November 14th 2014

The world ended on a Monday. It was a rainy, dark, and hot Monday, too. Not even the cold kind of Monday that made you want to wrap blankets around yourself and sip hot chocolate. No, when the world ended it was hot and humid, like a tropical rainforest. Let me tell you, this is why I hate Mondays.

My head throbbed on the bus ride to Mullion's Base and it hurt when I organized my first strike. It hurt every time when I tried to escape and when Jake died. It always hurt when I got stressed. Well, it's hurting right now, because barracks are closed in ten minutes and I just traded my rations for a week, my socks, and a ring that my boyfriend got me for some paper and a pen. I wasn't supposed to trade things.

That is one of the many reasons that I hate it here at Mullion's Base. I hate it so much a few months back I tried to organize a hunger strike, so that maybe we could be treated like humans. That didn't work out so well. Turns out people love the little bits of food they get to much and I turned out to be the only one starving myself, and hey, that was more food for everyone else so no one stopped me.

I tried to march and chant a couple of weeks ago. I made signs out of wood and with a butter knife I carved 'knowledge for all.' I think I ended up spelling knowledge wrong but spelling didn't matter because no one liked my so-called artistic ability and catchy slogan. I know this because my sign got snapped in two, when Major Ivory found me screaming my head off in the street about civil rights and the privilege to know what is going on, like the officials did. That was my first time in confinement and lost my rations for three days. I attempted a couple of escapes but didn't really have a plan and got caught every time.

My most recent strike was trying to cause a riot in the camp by the heroic means of self-sacrifice and patriotism. I tried to slit my throat with a plastic knife so that maybe my death would cause a riot in Mullion's Base. I really should have known better. First problem with that plan was that they really didn't care if I died or not. They confiscated my pens (why I had to trade for one) and took me aside. They gave me a firm talking too about how everyone here was important and how they needed everyone in a different special way and how hurting myself would not bring my parents back and my baby brother was in a better place and that Jake would have wanted me to pull through. I cried every night since they said that because I knew it was true. Mullion's Base is good at screwing with your head and getting you to shut up.

In all honesty, I don't really have much of a reason to strike, except, you know, fair treatment, but still. They gave us meager rations and their military style kept the place running fairly. They kept us safe from the zombies in the world. I still hated it, incase you couldn't tell. I guess I wanted the one thing that the base really deprived me of. Knowledge. I wanted to know what was happening and I wanted to have a real role in the community. I wanted to feel needed and I wanted to know about the other people in what is left of America.

They don't want us knowing about other people in the world. They don't even want us knowing about ourselves and out neighbors. They told us that if we got attached to each other then we would care if we 'passed on.' I wonder if they know how inhumane that sounds or if they just do that to keep little pawns like us 'in line.' We refer to each other as 'Comrade Number' or simply 'Number.' My number is ninety-three because I was the ninety-third survivor too be allowed into the base. I think some people here have forgotten their names. I know my mother and father did, until they died of tuberculosis. I looked after my younger brother, but he turned gray or went all zombie on me. I made sure that he remembered his name was Aidan and that my mother's name was Adelaide Marie and my father's name was Brendon. Jake remembered his name, too. He was a rebel just like me but he turned zombie a couple of weeks ago in the same chaos that my brother died in. Ever since I lost them, I vowed to remember my name.

So when the lights are shut off for the night in the barracks I'll whisper my name to myself until I can see the sun, just so that I assure to myself that I'll remember it for one more day, because if I don't then I'm scared that ninety three will be my new name. I can't let that happen. I know Jake would have been proud. My father and mother would not have though. They were both in the army and when we were recruited to the base they assumed new identities and demanded that I do to. They died a week after the base was formed. The last words they ever said to me were in the heat of anger; so I'll not write them, just know that I would give anything to take them back.

I only have one memory of my father and mother. It's a book called Brave New World. I don't actually know what it's about. I've scanned through it a couple of times, but I've never really been one for reading. I think it's about birds because they're always talking about hatching things. Birds and maybe cannibals because they say savage a lot. I don't plan to read it though. In all honesty, it seems kind of boring.

I should probably be getting to bed, but, as much as I hate to admit it, I'm scared. I'm scared to sleep. I hate dreaming, partially because I know that my life will never be normal againe. I'll never stop dreaming; even when I'm awake I'm still dreaming. It's a horrible nightmare and a horrible bad dream, but, I tell myself that that's all it is; a bad dream. Not like I believe that, though. I'll always be living in a bad dream. I don't have a single person on this earth can count on any more.

Dr. Regan Hills tells me that it's a diagnosable case or paranoia, but I think that she's just saying that to keep me 'in line.' She tells me that I'm sick and that I need help that they can't give me but that's not true. She says that to everyone. She needs to keep people needing more of the limited supply of medication. She needs people to need her ten-minute therapy sessions. She needs us to need her more than we need her. The base needs us more than we need it.

Everyone else is stupid enough to stay here, when really all we would need to do is just overthrow a few people. Then we could have a democracy. Sucks that I'm the only one gutsy enough to even try to make a change. It also sucks that there is nowhere else to go.

Everyday I think that maybe if people start to see what Mullion's Base keeps from us they'll help me. They might start to see reason and realize that even though it's the apocalypse we can still live a good life. Yah, not really, we would definitely be better out of this dictatorship though.

They send people on missions and those people don't find out about it until they get there. It sucks that everyone else is too hooked to the pills they give us before bed to get us asleep. It's to bad that I have not a friend in the world to talk to anymore. It's too bad that I wish I were dead. To bad that this base sucks and to bad that I wish it would blow up with all of the people inside. To bad I wish zombies would come and destroy it. To bad I hate it here.