Entry 17

Orders don’t change

Move

Clear

Report

Repeat

People think routine makes this easier.

It doesn’t.

You still remember faces.

Today’s patrol covered another abandoned neighborhood. Twenty-three houses.

Twenty-three empty kitchens.

Twenty-three tables where someone expected to eat dinner again.

No infected.

No survivors.

Just dust.

One of the new Hunters asked why we still search places like that.

Gideon told him because hope gets people killed.

No one argued.

Sometimes I wonder if silence is worse.

At least the infected make noise.

The empty places just wait.

Found another child’s room today.

Bed still made.

Rabbit on the pillow.

I left it.

Not because I cared.

Because carrying dead things serves no purpose.

…

That’s what I wrote in the report.

I don’t know why I looked back before closing the door.

We move east tomorrow.

Gideon says something has been slipping through our patrols.

If it breathes…

we find it.

—Rowan