January 16, 2138 (Early evening)
Karl came in and talked to me again earlier. I shouldn't have allowed myself to lose it like I did. Sarah will wonder what was wrong and now Karl will have to either tell her or lie to her. Either one isn't something that I'm ready for right now. After taking Alan outside there must have been a little accident. Apparently he was playing around the fence and cut his hand somehow. Now I feel even worse for how I acted.
Dad is still trying to figure out our next move. The church wasn't all that far away from here and they could find us if they look close enough. Karl says that both the church and the zoo are rather isolated. I don't think that really matters much since they found the church anyway. It kind of dawned on me that having a zoo here and a church too, we must be somewhere near a town. According to Karl there used to be an old state capitol near where we are. Last he knew there were about a couple hundred-thousand people living there. Dad assumes that a city of this size would have been a focus of the dreads. Karl has made a fairly detailed map of what the city used to be like, but it's just from what he knew of the past. It might not be accurate any longer.
According to his map we're Southeast of the city, on the other side of the lake. The bridge we tried to cross is directly East of the city. There is another bridge leading in to the city from the South that crosses over the lake also. The other directions leading in or out of the city are without bodies of water to cross. So there aren't any bridges anywhere else around it. Karl says that the outer areas of the city were business areas of all sorts, except for the area to the South and the North. The South had a college, the lake, the zoo we're in now, a small park, and a small hospital closer to the outskirts of the city. The West has many businesses and the park with the Carillon tower. The East had more businesses and the bridge we failed to cross, but not much else. The North has another airport a mile or two out from the city, and what used to be a military base within the North side of the city. Still on the North side but closer to the center were two large hospitals. Both hospitals had landing zones for ships. In the center was the capitol building along with several others of different types.
While looking at the map Dad is assuming that, if the buildings remain as Karl knew them, the capitol building, military base and airport will probably be occupied. The capitol building has several tunnels that run underneath that he doesn't know what to think about, but he thinks it's safe to assume that they will be occupied as well. He feels that the hospitals within the city will either be occupied also or they will be under surveillance. He's not sure about the different business districts, the other bridge, the hospital that's closer to us, or the park with the Carillon tower. All of this is assuming that any of it remains. The whole map could be nothing like it really might be by now.
January 16, 2138 (Late evening)
It's very dark outside tonight. Tommy and Sarah came in and helped me walk outside for a little bit. It feels good to be outside of that room. Even if it is cold out there and it hurts to walk right now. Dad was up high in a tree, looking towards the city. Karl was watching after little Alan and his cut on his hand. Tad was patrolling the perimeter again. I could see him out far but he didn't come close enough for any of us to talk to him. I thought maybe he might come over and hang out with us, but we have to stay on alert right now. I'm told that Mom was really tired and went to bed early. I hope she's getting some rest. I'm sure she hasn't had much lately. With everything that's happened lately it's a wonder if she's slept at all. I was hoping to get to talk to her tonight on her own, but I'd rather she get some sleep. We can talk later.
Tommy and Tad have really been making this place a compound. They've put up metal plates on some of the fencing to shelter us from sight. All of them are wearing the armor Tommy made. Even Dad. He's not wearing the head piece that Tommy made a helmet out of for him, but he is everything else. Karl should be proud of what they've done for us here. I'm sure they're just boys to him, but they act like men. I wonder how their training is going. Dad's probably putting them through the ringer. Whatever that means. I'm sure it's not good.
Dad seemed happy to see me walking even though he didn't come down from the tree. He asked me how I was feeling and I told him I felt fine. At which point he said, "Good because I need to catch you up with the others." Then he laughed, causing Tommy and Sarah to follow suit. I walked right into that one, but it was nice anyway. I told him not to expect me to be climbing trees like him anytime soon. He told me not to worry about that. Then I wanted to go look in on Alan and my two human crutches helped me get there.
Karl was looking over him with a bit of a worried look. Alan was asleep already. I asked Karl how he was doing and he said that he seems fine, but he was worried about his cut anyway. Tommy asked his father why and he said, "Because he cut himself on the fence and all of the fencing is rusty." I could tell that Karl was worried about infection as he went on saying that we didn't have medications for something like that. Being on the run for so long has drained us of a lot of things. And no way of replacing them has come up so far. Tommy spoke up saying that Alan was a tough little guy and that he could handle it, but his father looked back at him and said that it wasn't that easy. Sarah asked Karl if there was anything that we could do to help. He just replied, "Keep him away from the fence." Then he looked at me and asked me how I was doing. I told him that I was all right and happy to be walking around again. He told me not to over do it and we went on, leaving him to ponder whatever was on his mind at the time.
We walked around some more. It was sad to take in our area at night when seeing everything was hard to do. Several buildings were here and they were intact. None of them were really big, but they offered us shelter if we needed it. The guys had taken up one rounder building like the one I was in. Dad and Mom took up another building that was square, along with Sarah in another room. Alan normally stayed there too, but not tonight. He would be with Karl this evening. Off and on all of them would regularly stay in the main room of the building I was in too. Continuing along I managed to see the cages we passed by on the way in. There was a gated area that looked as though it held some four legged animals. I missed it before. Along with several other things. Eventually we made it back to where Dad was.
We found him looking towards the city still as though he hadn't moved a muscle all of that time. Sarah asked him what he was seeing, and he hesitated to answer at first. At that point we heard a thumping noise that sounded like thunder from far away. Dad looked down to us and said, "Guys, I don't think we're alone here." I asked Dad what he meant by that as he looked back in the direction of the city. He replied, "There's a fight going on in the city right now." Tommy asked what he could see but he said that he could only tell that there was a battle going on around the southern edge of the city. Suddenly we knew we weren't alone. But who or what was doing the fighting in the city? And what were they fighting over? Dad thinks that it must be part of the population fighting against the machines. That doesn't mean that they would be friendly to us though. Either way it's shocking that any people are still there at all.
After this revelation Sarah and Tommy helped me back to my room. I was kind of sad to be returning to it, but Sarah stayed with me for a while. Tommy went off to start patrolling the perimeter along with Tad. On the way out he kind of gave the top of my hand a kiss and made his way out the door. Sarah seemed to pick up something from this and just looked at me with a half grin on her face. I didn't notice at first because I was too busy looking towards the door. Then I turned towards her and saw her. She asked me what was going on with the two of us, and I was embarrassed to say anything at first. There was a big part of me that wanted her to know. I like confiding in Sarah and I never like hiding anything from her, but I wasn't sure what to say. As it was I didn't have to say anything first as Sarah said, "You like him, don't you?" I couldn't answer at first as I was thinking up how to tell her how things were with us, and she spoke up again. "Oh my God, you do," she said. I managed to get Sarah's name out and she continued to talk. "I knew something was different about you. I thought it was just the church incident, and I knew that he cared more about you than you ever said that you did about him, but this is incredible."
"Sarah", I said. "We….
"What?," Sarah said back to me.
"I love him, Sarah," I told her.
Sarah just looked at me with her big eyed look and grinning, and said, "Oh my God, I'm so happy for you." You would have thought that I said we were getting married or something. Then she looked at me and had to ruin the moment by asking me if this wasn't just some kind of hero worship thing or something. I reassured her that it wasn't, and she ran up to me and gave me this huge hug. Then we went through twenty minutes of how I didn't want her to go around talking about it to everyone, and she told me that it was our secret. Some secret it is. I think most of the others know that there's more to us than what there used to be, but I want it between Tommy and me. Not the whole world. What little of it there is to share it with.