1.3 New Hobbies

Grayson Apocalypse 1-3

Generation One: Chad’s Story

Well, Aren’s feeling better and doing great. He came and spent the day with me, said he was going out of his mind looking at the same four walls. I threw together some salad made with fresh lettuce, and we ate two helpings for lunch.

We played some chess and talked some man talk. We speculated about what was next on the agenda for work. We’ve been trying to set up a regular exchange of information with some of the other little towns that we’ve discovered, with safety being our top priority. We’ve actually got a pretty good supply of weapons and ammo, which is kept in a community lock-up. When someone wants to organize a hunting party they just come and list who’s going out, what basic direction they’re taking and when they think they’ll be back. Now that I write it out it sounds very Big-Brotherish, but it’s more to do with keeping everyone safe. If a group of hunters is running late we can go check on them, instead of them being totally on their own with no one looking for them. With no phones it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on.

The next day was Sunday, so I jumped in my rusty old POS and went to town for some more interviewing and reporting. Joy!!! Those three exclaimation points are my extreme sarcasm, BTW. I don’t know why but I’m feeling restless, more than usual. If I was a woman I’d say it was my time of the month. Being a smart man however I will never let that sentence see the light of day. Time for some meet and greets.

Colin’s one of my neighbors I mentioned earlier, but I hadn’t done a report on him yet so I softened him up with some jokes and my impersonations. He gave up the goods pretty easily (and look it’s more sarcasm!!!), but he was already a friend of mine. I can’t remember what I said about him earlier, but he’s married to a nice woman named Paige and they have three children, the twins Tammy and Sammy and little Brian. Colin is… not lazy exactly, once you get him off the couch he’s fine. He’s got plans for the future, does the cooking for his family, and likes cats. He’s also lucky, I mean he was supposed to be out of town on business when the End happened, but at the last moment he canceled. If he hadn’t I don’t know if he, if his family, would have made it.

Since I was at the library I went ahead and used their typewriter to write my report. I’ll turn it in tomorrow.

Ugh! If you break it you fix it is the rule. Good thing these things aren’t electric or my very un-handy self would probably die…

The next week I got sent out on one of the information runs to a nearby town. While I was there I did a little digging around and found some interesting stuff. It’s getting to be a habit, when I get sent to the other towns I end up poking around and digging up something.

I stayed a few nights, ate some local food (they took up residence in an old section of the Chinatown part of town),

got to read a few books, ok, one book,

found a cool snake to play with,

and learned some martial art techniques. Those’ll come in handy back home.

Board-breaking seems very therapeutic, think I’ll see if I can find one of these to take home.

When I got back home I wrote another report and turned it in at work the next day. Of course before I went to work that morning I checked in with my buddy Charlie. Aren came over and fed him for me, but I missed the little guy.

Another lonely supper.

Time to de-stress with my new board-breaking equipment. I’m extremely happy to have found one to bring home. Of course the jogging and the strength training is necessary, but it gets boring. I used to do some skateboarding, I wasn’t a pro but I did alright. Jason (my brother) was the ‘skaterboy’ for a few years, but like me he’d mostly drifted into other sports. Board-breaking is turning out to be very soothing, and I know that seems weird but it’s true.

No problem! Ok, so I had to try twice before I broke them, but I still think it’s pretty good!

It’s been a few days and I’m feeling a little better lately. Less nightmares, more smiling and thinking about the future. What happened was terrible, but I can’t worry about the past so much. There’s a lot to be done for the future. I’ve been thinking about my future in particular, my romantic future. I think I’m ready to start looking now, and, well, not being callous about it, but we’ve all got to have children. I’m going to hate seeing them grow up in this world, but life continues. And I’m tired of my lonely suppers, sure I could crash my friend’s dinner times (and I sometimes do), but to me that’s family time. When everyone sits down together and talks about their day, and friends and random stuff and trivia of their life. Family time. I miss my family a lot.

What woman could resist this?  *manly grunt* Ok, I’ll come lie write more tomorrow, got to shower away the manly stink now.