Saturday, June 5, 2020

I am on day two of my exile but it is bearing some fruit. To help pass the time, I removed our guest gag, and to tell the truth I pitied the poor fellow. I know how bad I smell to my own nose, I can't imagine what I smell like to Brad's nose. That is his name, and his wife, the one that was killed, her name was Samantha. She was almost six months pregnant. I have talked extensively to Brad. The whole raid was for food for Samantha. They had not eaten in two days prior to the raid and at that point, he had grown desperate. She was starting to get weak. The pregnancy was adding strain to her body. The other gentleman that was with them was someone they had met and joined with around the time Nashville closed. It had started out as a decent size group he said, but after several unsuccessful raid attempts, their numbers had dwindled. That is the only reason that they had food for as long as they had for his wife.

We will need to have a meeting soon to discuss the fate of our guest soon. The fate of our own family group here will depend on it. To have someone on the homestead who is taking resources but contributing nothing in return will eventually cause someone to go hungry. I already know Brad's mind on the matter. He knows what he did was wrong and he accepts that he will probably die for it. He wants to die in fact. His wife and unborn child rest not far from where we sit now in sullen silence, listening to the sounds of the oncoming evening as I write. Brad's only request was to be buried next to them. I do not know if I can ever trust him enough to free him off the homestead but dammit, to kill a man for trying to do the exact thing I am trying to do does not seem right. Maybe he will be willing to live in an uneasy arrangement. We need help and until he becomes trustworthy, maybe he can do a work release? But then, he has confessed to being a raider. Maybe death would be kinder for his kind.