Quarantined Days

The Lost Journal Entries

The year is 2028. 

Humanity is on its last legs. The population has dropped to two thousand seven hundred and fifty-eight peo-...two thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven people (RIP Mr. Havershim. You were the best drug dealer I've ever known). The Corona Virus was much more powerful than anyone could have ever predicted. Toilet paper hasn't been seen in years. 

I am the last living member of my family, and no doubt the Ravind family name will end with me. My only friend is my pet rock, Peso. 

He's a brat. 

Yet I can't find it in myself to get rid of him. He's seen me through the schools permanently closing, the president catching COVID-19 and dying, the internet shutting down, World War C, the death of Trish...and finally, the beginning of the end of the world. I reckon I only have another month or so before my supplies run out and I'm forced to go out into the world and find new supplies, maybe a new partner.

 Trish and I were lucky, we had this bunker made long before the outbreak. Then again, Trish had never been quite sane, always keeping up with the latest conspiracy theories and regularly made doomsday plans. Though I guess she was right in the end. When the prez kicked the bucket, we knew it was time. Amid the panic buying and general chaos, we stocked up on essentials and locked ourselves in. We had it going pretty good for the first year or so before the internet went down, and we lost most forms of communication with the outside world. That's when the hysteria began to set in for Trish. She couldn't sit still, could seem to keep herself occupied. I'd find her regularly pacing late at night, mumbling gibberish to herself. She'd cover the walls in crazy drawings that made no sense, of strangers she'd never met, or creatures not recognizable to planet Earth. She'd have horrible nightmares, wake up in the middle of the night screaming, saying they were coming for us. 

It got to the point where I'd have to physically restrain her before she hurt herself. And then...there was the night I was too late. I'd gone deep into the bunker to fiddle with our makeshift security system, cause there had been some fools outside messing around when she'd woken up from one of her naps, and evidently thought we were being attacked. She'd grabbed a gun from our safe, and ran outside. I heard the alarms go off that an outside door had been opened. I sprinted up the stairs, only to find the door was wide open, and Trish was gone.

 The last time I was caught wind of her was in 2026, after someone directly radioed me, claiming there was a crazy chick with a gun, who looked like Trish wandering around their bunker yard but was scared off by a wolf. 

I'll never know if that was really Trish, but I do know one thing. This virus got the best of us, but it ain't gonna get the best of me.