July 10^th, 1993

Today has really had its ups and downs. By that I mean many things went wrong, there was a lot of grueling work, but on the upside I have a new friend. Let me start from the beginning, journal.

I can’t say that it started off particularly well, aside from the earliest parts of the morning. I began with a plan of action: get up at 5 AM, make breakfast, and watch Miss Kitty on Life and Living to see if she had any cooking advice on show she hadn’t given in person yet, while keeping two ears out on the news from the radio.

Once that was done, I was going to ‘gear up’ and head out towards where I’d seen the package from the helicopter fall. I’d figured it couldn’t have been more than a few streets away, and Muldraugh is far from a large place anyway, so there’s only a few locations they might have dropped it. My guess at the time was that they aimed for the parking lot of the little corner store up the way, which turned out to be correct.

I’d also guessed that most of ‘them’ would have been distracted to other sides of the town for now, which also turned out to be correct. Though I ran into a few of ‘them’, it wasn’t anywhere near as many as it could have been. The problems began, though, with-

Someone else had already been here. That much was obvious to Evan as he peered carefully around one of the privacy fences where he was crouched, hidden from any obvious sight. At least, he hoped that was the case. The handful of ‘them’ he had run into were easy enough to deal with. ‘They’ weren’t that dangerous if you saw them coming and knew what to do, at least not alone. In large groups, a single mistake would be fatal, certainly, but you could just hit the bricks and walk away if you weren’t in a building.

Evan’s thoughts were wandering; he focused back at the matter at hand, namely that someone else who wasn’t one of ‘them’ had been there, and he doubted it had been the woman with the shotgun as she didn’t seem the type. The first sign of something wrong, beyond everything that was already wrong these days, was a smattering of semi-recently downed bodies by the intersections closest to the store. He could tell they were recent by the color of the blood spatters on the ground, as they hadn’t yet had the time to turn black with age and dryness. He could also tell because the bodies weren’t like a handful of others he’d seen, stripped to near the bone by whatever had happened to them.

Those ones he smashed the heads of, just to be sure. He did the same for any of the other bodies he found, or at least brought a blade down on the neck hard enough to sever the spine. Always best to be sure.

But the most obvious sign that someone had been here is that the aid crate was open. An inconsiderate thing to do, given that it was supposed to rain later today and it was possible that it might ruin the supplies if left exposed too long, but he supposes whoever else was here might have been in hurry. Now, seeing this many of ‘them’ disposed of and signs that more people were around should have Evan feeling more optimistic, giddy even. But somehow it just wasn’t.

Perhaps it was because his only other experience with another survivor so far was being called a murderer and being threatened with a gun. Perhaps it was just natural wariness. Perhaps it was that ‘Greatest Game’ horror movie he’d watched that had a scene just like this one that was a set up for a crazed hunter who wished to hunt humans leaving supplies out as bait to attract victims.

His mama had been right, he wasn’t ready for that movie back when he was 10 years old. She usually almost always was right, or at least mostly right in the cases where she wasn’t entirely. But he’d been foolish and insisted he wanted to see it. In his defense though, it had been a really cool movie and the last survivor girl had found a gun left behind by a frontiersman a century ago that still worked and hunted the hunter down in revenge and that part was awesome.

He wished he had a Marlin 1895. He kinda wished he had a gun in general. Maybe he wouldn’t use it since such loud noises would probably attract more of ‘them’ but just having the option would be nice. It would also make him feel safer from other nebulous threats that loomed at the edges of his awareness. Phantoms that may not even be real.

Though that might just be the coffee talking. He probably shouldn’t have had any, he knows it gives him jitters when he has coffee this early. But he’d stayed up later than he should have playing Sonic, so he thought he would need the extra energy…

Again, he’s getting distracted. Evan has to decide what to do here. He needs to get to the supplies, and he’s waiting long enough to see if someone is going to step out and say something. He hasn’t seen any of ‘them’ hanging around in the area after he dispatched the only one left that had been standing under a street light, staring up into it for some reason.

There’s really nothing to do but go for it. Standing up, Evan steps out of cover and is not immediately drilled by a bullet for his trouble. Already a great success in that regard! He crosses the street, moving at the quiet stride he’d started developing that balances out his speed with not making any unnecessary noise.

Getting to the crate, he looks into it to find a number of cardboard boxes. Some of them are already missing, but there’s numerous others left to collect. A notice on the crate orders that only one box be taken per person under penalty of law, up to and including a fine of twenty five thousands dollars and jail time.

Evan swings his pack down from his back and opens it up to heft one of the surprisingly heavy packages into it. They’re large cardboard boxes that are taped thoroughly shut and are stamped as ‘Emergency Relief Supplies’ along with a list of other smaller notifications not really worth mentioning. Evan has to suspect that there’s more than just a bit of food in here… at least, hopefully.

He eyes another package consideringly before setting that aside for the moment and turning his attention towards the store itself. There are a few cars in the parking lot, some in better condition than others. Just outside of the parking lot and almost in the four way intersection itself is a three car wreck, most of which are splattered black and black-red around the shattered windows and busted hoods. Evan doesn’t think he needs too many guesses to figure out what happened there.

Out of idle curiosity, he tries the handle of the car nearest to him, a brown station wagon whose make and model he didn’t really know or care about. It was, predictably, locked. It’s not like he particularly needed anything from the car or even wanted to get into it. It was just an idle thought of looking in any place you could reach, the sort of thing that his Uncle Dean had taught him to foster how to really survive.

Always look for every advantage, Uncle Dean would say. That and to never forget your paperclip. Evan has three on him today, so he doesn’t think he’ll be in any trouble on that front. Done with the car, he makes his way to the store instead, looking through the big storefront windows into the darkened interior. The windows were entirely intact and not smeared in blood or viscera, so he assumed that no one had been inside when the events happened, and that no one else had tried to get into the store just yet either. Right in front of the frosted window is a line of display cases with veggies and fruit in them, which looked to be, perhaps surprisingly, not in too bad of shape despite having been sitting out for a few days now. He wasn’t sure how much longer that would be the case.

Evan hated wasting food, an attitude his mother instilled into him young and made sure stayed that way. He ate what he could, saved what he couldn’t to eat later, and tried to never get more than he really needed to so he didn’t end up with that dreaded situation of not having enough for it to be worth saving but it being too much to finish. All of this is a long explanation for why Evan tried the door of the corner store to see if it would open… but it was locked.

He takes a moment to consider it before he starts around the side of the building. It was likely there’d be a back entrance for deliveries or a staff room, after all, and he finds it quickly enough around the east side of the building, nestled in a small dip in the corner of the building where the northern rear met the eastern side. This door he tests as well… and it glides open easily as if there was nothing holding it in place. The inside of the room was very dark and Evan steps back carefully in case something within the darkness lunged forth… but nothing happened.

Kneeling down to check out the lock, examining the point where the bolt met the door showed that metal and wood had given way to force from within, leaving nothing for the bolt to latch onto to keep the door shut. Someone had broken out from the inside. Perhaps someone had been infected in here, but had hidden and succumb in the back room and only broken out after hearing something going on outside. Either way, they didn’t appear to be here now. A careful step forward had nothing happen, and so Evan entered into the store’s backroom and quickly looked things over. He wouldn’t take any of the imperishables, as he had no immediate need and things would be over soon enough, and since that was all that was in the back, Evan simply moved on to the main part of the store.

He heads straight for the fruits and veggies, grabbing a bag along the way and stuffing it full of perishables as he roams the store. They’d have gone bad by the time anyone got back anyway, so this wasn’t really taking things he shouldn’t so much as preventing needless waste. Nodding at his ingenious logic, he borrows a bottle of chocolate milk to wash down the hypocrisy as he also borrows anything in the freezers or refrigerator in the back of the room too. These would probably go bad too by the time anyone got back, and also he just really wanted some ice cream right now and if someone had a problem with it they could take it up with him later. Savoring a delicious creamsicle, Evan lets himself relax just a bit. It was only for a few moments, in an abandoned little corner store lit only by the light coming in from the windows, but it was quiet. The good kind of quiet, with faint little noises going that kept the silence from really setting in. The hum of the fridges, the quiet thrum of the climate control coming to life. A moment of serenity.

It ended, but at least not due to a disaster – simply because Evan had other things to do today. He was finished here anyway, and shouldn’t linger unless he wanted to become an uninvited guest to someone else’s event. Stepping out of the store, he stops by the supply cache again and grabs another box to tuck under an arm. That done, he marches back where he came from, crossing streets and keeping an eye out for any distant figures. He didn’t see any of ‘them’ right now, so it seemed that the area was reasonably clear at the moment… at least for a few streets. Sometimes though, he’d swear he’d see a shadowy figure in a house, or at the far end of the street. He doesn’t linger longer than he has to in the open, slinking back to his own place.

Heading down his cul-de-sac, he stops by the armed woman’s home and braces himself. He’s got to do the right thing. That woman couldn’t have left and gotten one herself, so she’ll need one too. That’s why he takes a few steps down the walkway to her house, sees movement in an upstairs window and puts the box down immediately and beats a hasty retreat. That’s close enough to her front steps, Evan thinks. Close enough counts in this and horse shoes.

Safely withdrawing from the location without being shot, Evan returns to his summer abode and escapes indoors. There weren’t any more of ‘them’ wandering into this part of the neighborhood yet, and there were only two ways through the wrap around privacy fence into the cul-de-sac anyway. He’s not about to go poking around in the woods out back between Muldraugh and the train depot at this point either. It was best to stay close to home for now.

“Okay, let’s get this out on a table,” Evan spoke to himself as he set his pack down and quickly set about putting the perishables away into fridge and freezer, which now looked far more full, which was a fact that made him feel much, much better about it when an empty stomach is the last thing he needs right now. As for the package from the government itself, that he has to open up with his knife.

Its contents set out on the table, Evan’s hands go to his hips as he stares down at it. This was… he’s not exactly sure what he was expecting. The package contains a small radio with a long antennae which was presumably for listening for government instructions or the news, a first aid container with everything you could need for a normal injury, several heavy plastic packages of what claimed to be ‘Meals-Ready-to-Eat’ and packets of the kinds of gloves and masks paramedics wore.

There was also a note, which Evan contemplated after reading. It really wasn’t the hail mary ‘we are coming to get you here’ he had hoped for. It just told him that this was a disaster zone and martial law was in effect, something he already had put together from the news, and that he must follow all instructions from lawful authority figures. It advised him to ‘isolate the infected and not to approach them’ and insisted that ‘all unlawful behavior would be prosecuted to the full extend of the law’.

It was, in short, extremely unhelpful in most regards. The supplies themselves were nice, but there wasn’t any information on what to do or how to further survive the current situation as it was. Even some sort of warning like ‘we’re going to send in people to help you in a week’ would have been appreciated. This was almost like they were just planning on sitting and waiting, like people were claiming on the news. Evan knew, of course, that the government and military wouldn’t do that. They were just acting with an abundance of caution, but… that didn’t mean he had to like the situation.

It was 8 AM now, three hours after he’d woken up and an hour and a half after he’d left on his sojourn deeper into Muldraugh. He wasn’t sure what else to do with himself at this point. He felt antsy, just sitting around doing nothing. Even the idea of playing video games, while appealing, didn’t really call to him as much. He felt like he should be getting ready for something-

There was a sound. A sound he usually ignored, as all people ignore in modern life. But this was a sound he hadn’t heard in days, one that didn’t fade away into the background with no other noises to contrast it. It was the sound of a vehicle.

He puts aside the temptation to run outside immediately, instead skulking to the window to peer carefully past the heavy sheets he’d hung over them. Outside, turning down their little cul-de-sac and driving at a steady pace even as it circles around the street was a mail van; a Grumman Long Life vehicle, to be exact, as he’d been told by a post man once who’d taken a great deal of pride in his vehicle.

The boxy little thing trundles at a steady pace around the street, circling and then coming to a stop… in front of Uncle Dean’s house. His house. The house he was currently inside of. The house that contained him and everything he needed to survive. There was a person stepping out of the van and walking up his front way towards his door, a package under his arm. The man wore the light and dark blues of the postal office and had a broad cap on his head and a smile on his face, looking for all the world as if he simply loved his job and what he did despite the world around him.

But why was he here? Why was he delivering a package? What did he want? Was this some sort of trick, or were the mail men just somehow keeping packages running despite the mass unrest and violence?

The man knocked jauntily in a little ditty of a pattern and then waited. Evan hesitated, just for a moment. Then he approached the door, left hand resting out of sight on his knife as he spoke through the door. “Yes, hello? H-how, uhm, how can I help you?”

“Package here for a…” The mailman glances down at the package in his grip as he looks for the name, drawing Evan’s eye to the nametag on his chest, one reading ‘Mitchell’. “Evan Daniels?”

“… That’s me.” Evan came to a decision, unlocking the door after that moment’s hesitation, “Sorry, just give me a second to get the door open.”

“Perfectly fine sir, perfectly fine!” Mailman Mitchell assures, chipper as seemed to be his default. “Things sure have been a bit of a fuss recently, what with all those army boys around and the upset that caused.”

“Yeah,” Evan manages to respond as he opens the door and is rewarded for his act by not being violently attacked. Instead Mailman Mitchell hands him the package, which Evan gratefully receives. A glance at it shows the return address is his home in Philadelphia. His mother must have sent this for him, but… what? She hadn’t mentioned anything in the last phone call he’d had with her before the lines ended up being serviced. “Things have been… yeah. You’re actually out… delivering?”

“Yes sir, young man!” Mitchell declares with a smiling nod. “Neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor hail after all, and it’s a bright sunny day today!”

His smile was so bright that Evan had a hard time looking at him.

“Well, thank you very much.” Evan fell back on his ingrained manners. Always be polite, it doesn’t cost a thing. “I appreciate this, sir. Have a nice day.”

“You too, young man! Have a wonderful day!” Mailman Mitchell enthuses before stepping off of the stoop and heading for his loitering mail van. Evan closes the door and stares at the package in his hands before looking back out the window he normally keeps covered. Mailman Mitchell simply goes to his van and gets in before checking something to his left. Probably another package, he guesses.

That was the most human interaction Evan has had in the past three days – well, interaction that didn’t include getting threatened with a gun at least, somaybe ‘pleasant interaction’ might be more accurate. The point Evan was getting to is that things had gone better than he expected. Cheered up by something approaching normality even as he tries to figure out what the hell was going on, Evan sets the package down on the table and gets ready to open it, right around when the screaming started.

He’s back at the window quick, peering carefully past the curtains and watching down the road. The shotgun-having woman had left her home, rushing outside towards the mail truck, yelling for him to wait, to stop and to take her with him. She has her weapon in hand as she runs towards him and all but throws herself in front of the vehicle, going for the door, trying to yank it open, yelling something he couldn’t hear to the man, and then-

-her head disappeared in a spray of red and white as the loud retort of a shotgun sounds off. For a moment he wonders if she’d shot herself on accident, but as the body flops uselessly to the ground he could see the hand holding another, separate gun poking out of the vehicle’s window. The mailman leans out, staring coldly down at the body pouring its lifeblood out onto the pavement.

Then he turns towards Evan.

Evan desperately wanted to get away from the window, but he finds himself frozen, staring transfixed into the eyes of the killer down the road. Mailman Mitchell simply smiles and waves back, offering a ‘what can you do’ sort of shrug as if he hadn’t just killed a woman, before ducking back into his truck and driving away.

Finally, Evan steps back from the window, then a few more paces until he hits the wall and slides down it to rest on his rear and just focus on breathing and trying to not think for a few minutes. Some part of his mind kept processing information needed to survive, pointing out the risk of the gunshot drawing more of ‘them’ to his location, but he couldn’t do anything about it in the moment as he focused mostly on not focusing on anything at all. It helps, he thinks, to do that for a bit.

Time passes, and Evan is finally able to get back to his feet. What has happened has happened, and he has to deal with it now. There’s nothing else that he can do. The message from the government said something about isolating the infected… did that also mean their bodies? He probably shouldn’t just leave them lying around. That’s right, he needs to get up and do something.

So that’s what he does. Evan gets up and does something. He puts on a face mask and a pair of gloves from the government’s gift box and snaps them on. He needs to move the bodies further away so he’ll be safe. He also needs to do something… something more for his actual neighbors at least. Especially Mister Next Door. It just wouldn’t feel right to leave him lying out like the rest of them.

So something is what he did. He got himself equipped and ready and with his shovel on his shoulder stepped out. Blessedly, it didn’t seem that very many of ‘them’ were drawn by the gunfire. At least, not many that stayed. He supposes that most of them would have been drawn towards the sound of the vehicle as it made its escape and headed that way. Either way, he only saw a handful more of ‘them’, which had settled around the deheaded woman’s corpse and tore into it with the fervor of starving, wild beasts.

He dispatched ‘them’, crushing their skulls with heavy blows of his hatchet after severing their spin with a thrust of his mighty shovel-spear. Once he was certain that ‘they’ had been dealt with, he began to move the bodies, grabbing them by their ankles and dragging them along the grass. It was slow, laborious and heavy work, but it was better than trying to carry the corpses and getting covered in whatever ichor was leaking from them ashe dragged the bodies out of his cul-de-sac and across the street.

One by one, body by body, they went. Until there were no more to move and he was left with the bodies he had to do something else with. He couldn’t just drag off Mister Johnson or the murdered woman. It just didn’t feel right, not even as his legs and shoulders ached with the pains of hours of labor as he set about doing what did feel right. That was why he started to dig. Shovel strikes the earth instead of flesh and pierces it just as surely. He doesn’t know much about digging graves, but he’s pretty sure he can at least manage a hole in the ground deep enough to do the job.

He buries Mister Johnson first, as he’s had longer to sit out in the summer heat and for nature to begin to do it’s work. It’s unpleasant business, but it’s the right thing to do. He puts him as gently into the ground as he can, laying the kindly man to rest before he shovels the dirt he dug out back over the body. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Everyone returns to the earth someday. At least he can do this for the poor man instead of leaving him for the birds.

He goes through the shed, finding some spare wood and nails and crafts a marker for the grave, placing it into the dirt and packing it around tightly enough to make sure it stays up right. He had to go into Mister Johnson’s house again to find what else he’s looking for. His identification will make for a good marker, and he nails that to the top of the grave marker.

“… I’m sorry,” is all Evan can manage to find in him for a eulogy. What else can he say, when all he can manage is a shallow grave and a scrap wood cross?

He digs out a grave for the woman with no name next, right in her front lawn near the street. It’s all he can do for her now, and that’s why he’ll do it. He supposes she’s at least lucky enough for it to have been quick. Lucky enough to have not been taken by ‘them’ and turned against others. It’s a cold comfort, if it’s even a comfort at all.

She’s settled into the hole and he covers her up, the same as he did Mister Johnson. But he couldn’t find any identification on her, so he supposes he’s going to have to go into her house to get something. He can’t just leave her grave unmarked. It wouldn’t be right. Besides, somehow the idea of leaving a gun unattended and unaccounted for sounds like a downright terrible idea to him in this situation.

So, that decided, he steps carefully into her home to look for something he can use to mark her grave site with… and also to try and find that gun so that he can put it somewhere that will keep it from being pointed at him again. The latter is actually easier than the former, as he finds the H&R Pardner Pump-Action propped up carelessly next to a coat rack. A check of it reveals it to be completely unloaded both in magazine and chamber, so he hooks it onto his backpack for now and goes into the rest of his search.

There’s nothing much in the kitchen save for some canned goods, no identifying papers or anything. The freezer has a number of frozen meals in them and the fridge has a large amount of discount brand wine. The cheap kind of discount brand wine. The kind that looks cheap and smells cheap. Like practically just boxed wine without the box. He didn’t need any of it, so it stayed where it was. The rest of the house turned up a great deal of other useless information, including a truly staggering amount of trashy romance novels. They filled up, stacked three deep, two entire book shelves.

The upstairs had two bedrooms and a bathroom, all of which had little of use or value in them to make much of note from. The bedrooms didn’t seem to have been lived in for quite some time, as there was no clothing in the dressers or other signs of someone living within. There was also one more room, one with a door that was difficult to open. It wasn’t locked so much as it seemed as though there was something heavy pressed against it. So with nothing else to do, he braced himself against the door and pushed. He put his back into it and shoved it across to reveal… another bedroom. One covered in sheet on the floor, on the windows, and mattresses and blankets nailed or stapled to the wall. Perhaps some form of sound baffling, Evan would guess. He’s not certain how effective it would be. The room is covered in the detritus of unhealthy living as packaged foods and no longer frozen meals dot the landscape of it.

In the corner of the room, there is something covered in a sheet. He hears a faint whisper of movement from that boxy shape, and his knife is in his hand in an instant. Evan advances, carefully reaching out for the covered box and ripping the sheet off of it to reveal…

… a dog crate. With a dog in it. The crate is in deplorable condition, soiled with waste and showing clear signs of the dog not having been able to leave it in some time. The dog looks to be relatively young. It’s small, at least. It looks like a beagle, or maybe a basset? Maybe a beagle-basset. A bagle? Either way, it’s not a puppy but it’s certainly not full grown. It looks at him, frozen in place. Its tail is huddled beneath its legs as it crouches in the corner that’s the least disgusting and trembles. But it doesn’t bark, yip, whimper or growl. It just stares at him, and trembles.

What had been done to this poor thing if this is how it reacts to a person?

“Hey.” Evan’s voice is low as the knife is immediately put away and he crouches down, hands up and open, “Hey, hey hey… it’s okay, hey. You’re okay. You’re okay. Good dog. Good dog…” His tone stays soothing as he tries to find a lock on the cage to get it undone and let this poor thing out. He gets the job done and steps back to let it come out of the cage on its own if it wants.

It stares for a moment and then slowly, tentatively starts to take steps forward. It pauses at the border of the cage to glance up at him worriedly, but as Evan does nothing it steps out of the cage and onto the sheet-covered floor.

“Good boy…” Evan reassures the poor creature, bringing his hand a little closer to it. He freezes as the dog flinches, and stays in place as it seems to stare at his hand for an eternity. Eventually though, it takes a step closer, followed by another, and puts its head in his hand. Evan pets it, running his hand down the length of its back from crown to tip of its tail and then does so again. Finally, the tail stops curling under the dog. Finally, it makes a noise as it lets out a plaintive whinge and then jumps up onto him. It never barks or raises its voice above that quiet yet joyful whinge as he showers it in affection, uncaring of how mired in muck it might be at the moment. He’ll help clean it off later. Instead, he simply shows the poor thing the love it seems to have been lacking, rubbing his ears, patting his back and showing him all the tenderness that he can. The dog returns in kind, pouring its affection and happiness right back into him and leaving Evan feeling more whole and alive than he has in days. More of a person and less of a survivor. This dog… saving it feels like the first thing he’s done that was right.

“Hey, come on. Let’s get you food, okay?” Evan’s pretty sure he saw dog food downstairs, and as he forces the door open the dog stays close on his heels, never straying more than a foot from him even it happily trots. He finds the canned dog food easily enough, but for some reason is unable to find a can opener. Thankfully, he has a knife and that can also open cans. Quickly enough, the food is on the floor in a bowl, and he adds a dish of water as well since the poor thing seems to need it.

… It definitely seems to need it, as it eats the food voraciously and laps up all the water afterwards. He’s pretty sure he read somewhere that feeding someone who hadn’t eaten for a long time too much could be bad for them, so… he’s going to just give the thing a bit more water rather than even more food. No matter how much it might tippy-tap on the floor and look at him.

Leaving it to its water, Evan makes a decision and begins to pack up all the dog food he can find in the house, along with a few other things that look like they could be useful. She won’t be needing them, and he finds it hard to feel even a bit of regret for it. Strangely though, even as he searches more thoroughly he cannot find a single shell for the shotgun in the house. Not in her room, not in any of the other rooms, and not even in the closet or cupboard. Did she simply… own a gun and not any ammo for it?

That seems strange, and not particularly helpful for him. He’ll be taking it anyway of course, since leaving a gun lying around is stupid in the extreme.

“Hey buddy. Hey.” Evan crouches down next to his new friend, which quickly attempts to lick his face with its tongue that smells strongly of mass produced brown gravy. “Ach-ptt, nah nah no.” He pushes the dog down gently, and is happy when it does not seem to show fear in response, “You wanna come with me? You wanna go?”

He’s talking to this dog like it’s going to understand. Then again, dogs are supposed to know some human words aren’t they? It lets out a quiet yip and bounces excitedly, which he takes as a yes. Nothing else in this house is of value to him or his survival for now, so he just picks up the dog’s food bowl and water dish and tucks them into his pack as well. He opens the front door and steps back outside.

Nothing much has changed, and the grave is still there with only wood for a marker. Evan thinks she’ll just have to put up with that for now, and he heads back home with his new friend in tow. He’ll need to think of a good name to call them since they don’t have a tag on their collar.

Maybe…

“Let’s go home, Bagle.” Evan speaks, and the dog eagerly sticks close to his heels as Evan leads the way. He’ll be back inside with plenty of time to cook dinner and to watch Uncle Dean’s show, and then after that he’ll take a look into the package his mother sent him to see what it was.

-and that’s what I did. It turns out mom sent me my birthday present and it just took longer to get here than they expected. She got me ‘Link’s Awakening’, which is awesome because I haven’t gotten to play Link to the Past since I don’t have a Super Nintendo and just a regular one. Maybe when this is all over I can get one eventually?

I’ll write more tomorrow. I need to bathe Bagle again. He seems to like the water at least, and doesn’t try to fight me as I work on getting him clean. The mess he was coated in was awful...