I have good news, and I have bad news. I'll begin with the good news. I'm going to be a father! Kat's been trying to find the right time to tell me, but she just ended up doing it this morning. She kissed me awake and when she thought I was alert enough, she whispered into my ear, "I'm pregnant." I got so excited, I nearly threw her off me onto the floor. We were so overjoyed, we ran into John's room and told him....
And that's the bad news. We forgot to take into consideration his depressed state. I believe our news only made it worse. He tried to smile through it, and you could see him struggling to keep his head straight as he nodded, and there was a slight timbre in his voice when he said congratulations. As much as he tried to hide it, we saw that it bothered him. The moment quickly became an awkward one and we backed out of his room and shut the door. I could have sworn I heard something go thump when we walked away.
The thought of being a father... To be honest, I'm more worried than I am excited. I was so happy when she first told me but the more I think about it, the more I'm not sure it would be a good idea. It's an extremely dangerous world right now where our meals aren't even guaranteed let alone our safety. Heh... one rule of survival in a zombie apocalypse: don't get pregnant. I know I shouldn't be talking about this but honestly, a baby is something that can bring risk to you. With all the crying and screaming, it's a zombie magnet. It has needs that will constantly send you out to find food and better shelter, and it also hinders your mobility.
Kat's going to kill me if she ever reads this journal, because I'm going to keep another secret from her. As much as I want to a be a father, I wish I could go back in time when we first had sex and change it. I shouldn't have came in her, but neither of us thought about that. We were so caught up in the passion that it just happened. The thought of me impregnating her was on the back of my mind, and I kept it there because I had to focus on other matters such as keeping everyone else alive. I was hoping maybe there was a chance it would never happen, but I guess it did.
She's not 100 percent sure she's pregnant, though. Since we don't have access to a pregnancy test, all we have to go on is the fact that she's missed her period. She usually has it around the 19th and when she was a few days late, she brought it up to Temperance to get her thoughts. That's why the two of them shushed whenever I came around them. It's now the 27th, so she's more than a week late. With every day that she missed, she grew more certain that she was pregnant, so she finally decided to tell me today. There is, however a slight chance that she's just running far later than usual, and now that I've been thinking of the possibility of being a father, I hope that's not the case.
This means that's it become even more important to get to Rhinelander and hope that it's a sustainable community. If it is, especially a safe one, it would be the perfect place to start a family with Kat. Hell, I'm even hoping Johnathan manages to find a girl there. That's exactly what he needs to calm him down. Unfortunately, we got a late start today. I normally would have liked to get on the road before 9, but it was raining almost until two in the afternoon. It was still quite cold, and I realized we needed to keep a lookout for warmer clothes. Once it starts snowing, we're going to be in bad shape.
We ended up taking Main St. north through the heart of Bloomington. It was slow going though, as cars littered the road everywhere. Towing Kat behind us, we had to make sure we weren't swinging her into any abandoned and tipped over cars. We passed several parks, a coliseum that looked like it was set up as a triage and shelter, a cemetery, a theater and three different colleges until we hit I-55. We took it just east until we got to I-39 and continued on north.
After about 40 miles, we decided to stop at the town of Oglesby. It's more farm area and we were going to stop off earlier at a house we found, but Kat noticed something extremely sickening. She pointed at a tree that had about 30-40 things dangle from it. We rode over to the tree and inspected it, and to our horror, they were zombie heads, complete with spinal cords, hung with rope on branches. Their nervous systems intact meant they were still alive. They were also all leathers. Their eyes focused on us, roughly 40 pairs of them. Having that many eyes trained on us was intensely unnerving. What made it worse was each one of them had their mouths wide open as if trying to scream. They chomped and gnashed their teeth at us and the movement of their jaws caused their heads to start swaying back and forth, and their mouths only became more violent when they realized how much of a vain struggle trying to bite us became. These heads with vertebrae. These were trophies. Someone was hunting leathers. We then remembered we're wearing leather zombie skin, so we quickly pedaled up north.
We put an extra mile between us and that tree just to be on the safe side. We got off the interstate and came across a Best Western when we saw a camper trailer on the side of the road. It still had its lights on, so I had everyone take their suits off. We knocked on the door to see if anyone was home and got no response. I knocked one last time, and then tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. I had John stay outside with Kat as I went in saying, "Hello?" One step into the trailer, I immediately turned around and had John get on his bike as I got on mine and pedaled as fast as we could from that trailer. John asked what it was that I saw. I said I saw headless zombies with pieces of them missing. I took a guess saying that it was the hunter's trailer and he was eating the zombies. Kat immediately got sick hearing that and had us stop so she could throw up. I rubbed her back and held her after she was done and I guess that display was enough to annoy John, who then snapped at me saying, "LET'S GO!" I don't know, maybe he was just freaking out over the fact that there's a man hunting zombies - the worst kind - and eating them.
We instead decided to stay at the Day's Inn down the road. We hauled our bikes in, along with Kat's wheelchair, and we took up residence in a room with John in a room next to us. I advised him to push something against the door just in case this zombie eater is on the prowl and I did the same. We managed to actually find a room that was in immaculate condition, except for the layers of dust everywhere. It actually felt good to be able to sleep in a bed that you knew no one else slept it before.
Kat and I just held each other, neither of us in the mood for anything else. Too much was our minds. We were thinking of the possible child we're having together, Johnathan's current state of mind and now a psychopath on the loose. To be honest, I didn't feel comfortable staying here, but we were far too tired to keep traveling. Also, my logical side suggested that whomever this killer is, he only kills zombies who make far interesting prey than a couple of lovers sleeping in a hotel room. That's what I'm hoping for anyway...
Until tomorrow.
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