The Bath Salts Journals (Volume 1)

by Alisse Lee Goldenberg

  November 10

  We’re slowly learning to live off the land, and this is making our food stores far more varied and flavourful than I first expected. Xuân has taken Olivia hunting and they have come back with various types of game and meat. I have thus learned to make such dishes as rabbit stew and caribou burgers. David has also learned the art of fishing from Edehon Lake, and I have gone with him a couple of times.

  It is always a bit of a risk, going out of our compound, but for the food we bring home, it is worth it. We have each encountered zombies on our treks, but they are always travelling alone, and are easy kills.

  We have also tried to make improvements to our lives here. Now that we have been here for over a week, I have taken up an exercise regimen, jogging around the perimeter a couple of times a day. This way I multitask checking the fence and staying in shape. Xuân and David teamed up to work on a project and have built the triplets a sled. We have even hooked Sebastian to it, and he has taken the kids on rides outside. They love it! The sound of their laughter brought us all such joy. I’m so glad they can still find something to smile about.

  Some of the herbs in our garden have actually grown big enough to take clippings from. This has improved our meals to a large degree. Once Doogoo has her kid, we will also have some much-needed milk and cheese around here as well.

  We have had some minor mishaps: Xuân seems to have broken a finger while building the sled, and we have taped her up as best we could. She hit herself with the hammer nailing two pieces of wood together. David put a fishhook through the palm of his hand while trying to bait the line. But these are all minor incidents, and we are doing fine for the most part.

  * * * Xuân * * *

  Ran into a few zombie stragglers while hunting animals. Olivia and I killed them. We left the bodies by the path. We’ll figure it out later. First, have to get this sweet, sweet, protein home! BURGERS, BABY, BURGERS!

  Broke finger. Not handyman. Fuck. Not like I’m writing much anyway. I think Ethan learned some new words.

  November 11

  It’s Remembrance Day. I have a lot to remember, and I wonder who else is out there doing the same. Today was the first day I had an answer. The phone rang! I was in such a state of shock. I haven’t heard a phone ring since the day we drove away from our home in Toronto. I stood staring at it for the longest time. Finally, I answered it. I almost dropped it, my hand was shaking so badly.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Alexis?” came a familiar voice on the other end.

  It was my brother! I couldn’t believe it! I stood for the longest time, tears streaming down my face. I was shocked. I asked what had happened.

  “I was out getting supplies for Mom and Dad. They were holed up in the basement kitchen and dining room. Richmond Hill was overrun. I decided to risk it and try to find more food. I got into the car and drove. A swarm of zombies came, seemingly out of nowhere. The few idiots like me who were out on the streets had their cars completely covered. I saw people who were trying to escape from their car windows get their whole faces chewed off. Limbs went flying everywhere. I turned south and slammed on the gas pedal. I mowed down as many zombies as I could. I headed for your house and I used what I could to board up the basement windows and doors. I realized I could use your ladder to climb from your house into your neighbour’s, and I’ve raided her pantry. I have a good stock of supplies here. I’ve been here since.

  “I don’t know what happened to Mom and Dad. I can’t get a hold of them. I’d come and join you, but there’s no way out of the city anymore. We’re completely overrun. They say the army’s fighting back, but I’m not holding my breath.”

  We talked for hours after that. I put everyone on the phone. We were all hungry for news from home. We promised to keep in touch for as long as we could keep the phones working. I am extremely upset by the news about my parents, yet, I still have someone out there. My brother is alive! He didn’t say for certain that my parents weren’t; there is still a chance, no matter how remote it may be. I am thrilled. My brother is alive, and my house is still standing. I know that is something stupid to be happy about, all things considered, but I am so glad that he found safety there. I hope his food holds up. That is his main concern—as it should be. At this point, I know that it is much better to worry about meals than about how many zombies you need to kill in order to survive to the next day.

  * * * Xuân * * *

  The fucking phone rang today! Scared the piss out of me! It’s been so long that when it went off, I automatically grabbed a weapon to deal with the unknown threat. I felt like such an idiot! It was Alexis’ brother. He’s holed up in her place now. At least someone is still out there.

  November 13

  It is definitely colder here than anywhere else I’ve been. The nights can go down to minus fifty degrees Celsius, and that’s not counting the wind chill. It’s only November; I suspect this weather will only get worse. Also, the nights are lasting much longer than we’re used to. This is odd, and the lack of sun is filling us all with a bit of a feeling of—I don’t know—the blues I guess. David noticed this and decided to combat it with an impromptu party. He made us all get dressed up (I actually put makeup on for the first time in weeks!), and we all gathered in our trailer for a fancy dinner. Samantha insisted on wearing a tiara I forgot I packed, Ethan wore a cape, and Benjamin proudly donned his tie. Xuân and Olivia wore dresses, and David wore his best shirt. We cracked open a bottle of wine and had a lovely time with some music playing in the background. It felt so good to be doing something so normal. Once we were dressed up, we all agreed that we felt human again.

  I spoke to Loren again on the phone. He says there is no power, but the water is still running. He found a generator next door and has figured out how to work it. He told me that if things calm down in the streets, he’s going to try to go home to see if Mom and Dad are okay. We all pray that they are.

  * * * Xuân * * *

  Went out for some alone time today. Yes, I broke the cardinal fucking rule of zombie apocalypses: don’t fucking go anywhere alone, especially outside of your safe area. Despite being extremely extroverted, I do occasionally need alone time. It’s a good thing no one can tell what’s going on in my mind, because they’d probably commit me if that was still possible. I just went to chill out by the woods near the lake and this dude showed up! Fuck, he had some coat stitched out of carpets or some shit. It actually said WELCOME on his back. And he stunk. I mean, I’m sure I don’t smell like a box of chocolates, but damn, I’m sure I don’t smell like booze, piss, blood, and vomit. He looked like one of those frontier men from the Wild West pioneer days, totally batshit crazy from living out in the woods for so long. All giant bush hair and beard. I heard something coming, but I wasn’t expecting a live one when he shambled around a boulder.

  He was all “HEY GIRLIE, GIVE ME YOUR SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!” and fucking rushed me with a brick! But I’m guessing he wasn’t as well fed as me or wasn’t paying attention, because he tripped over this log and I bashed his head in with my crowbar. He didn’t have anything interesting on him, nothing useful or tradable. The carpet coat probably has bedbugs or something too. It was falling apart. His tote didn’t really have anything in it. Made me wonder how he was surviving. Some sticky girlie mags, ew. Not even good or real ones, just like a department store catalogue with only the lingerie part. Some crackers. A bloody rabbit’s head, damn. A broken bread knife. There was a quarter bottle of rum on him, but I sure as hell am not drinking that. I used a stick to prod his stuff. I wasn’t going to touch anything he had, sick motherfucker.

  Dragged him to the zombie hole with my crowbar and broke the rum bottle over him. I don’t think rum burns well, but we’ll find that out in the spring.

  He seemed like a loner. I’ll just be extra vigilant for the next few weeks. I hope he wasn’t a scout, but he didn’t strike me as one.

  I killed my first human. And I didn’t really feel much. I should, I think.
But I suppose killing so many zombies on the way here desensitized me. Not to mention the fact that Thibault (that’s the name I gave him. He reminded me of a crazy homeless guy I met in Montréal), seemed more dead than alive to me anyway. Alive people are in the compound. People outside are suspect.

  November 14

  David and Olivia went fishing today, leaving Xuân and me with the kids. I don’t know what to say about what happened. I am horrified by what we’ve done. After David and Olivia left, Xuân and I sat around chatting, helping the triplets learn new words and work on puzzles, when Sebastian started barking. I immediately thought a zombie was coming close to our fence line and went out to see if I could spot it. What I found instead was worse.

  I heard the engine before I actually spotted the car. A large, black, SUV pulled up to our gate, and three heavily armed men came out. I approached them holding Olivia’s revolver, trying to look braver than I felt.

  “What do you want?” I asked them.

  “We want your setup here,” one of the men said to me.

  I was angry and scared, and I didn’t really know how this was going to turn out. I heard Xuân behind me pop the hood of my car. I didn’t know what she was doing, but she seemed to have a plan, and I tried to buy her some time.

  “You can’t have my home. This place belongs to me and my family,” I said to them, and I showed them my weapon.

  The man in front of me laughed in my face, and I could see his yellowed teeth, and even smell his stinking breath through the fence.

  “You and your yellow friend aren’t going to stop me from taking what I want,” he sneered at me.

  “Yes, we are,” Xuân called from behind me. She turned the key in the ignition of my car and the headlights came on. “Just try and take it.”

  That was when things became horrifying. The first man grabbed a hold of the gate with his bare hands and there was the sound of a swallowed scream with the smell of singed flesh. It took me a moment to realize what had happened. Xuân had used an aerosol can and a lighter to make a blow torch. She had set the man on fire!

  Next thing I knew, the other two men had grabbed their guns and started firing. I felt a hot, stinging pain in my arm as a bullet winged me, and I fired back, hitting one of them square in the chest. Xuân quickly dispatched the other two with a gun she kept in her belt.

  By the time David and Olivia came back, Xuân and I had taken care of the bodies. The car and weapons had joined our stash. Olivia patched me up, but I don’t feel right about what happened. Yes, they were bandits. Yes, they would have killed us all, but killing a man, is infinitely different from killing a zombie. It’s also infinitely harder. David says I did what I had to do to protect our kids. I wish it felt that simple.

  * * * Xuân * * *

  Killed some bandits. They actually had the nerve to come up to our gate and demand our stuff. One of them made this licky thing with his tongue at me and mouthed “yellow meat.” I made sure to cut it out of his smarmy face when Alexis wasn’t looking. Then I bashed his head in. She thinks they died immediately. She doesn’t need to know.

  I was going to take the bodies off to my body hole, but Alexis wanted to burn them here. Okay, but I don’t like using up fuel on these dirty fuckheads. We could just wait until spring and burn the whole lot of them, but Alexis was very insistent. Something about treating humans differently. I’m not that idealistic, but I’m actually glad I’m with other people up here, because by myself I think I would have totally degenerated into some kind of crazed murdering loner. They keep up my humanity (as little as there was to begin with, anyway). I suppose I should feel somewhat bad for shocking the bandits with the car battery, but not really. They were going to kill us after doing who the fuck knows what to us. They needed to die.

  November 16

  I’m having a lot of trouble coming to terms with the events of a few days ago. Logically, I know I acted in self-defence, but the look on the dead man’s face haunts me. I never did find out who he was, or what drove him to act the way he did. I don’t suppose I ever will get those answers. We burned their bodies just as we will burn the bodies of the zombies we kill out here. Somehow, it seems wrong to treat human beings with the same lack of care.

  Ethan has come up to me several times over the last few days. He knows I am upset over something, but doesn’t know what it is. He calls me “Bum,” because he knows it usually gets a rise out of me. I try to act as I always do when this happens, but he’s having none of it. He hit me lightly in the face and just told me to stop being silly. Maybe I should take his advice on this.

  Loren called today. He made it to my parents’ house and back, but they weren’t there. He says that it doesn’t appear they were taken by force, and there is no sign of a struggle. He left a note for them saying where he went, in case they return. By all accounts, it looks as if they left of their own volition. He hopes they turn up at our Toronto house. I hope he’s right.

  Xuân also seems to be struggling. The two of us had a long talk today. She feels responsible for what happened since she was the one who burned the guy. I believe those men would have shot at us regardless of what either of us had done. They seemed desperate to take our place here. We do have a cushy set-up compared to most of what is available out there in the rest of the world. I brought us here to give Ethan, Benjamin, and Samantha the best opportunity for survival. Letting those men in here would have meant death for us all. I just wish this could have been solved without either of us getting their blood on our hands.

  My arm is still quite sore from where the bullet nicked me. I’m thankful for the layers of clothing I had on. It could have been much worse. We discovered a few bullet holes in the façades of our trailers. I’m going to have to think of them as part of the decor from now on. I can’t say if any of this was avoidable. Maybe if Xuân hadn’t electrified our fence, maybe if I had been friendlier, maybe, maybe, maybe. But it does nobody any good to think like that. What’s done is done.

  * * * Xuân * * *

  Ran/hooked another zombicicle today. I carted it off to my zombie hole. There’s like six in there now, I think. There should be more, but I can’t find all the zombie bodies I left in the bushes. I wish I had mushrooms sautéed in garlic butter. That would be soooo good.

  November 19

  We had packed a few radios, as well as our laptops. We started out monitoring what was going on in the south, but all there is now is radio silence. It is such a weird feeling being so cut off from everything and everyone. The only way we have any idea about what’s happening is through my brother, and even then the news is limited. He has told us that an estimate of the world’s death toll is in the millions. Whole cities have been wiped out. This seems astonishing to me. We all have family all over the world; the notion that they are gone is just unbelievable. How can you cope with the eradication of your entire family?

  However, there is life continuing. Doogoo went into labour today! Xuân and I were there and helped her through the whole thing. I can’t say how much help we actually were, but we were there. Everything seemed to go smoothly, and it’s clear that we were given a pregnant goral. As soon as we were confident the kid was all right, we brought in Ethan, Benjamin, and Samantha to see the baby. Ethan was so excited that there was a new goral in the shed. He gave it a hug and kiss. Doogoo was calm throughout. She seems to trust the children with her new kid. Benjamin excitedly pointed at the baby goral and called it “Dog.” Soon his siblings were doing the same. I guess that’s its name then. Now we have Boba, Doogoo, and Dog: our little goral family. Starting tomorrow, we’ll have milk, and we’ll experiment with making cheese.

  Everyone has had a turn holding and petting our new addition. It’s a truly wonderful little miracle. Life is going on in some form here, and I’m sure elsewhere. Eventually, we may be able to rebuild.

  I asked Loren if he thought he could make it out to us. He shouldn’t have to be trapped in our house with such limited supplies. He doesn’t think it’
s possible. He doesn’t believe that he would ever be able to get enough gas to make the trip, nor does he think he’d survive an attack on the road. He has little to no ammunition and has no knowledge as to how to fire a gun. I just need to be satisfied that I can care for my baby brother over the phone. He says he’s doing well; he has found several cans of food in our house and our neighbour’s. He’s not starving, and he seems relatively safe where he is. I am proud of how he’s proving to be self-reliant.

  We are spending a lot of our time here teaching the triplets as much as we can. Neither David nor I want their education to suffer while we are living out here. We are teaching them counting and their colours, and we are working on their language. Triplets are frequently language-delayed, and ours are no different. We have made great strides by giving them one-on-one attention, and through reading to them as much as possible. When all you’re doing is working on surviving and thriving, it’s amazing how much more time you have to spend with your children and how they respond to all the extra attention. David has been wonderful through all of this; he has been patient with them, and seems to revel in all they are learning. They are a trio of little sponges! I want to take the specialists they’ve seen since they were born and give them a good shake. Seven weeks premature does not automatically mean a child will be behind in development. My kids are just fine, thank you very much!