I woke up this morning to find Kat in my bed. I thought this was a good sign that she's forgiven me, so I kissed her awake and was instantly proven wrong. She slapped me in reciprocation and after witnessing my stunned expression, she said she's still mad at me. She only snuck into my bed during the night because she didn't feel safe by herself.
She wasn't as mad at me today as she was yesterday, but she was still pretty pissed off. We ended up fighting back and forth most of the day. One of the subjects we talked about (well, fought about) was her reading from my journal about how I wished I never got her pregnant. I tried to convince her that I still wanted the baby, but she kept going on about how right I was in saying that this was no world to have a child in. She said it was better to just end the pregnancy now and she grabbed my machete and motioned to stabbing herself in the stomach.
I lept on top of her and tried to wrestle the blade away, but she was surprisingly strong and wouldn't let go. I tried gripping her hands and prying her fingers off the handle and as she was pulling back out of resistance, my hands lost hold of hers and the Alligator whizzed by my face, the rectangular edge catching the outside corner of my left eye and slicing down to my ear. I recoiled off her in surprise and held my hand to my face, and it was that moment when she hurt me, the fight completely drained from her. She dropped the machete and came to my aid, but my initial reaction was to throw her against the wall and put my fist through it via her face. I knew it was an accident and she didn't mean it, so I let my anger cool and let her approach me.
I wished that moment could have lasted forever. She was so tentative to my wound, so gentle and so focused on making sure she stitched it up that she wasn't thinking about fighting. Kat made sure I was bandaged up as best as could be, and then plopped down next to me on the side of the bed. I tried to put my arm around her, but she threw it off. She apologized for cutting me, but that's as far as she was going take it.
She wanted to make sure she that I understood completely no more secrets, no more withholding information that was pertinent to any kind of threat, either to her or me. Of course I nodded. I told her that I won't ever be able to stop feeling horrible about what happened yesterday. What she said next, I couldn't really believe. She said that anytime I had a doubt about someone, anytime she had a doubt about someone, we were to kill them straight away. I told her I didn't like that idea, but she said it was the basic rule of survival, to eliminate threats before they came threats. I asked her wouldn't that make her feel like a murderer? She just went cold. She told me she didn't care. From now on, we trust no one. She also said she if I didn't trust her on this, I should go my own way.
Of course I won't, though. I love her too much. We need each other, especially now since we're having a child. She made a lot of sense. Timothy nearly killed me. Johnathan left me for dead and tried to rape Kat. Yet, Wallace nearly killed Hector and Temperance hit me over the head with a frying pan. On those grounds alone, we should have killed them both. We didn't, and they turned out to be good people. Hell, even Rampert didn't turn out to be the monster we thought he was. He actually went after the monster named Jonathan. I didn't want Kat feeling like this, but I completely understood.
Then I got to thinking about the vivensmortua virus, how it might be turning people who are immune to it insane. There has to be some kind of reason for this. Something, some kind of stress or duress, has to trigger a sudden behavioral change in them. I mean, Jonathan was such a nice guy for what little time I knew him, yet he degraded so quickly. He went from simple depression to sexual aggressor in a matter of days. He turned on us so quickly, almost like a new persona was downloaded into him from the Cloud. Rat was incredibly young, yet her feral tenacity was ferocious. For such a little girl to take down leathers to make skin from, she would have had to have undergone a complete psychological transformation. Torsten went from family man to a slasher straight out of B horror film. Then there's Rampert. He believes he's devouring the power of zombies as he eats them. He actually thinks zombies are scared of him! Whatever his thinking, though, his altered brain gives him the strength needed to hunt those things. We're changing. Not into zombies, not into draggers or leathers, but we're definitely changing into something else.
Kat wants us to kill on a whim. Does that mean she's starting to change as well? I know it's a defensive mechanism, but the emotional trauma of what she went though, would that be the catalyst to cause her to go insane? By her logic, kill anyone you can't trust, does that mean I have to kill her if I somehow can't trust her? Will she kill me if she can't trust me? God no. I don't want to think that! I don't want to be afraid of her! But, what happens if I somehow go insane? What if I try to do something to her? She'll definitely kill me then. It's all wrong. All so wrong... (I let her read this by the way. She said we'll deal with it if it ever comes up.)
And we didn't even travel today. It's not that my leg's bothering me. It hurts, but I was able to move around on it. I just don't think I'd be able to ride a bike the way it is now, especially towing Kat. Not that it matters anyway. It snowed this morning, well into the afternoon. I'm guessing we got at least a couple of inches on the grass. It wasn't cold enough the day before to allow the snow to collect on the pavement, but it was cold and wet enough to make traveling absolutely miserable. Remember what I told you. Don't travel during rain and snow, because if you catch cold, that only makes matters worse.
Speaking of the cold, it was seeping through into our room like a ghost paying us an unwelcome visit. We gathered up some furniture from a few rooms and broke it up into firewood. I used the machete to cut into the carpet and peeled it back to expose the bare concrete underneath as the base for our fire pit. After we got a cone of wood together, we sprinkled a little rubbing alcohol on it and lit it with a match. The fire took, and we sat next to each other watching the falling snow through the window.
The flakes were huge, so they stacked on top of each other rather well. They reminded me of bodies of zombies piling up on each other as they tried to advance on an army They would shoot one down only for five more to take their place. The more and more zombies were slain, the more the piles of bodies would grow. The piles became so massive that it restricted movement. You could fight off an entire city of the undead for as long as you wanted, but the numbers would eventually overwhelm you. Dammit. I can't even enjoy something as peaceful as falling snow without thinking of zombies...
As I lost myself to the snow, I felt Kat's head rest on my shoulder. I wanted to put my arm around her, but I wasn't sure if that would upset her so I refrained. Then she told me, "I still love you, you know. I just think you're a fucking idiot." I just huffed to myself and decided to try for it. I put my arm around her and she let me keep it there. I told her I didn't want us to be upset with each other when she went to bed, so she finally forgave me to erase the slate clean. I put another chair on the fire before getting in bed with Kat.
We need to get going tomorrow, though. We didn't travel for two days. Whatever progress we gained from biking was negated by yesterday and today. We still need to reach Rhinelander and we still have a long way to go.
Until tomorrow.
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