I was trying to warm up and shake off the cold. My body was sore from the slip, and my mind was racing with the endless thoughts of survival. I had boiled water for a meal, and the warmth of the food gave me some comfort, but it wasn’t enough to drive away the chills completely. I decided to take stock of my situation again and see if there was anything else I could do to improve my chances of staying warm and safe.

  I decided that activity would be the only way to stay warm. I disassembled the A-frame tent and freed up my poncho to be worn. I also had some idea to use tent pegs for. I placed my belongings on the peak of the roof so that the runoff wouldn't make my backpack soaked. As the water hit the rain cover, it was deflected to each side and didn't get the bottom wet. If I had set the A-frame like this, I could have gotten the rain to fall to the other side of the building and not soaked my bed. I couldn't run or jog to get body heat, but I knew something that was very taxing and could be instrumental in survival. I started trying to pull up a steel sheet.

  Wearing the poncho for its intended function was weird as I don't believe I've ever actually worn it in the rain. The rain clothes I have were amazing. I would have probably been better served buying an ultralight tarp than trying to combine two different functionalities. But where I thought I could save some weight, it was worth the experiment. The poncho didn’t provide much warmth but did trap a layer of water for longer so that I was not constantly heating up fresh water. As I thought about that, I also thought it’d be best to wear both shirts even though they were drenched, as well as my pants. The wet fabric trapped heat as I worked. Best case scenario, they would be slightly drier when it stopped raining.

  I started working on the metal sheets and actually found a pretty good system. Now that I had freed up all the tent pegs, I would hammer in two pegs on either side of the screw. Then wedge another peg under that peg. If I did this with all three pegs, the screw wiggled quite a bit. Then I removed the pegs and hammered on the screw with the end of the multitool. This would cause the metal to flex, especially if I hit it on either side of the screw repeatedly. This worked really well when the screws were close to the edge of the sheet of steel. The further back the screw was, the more difficult it became.

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  After most of the day prying the screws up, the light in the evening was weaker than normal with the cloud cover, making me decide that it was time to call it quits. There was also that one last screw holding the bottom plate. So I decided to tackle it tomorrow morning. I grabbed my stove out of my backpack again and noticed that the Coleman container I was going to boil the water in didn't need filling as it was full from the rain and what had rolled off the backpack, which I had leaning against it.

  I ate another meal later that night and continued to boil water whenever I realized my body temperature was dropping. The night was miserable. I dug into the supplies and activated the hand warmers that I had in there, positioning them under my armpits to try to keep my core warm. I knew that it would be pointless to try to use the sleeping bag or sleeping mat as they would just get drenched further and give me no insulation value at all, especially since the sleeping bag was made out of down and was notoriously not good if wet for keeping its insulation value. I wished I was wearing wool, both for the insulation value when wet and for the comfort. But both my shirts were made out of quick-drying athletic polyester. The only consolation was at least I wasn’t wearing shorts and sandals.

  I didn't bother trying to sleep. I considered working on the roof, prying with my headlamp, but wasn't sure how many Zed heads I would attract with a light like that shining, and decided it wasn't worth having a stampede of zombies around the shelter. The 500 or so around it were bad enough. My thoughts circled, questioning more the rationality and science of what would have caused this to happen, and why there weren't very many other people immune or whatever it was keeping from turning. Was it a virus, cold, or, let's say, full conspiracy theory; alien parasite? But I had no explanation. This also didn't follow the normal zombie trope. I’ve always seen a bite leading to infection. I knew from intimate detail that Patricia's skin was flawless from any bites or wounds.

  As dawn started to lighten the sky, I really contemplated what was worse: being thirsty or being cold. After a good three-hour back and forth, the conclusion was that maybe being cold was more controllable as I have the ability to wear more clothing and have better shelter, whereas thirst could take you anywhere. As for the zombies, I do not know. And my only thoughts there were, without doing research further into it, I don't believe I would be getting anywhere further.