Will of Man - Part Three Read Free Page B

making progress again since my encounter with the boy. I backtracked to where I left off and am now heading north again.
    I am coming to terms with what happened. I feel horrible, but I know it wasn’t by my choice. I am not a killer. I do not get joy out of hurting people. What happened to that boy and me was not our choosing. There must be a higher power controlling what is happening. The blackouts, the LAST DAY, the THIRST, and the PULL are all connected.
    Will I be pulled again? Will I have to kill again? Will I be killed next time? When I compare my wounds to the boy I had to fight, mine were by far the worse. He was getting the best of me before I got lucky and whacked him with a stone. What if that stone would have not been within my grasp? Would I have lost? Maybe I would be dead now and my family would have never known what happened to me.
    I’m not a violent person. I’ve never enjoyed watching people fight. How can I defend myself, or be aggressive enough to kill someone.
    Can I train myself to kill? Do I even want to? Am I sinning, even though I have no memory of what I did? So many questions, so few answers.
    As I walk along these dark roads, I am thinking nonstop about what I should do in the event I have another PULL. One thing I have going for me, is that I am very good at preparing for competition. If I get PULLED again, I know I will not be able to resist it. I know I will have to fight someone again and I am almost certain it will be to the death. It makes my stomach hurt and I want to throw up.
    If I want to survive this, I will have to prepare and approach it like I do a race. I will have to prepare myself through disciplined training and mental preparation.
    I will exercise when I can, I will begin doing my core exercises, along with pushups and cardio training. I will do my best to make myself strong and fast.
    But as far as training to fight, I have no clue where to start.
    Tyler's Journal Entry: 386
    Date: July 27
    Day: Saturday
    Weather: Rainy and hot
    Miles to go: 629
    Last night I walked through a thunderstorm. It was windy, with hard pounding rain, and lots of thunder and lightning. I know I should have taken shelter because of the lightning, but last night, I was motivated and felt strong.
    Part of my training when I was preparing for a long race was to prepare my mind. I forced myself through tough situations, I pushed on when I wanted to give up, I ignored the pain when my mind told me to quit. I guess walking through that storm, was me starting to train my mind.
    What if I’m PULLED during a storm? I may not be able to run for shelter. I may have to do battle in a tornado for all I know. Who knows, maybe I’ll never be PULLED again, and all this preparation is a waste of time. Hopefully that is the case. But preparing myself does keep my mind busy and it’s best to be prepared than not.
    The thunderstorm lasted into the morning when I usually stop walking and start looking for shelter. I found a huge culvert to rest in for the day. Since it was raining, and I didn’t expect anyone to be walking around, I started a fire with some dry wood I found inside the culvert. I hung my clothes to dry and fell asleep near the fire I made.
    I had been asleep for a long time when I finally woke up. I expected the fire to be out, but found it still going with a fresh pile of wood on it. Someone added wood to my fire while I was sleeping. I jumped back and grabbed for my machete, but it was not where I left it.
    Instead, there was a man holding it, sitting across from me, staring at the fire. He didn’t react, he just calmly said that he wasn’t there to hurt me and that I could relax.
    I’m not one to spaz out, so I calmly sat up and stared at him waiting for him to make a move. But he didn’t. He had a rabbit cooking over the fire and asked that I didn’t mind him sharing my fire. He offered me some of his rabbit and we ate in an uncomfortable silence.
    The rain was coming down hard, and I could