After several days of living in the Clark household with so many people, I felt like I was starting to lose my mind. No one matter where you went in the house, it wouldn't be long before someone else walked in. If you wanted any sort of privacy in the bathroom, you had to be extra sure that the door was locked otherwise someone would try and walk in.

To keep myself busy, I walked around the neighborhood countless times. I'd leave the house whenever it felt too crowded, and then just walk along the sidewalk until I was ready to go back inside. And, throughout my many walks, I got to see more of the neighborhood than I would've usually.

I met the McDonalds, a family that lived a few houses down from the Clarks. Their household only consisted of the parents and their three sons. Mr. McDonald was a former Air Force sergeant and from what I heard his young sons complaining about, he was trying to become buddies with the soldiers keeping us on lock down. According to the oldest McDonald son, a boy around thirteen named Robert, the whole family were supposed to go on a trip to Disneyland before this flu started.

I had shrugged when I he told me this. "Well, this lock down won't last for long. And it's Disneyland; it'll still be there when the flu's gone." Robert had shrugged too and then left me to my own devices and he chased after his younger brothers.

As I watched Robert look after his brothers all day over time went on, I couldn't help but think about Jared.

Where the hell was my brother anyway? He had left when I was fourteen, so by now he'd be twenty-four. I wanted to curse my brother for leaving, for abandoning me and Mom. It was kind of hard to imagine him now when I had no idea where he could be.

In my mind, he was still eighteen, talking to me about Lord of the Rings, watching horror films with me. I started kicking a rock along the sidewalk as I walked. I caught a glimpse of my old vans and smiled to myself. Jared used to always wear converse; he had about eight different pairs by the time he left. He probably got even more pairs as time went by.

The large military trucks were parked in a line as I passed. I spotted McLendon, wearing his uniform and looking over a clipboard. I looked at the single stripe on his arm and remembered what Travis had told me just last night.

Travis had pulled out a dusty book from his bookshelf and showed me the different military ranks and the stripes that went with them. Through this book, I had learned that McLendon was at the rank of private.

McLendon looked up and saw me looking at him. I offered him a small smile which he returned. When McLendon looked back down to his clipboard, I continued on my way inside the Clark household.

"Joanna!" Madison said the second I entered the house. I turned the corner of the hallway and entered the kitchen, where I spotted her washing the dishes by hand. "I'm recruiting you to drying these dishes."

"Did the power get cut off again?" I asked, joining her by the kitchen sink and grabbing a dripping wet plate from her along with a dry hand towel.

Madison sighed. "Yeah. I asked Sergeant Adams about it right when it happened, but he doesn't know anything."

"When'd it go off?"

"Around ten."

I frowned at that, trying to think about how long I had been out on my walk. Madison gave me a look from the side of her eye and said, "It should be around two o'clock right now." She handed me another dish and a glass.

There was a sudden splash and Madison's eyes snapped up to the window we were facing to look outside. I followed her gaze to the pool just in time to see Nick's head resurface. I looked away and got back to work drying the pile of dishes in front of me. Madison looked away from her unruly son and finished the last dirty dish.

"Would you finish drying these?" She asked, gesturing to the mount of wet dishes. I nodded in agreement and the older woman turned tail and started outside. I watched the outside window until Madison appeared, looking like she was pissed off at Nick for some reason. All I had gathered from the family over my prolonged stay here was that Nick was detoxing from some kind of drug and that he was being stubborn when it came to weaning off the drug.

I finished drying the dishes and left them all on the drying rack to continue the process. I folded up the hand towel and left it beside the drying rack before leaving the kitchen. One last glance outside the window told me that Madison was still having a heated conversation with Nick, who looked to be having none of it.

From the Salazars' room, I could hear another heated conversation going on, but this time it was in Spanish. I blinked at the door and continued through the house. Loud pop punk music was coming from the room that Alicia and Nick were sharing and there wasn't any sign of Travis, Chris, or Liza. Beginning to feel frustrated with my lack of options, I went back outside.

"Hey, Jojo!"

I jumped out of my skin and looked up to see Chris sitting on the roof with his legs dangling off. He waved a hand for me to get up there. "I gotta show you something." He said. After a second of looking around, I saw that he had gotten up there thanks to the car parked right next to the house: a perfect step stool to get to the roof.

Chris waited with a hint of impatience as I climbed onto the car and then the roof. The roof itself burned my hands as I crawled across the roof to get to him, so it was a massive relief when I got to sit down off of my exposed skin next to him.

"What's so important that I had to burn the skin off my hands?" I asked him. Chris pulled out his video camera and showed me the footage playing. At first, it was just a video diary of sorts with Chris explaining the situation of the neighborhood. I gave him a pointed look to which he hissed at me to keep watching. I did right as the video footage turned the camera around suddenly faced the buildings on the mountains opposite of us.

I blinked at the flickering light coming from one of the building's windows. It wasn't a spastic series of flashes either; there was definitely a pattern there. I looked up at the actual building to see that it was dark right now.

Chris was watching me with expectant eyes, waiting for a reaction. I asked, "What is it, d'you think?"

"I think there're people out there who need help." Chris said in a hushed voice. "The military are telling us that nothing's out there; that no one's out there. Clearly someone is out there." He went on about the flashing light and how the military were lying to the whole neighborhood, but I was only half paying attention by now.

If they were lying to us about others being out there, what else could they be lying about?