Brian had been a fireman in town and told the guys about how he almost didn't make it out of the fire house, let alone back to his house. He had been working his way towards his place, still another 17 miles from where he was found, for a month. The several other fireman had survived until around May 12^th. That's when a group of 50 undead heard one of the guys knock over a group of oxygen tanks in the back yard of the firehouse. They started moaning and pounding on the bay doors and eventually, they were able to break through. Brian was upstairs when it happened and was able to jump and climb onto the roof from the window ledge. The rest of the firemen were not so lucky.

     He broke down while he told the team and those with them about listening to the screams and then the sounds of the undead eating his friends and co-workers. It took him a few minutes to pull himself together before he could tell them what had happened between then and when he was found. Basically, he moved from house to house and in some cases, tree to tree, to avoid as many undead as possible. Brian was hoping to run into other people, but the only ones he'd seen before our people was the group we were avoiding.

     Frank, Jake and Danny have a list of questions that we came up with as a group. Each time they find someone, or a group of someones, they ask all of them the questions, and according on their answers, bring them back. There were a few others that we stumbled onto that didn't make it. One man shot at our people and told them to leave, which they did. One man tried to come back to our group, but the answers he gave made the guys suspicious. Then he did some things that made them decide he had to be taken care of. That was one of the harder things they've had to do, but we all decided once we find someone, either it works out and they become part of our group, or they die. We can't risk leaving someone alive to follow our group back and we can't risk the possibility they could bring others to our cabin, people like the ones in town.

     Yeah, the group in town. They are getting closer to us, close enough that we have a small group watching them all the time now and reporting back their actions. We're having a meeting tonight to decide what we're going to do. Personally, I think the only thing we can do is find a way to take them out. They won't leave us alone once they know about us. They will kill the men and enslave us women. That's their way. We can't allow that and so we'll talk out our options. The only ones I can think of are leave or kill them. And I'm not leaving.

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.