- Sleeping on concrete sucks. Sleeping on grass sounds nice until you wake up itchy or bitten.

  - A tent is a portable sanctuary. A tarp and paracord are close second.

  - Also, creepy crawlies don’t just mean bugs. Think hands. Rotten ones. Grabbing you from the underbrush.

  - [Jules’ Edit]: I told him to stop calling everything a “creepy crawly.” One zombie under a bush does not make all bushes evil.

  ---

  We found a busted sporting goods store just off the highway—glass broken, shelves stripped, but the camping section was mostly untouched. People don’t think about tents during the apocalypse. They think canned beans and bullets.

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  Idiots.

  We scored two sleeping bags, a compact tent, some thermal blankets, and even one of those tiny folding shovels Jules kept calling a “poop knife” no matter how many times I corrected her.

  Setting up camp became our thing.

  We’d find a quiet spot—near a river if we could—and she’d rig up little perimeter alarms with soda cans and string while I checked for tracks. Not just zombie ones. Human ones. We’d take turns watching the stars, swapping stories about who we used to be.

  It was the first time I felt like we weren’t just reacting—we were preparing. We were building something.

  At night, under the nylon roof of that cheap two-person tent, we’d talk about the future. Places we’d go. Towns that might still be okay. What we’d do if we ever found a boat.

  She even drew a little doodle in my journal—us in a cartoonish sailboat, armed to the teeth, flag waving in the wind that said: THE UNSINKABLE IDIOTS.

  I laughed so hard I snorted.

  It didn’t feel like a temporary alliance anymore.

  It felt like the start of something good.