Hamsikker 2 (27 page)

Over the four hour trip home my mind keeps replaying the events of the last five days away from the house, mainly repeating today’s events. We’ve lost a lot of people at the ranch already, and a huge portion of the human population has been infected or killed off by this thing. But no matter how bad it has gotten so far, there was always a hope of wiping this thing out, and rebuilding. I don’t know anymore what hope there is if the infected can run and use their hands for more than just basic grabbing. Will they know how to open gates and fences? Could they possibly use tools to smash or cut through defenses? How many runners are out there? Too many questions and not enough answers.

It took quite a while for Simone and me to come to terms with these things no longer being human. For us, there was and still is the remorseful thought that after the fever hits, these are technically just brain damaged people. Brain damage with extremely violent tendencies, but still the type of thing that in our former life would have been treated as a deadly disease or illness. The people who contracted it being afforded all the rights and protections as every other citizen of these former United States. Perhaps if it didn’t spread so fast and kill so many, that is exactly as it would have been. A bunch of brain fried violent individuals locked up in special medical facilities, and family members visiting them occasionally.

Coming to terms with things doesn’t seem to be the case for our kids. They are far more elastic since they are still learning about and processing the new information of life. Something seemed to click in our older kids and just made them deal with it. There should have been a great extent of screaming and crying, and while there was some, there wasn’t as much of it as even I would have suspected.

As a responsible father, before things fell apart, I had already exposed my children to scary movies. I told them about the zombie books I read, and they saw me play great video games with visually gory gun blasts and regular beheadings. I didn’t try to shelter them from violence the way some misguided people do. I exposed them to it and explained what they were seeing if explanation was needed. Knowledge truly is power, and not knowing truths about the world, such as how violent it can be, is a handicap to survival.

Once the world fell apart and we knew what we were dealing with, I didn’t lie and tell my family everything was going to be okay. I said we were going to have to fight to survive, and I directly explained to Hannah, Olivia, and William that if they yell or cry when they see an infected, the infected person will find us and kill us. From then on they made sure not to make noise when we told them to be quiet.

For Amelia and Benjamin, I’m mainly just concerned with keeping them alive. They watch and copy their older siblings like any young child does. These days, what they are copying is stealth and stillness rather than mimicking a phone call. This is the only world they will know, so they are being raised without the run free and yell when you feel like it mentality of the rest of our childhoods.

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