Arlene’s Journal

It's the night before the six will leave to go back to the outside. I think of it that way... The outside. This place is something I have never had. So much love, so much caring, it overwhelmed me for the first little while. That and the other. Having to kill a man. But it was worse for those who stayed behind when we made our way to this place. If they had not stayed to fight the rest of us would not have been able to get away. David told me what it had been like for them. They had to kill too. They had to kill children that were controlled like puppets. Deadly puppets to be sure, but a puppet is a puppet... a slave.

And now we're sending them back out again into a world that can't be any better than it was. It's worse in some ways. We didn't have to deal with the dead. The radio tells us they have taken over most of the bigger cities. I just can't imagine it. But We're sending them out tomorrow, and all so that we can live a little better. Nothing that we absolutely have to have. We have everything we could ever need right here. But to live better.

To live better we need other things. It makes me wonder if we have changed all that much after all. I hope it is not a move toward the old society. I really hope not. Enough negativity though. They're going. I voted yes too, and there are thing's they will bring back that I asked for too.

On a lighter note I think almost every woman in the Nation is pregnant. I guess that's a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. Me, Patty, Candace, Lilly, Annie. Jane, Alice and Amber are pretty sure. There are so many more people here. It seems almost like we grow every week. Maybe we do, come to think of it. Oh and now Molly too, and I wonder who the father is? But how would I ask Molly without sounding too nosy or even insensitive? Babies and more Babies, and thank God for them. They are our real crop. We joke about that, how in a few weeks it will be time to bring in the corn and that's our crop, but our real business, our real crop, is babies.

Sandy and Susan are thinking about it too, only they both want to get pregnant. They're trying to decide who goes first. God bless them.

Some times I think I am a long way from my roots. In another respect it seems to me that I have spent my entire life trying to get to this place... This condition... And I am so glad that I am here.

May God go with ours tomorrow as they go back to the outside. Keep them safe. Bring them right back to us.