We spent most of the hours until nightfall looking around the building and wondering if this building could ever be used again as what it was. We discovered that many of the offices had apparently been in use until the apocalypse. Everything in many of the offices had been dusted, but documents, files, and any other items looked as if the employee would return to their workstation at any moment and continue working.

Somehow, that had been eerie. In one office, there was even a cup still on the table with a tea bag hanging in it. In another office, there were flowers that had dried up, with greeting cards from colleagues for her birthday and an unopened gift from a Suli for her very favorite colleague, Jen. How sad is that? I mean, this gift Jen will probably never open and she will never know what Suli gave her. We left everything as it was, by the way.

I said to Yibo that I often think about those apocalyptic movies and series and that I wish the apocalypse was just a movie or series with us too. Unlike "The Walking Dead" or "28 Days Later" where both main protagonists woke up after being in a coma in the apocalyptic world, I wish I would wake up in the morning and realize that everything we experienced in the now almost 16 months was just a nightmare.

On "The Walking Dead, Rick Grimes is shot in the line of duty and ends up in a coma. When he wakes up, he finds that he is alone in a hospital and that on a door is written "Don't open. Dead inside." In the hospital itself, there are already some traces of what went on there. But Rick doesn't understand, not yet. Not even when he saw all the bodies lying in the hospital's courtyard. He wants to go home to his wife and son, walks through the deserted streets, arrives home, the front door is open and no one is there. He spots a boy on the street, talks to him, gets knocked out and then learns about the zombie apocalypse from Morgan.

In "28 Days Later," Jim, who was a bike messenger and had an accident, wakes up from his coma and is also all alone in the hospital. He too wants to go home, in his case to his parents, and also finds the streets deserted. He screams his head off "Hello" which was really annoying and enters a church. In the church he sees people lying. Again he shouts "Hello?" and a few of the figures rise and immediately make their way to him. He realizes that something is wrong with them, runs away and gets help from two strangers who hide with him in a kiosk. There he learns from the two about the zombie apocalypse.

And I imagine waking up and the creature apocalypse never happened. So in the opposite sense. But what I don't wish for is to be married again. Wow, I just realized that the moment I write this, I thought about my ex wife for the first time in a very long time and I'm still glad she's my ex wife. I don't know how to say this, I want Yibo and I want a normal life with him where we don't have to be scared all the time, run away, fight or hide. A normal life! But will we ever have that?

Suppose the creatures disappear and we humans can come out of our hiding places again and live without worries. Then, nevertheless, nothing would ever be like it was once again. It would be as if we had to start all over again after a long war. I am sure of that. Millions of people died all over the world. Apartments, houses, factories, hospitals, much of it totally destroyed. Everything would have to be rebuilt. There would be a shortage of skilled workers.

Ah I don't know. This unopened gift made me very emotional and all these things went through my mind. When you see things like that and you have a lot of time to think, you think of thousands of things that make someone emotional. All it takes is a picture of a Coke or a hamburger and you get emotional. Because we may never have these things again.

Just like new books, new movies, new music. All of that will probably never exist again. Instead, should we humans survive the creatures be able to claim the world again, we will have to work hard to rebuild our cities and infrastructures. Or another example is our jobs. I wanted to be a special agent, worked hard for it, became one, and was proud of it. But I will never be a special agent again.

Then who am I now? Sure, I am still Xiao Zhan. But what makes me special? That I carry the blood of an Amore within me and thus have been "improved"? No, that doesn't make me me. That I have learned to survive? No, not that either. I just don't know who I am anymore. And that makes me sad. My greatest joy, all my love, my purpose in life, my only support, my confidant, my intimate partner, my simply one and only and someone who loves me so incredibly is Yibo. I am Xiao Zhan and my life is Wang Yibo. But that alone is not enough to be able to define oneself.

Alright, enough with the sentimental crap, let's get back to the topic at hand. Of course, we also kept an eye on our surroundings. Because the Demoids, and we were sure of this, would probably turn over every stone to find us. Raha doesn't want to just kill Bac, he wants to torture him by killing us first. Therefore, we shouldn't let them capture us again.

Just before dark, we noticed that it had started snowing again. Large snowflakes first fell sporadically from the sky and soon we had heavy snowfall again. Not good for us if we wanted to make progress. Except in the case of our tracks being immediately covered by the snow again.

Still, we had no choice. We had to keep going. So we packed our backpacks and set off again. We had really big problems to get ahead. The snow was knee high and there was more coming from above. I don't know if I had ever seen so much snow as this winter.

At some point we were really exhausted. And it wasn't even halfway through the night and we hadn't walked more than 4 miles when Yibo saw a couple of fenced garages. Curious if we could rest there, we climbed over the fence and Yibo broke one of the locks of a garage. And what did we find there? A snowplow!

The doors of the snowplow were unlocked and two keys were hanging on rakes on the wall with the papers for the snowplow. Likewise, there was a barrel of diesel and a fuel hose in a corner of the garage. "You can call me crazy, but I'm of the opinion that we fill up the snowplow and drive it as far as we can." Said Yibo, jumping into the driver's seat.

"So that means you want to leave a definite trail?" I asked, frowning, and sat down in the passenger seat. Before Yibo answered me, he tried to start the snowplow. Right at the first try it started and the tank was even full. However, I was really scared when the engine started roaring. A sound that was like a thunderclap in our otherwise silent world.

"I don't care about the track right now. You know, we can keep trying to make any progress on foot tonight. But I'm telling you, we're not going to make it. The next place is still 10 miles away, if not more. If we don't reach the next town before daybreak, we probably won't have anything to hide in during the day. With the snow plow, we have a chance. And no one is saying we'll leave it right where we'll be spending the day. And with luck, it will keep snowing like this until morning and our footprints will be covered right back up. And even if it stops snowing, we can still cover our tracks."

I realized that this is another one of those arguments where Yibo ends up being right, so I said, "All right. But on your responsibility."

Yibo smiled, kissed my hand and said, "Trust me. I'll get us out of here in one piece and you'll see, in a few hours we'll be in a safe hiding place." Then he drove off.

We turned on the heat, I watched the snow being pushed off to either side and flying really high, and at some point I got so tired that I just fell asleep. Traveling like this felt so comfortable, I just relaxed and slept until Yibo woke me up. By then it was already gray in the sky.

To my surprise, Yibo had covered a distance of about 110 miles by snowplow, taking us much further than planned. We got out of the snowplow and I immediately shivered all over. After all, I had been sleeping in winter clothes and heating for the past 6 hours.

Yibo took my hand and we stomped through the deep snow. With his other hand he covered our tracks with the help of a branch. After about 300 meters we reached a house. It had been too new for my liking. Not like the dilapidated houses in which we usually sought shelter. And it was even completely furnished.

I asked Yibo that we should look for another house, but I realized how ridiculous this request was. Outside it was daylight and we could not just walk around. Yibo had also said nothing and went instead with me through the house. At some point we stood under a skylight that Yibo opened. A ladder came down and we climbed up to the attic.

There were lots of dusty boxes in the attic, but that was all. We pulled up the ladder, locked the skylight from our side, and set up camp for the night among all those boxes. But I thought that I would not be able to sleep. I had slept almost the whole night and was wide awake. Unlike Yibo, who fell asleep as soon as he got into his sleeping bag.

I actually could not sleep. I lay down in front of the small round window in the roof and observed the area. While doing so, I let my thoughts wander, thought about the past year and became so melancholic, as can be read above. And I also got around to calculating what day it is and realized that in a few days it will be Christmas. That is, if I haven't miscounted.

And while I was thinking about Christmas, I thought it would be a nice gift if we could find our parents and be reunited with them. That would be great for us and our parents. And at the same time, our journey would be over, at least for now. And with that thought, I fell asleep. Luckily, I was lying in my sleeping bag and had asked Yibo not to connect our sleeping bags this time. Because I told him that I would be awake for a while and did not want to disturb his sleep.

In between I had woken up briefly and wondered why Yibo was suddenly lying next to me and holding me in his arms and he was not two meters away from me as before. When I asked him about it after waking up he said he couldn't even remember when he came to me. It seems he is attracted to me even while sleeping. Hahaha.

After we each ate two energy bars, we went through the house again looking for usable things. But the former tenants didn't leave anything behind that would have been useful to us in any way. During our search in the house we stopped at the windows again and again and looked outside.

In doing so, we noticed that there didn't seem to be any activity in the place. No creatures, either on the ground or in the air. No people. No animals. Nothing. I guess this little town really deserves the name ghost town. We even ventured out of the house and looked around. Unhindered we went to the snowplow, drove back to the house with it and left in the afternoon before the sun set which was shining so wonderfully. As long as we still have diesel in the tank, so long we still want to use the snowplow.

And when we were already an hour on the road, Yibo said, "Honey, it's now only 70 miles to the last known whereabouts of our parents." And at that moment I got all excited and nervous. Maybe we will see our parents again in just a few hours. Maybe!