The Bath Salts Journals (Volume 1) Read online

  David was slicing through his window with his machete, trying to get zombies away from the SUV, while Xuân was shooting her way through with what seemed like childish glee. That gives me some concern, but I think she was just acting out her frustration with being cooped up in a car for so long. We barely have had any time or peace enough for bathroom breaks. I have been feeding the triplets finger food, by turning around in the driver’s seat and handing it to them. I know they all had very full diapers at that point.

  At the present, we are situated under a large tree, trying to rest, yet I can see no one is actually able to sleep but the children and the animals. I can see Xuân sitting awake, her rifle at the ready. David is cleaning and sharpening his knives. Olivia is plugged into her headphones trying to block everything out and relax; however, I can see from the set of her jaw that she can do anything but.

  We are soon going to be crossing into Nunavut, and most roads have ended. I applaud our forethought at having snow tires installed on all our cars. I have never been so glad that they sell these in October in Canada. After seeing all that we have, I wonder who is left at home. I have very little hope anyone is. At least we have each other. Right?

  October 29

  I don’t know what to think. It feels as if everywhere we turn, we are surrounded. We can’t keep going at this pace, yet the cars are moving so slowly. We see stalled and wrecked cars on every side of us, and we spend more time driving around roads, as opposed to driving on them. Furthermore, all we see are the dead. The cars we have passed are filled with men, women, children, and the elderly, all dead from being mauled by the zombies, or from neat bullet wounds to their heads. Somehow, those bodies seem to affect us the most. These people had no plan. They just up and tried to run as things got bad. It seems they simply gave up partway out of town and decided that taking their own lives was preferable to whatever else was out there. We passed one car where an entire family chose this to be their fate. I can’t imagine ever doing such a thing to my children. I will always choose life for them as well as for myself.

  We are still seeing zombies roaming around the roads, and we have destroyed so many of them, I have lost count. I no longer seem able to prevent my children from seeing the carnage. It has become a futile task even to try. The one thing that cheers us is that they seem to be thinning out in number the further north we push. This is a very good sign.

  * * * Xuân * * *

  I tried to make a game out of killing the hordes. Like, Olivia would only kill girls today, or we could play bingo. First person to make a word out of the first letter of the colour of the shirts of the zombies they shot wins a prize. Bragging rights, but a prize nonetheless! Double points for swear words. But we stopped keeping score. It got boring. You can only shoot them between the eyes so many times before wondering if you can hang half out of the car window and decapitate them as you drive by while blasting Ride of the Valkyries and screaming, “LOOK AT HOW MANY FUCKS I GIVE!” The mental picture of decapitated heads hitting Alexis’ windshield as she and David scream at me to “Stop fucking doing that” was awesome. I’m sure the triplets would think it was just balls or something I was throwing at them.

  October 31

  Happy Halloween! I almost want to take the kids trick or treating, yet that seems like a stupid idea. The only thing it has going for it is that it would give our lives a touch of normalcy.

  After all the zombie activity we were contending with, this sudden drop off into silence seems eerie. We seem to be driving through a no man’s land. I’m not sure what to make of this. We have seen no homes, no farms, no sign anyone has ever lived here. At least this makes it seem safe. There is snow all around us, and we see little by way of vegetation peeking through the white on the ground. We have driven past several evergreen trees, and going by my maps and the compass, I am fairly confident we are headed in the right direction. Within the next couple of days, we will find our new home, and we can get to work at making it nice, livable, and safe.

  November 3

  I think we drove forever these past couple of days. Thank God we refilled the extra gas canisters. I don’t know how we did it, but we’re here! Yesterday, we drove for hours in silence. Everyone was focused on getting where we were going. Today, we drove on for several kilometres seeing nothing but white snow and the odd tree. Suddenly, we saw a fence towering over two small wooden structures breaking the landscape. I let out such a sigh of relief. They were real! I was right, and we made it. I found myself stopping the drive and just sitting there staring at our compound with tears streaming down my face. For the first time, I felt vindicated, hopeful that we would actually be able to pull through this.

  Xuân was the first one to get out of the car. I watched her scan the area, go over to the gate, and pull it open for us all to drive through. David and I pulled our vehicles in front of the small trailer on the right, while Olivia chose the one on the left. I left the van running, and taking the key out of my glove compartment, I unlocked the door to the tiny house that David and I would be making our home. Inside, all was very cold. While the small bar fridge was clearly on and working, no one had turned on the electric fireplace to warm the trailer at all. I quickly did that and was gratified to see it was working. Soon, the place would be habitable.

  David and I quickly located our suitcases containing the kids’ pyjamas and our sheets and blankets. Xuân sat in the van watching the children sleep, as David and I made the beds and got the pyjamas ready. Olivia set up the bedrooms in the trailer where she and Xuân would be sleeping. David and I got the kids inside, changed, and into the small room where they would all be sharing a bed. Tonight would be the first night they would be sleeping in a real bed instead of their car seats. Even though they would all be sharing, it was still a vast improvement over what their conditions had been since we had set off from Toronto.

  Before I could sleep, Xuân and I set about making sure our fence was standing and secure. We both met at the gate and using chains and heavy padlocks, locked ourselves in at the top, middle, and bottom of the gate. Then, we set off in opposite directions and walked the perimeter. All was secure. There was no one around us for several kilometres. We were literally in the middle of nowhere. We could finally sleep safe and secure. The last thing I did was put up the mezuzah from home on the front door of our trailer. David stood and held me a moment as we looked at it. He kissed me and said a soft “thank you” before going back in. I just stood and took a last look around before joining him.

  Sebastian is sleeping in the main area of the trailer, while David and I are sharing the queen bed in the loft. It is such a relief to have a normal mattress under my back. I don’t even care if he snores tonight. Tomorrow we build our sheds, set up our hydroponic garden, and set out to work at surviving and thriving.

  * * * Xuân * * *

  Arrived at the compound yesterday. Or trailer park. Everything seemed to work. Did a walk around the perimeter with Alexis, mentally mapping where potential weak points were and possible escape routes if shit hit the fan. I marked weak points with rocks outside the fence and escape points inside the fence. I don’t want it to look too obvious to bandits or other motherfuckers.

  November 4

  Today we built our sheds. I learned that it is quite difficult to build things while wearing gloves, scarves, and other bulky clothes. The kids stayed indoors and played with the toys I packed for them. We took rotating shifts watching them so that at any given time, there were three people building and one person on babysitting duty. We also took turns walking along the fence. So far, we haven’t seen a single sign of any living or dead person headed in our direction. This is quite encouraging, and we actually felt safe enough to laugh and joke as we built.

  It took all day, but we managed to put up all three of our sheds. We moved Boba and Doogoo into the first shed, and set up the hydroponics system in the second. The third is home to all our canned foods, dry goods, extra ammunition, and first aid supplies that don’t need
a warmer environment. We have set up a small fan heater on a shelf above the gorals so they will be a bit warmer. Both their shed, and the hydroponics shed, are hooked up to the outside GFI outlets of our trailers, and the hydroponics shed is sharing one of our water lines.

  Olivia and I got started planting our seeds in their trays with the haydite and growing solutions, and the water is set to a timer. We have them under fluorescent lights in different colours, also set to a timer. I read that they will grow faster in a hydroponics setting than in a traditional garden. I hope this is true. It would be great to have fresh fruits and vegetables. Right now, we’re attempting romaine lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini, and strawberries. Let’s see what thrives. We had a couple of issues figuring out the tubes and wires. Neither of us had ever attempted such a task before, but I think we have a good thing going now. Time will tell if it worked.

  The plan for tomorrow is to start moving more of our personal belongings into the trailers and make everything feel a lot homier. The good news about all of this is, we were actually able to have a hot meal for dinner tonight. I managed to compile a halfway decent tuna casserole out of boxed macaroni and cheese and canned tuna. We don’t have any milk yet, but I figured out a work around that with water and powdered coffee mate. No one said anything negative about the taste. I think we were all just happy it was hot, and eaten off of plates, while sitting around a kitchen table like normal people.

  * * * Xuân * * *

  I feel more like guard/killing type than domestic, so I’m feeling out of place while we’re setting up our shit. I just went to walk around the perimeter with David while Olivia and Alexis set up the hydroponics and stuff. We dragged the sprogs behind us in a plastic tub. We should probably have picked up a sled before coming.

  November 5

  Our books and movies are on our shelves, dishes are stacked within the kitchen cupboards, and some of our clothes are put away in our tiny closet. The rest will stay in the cars for now until it is needed. The good news is that our trailer looks like a home. I even put a small bud vase with a fake flower in the window. The kids seem a little lost. They keep looking for toys left behind, and they’re asking for people I don’t think they’ll ever see again. I tried my hardest to pack all of their favourite possessions. What was left, I don’t ever recall them actually playing with, but now it seems important to them to have these things here. I don’t know what to tell them.

  David has been fabulous with them. Whenever they seem down, he distracts them with a story or a song. It seems to work for a while. Samantha was especially upset today, so I took her outside to visit Boba and Doogoo. She expressed delight that they had come with us, and this seemed to help her adjust. I hope that they will figure out that having us around is enough for them. They don’t need their castle slide or tent from home to be happy.

  I’m not immune to homesickness. I miss my parents and siblings. I also miss the ability to take a hot shower longer than five minutes. Turns out, that’s all our water heater is able to manage. That was a pretty dismal discovery. If we ever get home, I’m hopping into our shower for a good hour. That would be heaven right now.

  November 6

  We had our first mishap today. Benjamin figured out how to open the front door. He wandered right off our tiny front porch and face-planted on the ground below. I grabbed him as fast as I could, but he had bitten through his bottom lip, and his face was covered in blood. I couldn’t get him to stop screaming. We were all nervous about the noise, but it doesn’t seem to have attracted any zombies. I’m beginning to doubt there are any to attract out here.

  We got him inside and cleaned him up. We held cold and wet washcloths to his lip, and it soon stopped bleeding. It looks pretty swollen and red still, but he seems in much better spirits. David has since set up a makeshift baby-gate across the opening of the porch using the boxes that contained the sheds.

  In other news, I set up the satellite phone today. I tried calling every number I had, including our own. No one is answering anywhere. This is discouraging, and I had a good cry over it. I fear the worst. Xuân told me that this may only be a sign that the phone lines are out across Toronto, maybe even across North America. I shouldn’t be so pessimistic. Yet, I could see it in her eyes that she didn’t believe her own words to me. She too thought they were all dead. I wonder if at the end of it all, we will be all that’s left. But that can’t be possible. Can it?

  November 7

  Today is my niece’s birthday. She will be three years old. My sister thought they could stick it out in Orangeville, safe in their split-level home. I wonder if that’s true. I need to stop marking the birthdays of people back home in my mind. I know so many, it will just make me crazy.

  I learned today that we are not completely immune to the zombie threat out here. I never truly thought we were, it’s just that all the silence had made me complacent. On my patrol, I saw one shambling across the ground, trying to make its way to our fence. I could see that it had been turned while asleep. It wore nothing but a flimsy nightgown and was barefoot. The frostbite had claimed most of its toes and was spreading across its left foot and up the leg. I watched as it came closer to our fence, and saw it grab onto the chain link trying in vain to get to me. It was no match for our fence, and almost felt a bit of pity for the creature as it grappled with frozen fingers, trying to hold on and make its way through the metal to me. I grabbed the handle of my knife and brought the blade through its face between the links of the fence. Later that evening, Olivia and David took the remains of the zombie farther from our encampment and burned the body. We haven’t seen a single trace of any others making their way here. I’m sure there will be others, but if they are in the same condition, I don’t believe they will be all that hard to dispatch.

  Tonight we had a movie night. We watched The Princess Bride on Xuân’s laptop, all sitting together in our bed loft. We just needed that time to decompress and watch something that was not horribly depressing. We wanted something funny and familiar. This seemed like the perfect choice, and we all went to bed with smiles, feeling as if a weight had been lifted. All in all, it was a good day.

  * * * Xuân * * *

  Olivia and I ice fished today. I fucking hate fish. Gives me one hell of a stomach ache. But I eat it with a smile and shut the fuck up because it’s food. I have no idea what I’m doing, but we managed to drill and hack out a hole in the ice.

  We saw a weird blob in the lake today near our fishing hole. Whatever the thing was, it was kinda bobbing along, and Olivia hooked it, and pulled it in. It was a motherfucking zombie! WHAT THE FUCK? Zombicicle? We smashed its head in with my crowbar and wondered what to do. I mean, can’t just shove it back in the water. Who knows what kind of germs and stuff could contaminate the water. Same problem with just leaving it at the shore. Besides, this is a good fishing spot and I don’t want to have to see that zombie body each time I come here. And the ground’s too frozen to bury it and I don’t want to break my crowbar. The other bodies in the woods I pushed under bushes. We ended up carting water zombie off to this ditch we found in the ground a bit away from the shore and covering it with snow. I made a small pile of rocks and stuff near it to mark the ground. Later, I’ll drag the other bodies here. In the spring, I’ll come back and burn the lot, because I imagine this won’t be the last zombicicle I see in the water. I don’t want to use precious fuel or wood right now to roast zombicicles. Should probably tell the others about waterbies. Hmm. No, zombicicles sounds better.

  November 8

  I have a feeling that with all our safety precautions, our lives here may descend into tedium and boredom. Random zombies notwithstanding, we are so cut off from what is happening out there, we can feel like we have the world to ourselves.

  I accidentally led everyone into a panic today. I couldn’t sit around and stare at the walls of the trailer anymore and it was far too cold to sit outside, so I grabbed one of my books and a chair and headed into the hydroponics shed. It was so warm and
peaceful in there that I ended up falling asleep. I didn’t realize that anyone had been looking for me until David rushed into the shed, startling me as he grabbed me in a panic. They had been calling for me and searching for a while. I think they overreacted a tad, but you can’t be too careful these days.

  While I was in the shed, I noticed that several of our plants have taken root and are starting to grow. This is good! Soon, we will have fresh fruit. I also suspect that Doogoo may be expecting a little goral. This means more gorals, milk, and cheese. These are all good things. I am slightly concerned since none of us are veterinarians, but we’ll muddle through. I don’t even know how far along she may be. For all I know, she arrived at our home already pregnant.

  We had a karaoke night. The kids wanted to take part and had a little dance party of their own while the adults sang. If we were back in Toronto, and things were different, no way in hell would I let them listen to AC/DC, or Eminem, before the age of two. But here? Fuck it. Yeah, I think Xuân’s getting to me. She swears like a sailor, and it’s rubbing off on us. Today, Ethan said “Oh, shit.” when he dropped his cookie. I only gave him a mild reprimand and laughed. What would my mom say about that? Doesn’t matter. She’s not here, is she? I gave her a chance. This makes me so angry. I warned them all, and nobody listened. Now, they’re probably food for the undead, while I, the crazy one, am sitting pretty with food, lights, my children, and a fucking karaoke machine.