- If it looks weird, write it down. You’ll forget later. You’re not special.

  - A pen and a journal are your best friends. (At this point, you should have a small army of best friends.)

  - Don’t just write stuff down. Read it back. Learn from it. Otherwise, you might as well take a nap in the middle of a horde.

  ---

  I have 6 notebooks.

  First three are information I got in the internet before it died. Thanks to these it got me past the first 3 weeks since the outbreak.

  One’s filled with food counts, supply lists, and how many pairs of socks I’ve gone through. One’s full of drawings—bad ones—of the zombies I’ve seen acting off. And the last?

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The last is everything else. This book. Tips. Tricks. Little flashes of “oh crap, that worked” moments I don’t want to lose.

  It started small—scribbles on old receipts, a sharpie on my arm. But the more I saw, the more I realized I wasn’t just surviving. I was studying.

  There are patterns. Movements. Triggers. Zombies don’t like fog. Some freeze in heavy rain. Some stare at mirrors. One literally tripped and started clawing the wall it bumped into for twenty minutes like it forgot what it was doing.

  I’ve seen one follow a song. Actually follow it. Not noise, but melody. Maybe something left behind in the brain. I don’t know.

  I wrote all of it down.

  Yesterday, I spent two hours watching a zombie scratch shapes into the dirt. Circles. Then triangles. Then nothing. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it meant something. Either way, I drew it. Labeled it. Dated it.

  I re-read all my notes every other night. Remind myself what I’ve seen. What I’ve learned. What nearly killed me and what didn’t.

  It’s not just about memory—it’s about pattern recognition.

  Some survivors think this is a numbers game. Food in, blood out. But if you know what you’re looking at? If you really pay attention?

  You get to stay one step ahead. Sometimes even two.

  And if I die, and someone finds my journal?

  Maybe they’ll last longer than I did.