Success! Sweet, sweet success. I haven't felt this happy in what seems like forever. Oh, right. Day 5. October 27, 2012. 12:22 am. My plan worked! Those seagulls and their questionable tasting meat can s** it. Elliot and I have enough food to last for weeks, if we ration it right. Just like I thought. Let me explain. Yesterday, I was scouting the place, an old supermarket (one of the few buildings that weren't set on fire), processing how exactly I was going to get inside safely/without the Thy-Trips noticing. I was thinking so short term, it disgusts me now. In my head, I would just walk in there, grab a couple of boxes of crackers, meat, maybe some fruit snacks, and whatever else hadn't gone bad, and sprint back here. Then I remembered something. If they were as hungry as I thought they were, they would smell whatever I was bringing out of the market and track me to the Starbucks hideout overnight. If I walked out of there with anything that had a smell on it, they would track me in an instant. New York may be big, but it isn't big enough for me to take that risk. Besides humans and birds, food is hard to come by, for them and for us. So, I grabbed my knife, headed down the few blocks it took to get to the store (as quiet as a sleeping mouse in a soundproof whisper factory made of pillows), and climbed in through an open window. Now here's where it got tricky. Remember how I said that food is hard to come by? Yeah, so guess who was wandering around the same store I had just climbed in? If you guessed anything besides the Thy-Trips, you probably wouldn't even be alive to read this. What was I supposed to do? Go around and stab each and every one of them with a dull knife I found in a place that specializes in making coffee? That wouldn't have worked at all. So I had to think. What would be more appealing to them than a store full of food? Live food. That's right, savages love a good chase. Most animals won't eat anything that's been dead for too long. They prefer the hunt and the freshness of a caught prey. What would make them any different from animals? Well, that thought pa**ed quickly. I wasn't using my ten-year-old brother as live bait, and I certainly wasn't going to run around New York screaming at the top of my lungs. So I used the next best thing. The appearance of possible prey. Now this was a long shot, but if it worked, I'd be set. Did you notice how late this entry was? That's because I had to use nightfall for it to work. There are abandoned cars all over the place, so I (quietly) searched for a spare tire. When I finally found one after searching car after car, I grabbed it, set off the cars alarm, threw the tire in the opposite direction of the market, and, you guessed it, hid somewhere out of sight. They all came pouring out like kids during recess to check the noise, and when they saw something moving around in the dark street, they chased it like dogs chase cats. And I slid inside the window, jammed my bookbag with as many odor-hiding cans of food as I could, and ran back here. Not too shabby for my first zombie apocalypse, huh? I'll be sleeping soundly tonight, and so will my brother. Maybe I'll even dream. Who knows? I'm starting to become optimistic. First good day of living, Shia.