Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel] Meadows, Carl (book recommendations for teens TXT) 📖

roads, so they’ll have to move up the priority list. That’s for another day though, we need to take stock and slow it down a little. Moments like the electronics store amp up your adrenalin and the crash that comes after is exhaustion like I’ve never known. I’ve done some crazy things on rooftops when free running, things that set my heart racing for their danger, but it doesn’t even compare to the flood that goes through you in life-threatening combat. It’s a soul-deep exhaustion when that leaves you. Nate is more used to it than I am, but the guy’s still just over fifty, so it gets to him more than it might have in the past.

It wipes the shit out of me. All I want to do is lie down, maybe read a book, probably just sleep. I can’t even write when that crash hits, which is why I always wait until the morning after to record the events.

That’s enough for today, I think. Pottering round the lodge today. I’m going to hang out with my Golden Girls; Freya, Maria, and Norah. Those three are the best.

September 5th, 2010

KADIE

Tensions were running high until today. We’ve all been house-bound, because for the last couple of days, the rain has been on and off, but when it does rain, it’s absolutely battered down, and not the kind of weather you want to go scavenging in.

Hmm. I don’t like that word, actually. Scavenging, looting… they’re such negative words, like we’re raiding or plundering. Resource acquisition is more appropriate, but it sounds so snooty and formal. I need to find a better word for what me and Nate do. Sadly, I own the world’s worst thesaurus; it’s not just awful, it’s awful.

Shit, it’s hard being this funny.

What wasn’t funny is the tension boiling in the lodge over the past few days. Alicia was a ball of traumatised rage, and of course we can all understand why, but she’s been handling her ordeal with hyper-aggression as a defence mechanism.

On the flip side is Laura, who’s little more than a phantom, silent and ethereal as she floats about the place in a daze. I guess we’d all hope that the two of them would have some kind of bond and find strength in each other from their shared pain, but that’s just not the case. Alicia wants to start an argument with everyone—especially the boys—while Laura doesn’t want to speak to a soul, though Freya seems to be making progress. I’ve noticed that even though she’s saying little, when we’re all together to eat and plan, Laura plants herself next to Freya. My little dude Particles is also excelling as an emotional support dog and today he managed to evoke the first flicker of a smile from Laura as he licked at her face excitedly. He’s a smart cookie that pug. Dogs rule.

Everyone’s been walking on eggshells around them both, giving them space. Even when Alicia is at her worst, she’s been given a great deal of leeway, because none of us really know how to support someone who’s been through what she has. Nobody feels they can say anything, because we haven’t experienced what she has. Everyone’s afraid of being cold or unfeeling, trying desperately to empathise with her plight, but we just don’t know how to manage it.

That all changed the moment her ire turned on Charlie.

The kid is nine years old. He has a certain innocence that needs to be protected for as long as we can, because this world has already stripped much of it away. He’s been kidnapped, seen the undead kill, had Bancroft’s gun to his head, seen the corpses of men gunned down; shit, he’s seen more than any nine-year old boy should ever experience. It’s testament to Mark’s solid parenting and Charlie’s own fortitude that he’s still a bright and happy kid, despite all the horrors this world has already thrown in his path.

Rape and its aftermath, though… that’s just something a boy his age just doesn’t need to compute right now. He knew the women were captive and terrorised in some way, but the savagery of Bancroft and his men is one thing we need to shield him from right now. Bancroft’s men “hurt” Alicia and Laura; that’s the way Mark explained it to him. Charlie didn’t need any more and he accepted that explanation from his dad.

Seeing Alicia angry at everyone, snapping at everything anyone might say, that gold-hearted kid decided that Alicia was hurt, and angry, and sad. He did what any kind-hearted child would do in that instance. He tried to give her a hug, bless his little heart.

“Don’t touch me!” snapped Alicia, forcibly placing her hand on Charlie’s chest and shoving him backwards. Taken off guard, the poor kid stumbled backwards, planting to the kitchen floor on his arse. He put one hand on his chest where she had pushed him, looking up at her with the glisten of tears in his eyes.

“What the hell, Alicia?” roared Mark, standing from the stool at the kitchen island and rushing to his son. “What’s your problem?”

“Boundaries,” she spat back. Shit, there was such venom in her tone. “He needs to learn them, or don’t you teach your son how to treat women?”

It was a wholly unfair accusation. Mark is such a gentle guy, but Charlie is his whole world. If you want to wake the sleeping lion in our resident engineer, question his parenting or his beloved boy, and woe to you.

“He’s a child, Alicia!” bellowed Mark, kneeling beside Charlie and checking he was okay. “He’s nine years old, and just wanted to give you a hug!”

“I never asked for one, or wanted one,” she retorted. “My space is my own.”

She was all-in with her argument. I could understand her fury if it had been someone like Mark or Isaac breaching that personal space, but Charlie’s a kid and doesn’t understand what she’s going through. He just knows she was hurting and