Rushing home would be a good plan if my injury required getting help more quickly,” I reply. “But we have cleaned it as well as we could at home, and your mom is stitching it up right now. We have a good amount of time to make it there with everything we gathered. Also, I am concerned that increasing my activity level by rushing home may quicken the spread of the parasite, and I would rather just stay as calm as I can to make sure that you all make it home safely.”

“So we all make it home safely,” my wife adds.

“Let’s just get ourselves pulled together and ready to finish our trip home in one piece, okay?” I smile while saying it, but inside I am worried and you can see in Simone’s eyes that she is as well. To distract from the mood, I add, “We should remember where this shoe store is so on our next trip this way, we can get some extra shoes for everybody, and stock up on everything as a possible trade or barter item in the future.”

While I would normally suggest that we look through everything now and see what we can find, I can’t risk not getting them back to the house and other families before the fever hits. We also have our bikes and trailers loaded down to the extreme with the stuff we picked up, so shoe boxes will definitely not fit without leaving something else behind.

As we leave the store and the three lifeless infected bodies, my mind starts to wander through the happier thoughts in life. One big positive that has come from the apocalypse is a healthier eating lifestyle. I mean, I miss fast food and chocolate donuts, and my wife misses ice cream, but because we were already prepared for some type of disaster, we had food stockpiled and are doing quite well. We have buckets and buckets of sealed rice, beans, and dehydrated potatoes. Thousands of cans and jars of beef, chicken, fish and the same amount, if not more, of vegetables and fruits. Most importantly, we have an abundance of seasonings of various types to make sure we aren’t eating plain rice and bland chicken.

I know that thousands of people, if not millions right now, are not just trying to hide from the infected and survive this end of the world scenario, but they are starving while they are doing it. I feel for them. I do. And when good people have come our way, we helped them the best we could, and tried to get them started in the right direction if they were unable or unwilling to stay with us on our ranch. Even with my sympathy for those suffering out there, a less compassionate part of me always wanted things to fall apart from what they were. Not to this extent, but enough to remind people how precious life is, and to appreciate what they have.

Thinking of food makes me chuckle to myself, and say, “Simone, when we get back, after my fever is done, I would like a nice steak.”

“Cow I hope,” she replies. Insinuating I might want people steak after my fever.

We both have a good chuckle over it, but the kids are still oblivious to many of the strange things we find funny.

The final length of the trip home was largely uneventful according to the current state of the world. We saw no other survivors and only had one more of the infected to put down. I was on point and managed the kill cleanly with Hannah’s spike. She has a long tire iron and the non-curved edge was sharpened into a point. That point went right through the face to the left of its nose and out the back of its skull. It was a female, only about 5’ 6” and 120 pounds, so I decided to keep our group moving and just end it when the thing was within reach. No search of the body was necessary, as this infected must have been attacked while she was relaxing at home, due to the tattered remains of pajama pants and top.

Over the four hour trip, my mind keeps replaying the events of the last five days away from the house, mainly repeating today’s events. We’ve lost a lot of people at the ranch already, and a huge portion of the human population has been infected or killed off by this thing. But no matter how bad it has gotten so far, there was always a hope of wiping this thing out, and rebuilding. I don’t know anymore what hope there is if the infected can run and use their hands for more than just basic grabbing.