On the other side of the glass

I guess I fell into a depression. I haven't written in here for a week. I can't say that too much has happened in that time, just our exploration of our tiny six house nation. We've a small mountain of supplies that we have liberated from the other houses. Had to leave the fourth terrace down alone; family of four in there. I think the Infected children are far more terrifying than the adults. The last house in the row had a broken back door. We were surprised by a walker that must have come in from the outside, because we looked everywhere and followed our routine to the letter.

Oh, our Routine. See, the worst thing, after being killed that is, is being surprised by an Infected. In a house, they can come out of nowhere and be on you in the blink of an eye, walker or runner, it doesn't make a difference. So we have our routine for trying to winkle out any Infected in the house below us when we come in via the roof. It helps that all the houses have the same room layout.

• Make inspection holes over all upstairs rooms and visually inspect for Infected.
• Open loft-trap and make some noise.
• Wait 5 minutes.
• Make some more noise.
• Wait another 5 minutes.
• Lower rope, climb down, find stairs.
• Make noise, descend one stair.
• Repeat previous until no more stairs.

It's not much, but the Infected, simple beasts that they are, will investigate almost any noise. It only fails when the Infected cannot hear. The very last house in the terrace had one such old lady. Fortunately she was so infirm that she could only crawl across the floor. She's shut in her bedroom now. While we searched that place she scratched at the door like mad, but we were quite safe.

The empty houses were creepy. I expected something behind every door, and every creak was another Infected waiting to pounce. We pretty much cleaned out everything we could though. Starting with perishable goods, we took everything into the third house. The food went into the kitchen and everything else was piled into the master bedroom.

We blacked out the downstairs windows. Stupid of us not to do this first, but curtains are not enough. Luckily for us our mistake was in the old lady's house. Not sure if we were too loud or we nudged the curtain or were just unlucky enough to be seen, but without warning the glass exploded inwards and an Infected got itself mangled up in the window frame. The cuts from the glass didn't bother it at all. The noise attracted a couple more Infected wandering by. They got caught up in with the first walker too, but you could tell it was only a matter of time before they got inside.

While we got a good amount of food, it is mostly rice and lentils. The old woman had a couple of tins of Spam. One other house had a half tin of dried milk. I guess most people just ate through their supplies. We did score a assortment of vitamin pills. Otherwise the rest was a decent treasure trove; painkillers, plasters, bandages, toothpaste, dental floss, toilet tissue, bleach, soap, and some clothes that fit me and Craig. We pilfered all kinds of things, but past the euphoria of finding the food, there's only going to be so much of this other stuff that's going to prove useful. I mean, how many pen knives do I really need?

Finally got a chance to clean up as well. While it was a pity we couldn't use the shower or bath as intended, I did manage to heat up enough water with a camping stove to use. Didn't even have to use our drinking water as there was some in one of the tanks in the roof-space. I thought they were all empty, but the tap worked for a bit in one of the empty houses. Or, I'm stupid, there must be hot water tanks somewhere as well as the water tanks in the roof space Cleaned up and shaved, I felt human again. Even Craig seems happier.

 

It's been seven days of eating, looting, resting, and wallowing in self pity. I have to get out of this depression. Need to start thinking about our next move. We can not stay here. Gone through half the food and it would be nice to find more before we run out. There is probably a little food in almost every household, but not everywhere is going to have a convenient roof-space to clamber through that gives us easy access. The idea of fighting Infected door to door and room to room does not appeal.