The Journal of Madie Beartri

Journal 90

The snow is still falling. I think it is colder than the North Pole outside. Our fuel reserves are dwindling fast. Matt and Jonas went down to the basement to retrieve more fuel for the portable heaters and discovered we had none. At first, Tony thought they had looked in the wrong place in the basement. He took Matt and Jonas back down into the basement to show them the location of the hidden fuel. You should have heard the ruckus when they came back to the lobby.

Tony went ballistic when he discovered the fuel was indeed missing. Tony had just counted the number of gallons we had left the day before. If we were careful, we would have had enough to last us at least another week. This would give us a little time to find and obtain some more.

Sometime during the night Bear Country was broken into and our remaining fuel taken. Matt, Jonas, and a couple of other people went looking for more fuel. I don’t know what we are going to do if we can’t find more. I hate to say this, but I am relieved that I am not one of the people having to go out into the cold to find more fuel. I would have gone if asked but I’m glad Pete didn’t choose me.

Pete has placed guards all over Bear Country. It will be my turn in a couple of hours. I get to guard the back entrance near the kitchen. Everyone is sick to some degree. There is no way to get out of this detail. Not that I would want to but when you are not feeling your best and just want to sleep the idea of having to pull guard duty really sucks.

Marty is starting to look ill. He almost tumbled over. He had that look in his eyes you get right before the room turns black and you pass out. I think Marty is over worked he had been taking care of everyone else instead of himself. Marty is worried about Gretchen. Gretchen is also feeling ill. She had been having contractions all morning long.

We have Gretchen lying down and drinking fluids. I think Gretchen is running a fever. She feels very warm to the touch. Cecelia has been hovering over Gretchen like a mother hen all day. I have been trying to get Cecelia to rest and not exhaust herself.

 

 

Journal 89

I haven’t picked up this journal in two days. My hands are freezing. My whole body is freezing. The portable heaters work fine if you are standing within a dozen feet of the units but if you are farther away, the room is like an icebox.

The snow continues to fall. The healthy and the sick have divided Bear Country. The sick is resting on one side of the room and the apparent healthy on the other. I have a stuffy head and sore throat. I have taken my place amongst the lepers. Victor is still surviving but barely. He remains unconscious. Marty is playing a doctor. With the help of Tony, Matt and Jonas, Marty has set up a makeshift hospital on one side of the room.

Marty has been reading medical books for the last couple of days. I’ve watched him flip through page after page in a dozen or so books. It’s a little scary but Marty says he knows what he is doing. Tony and Marty stuck a tube down Victor’s throat and poured in water, smashed apples, and powdered milk. I couldn’t watch. The thought of having something stuck down my throat makes me gag. Victor is so out of it he didn’t even flinch.

Kate, who I have not seen in ages dropped by Bear Country today, but Pete wouldn’t let her in. He has quarantined all of Bear Country. Kate came for help. Several people at the Spurs Fort are ill, including Joshua. I wanted to run out there and help the second I heard he was sick, but my loyalties are here at Bear Country. I don’t think I would have made the journey anyway. My head is so stuffy I can hardly breathe. Walking ten paces exhausts me. Kate asked Marty for medical advice. Several members of the Spurs are gravely ill. She looked sad that we couldn’t help more. I asked Kate to tell Joshua I would be thinking of him. I am feeling guilty.

Journal 88

The drastic change in weather has caught everyone by surprise. It is so horribly cold. We weren’t expecting this kind of weather for at least another month. Marty thinks the meteor showers and the earthquakes caused the sudden onset of winter. All the excess debris in the atmosphere has messed up the weather patterns.

We woke up yesterday morning to a foot of snow on the ground. All ten of my toes have turned into icicles and I have on three pairs of socks. Tony, Pete, Jonas, and Matt set up the portable heaters in the main lobby. It’s too cold to sleep in individual classrooms. I guess we will be camping out in the lobby until the weather decides to warm up. Last night Matt, Hemy, Jonas and me all snuggled up to each other trying not to freeze. (A small note Jonas is a blanket hog.) There were other similar groups around the room. I have a feeling this is just the beginning of a long horrible cold winter.

Please, please, please don’t let the weather stay this cold for too long. I hate having to sleep with everyone. I like my privacy, but my room is currently doubling as a walk-in freezer. Not really but it could be if needed.

Victor is still sicker than a dog. He is running a high fever and is breathing like a locomotive. The boy has been unconscious since yesterday. He looks bad and sounds even worse. Tony has been guarding Victor like a mother hen. He hasn’t left Victor’s side in two days. There are people in Bear Country who believe we should abandon Victor outside to die so that no one else gets ill. You should have heard the protest when Tony and I moved Victor from the basement up to the main lobby. I thought a war was going to break out and divide Bear Country down the middle. Pete was very quick at calming the situation. He is very good at bringing out the guilt in people.

I understand the concerns of the people who would like to see Victor removed from Bear Country. It’s self-preservation. No one wants to die. I understand their concerns (I partly agree), but we can’t let Victor (no matter what kind of pain in the butt he has been in the past) freeze to death and die of pneumonia. He may die anyway. We have no medicine. If he is going to recover, he is going to recover on his own. Victor is currently resting in a corner of the lobby away from everyone else with Tony by his side.

Journal 87

It’s been two days of unbearably cold weather. I think I actually saw snow flurries earlier. There has been little movement in Bear Country over the last couple of days. Everyone is huddled in their rooms beneath their blankets. I briefly ran downstairs to get something to eat out of the food stores. The cupboards are bare. I grabbed an apple and a cup of hot water. I was so cold, anything warm felt good inside my stomach.

We ran out of tea, coffee, and hot chocolate ages ago. You don’t find these things in the market anymore. I started towards my room for the comfort and safety of my blankets when Tony walked through the back door of the kitchen. He had an actual box of hot chocolate. The first words out of my mouth were “Oh my God is that hot chocolate?” At first, Tony denied he had anything. I tackled him and grabbed the box. Tony made me swear not to tell anyone he had it. I was so cold I would have sworn to anything for a cup of that hot chocolate.

Our secret didn’t remain a secret very long. Runt, I mean Victor stumbled into the kitchen looking bad. He was sneezing and barking like a dog. My first reaction was to back away. Getting sick can be a death sentence and I didn’t want to catch whatever Victor had. Tony felt sorry for Victor and made him some hot chocolate. The three of us were heading down to the basement to tuck Victor into bed when we ran into Gretchen and Cecelia. The smell of the hot chocolate was in the air. They forced us to share.

Journal 86

It was so cold this morning. An unexpected cold front snuck in overnight. Yesterday was a long sleeve shirt day but the weather was nice. I woke up in the middle of the night freezing my butt off. I had to jump out of bed, grab another blanket and put on another layer of clothes just to keep from turning into a Popsicle. I stayed in bed as long as I could this morning. I was dreading stepping out into the frigid air a second time. I was finally forced to get up because my bladder was about to explode and because I was starving. It was a good thing I got out of bed when I did. Disaster was only moments away.

Sometimes people don’t use their brains. I’m thinking common sense probably comes with age. By the time I made it downstairs a group of kids was in the process of building a large fire in a wheel barrel in the front lobby. I guess they were cold. However, someone should have told them that building a fire inside Bear Country was a bad idea. The hall was quickly filling with smoke. I’m sure the kids thought I was insane. Why change a trend? I started yelling at the kids for trying to burn down our/my home. I grabbed a bucket out of the kitchen, filled it with water and poured it on the fire. I made a huge mess, and the kids were not happy, but I wasn’t about to let Bear Country burn to the ground. I lost my first home because a bunch of kids tried to build a fire indoors. The entire gated community I lived in burned to the ground.

I asked Pete if he wouldn’t mind holding a meeting to let everyone know that we have heaters for when the weather gets bad, but our fuel is limited. If the kids need to build fires, they can go outdoors.

Journal 85

This morning was an utter waste of my time. It was frustrating and I was peeved by the time I made it back home. I walked out to the Spurs Fort to see Joshua. I wanted to apologize for my behavior the other day after waking up from that awful nightmare. I have a sneaky feeling Joshua’s boys sent me on a wild goose chase. Joshua wasn’t at the main house so I asked a couple of his guards if they could point me in Joshua’s direction. One of the guards said Joshua was out with the herd trying to catch a wounded cow. I walked out to the herd. It was a good twenty-minute walk. I twisted my ankle and stepped in a cow patty. I also barely avoided an angry rattlesnake.

There were six people riding horses around the herd but no Joshua. I had just missed him. Trevor said Joshua rode back to the main house via one of the nearby farms. He went to pick up a bag of corn or something. I asked if I could get a ride back to the main house. I think chivalry is dead. There were no volunteers.

I wasn’t happy but I walked the twenty minutes back to the main house. When I arrived at the main house “the second time,” Cage said Joshua had run into town on an errand. No one seemed to know when he would be back.

Out of curiosity, I asked if anyone had told Joshua I had been by. Everyone looked at me with blank expressions on their faces. I took that as a no. Alternatively, they did tell him, and he didn’t care and was trying to avoid me. I am thinking it was the latter. I asked one of the guards to please tell Joshua I had been by I really wanted to talk to him.

Journal 84

I woke up early, showered and then went down to breakfast. I ran into Tony and Victor in the kitchen this morning. Victor was moving slowly. I watched him struggle to get in and out of his chair. It was quite sad watching the little runt struggle like that. Not really, I have no sympathy for his pain. I really wasn’t feeling sorry for him at all.

For a few moments, I thought Tony had worked him over yesterday. Victor didn’t even look me in the eyes, although, he did say, “Hi Madie”. It was an attitude improvement. I looked at Tony and then looked at Victor. Tony smiled and said he and Victor worked out in the gym for a couple of hours yesterday. This would explain why Victor couldn’t move today. He must have overworked a few of his muscles. Tony was trying to show Victor a new way of using his bottled-up energy that didn’t include making a pest of himself. Victor won’t be making a pest of himself for a couple of days. He can’t even move most of his body parts. I’m quietly laughing inside.

Journal 83

Victor is still a pain in the butt. I don’t know why that boy insists on tormenting me. Victor spent all morning playing outside my door. There are other people he can be a pest to so why does he insist on making my life miserable? I think Victor is trying to push me over the edge.

I listened to Victor quote lines from Aloysius and marched back and forth outside my door for an hour. I politely asked him to stop and then closed my door. He just got louder and louder. I stormed out of my room and then I chased him all around the school before cornering him in the cafeteria. There was a knife right there within my reach, all I had to do was reach over and grab it.

Believe me when I say I had evil thoughts about tearing him to shreds with that knife. Lucky for Victor I am a not a crazy woman. Tony intercepted me beating up the little runt. I didn’t get the chance to lay a hand on Victor, but I wanted to. I left the cafeteria as Victor was telling Tony I had no sense of humor.

I spent the afternoon with Hemy searching for a place where Hemy heard had bolts of fabric for sale. I think we traveled a good ten miles. We never found the store. We did discover a building converted into a hall for the followers of Aloysius. I wanted to go in and check things out, but Hemy didn’t like the idea. Hey, they were giving out free food. Hemy said she would rather be hungry than to mingle with the crazy.

Journal 82

I think Lisa stayed a little too long recruiting for Aloysius in Bear Country today. She upset many people. I think people would have been able to ignore the recruitment speech if Lisa wasn’t focusing on the littlest ones in Bear Country. I ignored Lisa most of the day but apparently, a few other people couldn’t. I think Lisa pushed a little too far when she tried to walk out of Bear Country with four of the smallest children.

Pete said it was very much like a scene from the Pied Piper. The children happily followed her. I was in my room when I heard a loud ruckus coming from the front entrance. Several of the senior gang members were yelling a Lisa for trying to take their children. Lisa was as calm as could be. She claims they were only going outside to play games.

She was and she wasn’t. I don’t know but I would have been a bit peeved if she had wanted to take my child outside without asking, if I had a child. Lisa calmly apologized to everyone. She said she meant no harm. Lisa left a few moments later but not before saying she would be back tomorrow.

Pete held a meeting. Not by choice but because several people insisted Lisa be banned from returning to Bear Country. Pete said he wouldn’t ban Lisa from coming into her home. I suggested we take a vote, majority rules. I didn’t want to see Lisa banned from Bear Country, but I didn’t think it was just Pete’s decision to make even though he was our gang leader. We voted and Lisa could stay. We would not allow her to be alone with the children and recruiting for Aloysius must occur outside the doors of Bear Country.

Journal 81

Lisa has returned to Bear Country. She came back to recruit followers for Aloysius. It was a bit unnerving to see her dressed all in white. I was walking out of the cafeteria with a plate of salad. I was so startled to see her dressed all in white that I dropped the plate. It shattered all over the floor. Lisa has always been a calm-natured person but today she was unusually calm, not unlike the people in my dreams. I can’t shake the feeling that Aloysius is bad.

I know that Aloysius is the leader of a cult. Ok, he is the leader of a cult, but cults come and go all the time. There really isn’t any harm in them, not really. Most cults are just fads that last a little while. The followers of Aloysius don’t seem to be bad people. They parade around a lot and like to party, and they can be a bit overzealous in the recruiting department, but I have not seen anything that would indicate they are evil.

Most of the followers of Aloysius are on the streets to help people. Of course, a few groups yell to the top of the buildings that if you don’t follow Aloysius you are doomed. These are the extremist, and I have only seen a few. My brain is broken. If my mom were alive, she would have taken me to see a good psychiatrist by now.

Victor has been tormenting me all day long by walking around like a zombie. He has been a major pest and if he comes around me one more time today, I am going to kick him in his little butt. Victor overheard me talking to Tony about my dream or rather my nightmare.

I was trying to apologize to Tony and explain the things that happened in my dream. I wanted Tony to understand why I believed what I believed when I woke up. I feel like an idiot, but that dream felt so real. I feel awful and a little embarrassed that I thought that Tony, Pete, or anyone in Bear Country could have been a part of that awful group in my dream.