July 11^th, 1993

Dear Journal, I was already pretty sure I rated an A for everything I wrote down in you before the 1^st of July but if I don’t get an A+ after everything I’ve recorded since them I’m going to go straight to the principal if I have to. I’m bringing this up because I had the weirdest dream, in which the teacher refused to believe my journal was real, and moreover that I was real. Then she expelled me for having my underwear on the outside and wearing yellow.

I woke up extremely confused at 4:30, thirty whole minutes before my alarm was set to go off. The light was only barely starting to come up over the horizon and the sun had not yet even started to show its face. Bagel, however, was quick to do so. We’d spent the day together yesterday and I let him stay in bed with me to keep a better eye on him since I still don’t know much about him. He’s so very quiet for a dog compared to what I’m used to. He never barks, only makes quiet whinges and wuffs.

Now that I’ve got multiple radios I’m trying to keep them tuned to different stations to keep aware of what’s going on in the outside world. Some of them have stations recorded I’ve never heard of, and I think they’re local channels. One of them had a preacher giving a sermon, and with the way he was talking I think he was inside the boundary. I guess it must be short distance transmissions only, because otherwise people from outside the boundary should be hearing these messages, right? Unless they were being blocked somehow, but the only people who could do that would be the military, right?

Later on when I was listening to the radio though, I heard something that has given me something to do besides sitting on my butt and waiting…

“All good, Bagel?” Evan says softly to the skittish pup, who even now despite his affectionate behavior and excitement at being released from his cage could go stock still and silent if he was too loud or moved too suddenly. Just what had Bagel been through until now? Given the condition of the cage he’d found the poor dog in, probably far too much. His former owner would have to do with an unmarked grave for a little while longer… at least until he had actual reason to return to her former home.

Bagel lets out a happy little yip, crawling halfway into Evan’s lap before flopping over and leaving his head resting on Evan’s thigh. He was rewarded for his brave efforts with a healthy dose of head scritches, followed by some long rubbing pets down the back which he seems quite happy with. Idly continuing to shower his newfound friend in affection, Evan turns his focus back to picking pieces of information out of the simultaneous radio broadcasts he has coming from different parts of the room. The TV news channels Triple N and WBLN were less useful to him, especially since Life and Living was running reruns of Miss Kitty, Mister Woodcraft and Uncle Dean’s shows, plus some neat things like how to be better at gardening and what plants can grow in under 30 and 60 days. All useful knowledge! Uncle Dean said all of the shows on Life and Living were, but his most especially of all.

Besides, Triple N and WBLN were just repeating the same stuff now. Government and Military good versus Government and Military needing to be called to task, respectively. The radios were a bit more useful since LBMW was a local station for this part of Kentucky and they were talking to people from the surrounding communities and on the boundary line constantly. It made him thankful every time that nobody mentioned Uncle Dean, since his uncle is a big TV celebrity, so surely everyone at the boundary line would notice him if his mama had dragged him there. NNR was helpful since they were bringing on lots of specialists in various kinds of things that were talking about what might be going on behind the boundary line.

The only one that had been really useful was the former CDC Doctor Gabraithe who’d talked about how there was certainly more going on, and how America wasn’t ready for this. Evan could safely say by looking out the window that he was certainly right… but he also didn’t agree with the good doctor that men in tanks weren’t a solution to this. Evan thought that they’d be an excellent solution if you just ran over ‘them’. They were so loud they could attract most of them and then just back up and then go forward again. Problem solved.

Moving past that probably worrying thought, Evan muses about the third radio in the room. This one was the one he’d heard that strange pastor preach on, as well as a woman running some sort of ‘underground pirate radio’ where she couldn’t talk about where she was broadcasting from, but that she’d keep doing it. All of them were on short-ranged, more local frequencies… at least, that’s what he was guessing since no one on any of the other stations were talking about what they were saying on them. Maybe they were people in Muldraugh, or nearby.

It was nice to believe that there were still more people in town than just him.

Between feeding and playing with Bagel and briefly taking him outside so he could do his business in the backyard, Evanwas spending some time fiddling with that radio to try and find other local channels. He’d only found an automated weather station so far, which he’d written the channel down alongside the other two he’d heard people on. No one else seemed to be broadcasting besides the aforementioned two stations and the automated one.

Uncle Dean had mentioned to him some stuff about radios; it wasn’t something he brought up in his survival show very often because generally if you were in radio range you weren’t hopelessly lost and in a survival situation… especially if you had a radio. Still, something he was planning on bringing up was radio channels and what was in each band. He and Uncle Dean hadn’t gotten to record it yet, but he’d explained it some to Evan. There were certain frequency bands for utilities, certain ones for military use and certain ones for public or corporate use. Once you learned where you should be looking, you could listen to those frequencies to try and hear if anyone else was out there using them. Maybe if you were lost in the woods and you kept a commonly used channel for walkie-talkies up, you might hear someone talking on it and be able to ask for help.

Of course, you could also have presumably used your walkie-talkie to ask a ranger station or something for help as well if anyone else was around, but it was possible for someone to end up… say, crashing into the Canadian wilderness with nothing but what they had on them which included a small personal radio. In that case, this skill just might save their life. That’s why Uncle Dean had been planning to teach people it, and had taught some of it to Evan already. Besides, Uncle Dean also said there was no such thing as useless knowledge, and when it came to survival any knowledge was good knowledge.

All of this was just a rambling explanation for what Evan was doing now with the third radio, since he’d found only those two other channels in the main bands. Namely, this radio has a higher range of wavelengths it could reach, going up into the range used by walkie-talkies and two way communication radios, so he’s slowly scrolling between wavelengths trying to find something, moving up and down the channels over the course of multiple hours by now. The reports on TV and the radio had already come and gone. Violence in the streets, the President calling for calm, riots in New York and LA and looting – you’d think they were the ones under siege by ‘them’ instead of him. So while the rest of the United States went mad and the World Health Organization grounded flights in and out of the US, Evan sat here playing with the radio and also his gameboy.

So far, Link’s Awakening is really super cool and even better than the Adventure of Link was! Plus it was a little easier to figure out where to go than the first Legend of Zelda, which was nice. The music was wonderful too, and the tinny little speaker of the gameboy fills his ears with such delightfully poignant music and sound effects. How they managed to make this all happen on a little 8-bit handheld was beyond him. Nintendoes what Sega don’t, and does it right.

… Sonic was really cool though. Maybe someday there would be a game with Mario, Sonic and Link all together in it? Maybe a fighting game or something? Yeah, that’d be awesome. Like Street Fighter II in the arcades! Mom let him play at the arcade in the building she worked at and they’d give him free tokens to keep playing because he got other people to buy more plays. At least, that’s what the cool older kids at the counter said.

… Evan’s mind was wandering. It was hard not to when you spent most of the day inside and had only seen a single one of ‘Them’ shamble by in the distance a few streets away up town. Things were distressingly, disconcertingly quiet out there yet again. It wasn’t normal, wasn’t natural, to be able to hear his own thoughts race like this. It was as still as death, and silent as the grave, and only now does he finally appreciate how apt those phrases are.

He supposes it was better than all of ‘them’ trying to tear down his door and tear out of his guts. Actually, he’d like to withdraw his complaints and have it stay quiet until Uncle Dean comes back, thank you.

Bagel shoves his snout into Evan’s hand, drawing his attention away from his spiraling thoughts. Evan doesn’thold back the smile as he pauses his game and gives Bagel all the love and attention he could want in that moment, whispering kindnesses to the poor hound. “Thanks Bagel, you’re a good boy Bagel, I love you~.”

Bagel, for his part, responds to the affection with little sub-vocal happy whinges and by wagging his tail so hard his hips are whipping back and forth behind him; the dog’s tail was like a propeller with how fast it would flap around wildly. Evan had gotten smacked more than a few times, but didn’t chide him since he didn’t want him to feel unsafe.

The radio shows were talking about some more information from the president. Something about how they were finally explaining more about the ‘condition’ within the Boundary. Their ‘top men’ were on it inside of the boundary and working on helping the people within… supposedly. Well, Evan hadn’t seen any of them yet except for that helicopter. Were they going around rounding up people to evacuate them to Fort Knox itself or something? That place was so well fortified it could probably keep out all of ‘them’ with just a handful of soldiers to hold it.

If that’s the case, then maybe the next helicopter he hears will do something about it. Like… telling him where the next evacuation point is or something? If that happened, he’d have to take Bagel with him… wait, didn’t one of the news reports mention something about dogs getting sick or the soldiers taking them away?

… Evan is starting to wish he’d paid more direct attention to the news when they were talking about that now. It had been something about dogs getting sick and… animals potentially being seized if they were a risk vector for infection? Something like that, he thought. Maybe he should take a break from Zelda since he’s got a dungeon finished just a bit ago, and instead focus more on the whole… surviving thing.

That sounds like a good idea, he thinks. Save goes the game, off goes the gameboy, and attentive becomes the Evan after he puts it away on the shelf. He’d be making a light meal later for him and Bagel around twelve or so, and it had only be a few hours since his early rise so for now he’d just keep… doing nothing.

Evan starts to fiddle with the dial again. He’d put it up at the high ends of the spectrum and hadn’t been hearing much wiggling around up there so maybe… down lower, below all the other frequencies? There might be something down there. He’d see if there was, or there wasn’t… well, hopefully. Maybe he should go and see if he could actually find a walkie talkie or another portable radio? Those would probably help if the military wanted people in shelter to call for air or something.

Too many things to do, too many possibilities. Trim the list of fat and think.

There’s no reason to go out and risk himself right now, so it’s better to just stay in. He has video games, books, food and the news. Besides, what are the chances of someone actually using the radio right as he is moving around the right frequency-

“-ello?-” goes the radio set generally in the frequency range of most ‘toy’ walkie-talkies.

“Fiddlesticks,” goes the Evan as he realized he’d set himself up for that to happen. Narrative causality will always take your bet, and the sooner he learned that the better.

He probably wouldn’t learn that lesson here because it would make a very boring story if he did, but it’s always nice to dream.

“I don’t know if anyone can hear me.” The voice was young and childish. Those usually went hand and hand, of course, but Evan had a feeling this one belonged to an actual child. “I tried talking to the helicopter but they didn’t say anything even when I changed the channel and, uhm, anyway I’m trying again. Mister Roger said to do this if he didn’t come back every three hours and it’s been three hours so I’m doing it again. I’m on the roof of the elementary school. I’m calling for help because Mister Roger told me to if he didn’t come back after a while… and it’s been more than a day since he left so it’s been a while… I’ve tried talking on here but no one’s said anything yet, but he told me to stay no matter what and call for help… but I’m running out of stuff to eat and drink…” The child rambled on as Evan began to do some mental mapmaking in his head.

Muldraugh has an elementary school within its boundaries. Only a small one with a handful of school rooms and a dining facility, but one nonetheless. Older kids would have rode a bus elsewhere to a different area to attend their school, and Evan’s pretty sure the middle and high school were closer to Fort Knox proper than Muldraugh was, but he hadn’t spent enough time around the kids who lived here to know for sure. Honestly, most of his summer was spent working with Uncle Dean. His mom had told him to make some friends, but…

… Honestly, did she even remember what being a kid was like? Life wasn’t some Saturday morning special where the new kid shows up and everyone wants to meet him and ask him where he’s from. He’d made a couple attempts at ‘socializing’ with the local kids but between his accent, his not knowing the local things and just generally being an outsider, well…

… hey, he made friends with Mister Woodcraft and Miss Kitty, so it was fine. Adults were more fun than people his age anyway. Plus he met Bagel, so he made three friends in total, so his mother will have to be happy with that!

“-there’s a lot of those people around… the people who aren’t people, I mean. They can’t get to me up here but there are lots of them in the road or around the highway. I need help though, and I can’t get down on my own. I’m not sure what to do… but I’ll keep sending messages. Uhm, I have some crackers and juice boxes left, and I’m trying not to eat ‘em too fast but-” The child seems to be just rambling about their circumstances now, but Evan notes down every bit of information.

… Even if it’s foolish, even if it’s dangerous, he can’t just sit here and do nothing. Someone needed help, and he doesn’t think there’s anyone else to do it. The Army helicopter passed over with messages and pamphlets, but if they didn’t come down to help a little kid waving their arms for help on top of the roof, then…

… well, he didn’t know quite what they’re going to do. He wasn’t saying he thought the army had abandoned them or anything, no way! Just that… they probably weren’t positioned to help them directly. He imagined all the communities closer to the boundary line got rescued already by now, but it’s just bad luck for him that he’s far enough from the boundary to be not easy to help, but not so deep in the woods that he’s basically just safe.

The point Evan’s gradually getting to here is that even if it’s dangerous, he can’t just sit back and do nothing as this actual child is in actual danger. That’s just not something he was raised to do, and it’s not something he wants to do. He can’t keep being the person he wants to be if he ignores someone in danger like this, especially if there’s something he could do about it.

… though it sounded like an awful lot of ‘them’ would be around that area. He isn’t looking forward to making the trip. He doubts he could fight all of ‘them’ either. What he did on the 9^th was a matter of luck and on the spot thinking, and even then it had only been a baker’s dozen and a half in numbers. He had been able to spread them out, thin them, and take them out in small groups. It might be best to think of this as a scouting mission rather than a determined attempt to breach and rescue them now.

If it came down to it, if it was the only option, then he could do something risky there… but for now it was better to play it safe rather than sorry.

“-I’ll try calling more in an hour, or if I hear anyone on the radio. Okay, uhm, bye.” The radio clicks to silence, hissing out white noise as Evan stands up. He had to plan this out. He was already mapping things out in his head and considering just what route would be the best way to handle the situation.

He’ll need to be careful. The last thing he needed to do was to rile up the wandering groups of ‘them’ that stalked the area outside the cul-de-sac. Muldraugh was a town of roughly fifteen hundred people, andwhile he doesn’t believe that everyone had become one of ‘them’… that’s an incredible, terrifying number to potentially be dealing with. Even if they’re divided up and scattered over the town, even if many of the residents might have been elsewhere when this happened… that number was overwhelming.

It’s why he’s planning his route, considering what he knows of Muldraugh and thinking about how to move through multiple avenues if he needed to. He spent most of his time with Uncle Dean so he only knows a vague, general street layout rather than knowing the lay of the land like the back of his hand… perhaps he should check for a map if he could find one- oh, that’s an idea! Something that would make his life so much easier, so much more palatable, would be a map of Muldraugh he could mark off and write things down on to keep track of everything. It wasn’t like he planned to go out on trips that often or anything, or that he thought that this wouldtake terribly long, but it’s never wrong to prepare for a possibility. Preparation was the difference between a night warm under your covers and a night soaked by the rain, as Uncle Dean said.

Evan refills his water bottle and grabs a spare to attach onto his backback, as well as some of the high energy snacks that he would need to keep himself active for however long he was going to be out and about and doing all of this. His hatchet, his knife and his backpack for certain, and a pair of shoes that should make it easy to run or climb if he had to. He’s dressed with longer sleeves, a jean jacket and denim jean pants as well; eventhough it’s a hot summer, he’d rather keep more of his body covered than not, just in case he were to trip and fall or… have some other reasons to risk getting hurt. He briefly considers bringing the shovel with him but in the end chooses to leave it behind, sinceit was large, unwieldy and heavy enough to potentially get in the way. He has the feeling that being able to move quickly and quietly was more valuable today than anything else would be.

Besides, he has a few ideas about potentially getting some other things that might help him help that child. He knows the frequency that their walkie-talkie was on, so if he could get one as well then maybe he could get in contact with them. If he could do that, then he could help them help him help them. He doesn’t think that staying exposed on the roof for too many more days on end would be very good for them. …How long could they stay up there anyway? Hopefully there was some form of shelter on the roof. Maybe an access to it or something..? But if that was the case, couldn’t ‘they’ have just walked up the steps to it? They must have had someone help them up there, or a ladder they climbed or something of the sort. It’s the only thing that made sense from the handful of times he’s seen the school.

… which means he’d probably have to find a way to get them down too.

The things he does because they’re right…

Bagel whinges,drawing Evan’s attention. The little dog looks up at him with big, soulful eyes as its tail dips down between its legs. Evan crouches down and gently takeshold of the fellow’s head and gives him rubs and affection. “I gotta go out for a little bit, buddy, okay? Hey, it’s gonna be fine. I’m just going to check something out and I’ll be right back, I promise.”

Bagel just whinges again. Still a quiet sound, but one full of a worried desperation. A few simple pets wouldn’t be enough to calm him.

“Hey, hey, hey… Bagel, Bagel, don’t worry, okay? Everything’s going to be fine.” He whispers assurances and runs his hands down Bagel’s back in long, loving strokes with one hand and scratched his chin with the other. The tail gradually comes out from between his legs and the dog shows a bit more optimism in its eyes. “That’s right, I just need you to keep an eye on things for me, okay? It’s nothing too dangerous that I’m doing. I’m just looking into something. I’ll be right back in an hour or two at most, I promise. Keep an eye on the house for me, alright?”

Bagel lets out a quiet whuff, more of an eager breath than a proper doggish bark. Still, it was better than him making such sad and mournful noises as he had been before. Evan standsback up and checks his equipment once more before taking the moment to set out some newspaper in case Bagel needed to do his business. That’s something he seemed to have been taught to do before being kept in that cage, so if he needed to do something he could use that.

Hopefully, at least.

“I’ll be right back,” Evan promisesBagel as he raises the curtain that covers the door’s window and peers out onto the street. He can’t see any of them as he scans carefully for a long few moments. Steeling himself… he undoes the lock and stepps out before closing the door behind him and relocking it. There’s a sweet yet horrid scent in the air, wafting in from all over town as that damnable silence covers it all like a blanket.

This feels wrong. The world feels wrong. He wants to just stay inside and hide away from it and all and wait to be rescued himself.

But someone needs help, and he’s not certain anyone else will be able to help them. So it’s up to him to try.

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he sets off. He’d put on one of the facemasks from the government survival kit this morning and snapped on a pair of the stretchy blue-green gloves they’d given. He didn’t know if they’d actually keep him safe, but he had to hope that they would. It’s better than having nothing at all.

He’s moving down the street first, checking every yard in the neighborhood quickly before he moves on. None of ‘them’ seemed to have moved into any of the backyards despite the mess, and he’s not hearing anything from inside the house that had broken windows so he’s assuming that there’s nothing in there for now either. Now all that’s left is to leave the cul-de-sac and move out into Muldraugh proper. Before he’d only stepped out to check out the supermarket, but now he’s going to have to cross the town entirely. Never before had a 10 minute walk felt like it’s such a long, long distance to cross. He tries to stick closer to fences or walls when he’s not going around corners, hoping that it will break up his outline and make him less obvious to any of ‘them’ since he didn’t know how good their vision was. He’s not seeing any of ‘them’ just yet, just the bodies left behind… along with a few new additions by the military package.

Someone else had been here besides him. The lid to the aid package was left off, and before even getting closer he can tell that a good deal of the packages inside had been taken. Were there more survivors than he thought, or did someone just decide to take back as many packages of handwipes and painkillers as they could? He puts the lid back on the aid supplies to keep the water and mess out, just in case it rained. It’d be a shame to waste all those supplies when someone might need them. The corner store’s front door was left hanging wide open, so he supposes whoever it was that checked out the supplies must have gone in there as well. It’s probably a good thing that Evan got what he needed already, then!

There was no point lingering around here, so Evan moves on. Anxiety causes him to move slowly and cautiously, hanging near fences and cover when he could and trotting to utilize cars as protection. At times he heard some of ‘them’ in the distance, or saw one far enough away that they didn’t seem to notice him immediately. Outside of his Uncle Dean’s neighborhood, not all of Muldraugh used tall wooden fences. Some had chainlink fences high enough to keep any of ‘them’ from climbing over and others had waist high fences that would probably only serve to slow ‘them’ down.

He’s moved over towards the T-intersection and is using the white-picket fence as cover as he peers in the direction he needs to go. There’s at least half a dozen of them visible near one little cluster of houses, and a few more scattered individuals standing hither and thither looking at nothing in particular. One of the homes has shattered windows and terrible marks of violence on them, as well as what lookedlike what had been boards over the window. They must have tried to fortify but drawn too much attention… or perhaps they were just unlucky. Evan can’t tell from here, and he’s not interested in finding out. Problematically though, that cluster of ‘them’ is standing near and in the road he needs to take to get to the school. He’ll have to cut through backyards or something now but… well, he’d like to do that, but that means cutting through the dense copse of trees between this intersection and housing and the public play areas that were near the school.

When he says dense, he means dense. There are numerous small and larger trees filling the area. He hazily remembers someone mentioning that there were plans to cut some of the trees down to expand the little park and playground the community maintained… but apparently there were always plans for that no matter what. Uncle Dean says that always plan to do it and they never do.

So he finds himself at an impasse: follow the road and certainly have to fight an unknown number of ‘them’ or run away from a group that would no doubt attract more… or walk through the spooky copse of trees which may or may not contain some of them hidden from obvious view. There was of course a third option of ‘try to take another road’ which was certainly possible… but then he’d be circling around one of the strip malls or restaurants that lined the main road that ran through town where he suspected many of ‘them’ would be.

It’s a tricky choice to make-

And as glass shatters and he hears gunfire he almost panics and makes the choice to run. ‘They’ stir, and he can hear the sounds of them from all sorts of directions. Some are over the too-tall wooden fence to his south and plenty more cries, moans and screams come from the direction he saw the rest of ‘them’. He hesitates, staying low by the fence for a moment as he tries to figure out what’s going on.

Then there’s more gunfire, and one of ‘them’ suddenly jerks violently as their neck explodes in a spray of gore. Their head lolls, connected only by bone and sinew now as it faces the wrong direction, teetering and tottering wildly… but it doesn’t fall, not yet. He hears more gunshots, driving him lower to the ground as human voices yell in the distance. ‘They’ are all being drawn in that direction, and Evan thinks that maybe he won’t go that way. The idea of staying out on the streets makes him nervous as well, so he decides to chance it and cuts across the street and into the tree line. His hatchet is in his hand now as he creeps through the dense tree cover, slipping between spaces when he needs to. It’s not like this is as dense as the deep forest can get or anything… it’s just dense enough to be inconvenient to move through, and thus very popular for the kids to play hide and seek and tag in, at least Evan suspects.

Surprisingly, he’s lucky enough to only run into one of ‘them’. Less luckily, ‘it’ lunges at him suddenly from the ground of all places, swinging its arms at him and trying to grab his leg and sink ‘its’ teeth into him. Quick reactions have him hop away from its reach, but ‘it’ simply decides to drag itself towards him… all one half of itself, at least. Its lower body is missing, and a coil of intestines trail behind ‘it’ as it pulls ‘itself’ towards him.

Evan thinks that’s pretty awful, and puts the thing out of both of their miseries with a swing of his axe… followed by another two to be sure. It’s messy, gory work, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

He glances about, hearing the sounds of gunfire even through the soundbreak the trees provide. It sounds more distant than it should so… maybe the person shooting is running away? That’s his guess at least. If they’re smart they’re running at least. ‘They’ definitely react to sound more aggressively than sight. ‘They’ didn’t notice him creeping along that fence line, so he suspects that ‘they’ won’t notice you as quickly as a healthy person probably would in terms of seeing movement… but ‘they’ react immediately to loud noises. ‘They’ are more like animals than people: bright lights, loud noises, rapid movement… that’s what will draw their attention, he thinks. Of course, if you are just standing out in the middle of the street they’re likely to notice you eventually even from relatively far away… but maybe if they can’t tell whether you’re one of ‘them’ or not they’re not certain to come after you?

There’s too much he doesn’t know yet to be making assumptions, but the thoughts give him a lot to consider as he slips through the trees. He’s almost past them, and then he’ll be near the toilets and changing rooms that are for the playground and park areas. He’ll use the building as cover to peek past and see how bad the situation is looking near the school and if the playground is clear. Hopefully it will be clear enough to make a move.

He slips out of the tree cover without any more surprises, and Evan creeps along the side of the large free standing restrooms building. Approaching the corner he carefully listens for anything on the other side of it and then cautiously peers around. Thankfully there’s none of ‘them’ to suddenly lunge at him from around the corner. Instead, he sees the soccer field is full of ‘them’… many of ‘them’ smaller than the rest, and in worse shape in many cases. The basketball courts, walled off with high chainlink fences to keep the balls from going wide, is a charnel house of bodies with many of them within it feasting on whatever ‘they’ can get their hands on. Past them all is the elementary school. A police car with its lights still flashing sits halfway on and halfway over the chainlink fence that surrounds the school… and he can see shadows moving within the school building even from here, figures that lurch and stumble in search of something.

“… Well… fiddlesticks.” Evan refrains from using foul language, but only barely. Atop the school though, he sees something… a flash of a small figure in yellow.

A little girl by his guess from this distance, if only because most little boys don’t wear dresses the color of the sun or have their hair in long braids. She looks over at the basketball course, staring at the nightmare going on within. Does she know what’s happening in there?

… Did she know who it is happening to? Something similar or worse could happen to Evan if he isn’t careful, so instead of helping her he’ll just be giving her another horrible thing to watch over.

… Well, now what? What does he do now? What’s your plan to help this little girl, Evan… or can you even help yourself in this situation?