/u/AndySocks has put together a fantastic looking new subreddit, specifically for keeping all of our stories going:

http://www.reddit.com/r/I_am_the_first_one

It's got a good rule structure, picks up right where we left off and looks terrific. Definitely worth checking out.

Sottik and I arrived in DC via Arlington. We happened to find a fairly complete map in the burned out carcass of an info center. We chose Key Bridge mostly just because it was closest, but when we got there and saw that it was not only closed but guarded by armed men and spotlights, we decided to try elsewhere. This wasn't a good thing. Moving through regional Virginia and now the outskirts of DC, we've seen nothing but horror and chaos.

I thought Zack was unpleasant back in AU, but America man, those ghouls are nasty. My confidence in seeing and handling Zack was, well, I thought it was OK back in AU. One huge Zack burst out of a dumpster as we passed it and starting gnashing at me. He was enormous. Massive guy. His jaw was completely broken. Must've been yanked downwards or something, because the bone was just not connected. It literally swung back and forth when he moved. Well, he still had muscular control of it. He was snapping and lunging and he really came close to getting me. Of course, Sottik couldn't really help a lot here; he was bit.

It was in Virginia, and we were walking along the highway. It was packed with cars, which is no biggie; we just keep far enough away from the road itself to not rouse attention. Well, you can't do that the whole way! The highway gets narrow, blocked, obstructed, and in two places literally missing. Sottik and I had to shuffle our way past a long line of cars, all filled with buckled-up Zack, and it was just this freak thing! This thing that happened, nobody can predict it, nobody could ever know how to react to such spontaneous fright. A seatbelt failed in a car we were passing and Zack got his whole upper body out the window. Sottik took a big bite in the side, and now he's sick.

Like, really sick. He couldn't stand without puking or getting really dizzy until early afternoon today.

We didn't use the Memorial Parkway - that seemed obviously guarded - and instead moved just a little further south to the Arlington Memorial bridge. Also blocked and guarded. So we felt stuck.

Then came the cavalry.

From behind the lines, in DC itself, packs and packs of bandits (what looked like bandits: they were in plainclothes and carried all sorts of mismatched gear) assaulted the bridge. They began pushing forward into the barricade, slashing at soldiers, some of them had guns to fire, it was chaotic on a whole new level: not because it was humans fighting humans again (like the good ol' days), but because the attacking bandits weren't fighting like they wanted to win. They were fighting simply because Control was in their way. Some five minutes of watching this unfold later, and a swarm of Zack attacks the bridge.

Thousands of them poured onto the catwalk, chewing into literally everything. From behind me I heard a voice. Sottik says to me "Bev, dude, it's time."

"The fuck it is, dude! We are gonna get across this river right fucking now, you hear?"

Sottik spat not a small amount of blood onto the cracked sidewalk.

"No man, not me. If I stand up now, I'll pass out."

He reached into his satchel bag and pulled out something: Two small, red pills. They weren't in a blister strip either, they were in a tiny zip-lock bag.

"I got these from a pharmacy friend in Uni. She said they were the best. The best, Sottik, the best. These are the best."

"Shut the fuck up and come with me!"

"Bev, I'm done, man. You can see that. Don't embarrass me by making me get up again."

You gotta understand, I didn't leave him there. Sottik made a choice and I happened to be nearby. Don't think I'm not gonna feel bad about it, or that I won't apologise to his mother when I see her next, because this guy, my friend, had the scratch to get up, out of his house, and survive. In spite of everything, literally everything, he survived where millions couldn't. When I have kids - If I have kids - I will tell them about Sottik.

I had walked maybe ten steps into the open air, body racked at it's core, mind fucked beyond imagining, beyond even mere rational thought, when I felt an arm grab me and a rough voice spat into my ear, "You wanna live to see the new year, kid?"

I turned, tried to focus, and saw a big man, one of the bandits, holding me. He had a fire in his eye that I haven't seen since TraitorBlade and I had to plough through Dubbo. He reminded me of TraitorBlade. The mindset that every day, apocalypse or not, is just a matter of rationalising challenges. The memory gave me strength.

"I'm just trying to find a place to stay safe and maybe eat something."

"You're joking if you think that place is under the moonlight in the middle of the road."

I tried to laugh, but my social skills have been obliterated by my general psychology. He must've seen it, and his whole tone turned from recruiter to humanitarian. "The bridge won't clear before morning. If you go for the main highway up north, the Custis, you should be able to sneak through it."

So I did.

It took over an hour, but I did it. I left my bag and took off my jacket beforehand. I only doublechecked the map before tossing that too. I pretty much had to follow the direction of Custis and I'd soon see the White House. A thing that Australians picture as this near-mythical place of justice and democracy and, most of all, humanity.

I attracted quite a crowd after touching earth when I hit the end of the bridge. I spent a couple hours on the roof of a building in GWU while the swarm shifted and changed. I stood on top of Mitchell Hall and saw the White House for the first time. It was still lit. The power was still on. I suddenly felt a rush of positive energy and a shot or two of adrenaline at the thought that, in there, I can finally feel safe without having to pretend or be the 'leader' anymore.

At 5:51am this morning, a nuclear warhead detonated over the White House. It's been just six minutes, forty seconds since then. The surrounding city was illuminated brightly, still is, and I saw that shoulder to shoulder, street to street, Zack had made DC his home.

I'm in Mitchell Hall now, without a shot of whiskey or a cigarette to ease my nerves while I wait. I guess it'll be radiation, or Zack, or maybe the building will catch fire or collapse.

I don't even have the energy to cry.

...Boom?

Randy was screaming wordlessly in my ear, his wrinkled face contorted and wild. The helicopters were spreading out, some tracking around wide, heading back the way we'd come. Two were hovering directly above us, bathing us in painfully bright spotlights. Randy was still yelling something, trying to get my attention. I looked at him. I was so tired.

"-said we gotta run!" he shouted, shaking me with trembling hands. He yanked my arm hard, and we stumbled forward, buffeted by the brutal downdraft of the choppers, trying to see through the unnatural brightness of the searchlights. Beyond was the dark, where we belonged. It seemed like we'd been out there for hours, days. I thought the night would never end.

We made a desperate dash for the Capitol steps, skirting around to the side for our meetup location. A handful of familiar faces huddled in the shadows. Where were the others? There should have been more. Gunfire erupted again in the distance, not stopping this time. Was it coming from different directions? The droning noise of the helicopters made it hard to tell. They were still out there, hovering over the lawn, their spotlights scouring the ground.

Things were spinning out of control. Maybe a quarter of the Resistance fighters we were supposed to meet at the access door had arrived, all of them looking panicked and confused. A hushed argument had broken out over where the others were and what had gone wrong. Apparently Big Brother agents had appeared near every location where we had surfaced, with more forces always materializing, as if we'd been expected. I looked out at the black night. Those were definitely gun shots, different calibers and from different angles. A firefight had broken out, maybe more than one.

As we dithered in our darkened alcove, the city around us steadily sank into madness. Vehicles rumbled by, a random assortment of armored personnel carriers and anti-riot trucks, herding groups of black-clad troopers. Helicopters continued to circle for miles around, their lights slashing the night sky. An explosion suddenly split the air, followed by another, then two more. Bright plumes of orange flame mushroomed in the distance, giving temporary glows to the horizon. More gunfire, and another booming explosion.

Either this was the big attack the bosses had hinted at, or something had gone terribly wrong. Though I had a feeling it was both, and that made it so much worse.

I spent the next few hours in a living nightmare. We finally agreed no one else would be showing up at the recon, and ventured into the Capitol to finish our mission, such as it was. There were offices we'd been ordered to search, documents to retrieve. Though what intel could be gathered that would alter events already taking place outside, no one knew. As we skittered our way through unlit halls, we started losing people. Fogerty had been rabid and cursing the whole time; he finally broke and took off, shouldering his rifle and growling about using it. Cassandra hadn't spoken since we'd met up outside; one moment she was climbing a stairwell with the rest of us, then next she simply wasn't there.

And then Randy disappeared. He'd looked in pretty bad shape. I never asked about the wedding band he wore, but I figured he'd lost his family somewhere along the way to D.C. No one should have to suffer so much as he did, as any of us had. Seeing him gone between one darkened office and the next made me suddenly sad, but perhaps it was for the best. We all need our own means of saying goodbye. I wished him well, and moved on down the shadowed corridor.

Shoving open the office door, its lock buckled and broken, I had to climb over the furniture that had been pressed up against it in some last-minute attempt at safety. The splintered bullet holes in the door suggested it hadn't mattered in the end. The office was large and well appointed; it had belonged to Congressman Mike Rogers, Chair of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. I didn't know shit about Mike Rogers, but I had specific files to search for. According to Colonel Bill, Rogers was a key figure of Big Brother. All the running, hiding, dying had been for this one room.

Of course, it proved meaningless. An hour later, the others had gradually dwindled away, and I could find no trace of anything - no files, no documents, not even a fucking memo. There was no computer on the desk, nothing of value in the cabinets, all remnants of useful information gone. Or it never existed in the first place. Had someone already been here, found and collected what I'd been assigned to take back? Or was the whole mission bullshit? Colonel Bill's face loomed up in my mind, and I recalled his last words to me: "Remember, appearances can be deceiving." He'd been smiling at me, like a challenge hiding behind bared teeth. I couldn't believe it had all come to this.

Crossing the carpeted floor (where were the bodies of the people who had barricaded the door?), I peered out one of the thick windows. Outside was Hell. Attack choppers lit up the night with tracers and rocketfire. Tiny orange gunshots responded, flying up from black pockets in every direction. Billowing fountains exploded in intervals, their booming shockwaves coming a moment after each bright blast. Down on the streets and lawns, a dozen or two vehicles, along with seemingly hundreds of fighters, shouted and fired and ran and fell. Scattered lines of fire arced across the landscape. Directly in front of me, a handful of cherry trees burned like giant torches. It was all falling apart, and rapidly growing worse. Jets instantly buzzed overhead in a deafening roar, and a heartbeat later an eruption blossomed so large, night was turned to day. It wasn't far off, over by the Monument from the looks of it; the casements in the office rattled and pounded from the force of the blast.

This was the end. There was no doubting it anymore. Despite the organizing, the training and planning, despite the passions kept alive in every member of the Resistance, this was the final battle. There could be no going back after this, and no recovery if Big Brother were allowed to win. It was the last chance to survive. The way to freedom would never come again. I fled from the room.

Back in the inky halls, it didn't take me long to find one - a fighter with a radio. With so few to go around, only a couple of us carried them. He had been Alfons, or Alfonso, a quiet guy with a thick black and gray beard. The gun in his hand told me he'd put that hole through his head himself. I sighed as I looked at his face; it seemed sad, as though his last emotion had been resignation. Taking the radio from his vest, I switched it to the command channel, used by bosses and other officers for sending out orders.

Nothing. No traffic, no static, just silence. Was it working? Did I have the right frequency? "Hello?" I said. "Is there anyone on this channel?"

Silence.

"This is recon squad three, in the Capitol building. Hello? We've suffered heavy losses. I don't think there's anyone left. I searched the-"

"Colonel Bill here."

I froze. Remember, appearances can be deceiving. Time ticked out to the throbbing of my heart.

"So, you're not dead yet, huh? That's good. Maybe there's a chance this thing won't go to shit after all."

"Sir?" It was all I could manage. If I was to learn anything about him, I needed to drag it out, and let him talk.

"Do you know how to find the number eight supply depot, soldier?"

"I think so, yes. Beneath the Pepco complex?"

"You can access it from the Capitol's tunnels," he said, breathing hard. He sounded bad, like he'd been running, or was hurt. The Colonel made me memorize the route I'd need to take, repeating it back to him until I had it exactly. "Good, good." He coughed, unable to stop himself for several minutes. "You meet me in the depot right away, you understand? Don't slow for anything. Go, now. Hurry, son." The radio went silent again.

I looked at the radio, then down at the bloody mess of Alfons. He already looked like a corpse, like a bloody mannequin. I stood and ran.

I raced through corridor after corridor, flew down staircases three steps at a time. The Capitol sits atop a massive system of connecting tunnels, and even has its own private subway. The Colonel's directions were spot on, and though it took ages, my sloppy footfalls echoing loudly along underground halls that stretched to black eternities, I eventually came gasping to a shut steel door marked "UTILITY ROOM - HIGH VOLTAGE". It had no outside handle - just a 10-key number pad on the wall beside it. I punched in the five-digit code I'd memorized, and a loud click sounded within as the electromagetic locks sprang open. Pushing it to, I found Colonel Bill waiting for me.

He had his pistol aimed at my forehead.

Neither of us spoke. I don't know if I even felt fear. I was struggling for breath after my sprint. I looked down, and saw his leg had been hastily bandaged. The cloth wrapped around his thigh was dark and slick with blood. I began noticing other things; he was sweating, and his hand was shaking as he gripped the gun. He looked like a caged bear, both frightened and terribly dangerous.

"Is this what you meant by 'appearances'?" I asked quietly.

He grunted, smiling weakly. "I suppose I did." He paused, studying me. "I also asked if you had what it takes. Well?" He was still aiming the pistol at me, now at my chest.

"If we're going to do something, let's do it then. I'm tired of surviving, Colonel. Might as well die for a reason." Tiredness had drained me to the point that I had stopped caring. I just wanted it to end. "Number eight depot is where the nukes are kept, isn't it?"

He nodded, lowering his weapon. In his other hand was a keyring. He held it out, dropping it into my palm. "Big Brother's command center is a complex of warehouses northwest of here. You and I are going to finish this. Our gift to humanity." Abruptly, he swayed, throwing a hand out to steady himself against a wall.

"Colonel, you're in no shape-"

"Quiet, damn it," he muttered through clenched teeth. "No time for bullshit. Come on, the trucks are waiting."

He led me, limping badly, down the short hall, this one fully lit. Beyond the door at the end was a vast garage, like a hangar, filled with rows of heavy duty military trucks, each with a large cargo box on back like a mobile bank vault.

A quick series of eruptions somewhere above suddenly burst the underground quiet. We were close to the surface now. There would be no telling what we'd find up there. The garage shook. Dust flurried down from the concrete ceiling.

"Stay right on my ass, and maintain radio contact," he growled, pointing me to my truck. He clambered into his and brought the rumbling vehicle to life. Starting my own and finessing the gears, I followed him away from the other trucks and up a slowly spiraling ramp. Flourescent lamps lit our way as we ascended. Soon, the spiral straightened out, and the Colonel stopped beside a control panel. The sloping ceiling ahead groaned and split, as each half smoothly receded, revealing the moonlit night beyond. He waited for the doors to retract fully, and I saw him eye me once in his side view mirror. Then he stomped on the gas and surged forward.

Instantly, small arms fire rang out, beating at the Colonel's truck with clanging, tinny reports. I was directly behind him, almost bumping his truck, and my cab suddenly lit up with sharp metallic bullet strikes. The thick armor in the doors and windows didn't help to muffle the deafening sounds with each shot. We were in a suburban setting, in a kind of corporate park. I couldn't see where the shooters were firing from, but as long as the truck's heavy armor held up, I didn't care. I just couldn't lose Bill.

We tore through the streets, some choked with burned checkpoints or riot control trucks, various bodies littering the pavement. We rumbled over them, never slowing. I risked a glance toward the sky, and it was streaked with aircraft and tracer fire, lit from below by a dozen burning buildings. We kept on, pushing our engines, oblivious to the occasional shots that bounced off us. A small blast erupted to the right, lifting my truck up and sending me careening into the parked cars on my left in a spray of sparks and crunching glass. I downshifted and stepped hard on the gas, unwilling to let the motherfuckers stop me. Helicopter lights appeared ahead, angling our way, flying low and menacingly down our street. I doubted the trucks were made to withstand rocket attacks, or minigun cannons.

The Colonel twisted his rig to the right, thundering down a narrow street between tall rows of brownstones. I nudged his rear bumper more than once, determined to stay with him. Where had the choppers gone? It had grown quiet.

He turned left at an intersection that sloped downhill. As I came around behind him, a black gunship was hovering nearly in front of us. In a bare moment that seemed to stretch beyond measure, Bill raced forward, getting nearly airborne as he crested the slope of the street. I urged him faster, making contact with his truck again as I pleaded for more speed. The chopper spit out a hail of speeding tracers. I couldn't tell if I'd been hit, but I was still driving, plunging down the street behind the Colonel and under a dark overpass. More explosions rumbled behind me.

Around a bend, back up a low hill and into an industrial area, warehouses and abandoned tractor trailers all about us. A rail line formed a perimeter to our right, behind buildings. There were bodies everywhere, as if hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people had convened on this one neighborhood. They were scattered like leaves, clumped up in doorways and beside cars, curled up against fences, lying face down in the street. We rolled past them all, crunching over them, ignoring them, defying them. Fighting for them. My face was wet with tears. I snarled something unintelligible.

Another explosion up on our left. More rapid gunfire. The helicopters were behind us now, gaining quickly. Something erupted wildly off to the right, bigger and brighter than any of the other recent explosions. The sound crashed like an ocean wave against the cab, and I saw a massive ball of blue and green death, terrifying and beautiful, go up from a fuel depot by the rail line. The whole world was coming to an end, one of fire and destruction. It was madness, and we were all damned.

The Colonel lurched once more, turning left down a side street. Nondescript concrete blocks loomed on either side. The way ahead ended at a cul de sac, with windowless warehouses all around. Trucks had formed a blockade there, and a hundred dark forms scurried about, waiting for us. Waiting. The choppers arrived behind, but held their fire, hovering at the only exit.

Bill hit the brakes, veered to one side and stopped. I eased up beside him and did the same. Craning my neck to look at him, I could see the spray of blood that he'd been coughing out.

"Ready, son?" He said softly, haggardly, the radio gripped close to his mouth.

"Will this really put an end to it?" I asked.

Someone with a bullhorn had started issuing demands outside.

Bill grunted. "Decapitation. Whatever comes after will be up to the others." He was wheezing, fighting off another round of hacking coughs.

"And Tim?" I had to know. If nothing else - the reasons behind it all, the reasons why we all had suffered so much - I needed to know if Bill had betrayed us.

He was quiet for a while. Our engines idled softly. The agents gathered at the end of the street milled about, their movements seeming pensive. The guy with the bullhorn kept saying something. I saw one of the gunships drift into view on the other side of the Colonel, floating like winged death, just waiting to cut us down.

"My wife's name was Marie," he finally said. His voice whispered out of my radio. "My daughter was Virginia." Heavy breathing. Weeping. "My s- my son, Henry. Gone." Another pause. "Taken. Gone." He moaned achingly, began crying like a child. His voice was full of so much pain. He quieted again, then took a slow, steady breath. "But I'm here now. That's all that matters, goddamn it. They tried convincing me, pleading with me, threatening me, blackmailing me. I wasn't the only boss. There were others. Others who listened, or caved. Who worked behind the scenes, to fuck the survivors." He stopped, looking out at the firelit night, at the nervous agents standing a hundred yards before us.

Then he turned toward me, and through the layers of bulletproof glass I saw a man reconciled. Whatever he had accepted, whatever personal obligations or demons he'd embraced, it was absolute. "I'm here now, son. That's all that matters. So. You ready?"

I smiled, Sophie seated beside me, Columbia in her lap. Looking at them both, I was content. It was over.

I was ready.

.......................................................

Related entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

I saw her, the girl from the parking lot. She was screaming, terrified of the monster that approaches. The beast tore into her flesh and began feasting, she cried, begging him to stop, but his hunger overpowers my mind.

I awoke, a piece of flesh in my mouth. As I open my eyes, I found myself outside and surrounded by mutilated bodies. I vomited, my mouth filled with the taste of blood and stomach acid. I was shaking. I was starving. There was gunfire.

I sat up only to hear, "Get down!" shouted at me as bullets whisked overhead. A man dressed in all black called out, "Crawl over! Now!" When I was in arms reach, he grabbed me and pulled me into a shallow trench.

"What's going on?" I asked.

He looked over and with a sigh said, "The end."

"The end of what? What are you talking about?"

He put a hand on my shoulder before firing at some hidden enemy. As he continued to fight, I became acutely aware of my hunger. A throbbing headache clouded my rational thought and I lunged at him. My mouth only got the taste of metal and blood as he hit me with the butt of his rifle, knocking out at least two of my teeth.

Alpha Company to HQ, we found one of the infected, over.

HQ to Alpha Company, bring him in, over

As I faded in and out of consciousness, I was carried. A great fatigue came over me and I lost the will to fight.

I hit the pavement. The man carrying me was bleeding from a wound in his chest.

Shit, return fire!

I saw beside the man a Kalashnikov. I picked it up and began running.

Leave him, we got bigger problems!

I ran into a nearby McDonald's hoping both for safety and to satiate my hunger. As I opened the door, I heard screams. Almost instinctively, I began shooting at the figure that startled me. I wasted three rounds to see two children crying terrified around their recently murdered mother. A girl, no more than 10 held her knee as blood spurted out, "It hurts! It hurts!"

It was a trick, there were no children left in the GTA! They weren't real. They couldn't be. It was a government trick. I knew they had to be false.

bang bang

They were dead and my shoulder bruised from recoil. It was a trick, it had to be.

Then there was my hunger. Three freshly killed animals? It would be a sin to waste the flesh. They weren't human, they couldn't be. The government had evacuated all the women and children. They were at Camp Borden. Women and children couldn't survive that long. The meat was salty, tender and fresh.

"Martha, is ever...oh my god!" I turned around to see a bearded man carrying a hatchet and a backpack. We stood looking at each other, stunned in silence, before I realized that if I did not kill, I would be killed.

I reached for my rifle as he ran at me with his ax. Lucky for me, my bullets traveled faster than he did. I was forced to see the reality in what I had done. I had just killed and began cannibalizing a family.

Planes flew over head and in the distance, large smoke clouds began to form. Outside a building was hit by a bomb and collapsed.

I was a monster. I was a failure. I couldn't get to the bottom of the conspiracy. I couldn't save the world. I couldn't even save myself. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I looked down at the rifle in my hands, the killing machine.

I kissed the still warm barrel before putting it in my mouth. I cried as I prepared to squeeze the trigger. I gave a final glance to the family I had just butchered, that innocent, beautiful family.

For my sins I will surely burn in hell. There is no redemption. Numbed of all emotion, I am left now with only one feeling left, the same feeling I felt on that moment, the same feeling that now dominates my mindless and soulless life. Soon I will die, but until then the feeling haunts me and destroys me. I hunger.

I had to eat.

-end-

I think something bad is happening. Worse than when this whole thing started. The electricity they were supplying us has been cut off and their radio transmission is now just static. People outside have started a sort of riot and I'm hiding here. No doubt is something happening-going to happen- that's changing things. I'll keep you all updated, but I'm not sure when I'll be able to write again. I've started praying again, but I don't think even God can help us now.

It was all going so well, safety was in our corner for once and we had enough ammunition to fight a small war with the people to fight it as well, We could not all fit on the plane that was going over and we were told it would come back for the ones that did not leave, so I chose to stay. Giving my spot to a little girl who had lost her mother and father on the trip to Alice Springs it was all going well, the food was plentiful and everyone there (even though ruled under a military oppression) was happy and quiet happy to relive their life like once before. It was all going so well, we had full bars and music. We even had old TV shows and movies.

It was all going so well until that morning, the morning where I drank myself to sleep at a local bar and was awoken by the sound of swirling sirens. Back and forth I heard it, lifting my head from the sticky bar, seeing the puddle of vomit on it. I stand up shaking my head and putting my sunglasses on my face. Bevman and Sottik were already on the plane and Traitorblade and troubleviking I hadn’t seen since I drank those two under the table a few night back. I stand from my stool, stumbling and catching myself on the bar. I see the half bottle of scotch on the table and my happy pills so I pop three and wash them down with a couple of swigs of out of date scotch.

I grab my things (Basha and my Glock) and push forward through the bar door into the bright, loud outside world. I’m standing on the side of the street seeing people running towards the outskirts of the city, a lot of extra people had been rolling in to town over the last weeks. I reach into my pocket and pull out a crumpled up packet of smokes, grabbing one of them out and placing it in my mouth, I flick my lighter and light it. Just as I was putting the lighter back in my pocket I feel myself being shoved forward. I hit the ground and watch the big brute of a man who knocked me down run with what looked like a bed post.

I brush myself off and swig the last of the scotch out of the bottle, tossing it to the ground, watching the glass shatter into a million bits. I walk down the street to see what the problem was, the amount of times people get up in a giant stink about a handful of rot bags it priceless, but the closer I got the more I heard. When I got to the gate I seen it, a wall of mouth breathers, slowly coming closer and closer to Alice springs. The gates where open (for now) and people where moving out to try to fight the oncoming wave. I get to the front of the line, looking at them I take in a deep breath of my smoke, dropping it under my foot and grip basha by the handle and have the glock in my other free hand.

I could feel the rage build inside me, my heart pumping, my hands beginning to shake and the song Omen by prodigy begins to pump in my head. I shake back and forth and I hear it, a massive roar from the big man with the bed post, I hear a lower yell from a girl with long blonde hair to my right and I rise up basha joining in. All yelling at the top of our lungs, not to scare an unscaleable enemy but to amp us up, the yells infected everyone and when we heard the first rifle shot the front line moved in. I notice the blonde girl pulls out a hand axe and a meat cleaver and she quickly darts around burying them into the skull of every mouth breather in sight. I turn to the big guy and spot him clean heads off shoulders with the bed post.

I hear another gun shot and the one in front of me drops, I raise the glock and start popping headshots left right and centre, I drop out the clip and basha swipes through ones neck turning it into a pez dispenser and I kick it in the chest. Reloading my clip I was back in the day, spinning around through the dropping corpses like they were going out of fashion. I feel something land on my back and turn quickly, glock pointed for a head shot but the blonde girl was standing with her back to me, we were slowly getting surrounded. I point the gun past her and run forward, shooting at anything that comes close, making a hole for people to use to get in and out of trouble. I place my last clip into my glock and swap my hands, basha now the main weapon of choice I was splitting skulls. That day I would have dropped more just defending the town then I did getting there.

It was all going so well, and then we heard it. Gun fire that was not our own and I spot the blonde girl go down, bullet through the head. Before I could do anything I feel something his my left shoulder and it drops me to the ground, I look over and I had been shot. Before I could react I feel something else on my left arm, I could feel teeth push their way into my arm. I swing basha into the skull and quickly roll to my feet and piss bolt back to the town and as soon as I got in I felt something hit the back of my head. Everything goes black……..

…….As I awoke there was one light shining directly into my face. I go to move h=my hands to cover my bloodshot eyes but I could not get them off the chair, when I looked down I could see a rope tired around my hand keeping me connected to the chair. I try to look around but all I can see is pitch-black around the light directly pointed at my face. “Hello Mr Boganus” Said’s a voice “I think we need to have a little chat”

“Who is it?” I replied franticly “Where am i?”

“Now now Mr Boganus, I’m the one around here that asks the questions.” It replies. As the figure stands closer to the light I can see a older man with a high ranking army uniform on. A colt 45 Pistol on his hip and he leans closer “Also refer to me as your Colonel, I think I am owed that much”

I spit directly into his face, blood and saliva slowly dripping of his face and he stands straight sticking my across the face with a powerful right hook, knocking the chair over. I calls over for other to pick me up “I aint telling you shit” I say as I am placed back upright

“You don’t have to” he explains “I know your friends are going to America”

I was shocked, how did he know “Why do you need me then if not for information”

“Well you know that farmhouse you went to?” He asks “the boy you cut up and left for dead was mine, we found him a day later, his guts pulled out of chest and his fingers all cut off on one of his hands. That boy was my boy, now I know doing the same to you will not bring him back but at least it will even out the playing field”

As he finishes he reaches behind him and grabs a bowie knife, slamming it down into my hand and the wooden chair underneath. I scream, the knife panted through my hand, my wail turn into silence when it hits the darkness, nothing was coming back to me. A tear rolls down my cheek and I try to get out of the chair but I the Colonel grabs onto the knife wriggling it around to stop me. “Fuck you” I whimper under my breath

I feel the knife come out of my hand and I let out a long sigh. My breath becomes heavier and I can feel myself fade. “I don’t think you have to long leave in this world Mr Boganus so I won’t be too long.” He goes to slam the knife into my other hand but I move it, he hit the rope and in one smooth motion I grab the knife, cut myself fee and tackle the Colonel into the light, turning the room into complete darkness.

I quickly find a wall and run my wet hand across it, trying to find a door. I find the handle and swing the door open and run out of the door, outside was still light out and it looked like the outskirts to Alice Springs. I quickly run down the road to the town. I hear cars start up behind me and take off down the road after me. I get to the front of the town and I hear the car speed up, I jump out of the way into a bank and I hear the cars tires screech and hit a telephone pole. I stand up and look in the car, not the Colonel, I look down the road an see another car come flying towards me. I dart inside the town.

It was dead, like Winton dead, there was no one left. I dart behind a house and jumped my way into a house, quickly pulling myself in, now I’m hiding in a walk in wardrobe with no way out. I was reading the flight is not even coming back. I’m alone, bite, shot and stabbed. I’m loosing blood like it’s going out of fashion, I don’t think I am going to make the night and it was all going so well.

• Mr Boganus 31/12/12

I tried desperately to escape from my shackles in vein. I so desperately wanted to be free. I could not stand to be as the captain, my fate in the hands of another. The inhumanity that was inside me could just have easily been in my captors. I had to get free.

Alarms sounded, a voice over the PA began to speak, "Initiating Operation:Maya in T minus 10 minutes. All soldiers to their stations. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill."

I was picked up and carried. I could hear the sound of soldiers running along with worried murmuring.

"Do you think this is really going to happen?" asked one voice.

"It must, it's time to bring in the new order. The age of the over man has come," answered another.

I was carried for what felt like an hour before I was placed down on a bed and my arm injected with some unknown substance. My fingers became cold and I felt violently ill. I became lightheaded and my mind grew clouded. I realized how hungry I was. I needed food. I vomited over myself, the puke dripping out of the bottom of the bag on my head. My shirt was removed.

Where is the yellow sign? He's supposed to have the yellow sign!

I fell off the bed and hit the floor. There was no pain.

You are going to ruin my experiments! Get him into a holding cell!

My limbs began to flail violently, straining against their shackles.

He's turning!

No you idiot, it's a first reaction. This formula doesn't activate for 3 days!

I was picked up.

What about the yellow sign?

The hunger inside me grew. I had to feed.

We'll know soon enough!

The bag was removed from my head, I saw I was in the arms of a strong looking soldier, his neck exposed. It looked almost like pork. I had to eat. I lunged at him, my teeth barely piercing his flesh.

He screamed and threw me on the ground. A door slammed and I was alone, ravenous in the darkness.

Shit, man, I'm too young to die!

My eyes adjusted to low light. There was a strange pile on the other side of the room.

You'll be fine. Nurse! Get me a sedative!

My eyes adjusted, it was corpses.

You, soldier! Hand me your side arm!

I had to eat.

Bang

The pages of my journal are more fragile now, they can easily tear and are begging to yellow with age. My pencil is not faring well either. It is now much more than a small stump with lead at the end. I have no eraser so I have to write slowly and meticulously. Making nwe no mistakes.

I am still sitting in the basement of my old apartment. And although I'm fully aware of my diminishing provisions I can't force myself out of here. It's home now. And who knows what the hell is out there. P -I can't do it. There's something on the roof too. A while ago I heard a loud thump, then the tapping of footstep. Someone's coming. But who? Friends? Allies? Or something worse?...

My radio has long since stopped working. The last thing I heard out of it was that whatever this...thing is this plague is that it came from Washington D.C. I always thought Trevor was crazy with all of his tin-foil-hatted conspiracy theories; but, I guess he was right all along. The Government really is trying to kill us or something. Here's to you Trevor! Wherever you are...

The footsteps have started up again. I can hear them coming down another floor. These angels or demons come closer. Will they be wielding pitchforks? Or maybe harps. Hopefully it will be the latter of the two. Though...what if it's neither? What if they bring a gun? What kind of salvation will that lead to? At least with the other two options I know what will happen. But a gun. Will they let me live and simply leave? Give it to me as a token of luck? Lead me to safety? Or will they just end it all for me. Any of these options are better than my current situation. I guess I will have to wait and see what fate will bring me.

More footsteps. They're getting even closer now. They're on the ground floor. I'm sitting here shaking with fear and anticipation of what's to come. At this point even if I die I will be happy. I have next to no food and I haven't a sip of clean water in days. Please. Whoever's up there bring me rescue, bring me death, bring me salvation, bring me anything I can't live like this anymore.

The footsteps again. They're coming! Yes they're here! A large man has his gun pointed at me. But to me there is no gun. There is light. And in the barrel is my angel...

The gunshot went off. And I died. I died smiling for I had heard the anthem of the angels. And I can only hope that more people will hear it too.

The next few hours blurred past me unnoticed, and I soon found myself jogging with the others in my recon squad down an unlit subterranean corridor. A few of us had headlamps, which provided the only light in the otherwise black surroundings. The thick concrete walls bounced our footfalls and breathing back and forth, creating an echoing din that followed us as we snaked our way under the city.

We eventually found the storm drain ladder shown on our map, and Linda, our squad leader, scrambled up it. She said she used to be a restaurant manager, before the Sickness. But the nightmare of death and corruption and genocide had made us all into different people, hardening us and reforming us anew; now Linda was one of the most gung ho in the Resistance. She wanted the fighting to start, wanted someone responsible to kill.

The coast clear, we all surfaced onto the silent residential street, stately brownstones and tree-lined sidewalks all about us. Nothing stirred, not even the air. It could have been a dream for all its unreality. Panting, Randy climbed up and joined me, and we were off again. We ran and stopped and paused and ran, repeating the same maneuvers untold times as we wound our way through the neighborhood. Alleys were our thoroughfares, moon shadows our accomplices. A row of townhouses was separated by a narrow park up ahead, and between the buildings the Monument suddenly appeared, floodlit from below. We were getting close.

Now out of the denser streets and approaching the broad expanse of the Mall, we slunk low. As the area opened up, I soon saw other groups - the other intel teams from the Resistance. There were Big Brother agents, as well, stationed behind barricades and around vehicles. Some patrolled with dogs, waving flashlights back and forth. What were they doing here? It looked as if they were expecting an attack. If they controlled the city, why had they set up defensive positions? What were they hoping to defend against?

We all knew our strike was supposed to go off soon, very soon, but the bosses weren't saying exactly when. In fact, it was to be a series of coordinated attacks, from multiple directions, all focused on quickly overwhelming whatever command structure was in place here. Colonel Bill told us once we'd secured D.C., we'd be able to branch out, sending forces north, south and west. But in order to win here, we first needed to know exactly what we would be up against, hence our orders.

But if the Colonel was working with Big Brother, wasn't I somehow assisting my own downfall? I didn't know enough to accuse him, but I couldn't trust him, either. What did he mean by "appearances can be deceiving"? What the fuck was I doing out here, risking my ass for someone who might be plotting against us?

"Two o'clock," Linda whispered, pointing off to our right. A dog patrol unit could be seen a way off, two handlers and one dog. That would be a problem. With so few lights illuminating the dark night, we could sneak about easily enough not to be seen. But if that dog caught our scent, it'd be over. We'd be lucky to run and survive, much less complete the mission. We still didn't have an accurate picture of the forces in the area; we couldn't turn back now, with nothing to show for it.

As we watched the agents, we soon realized they were walking a wide perimeter, arcing out far to our right. It meant they would be behind us before long, and getting closer. The dog would know by then. I lay in the cold grass, wet with dew, watching the patrol team and wondering frantically what we should do. To our left, across a wide lawn and up a nearby street, were perhaps a dozen troopers, dressed in black assault gear and gathered around a riot control truck. A dark dell in the Mall's lawn was directly ahead, with a small stand of cherry trees in its center. If we could reach that, we might be able to get a better glimpse of the agents around us, as well as get closer to the Capitol building, our recon location. But I couldn't see how we could make it without setting off that goddamned dog.

That's when Linda grabbed my arm. She didn't say a word, just fixed me with her haunted eyes, eyes that had seen too many horrors. She squeezed hard, harder again, and I knew. I nodded once, and she was off, hunkered low and sprinting to our four o'clock, angling to cut off the patrol as far away from the rest of us as possible. Before I could quietly answer the others' unspoken questions, the night erupted with barking.

"Follow, quickly!" I hissed, running like hell for the cherry trees. Shouts joined the dog's alarm. I saw another patrol, one I hadn't noticed before, swing their flashlights off behind us, and run to join their comrades. More shouts, then gunfire. CRACK. CRACKCRACK. A woman's voice, screeching curses, more gunfire. Half of those standing next to the riot truck mounted and peeled away, floodlights drenching the black air with brilliant white, as the truck roared and bounced over the street curb and across the wet grass. The remaining agents stayed where they were, suddenly wary. There must have been two dozen armed figures making their way behind us, toward Linda. If she was even still alive by then. The shots had stopped by the time we reached the stand of trees.

"Holy shit! Holy shit!" Randy was breathing hard, and even his manic whispering was too loud. I clamped a hand over his mouth and growled for him to shut up.

"We have to get to the Capitol," I snarled as softly as I could, pointing to the massive complex a few hundred yards ahead. "Linda just bought us that chance. No more talking. Stay low, stay quiet. Make for the access door from the briefing. Go!" Flitting through the trees, then out again onto open lawn, we scurried like roaches along the ground, searching everywhere for any agents we may have missed. Aside from the group still standing up the street, we couldn't see any others. And best of all, we hadn't been seen yet ourselves.

Running is so much louder in a silent setting. Gasping for breath, our footfalls stamping too hard, it was dumb luck we weren't heard. Off the grass of the Mall, over the sidewalk and across the street, trying to stay as far as we could from the occasional working lights. We circled wide around a shallow reflecting pool, its still black surface mirroring the starscape overhead perfectly. Onto another lawn, the final stretch of open ground; the Capitol loomed large and powerful directly ahead. We would make it. We'd get to the meetup point, find the other scouting teams and collect our intel, and then get the fuck out of there. And then...then I'd have to have a talk with the Colonel.

As we approached the broad, cascading stairs of the building, I sensed more than heard a soft, rumbling sound somewhere in the distance, somewhere up. It was in my bones as much as my ears. I slowed, then stopped, catching Randy's sleeve. "Do you- do you hear something?" I panted.

The poor man was breathing so hard, he wouldn't be able to hear anything beyond his own thumping heart. Fifty years of pot brownies will take its toll. "Wha?" was all he could muster.

I opened my mouth to ask him again, but it was too late. In an instant, a flash of blinding light erupted from behind the Capitol's massive dome, like a wall of small white suns. We squinted at the brilliance, shielding our eyes in vain. We needed to get off the grass, out of the open. Only another hundred yards to go. I wrenched Randy's arm, tugging on him to run. I could hear it clearly then.

WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP...

A cloud of helicopters climbed over the hulking building, spreading out and charging forward, their harsh lights slicing through the night, flying directly at us. I had never been so terrified in my life. We were caught. It was too late.

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Related entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

bang bang click click click I had finished emptying the rifle into the captains head. I then dropped the C7 and began to run, both from his body and from my sins. "He had to die," I said, "With a broken leg, he was doomed anyways. It would have been cruel not to shoot him."

I couldn't stand it anymore, the silence was judging me too loudly. I reached for my ipod only to notice that it was missing. I was alone, not even the late Benny Goodman to keep me company. I had no friends left. Instead the souls of the damned remained to condemn me for my crimes.

I was still in despair when I found the entrance to McMaster University. Unlike UTM, McMaster had not been turned into a military base. In fact, the only sign of activity was the thick black smoke coming from a smokestack on the campus.

I had to find Eric and I had to understand the symbol on my hand. I went for the nearest building and found myself in an abandoned library. I undid my coat to find that my blazer had been stolen. After removing my shirt, I found on my chest a scar in the exact shape of the yellow sign. Whoever the "UR" was, they had freed me from the military's control over me.

I noticed a camera move to face me. Not entirely sure if I was being watched, I walked across the library only to find that every camera I walked by followed me. I may have been free from the sign, but I was not free from the military.

A soldier burst into the room and began to shout, "Hands on your head!" I complied. I was cuffed, a bag placed over my head and carried to another building on campus.

As I hit the ground I was forced to confront my reality, I was still a prisoner.

I saw a light, slowly approaching from the end of a tunnel. As it grew closer I saw it was an entrance. I looked in and was greeted by Satan. Two demons took my arms and began carrying me towards the great heat. I screamed. The heat grew stronger. A great ringing followed along with searing pain.

I awoke with the ringing still in my ears as two gloved men pressed my chest against what appeared to be a stove. I cried out in anguish, but to no avail. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the ringing stopped and I was pried off of the stove. I looked down to see the yellow sign replaced by blistering burns.

I was dragged into another room where a bearded man in a white lab coat took my arm and began wiping it with an alcohol swab. Knowing what would happen, I closed my eyes, for fear of needles. I fell asleep.

I awoke again on Main Street, where I had last seen the battle, the pain still in my chest and another pain in my left hand. Looking down I saw I had been branded with a black tattoo of a circle containing the letters "UR". I briefly entertained examining my chest, but the cold quickly persuaded me otherwise.

I knew I was a pawn in some perverted chess game, but I had no idea who I was serving nor what I would be expected to do. Instead, I continued towards McMaster hoping I would at least find Eric.

As I continued, I found the ground scattered with dead bodies, presumably from the previous battle. Further down the road, someone shouted, "Hey kid, help! Over here." I slowly went over to see a Canadian soldier with his leg trapped under the tire of a Ford pickup.

The soldier, clearly suffering said, "Drive this fucking thing off me!" I looked at his shoulder to see the two bars signalling that this pitiful creature was once a mighty captain in the Canadian Army.

"Drive this off me, that's an order dumb shit!" Inside me, a rage began to swell. He was the military. He may have only been a middle rank officer but he was responsible for the bodies on the street. He was responsible for the bodies at Square One. He was responsible for the disappearance of my brother. He was responsible for the plague. He was responsible for my plight. He may not have given the orders, he may not have even carried them out, but that didn't matter. He may have been as ignorant about the crisis as I was for all I knew. It didn't matter, I blamed everything on him.

Here was my chance to enact revenge on what I saw as an appendage of the Canadian government. It was also my chance to save the life of a fellow human being. I could either slay or save. With the power of life and death over an enemy, I became God. As the captain went from angered orders to fearful pleas, I began to laugh. My shoe made home on his cheek, pressing his face into the road; his suffering amused me.

The captain took a swipe at me and I was forced to jump back to avoid being grabbed. In my insanity, I grew enraged. How dare he attack me when his only hope of survival was me driving the truck off his leg? I knew then that he was to be condemned to death.

I ran to a nearby tree and jumped at its branches until I had a sizable club in my hands. I then returned to the captain and began thrashing at him with all my might. He showed fear, but refused to scream, I needed that satisfaction. I left again and grabbed a C7 rifle from the battlefield and shot the captain in his groin. He doubled over, but again refused to scream. I started beating him with the butt of the rifle trying to get my satisfaction, but he was too strong to scream and I too weak to kill him.

As I beat him, I was slowly forced to confront what I had become. Not only the day before had I attacked an innocent girl, but I was now beating a defenseless man. Not only that, I was enjoying it. The captain had done nothing to me and here I was attacking him and why? Before that point, I had believed I was the good guy and that preserving myself was preserving a small part of humanity and morality. I was wrong.

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."-Friedrich Nietzsche

It was Tim, the son of a bitch from Edmonton; the man who'd disappeared as Jean-Claude, Sophie and I raced to get the hell out of there, only to turn up again with a gun in his hand, surrounded by goons, standing over those murdered UNAS members who had tried to escape. He was a fucking agent of Big Brother, and he was here inside the Resistance.

Talking with Colonel Bill.

Randy could see I was shaken up as we shuffled in line, filing into the briefing room. Was Colonel Bill watching me? I had to do something, while there was still time. I felt frozen, wooden. My thoughts were buzzing, but hardly made any sense.

"I said, you okay buddy?" Randy asked, poking my arm. "You look like the shrooms just kicked in." Randy was a middle aged stoner. He seemed to frame everything in drug references. I usually got a laugh out of it, even when he was being serious. But just then, I barely heard him.

We moved closer to the room, closer to the Colonel. Something was wrong; I could sense it. There it was again - Colonel Bill glanced at me in line. Was that concern on his face? Fear? Anger?

We got to the open door. I tried ducking into the room without notice, but the Colonel laid a meaty hand on my shoulder. His smile was all teeth. His eyes held me a moment too long. "Good to see you again, soldier." He gripped my shoulder once more, hard, then let me pass. I didn't utter a word. I couldn't have spoken if I'd tried.

I knew then Colonel Bill was one of them.

The briefing went by in a haze of confusion and panic. If the Colonel was working for Big Brother, how many other bosses were involved? What was going to happen during our series of planned attacks? Was it already over, preordained by enemies hiding among us? One thing I'd become absolutely convinced of after our trek across North America, and especially since reaching D.C. - the forces responsible for covering up the Sickness, murdering entire populations of innocent survivors and now working to reshape the world in their twisted martial image had to be destroyed. Not merely stopped, or beaten, but so utterly erased from existence that no trace would be left of their corporate holocaust. It was all that mattered anymore. Not me, not even Sophie. If Big Brother could be completely annihilated, any measure to see it done would be worth it. Humanity was worth that.

By the end of the briefing, we'd been given our orders. I was attached to a recon squad of about a dozen men and women, including Randy. We were to scout areas of the Mall and report back on Big Brother's numbers, assets and activity there. But as we stood to file back out of the room, the boss found me in line once more.

"I want you to know, I'll be there tonight, keeping an eye on things from the shadows," he said in a soft voice. Others were walking past us. The din of chatter and shuffle of feet made sure no one else could hear him. He leaned in closer, looming over me, his whisper barely audible. "I'll be watching you, specifically. Think you've got what it takes? Remember, appearances can be deceiving." He turned and stepped out, already talking amiably with the others. I stood there, dumbfounded and terrified, staring at the Colonel's broad back as he left.

Randy was poking my arm, but I never felt a thing.

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Related entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

The next couple of days after meeting Colonel Bill were a surreal blur of faces, locations and activity. The faces were young and old; male and female; black, white and brown; those of military veterans and doughy suburbanites alike. The locations were largely underground, built haphazardly into fallout bunkers and basements and cavernous utility rooms, connected by a dizzying web of multilevel corridors. It was a city within a city, or rather, beneath one. Long halls would stretch into blackness, abandoned rail stations echoed with dripping water, cold war structures built of absurdly thick concrete spoke of an era of national paranoia.

Colonel Bill turned out to be a member of the Ten Old Bosses, an ad hoc group of experienced officers, spooks and politicos who had taken responsibility for the Resistance, or the New United States, or whatever other name these survivors had adopted in their final fight. They'd amassed an army down in this shadow city; several armies, in fact. Each Boss seemed to control their own faction, complete with rivalries and allegiances between loyal followers. They nested in every space available, spread out over miles under the surface. There were countless hidden entrances and exits, disguised as residential garages, or car parks, or as fenced off utility blocks. There were cooks, doctors, nurses, clerks, scouts, junior officers, armed guards, even chaplains. There were entire complexes full of the very old and very young, families huddled in fear, nurseries caring for anonymous children. There were mess halls, banks, bars, chapels, jails and libraries. And there was an unending stream of stolen weapons. Small arms, explosives and every sort of military vehicle imaginable had been squirreled away in whatever area could be found. There was talk of a fleet of large trucks stowed somewhere, each carrying a tactical nuclear warhead.

But mostly, there were soldiers. A few months ago, they were teachers and plumbers, lawyers and students. Now they'd become hardened fighters, out of necessity. Their experiences of horror and depredation had reduced them as feeling, caring humans beings, then built them back up as cold survivors. They ranged in age and background and physique, but they had all made it here alive. They were poorly equipped and barely trained, but they were determined, even desperate. And I became one of them. I ate and slept with them, trained with them, nervously laughed away fear with them. I was a latecomer, but was instantly accepted. I even found another Alaskan, a pilot from Talkeetna named Randy. Randy was batshit crazy, but amusing.

Of course, Sophie was taken away early on. I caught up with a nurse once who had spent time with her; apparently she'd been taken to a care ward about half a mile from my barracks. Columbia had gone with her. The nurse said she'd be fine, but needed to rest a few more days. That was good. I had a growing sense that time was soon running out for all of us, one way or another. In nothing else, at least they would have each other. With luck, maybe I'd even get a chance to see Sophie again. That's what I kept telling myself.

Today is the 27th. Christmas was two days ago, though I didn't know it at the time. A bunch of us from Colonel Bill's company were supposed to run a scouting mission, waiting till dark and surfacing to map out Big Brother's activity near the Mall - that's what everyone down here had started calling them, the collection of military personnel, black ops agents, garbagemen, private contractors and other murderous cocksuckers who'd taken it upon themselves to try wiping out those of us unfortunate enough to survive the Sickness. Whether Big Brother had a government mandate was meaningless; their genocidal campaign was as twisted and bloody as the outbreak itself - more so, since the infection didn't have a conscience to ignore.

As I was mustering with the others for our briefing, I glanced down a half-lit hallway toward where Colonel Bill was standing. He loomed over most everyone else, and was easy to spot in a crowd. My group was saluting as they passed him, and filing into a room. As Randy and I approached, I noticed one of the men standing beside the Colonel. The two had been talking quietly. The man looked over and met my gaze, and his face fell. He excused himself from the Colonel and stepped away, scurrying around a corner.

My chest felt instantly gripped in a vise. Randy asked me something, but I barely heard him.

It was Tim, the man from Edmonton.

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Related entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

All I could think about was tea. Everyone I loved was probably dead, I was rendered a puppet by the yellow sign, I lived in constant fear of dying any moment, but my biggest anguish was a lack of a warm cup on a cold morn. With a heavy heart, I got out of the car and continued down the road.

Within an hour, I walked off the QEW onto Main Street. I was in Hamilton. The only problem is, I had no idea where I would find my brother. Reluctantly I stepped towards a house where I could at least be warm while I thought out my situation. To my luck, the first house I tried was unlocked.

As I stepped inside, I nearly tripped over a carelessly placed pair of winter boots. I looked around to see the distinct disarray that could only come about with family life. The kitchen was scattered with dirty dishes and food. The living room covered in the remains of a battle between great Lego armies. Atop the stairs was a filled basket of laundry. In to many ways, I was reminded of my childhood.

After hanging my coat, I stepped into the kitchen and began looking for tea. Luck held out as I found a box of Yorkshire. I smiled down at the royal warrant of HRH Charles, Prince of Wales as I filled a kettle with water and put it on the stove. I unbuttoned my blazer and sat down. On the table I noticed in the pile of dishes a book, "Raising a Teen With Autism." I picked it up and flipped through the pages, reading the notes the parents had written. It was abundantly clear from the book that this teen was a burden on her family.

The kettle began to steam. Frantically I searched for a teapot, finding it in the same cupboard as the tea. I threw a bag in and poured the water. My next issue was teacups. Despite having the rest of the tea set, the house seemed void of mugs. I settled on an ordinary drinking glass and began to enjoy my brew.

Almost at the end of my first cup I began to hear footsteps on the stairs. I instinctively assumed one of the infected and began searching for a weapon. I settled on a stainless steel knife and began walking towards the noise. When I reached the stairs, a blond girl lunged at me and began attacking me with spirited, though weak punches. I swung violently with my knife. The blade bit into her arm and as she drew back, I drew blood.

The girl fell on the floor crying and looked at me as though begging me to spare her life. A wave of guilt came over me. Here bleeding was an innocent girl I attacked. I knew I was morally obligated to help her survive this crisis, or at least fix the wound I had made. Emotionally, I was paralyzed with the fear that if I tried to help, she would attack me again. So, with a guilty mind I grabbed my coat and walked out the door.

Once outside, I decided my best hopes of meeting Eric would be at McMaster. However, as I walked down Main Street I was confronted by what appeared to be a street battle. Men dressed entirely in black were shooting at Canadian soldiers further down the road. I got down, terrified that a stray bullet may hit me, despite my distance from the combat. As I lay prone, a thump was felt at the back of my head and the world went black.

...okay, there we are...

Looks like I finally got this piece of crap working. First bit of good luck I've had in a while, heh...

I relocated last night, further north, always further north. The house I'd been holed up in was discovered by some folks packing some pretty major heat, from what I saw. Hell knows who they were, could've been the fucking Salvation Army, but the past few months have taught me that people are almost always assholes. Staying put and hoping they'd shower me with gifts and hot virgins wasn't even close to being worth the risk. Barely made it out, really...had to leave a sack of canned goods and a 1911 I'd scrounged up at some point, I can't remember where. Fuck.

I managed to find a park of some kind a few miles north. It's amazing how overgrown the place could get after less than a year of abandonment. Not that I minded. Gave me a lot of cover in case I get any unwanted attention. I slept in a tree last night.

I woke up to the sound of gunfire, and hit the ground running. I'd made it a hundred yards before I realized that it wasn't directed at me. Street gangs, probably. Or maybe infected. I remember shivering, dropping to a crouch, yanking back the charging handle on my AK. Ended up being a Zeke, a really ugly one, crouching over some poor bastard's corpse in the middle of the street. I don't really hold it against them anymore. Everything has to eat.

Anyway, after I put a bullet through the thing's skull, I glanced around and jogged over to the fresh corpse, putting another round in his face for good measure. I'm down to six bullets now.

He had a Ruger on him, a revolver, which I snagged and shoved into the waistband of my pants. I know, stupid. I made sure the two remaining rounds weren't in front of the firing pin, though.

A few more miles of walking and I found myself an apartment building, which, as far as I know, is empty. I'm sitting there now. Guess I'll start where I left off yesterday. Macon, right?

--

Anyway, I shot the guy, took his Pork 'n Beans. They were the first thing I'd eaten in days, and I sucked them down like a vacuum. They tasted like shit.

I choked them down, crushed the can and did a quick review of everything I had on me: 1 AK-74, 19 5.45 hollow point rounds. Would have been nice to have a gun that fired a more common bullet, like a .223 or something. I realized I'd have to be pretty conservative with my ammo. By the looks of things, 19 rounds weren't gonna last me more than a few months.

After grabbing a pretty large knife, almost a machete, really, and a North Face backpack, which I filled with as much food and water as I could find, I left. Lot of infected around, Macon was bigger than I'd realized. I managed to get out, though. Most of the poor bastards were so decayed that they'd lost most of their senses, at this point just kinda wandering around mindlessly. So, like I said, I made it out without any issues.

I didn't want to end up in Atlanta, because I didn't want to die, so I struck out down Highway 129, heading northwest. Passed through a town called, creatively, Gray. As I recall, it suited the place well - boring concrete architecture, looked like some post-Communist shithole. Saw no one, grabbed a water filter from a Bass Pro Shops I managed to break in to. Otherwise, it was uneventful. I kept at the northeastern route. I had no idea where I was going. Still don't, really.

The 129 went through the middle of bumfuck nowhere for a while, eventually dropping me off at some town - a hamlet, really - called Eatonton. It seemed deserted, save for the corpses littering the poorly-maintained thoroughfares. I prepared myself for more looting.

I figured I was probably the last man on the planet at that point, so I was somewhat surprised when I heard the screeching notes of a wailing electric guitar drifting through the air. Not particularly loud; they sounded like they were coming from a tabletop FM radio or something.

I don't know why, but I followed the sound to a small house, painted a gaudy yellow, with a busted-in front door and boarded windows. I could make out the song, now. Paschendale, Iron Maiden, the tinny notes ringing out from somewhere inside. Odd, I thought, shouldering my rifle and easing through the shattered aperture.

The stranger tackled me from behind, causing me to drop my rifle. Reflexively, I threw back my elbow, knocked him off me. He'd hit me at a weird angle, thank God, which meant that he fell back pretty easily. He recovered quickly, too - by the time I'd managed to draw my knife and spin around to face him, he was in position to launch a solid uppercut into my chin, which he did with vigor, snapping my head back like a rubber band. I hit the ground and he was on me like lightning, prying at my fingers to try and get at my knife. For the first time, I got a good look at his face. He was old. He looked almost feral. It may have been the shitty lighting of the house, but it seemed like he was frothing at the mouth. Driven insane by the End, I guess. At least, I thought to myself, he wasn't infected.

I don't remember a lot about the fight. I rolled, managed to get the knife to his throat. I killed him then, slit his throat as Bruce Dickinson launched into "Cruelty has a human heart". Then I panicked and ran, again. Seems like I do a lot of running these days.

I didn't make it that far, though. The prospect of loot in the seemingly deserted town was too much to resist. So I started going through houses, methodically. Found a surgical mask, more water, a Bible. Everything else was gone. Someone, several someones, had been through before me, and they'd sucked the place clean.

So I struck out north, again. I vaguely remember deciding to head towards Greensboro and I-20.

Not sure why I kept the Bible. I'd never been a religious man. I considered myself cautiously deistic. If anything, the coming of the apocalypse should have driven me towards a hatred of God. But something in me - my preacher of a dad, maybe - made me keep it. It's been comforting, I guess. Reading Psalms and all that.

I think I'll start calling myself Job.

We crashed near Richmond, Virginia, where one of the rebels said his allies had set up a base. I can't explain what happened during the flight right now, but I'll sum up the most important points.

We can't trust the rebels. We can't trust The Control. Sottik has been bit, and we're running out of time. We hope to find a group of survivors to form a plan with. I don't know the area, and I'm scared again. There hasn't been a whole hour since we left the wreckage where we haven't had to duck Zack or hide from something. Feral dogs are a very real hassle. We found an RV with some fuel, so we've holed up in it until we can get it moving.

See you guys on the 31st.

Here's my last entry.

 This camp is small, but busy. It's ran by Doc with the help of a few loyal henchmen. We've been here a week and things are calmer than I'd figured. But there is a lawlessness to most the men. Kinda feels like a prison yard on a good day. And I don't miss those days. But it is comforting to be around men I understand. There are a few who don't fit in, but more hands get more work done. So the ones who haven't found their groove are tolerated. Before we got here there was a few christians who tried to start a christian uprise inside the camp. Telling the men this was the bibles rapture and we were the sinners left behind. Suffice it to say they got the god beat out of them. I didn't even know you could beat someone that hard. But I haven't been heard one word about god since being here.   I asked Doc directly about my dogs. He said Bull & Baron weren't a problem, but I had to find their food. So he had my machete and bow returned to me. He asked if I were interested in a gun. They had plenty to go around. I said thank you but refused the offer.   It seems I'm free to leave, but not a word has been said about my ATV. There must be other facilities, Billy returned on foot without my ATV the first night we were here. But I have no plans on staying here. Everything I've been told assures me my family is either dead or gone. A small group of us have looted a few houses on the edge of town. Totally empty as if the owners just got up and left on their on accord. The dogs and I will leave here on foot, it's slower, but much safer. I still have to get to my family's home, i have to see it again. I'll know when it's time to go and when it's time we'll be just a whisper on our way out. These men have made it clear that they have no intention of ingaging in the battle that is starting. There are other groups of people out there, there has to be. Groups who don't want to live in small camps in the mountains hiding from Securadyne. Groups who are gonna be fighting to ensure their liberty. I am just such a man, I don't intend to spend the rest of my life running and hiding. This has to end. 

Is this thing on?

Day...fuck, I don't know.

--

I've lost count of the days. Not that I was ever really keeping count. Probably been...eh, a few months? A year? It's snowing. It wasn't snowing when it happened. pause

Anyway, I found an unbelievably beat-up tape recorder, seriously a total piece of shit, but it still works...I think it still works. I dunno. Thought it might be a good idea to, y'know, record my thoughts and experiences. Y'know, for posterity. After I die.

Which actually looks like it'll happen pretty soon. Been encountering a lot of infected, even though I've been avoiding the main routes. I guess, I guess that was pretty stupid of me, to expect mindless zombies to stick to the main roads.

Fuck, I'm not very good at this.

I guess I'll start off back home...

Started out in Valdosta. In Georgia. It was close enough to the Florida border that when the initial reports started coming in, I was worried. Not overtly so (who could be? After the faux scares about bird flu, swine flu, SARS, whatever, I wasn't about to freak out about some isolated crazies in Florida) but enough that I actually went out and bought a gun. Nothing big, some cheap 9mm snub-nose revolver, but enough to keep the wife happy.

Didn't take long for the pandemic to spread north. Guessing after about a week or so, we had a few isolated infected moving north. Valdosta's redneck country, didn't take long for a militia to form. At this point, we were starting to appreciate that things were gonna change, that shit was going down. I joined up. The Valdosta militia wasn't much better than an armed gang, lot of KKK paramilitaries and skinheads, but I was white, so they took me in, equipped and trained me with an AK, a 74 I believe it was - is. I still have it.

Despite all the tough talk, when the infection actually started swarming up from Florida, our lines crumpled like paper. Firearms restrictions had prevented us from getting anything heavy enough to really put a dent in the swarm. Heh...assault rifles, come on. Seems funny just looking back at our own ignorance.

Not only did the infected manage to break through, defenders started dropping, succumbing to the infection. After a few days, they'd come back as these mindless zombies, and we'd have to put them...we'd have to kill them. It was never easy. A lot of us refused. When they'd jump up and come at you, though, you tended to lose those inhibitions.

When the flood came, we didn't hold out long. A day or three. We all broke eventually. We all had that point where we could take no more. Infected were in front of us, beside us, around us...when I saw one of the lifeless husks rip its own arm off and club the guy next to me to death, blood spurting everywhere, that was mine. I ran, nowhere in particular, just...away, with only a pause to look back. I saw that I'd been one of the last to break - some small consolation now, but at the time, all I could think about was getting away.

There was one guy, Confederate battle flag patch and all, who must have been the bravest son of a bitch I'd ever seen. He was standing, alone against the onslaught, completely surrounded by these...things. I watched him run out of ammo in his sidearm and draw a machete and cut his way out. Musta killed six of them. It was like something out of a bad martial arts movie.

When he paused to take a breath, three of them came from behind, unimaginably fast, and tore him apart. That's when I started running. Not back to my wife, or my dog, or my infant son. Just north.

I'll never forgive myself for that.

I eventually found my way to I-75 and followed that. A brief stop in Macon to procure some supplies (read: loot them from a supermarket) ended in my first murder. I put a bullet in this guy's chest over a can of Pork 'n Beans. Only thing I regret is wasting the bullet.

That sounds awful, doesn't it? The end did horrible things to all of us.

Anyway, it's getting late. I'll continue tomorrow. click

I was hardly out the door two minutes when the cold began to bite at my ears. Instinctively I reached into my pocket expecting to find a hat. Instead my hand merely grabbed at my empty pocket. I began muttering to myself, "Mom, you always have to clean my coat every spring. You probably threw my hat somewhere and now it's lost again! Why do we have to have the same conversation every year? Don't move my things!"

"If you put your hat away, it wouldn't get lost," the memory of my mother replied.

"My hat was right in my pocket. That's away. My coat didn't need cleaning anyway. It's a hand-me-down from Eric," I continued.

"That coat was expensive. It's a nice coat and shouldn't be dirty," She retorted.

I continued my increasingly heated argument with my absent mother while I walked down the empty Mississauga Road, vaguely aware of how absurd it was. Finally as I stepped onto the QEW highway I ended my argument, put my earphones in and enjoyed the company of the only friend I had left in this apocalyptic wasteland, The Benny Goodman Orchestra.

As his clarinet filled my ears, the world seemed to melt away. I wasn't walking down an empty highway crowded with the remains of looted automobiles, I was in a ballroom, a beautiful girl in my arms. I spun her around and started into a foxtrot, slowly making my way down the room. I closed my eyes and let the music flow through me, I was free, soaring through the room.

I was falling, soaring towards the asphalt. As my face collided with the road, so did my life collide with reality. No time for fantasies, my foot was caught. Turning around I saw a pale man grabbing me from under a bus. As he dragged his mouth towards my foot, I screamed in terror. I kicked in vein, knowing that I was to go from a survivor into one of the infected. Yet as he went to bite, a loud bang echoed through the air and his head seemed to explode.

I looked around attempt to find the shooter, but found nothing. Instead I just thanked my guardian angel and feared my potential hidden assassin. Either way, there was nothing I could do but continue.

As I walked, the sun began to set and my feat began to ache. I desperately wanted to get to Hamilton, but my childhood fear of the dark prevented me from continuing. I opted for sleeping in an abandoned Honda.

Between the cold, the end of the world and conjurations of my childhood monsters, I got very little sleep that night.

I've been in Steilacoom for about five days now. Like the announcer on the radio said, there were supplies and food waiting for us; us including me and the thousands who flocked behind me. I took what was available and made a hideout for myself. Most of the buildings are abandoned, so I'm taking up residence in an office building. I honestly can't say that I trust any of the people here. No doubt have they been through worse than I have and are probably on the verge of insanity. It's odd to think that today is Christmas. No one is putting out lights or gathering around fireplaces. There will be no gift-giving. I'm not sure if the holiday even exists anymore.

I managed to catch a squad of them in a compromising position. They were getting overrun by fuckheads, so I lent a helping hand. Turns out they're leftovers from the navy base in Charleston SC. They've been recruiting the few people they find on the road and clear out areas with infected. They're trying to make their way to the Bahamas. They said they were looking for new people, and that I was apparently handy with a gun. So, I guess I'm going to join them. They're going to give me basic training on tactical manuevers while we're on operations. I've only got one problem, the commander was very shifty when I tried to ask about those other govt. guys other redditors have been seeing. I think they might be a splinter group. I'll try to update whenever we're not on the road. Signing off for a while.

Oh, and by the way, I just checked my calendar and it's the 24th! Christmas eve! Stay safe out there and keep your gun near your desk!

As the sun shone through my window and onto my face, I opened my eyes. The only comfort in my life was that Chairman Mao was still smiling down from the sun in the poster on my wall, a small token of an age gone by. As I looked up, I felt a small pang of happiness. I looked down at my chest and my joy was instantly turned into fear. I still bore the yellow sign.

I went to the computer praying Zhang had e-mailed me during the night; he had.

It means you're playing your part. There's something waiting for you in Hamilton.

I racked my brain trying to figure out why Hamilton? The only connection I had to the city is that my brother was a student at McMaster.

I began to talk out loud, "Could it be that there's where I'd find Eric? Or is it a trap? You know what? Fuck it! I'm done with searching for answers, I'm done with Zhang's stupid games and I'm going to stay here until either my brother comes back or the government kills me!"

Just as I finished, the silence was broken by a feint ringing that slowly grew louder. As the noise grew, a sharp pain began to surge throughout my body, slowly growing worse. I fell to the floor screaming in agony until finally both the noise and the pain suddenly ceased and I was left lying on the ground.

"Coincidence," I thought in half denial, "It was coincidence that I felt that way after declaring I'm staying home. I'll be fine." As if on cue, the noise started up again bringing with it a second jolting torture. There was no mistaking it, my fate was being dictated by this yellow sign. Any attempt to fight it would be punished accordingly.

Again I cursed everything and everyone for what had happened to me. Why did I deserve such misery; to not only be denied everything I loved, but also my very freedom? What use was I to the government? Why watch me of all people? What made me special?

As I loitered the noise came on again, more faintly this time. My delay was merely a small crime and thus was met with small retribution. Either way, it was time for me to get dressed and go. I found my old suit folded outside my front door, my shoes just beside the pile and a blazer hanging on my doorknob. I was eerily reminded of my mother who used to lay out my school uniform the exact same way before the world fell apart. With a heavy heart I decided that this is what I was supposed to wear and donned the black clothes, I felt as though I was meant to attend the funeral of civilization.

I stepped outside only to be greeted by the bitter cold. Winter had come, though no snow fell this year. I ran back inside where I grabbed a coat.

I headed out into the void, hoping to find my target in the dark.

Footfalls behind us. Someone approached, then stopped. A muffled radio voice broke the silence, and was shut off. Any other moment in this endless, forsaken struggle for answers, I'd have spun, snarling. For her part, Columbia gave a low growl, a tinny rumbling in her narrow chest. She stayed by our side, making a good show of bravery. But right then, at the end of it all, with Sophie's still form curled up in my arms like a ragdoll, I couldn't have cared less if they decided to put a bullet in the back of my head. I was finished; finished chasing, finished being chased, finished trying to glean some kind of meaning or reason out of the sickness, the response, everything. I wanted it all to be over, one way or another.

"If you're going to kill us, fucking do it, coward," I croaked into the gloom, not turning my head. Irregular pockets of lighting gave the landscape outside a spotty glow, with large patches of utter blackness in between. I wonder if this is what it looked like generations ago, before electricity and cars? I could see more stars above than lights below. When was the last time an American city had a canopy of visible stars?

"Raise your voice a bit more, and I might have to." The voice was deep and gravelly.

Sophie sighed, but didn't raise her head or open her eyes. I wasn't about to let her go. The stranger could come to me. "Leave us alone, please." I was so tired. I could hear the man stepping through the culvert's puddles, coming toward us. Finally, I turned my gaze to meet him as he strode up beside us. He was tall and lean, with closely cropped silver hair. He wore a combat military uniform. Army, I thought, but the tunnel was dim. Columbia had stopped growling.

He knelt. "I'm Bill Cummings, Colonel with the United States Marine Corps. But everyone prefers Colonel Bill." He waved a hand behind me, and I heard more noises; there were others back there.

"And are you here to dispose of us, Colonel Bill?" I asked, a dark chuckle working its own way out of my throat. "Like the garbage men? Are you a garbage man, Colonel Bill?"

Other strangers, some in uniform, circled us. They crouched low, scanning the railyard in the distance. One or two kept their eyes on me and Sophie.

"Not quite, son. Your friend there needs medical attention. My people will take good care of her. But you're coming with me."

I had trouble keeping up with his words. He was taking Sophie? I could have argued, fought him, done anything to protect her. But what could I have done against these people? What could I do to care for Sophie? She was dying. And if he'd wanted us dead, he would have killed us before speaking his first word. Columbia had sat back down, looking content. Good enough for me.

"I'll do anything if you help her," I muttered quietly. "She's not sick, just worn out. We've been through too much. She needs food, and rest." I locked eyes on the man. Was he smiling? Who the hell could smile at the end of the world? "You help her, and I'll do anything you ask."

"The only thing you need to do," he said, rising, "is fight. Fight with whatever you've got left, son. It'll all be over soon."

There was no mistaking it - he was definitely smiling.

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Related entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

 The camp was large, perhaps 40 tents, mostly small groups of 5 to 7 tent entrances turned together to make a common area with a firepit for each. The camp was full of men not just resting, but relaxing and some drinking and gambling like pirates. Others hiding in their tents and some just reading or lounging about. I automatically thought to myself this is too sloppy and relaxed to be affective. At the far end of the camp just below a steep rock formation was the circle where we all sat. It was about 20 men sitting on the ground so Kyle and me pulled up some dirt. I sat Indian style with a dog head poking out from under each arm. Kyle introduced me to a few of the men, one tried to shake my hand but Baron met him with a low growl. Then an older gentleman introduced himself to me as Doc and began telling me the story I hadn't heard yet, the story of the end, as we know it anyways.     An elite group of military contractors, chemical manufacturers, agricultural conglomerates and financial investment corp's decided to merge and make one company, Securadyne. After the merger they controlled most everything, grain production, major manufacturing, precious metals, small arms and law enforcement. And of course they bought political pull to make their plan legal all the way till it didn't matter anymore. Within just a few years Securadyne had bullied and bribed almost every major politician to secure tax payer dollars for research and development. Tax dollars used to fund highly intelligent mad scientists who created an airborne agent related to mad cow disease that would ensure a 95% mortality rate once released in large volumes. As for the 5% still alive due to anti-infection inoculations, personal protective gear or a natural immunancy, they can be controlled by the small military force Securadyne has built. At least that was Securadynes thinking. Doc told me about the Northern California Underground and the Radio Loop I've come to know pretty well. He says the NCU can't be trusted. He told me there's a tentative plan to over run the Securadyne outpost located just south of Sacramento. But these men from this camp wont be going because he has intel that says its a trap and the only way it can end is if we take out the company head in Washington D.C. But didn't express any intent on doing that either. He continued telling me about the horrors of the infection and how it all went down. So much information, I drifted off thinking about my family, the chance any of them have lived is glib at best. But I have to go. I have to see. Then I realize I'm not sure how this all works. I'm not sure if I'm free to just leave or am I now a recruit for this band of pirates? With the camp void of women and children I can't help but think these men might not fight for the right reasons. It's not like I had a choice in all this. I was kinda highjacked on the road. My thoughts are so loud and jumbled I've stopped listening to Doc completely.   Kyle had to nudge me and almost yell my name to bring me back. I wasn't sure what I'd missed, "Answer Doc!" Kyle snapped at me. I said "I'm sorry, I was thinking of something,...someone" "it's okay, I just asked if you'd please tell us about yourself, how you got here and if you seen anything we should know about" Doc said kindly, which seemed to upset Kyle. I can tell Kyle's ex-military and takes everything too serious. So once again, as I did out on the road with Kyle and Billy, I told my story to the circle of men. The divorce, the property, failed phone calls, the Radio Loop, getting to family, the helicopters, the Hum-V, how we looted a mountain home outside Portola 2 days ago for food and the old gas out of a lawnmower then meeting Kyle on the road this morning. I told them i was raised in Paradise and how excited I was to be Just About There. 

CLAYTON: I AM OKAY. HEADING YOUR WAY AFTER STOPS AT MIRAMAR AND/OR CAMP PENDLETON.

MOM AND JUSTIN: IF YOURE READING THIS, I WILL MEET YOU AT 29 PALMS.

I know that one of the naval bases is gone; it was in the middle of Barrio Logan, the worst neighborhood in San Diego… it has to be gone… MCRD was too close to Downtown, it has to be gone as well… Naval Base Coronado might be okay, assuming the Coronado Bridge still stands… Fourth Tanks is closest to my location… but it was a reserve center; not a ton of fortification or security… I have two options available now: Hike to Miramar, which is about 10 miles away, or hike to Camp Pendleton, 40 miles away…

I suppose that, sooner than I would have liked, I will have to go to one of the base. I know Miramar isn’t far; all I have to do is head northwest…

I am afraid, though. I am a woman, alone (except for Frank, the Cocker Spaniel). Strength was never my strong point… It was strategy. Strategy requires intel, and I am sorely lacking in that. I can’t fight my way out… best I can manage is to snipe out the bastards before heading into an area… and I can’t fight a mob swarming the entrance to a base…

However, unlike the rest of the fucktard survivors most likely swarming the entrance to the base, I have a military ID card; My father was a Marine for 22 years, and I am technically still his dependent… assuming Dad is still alive… and assuming my ID counts for shit. If not, I was in ROTC before shit went south like Sherman… I have to possess some skill that will allow me entrance onto that fucking base…

Miramar, though well-fortified, is too close to San Diego for comfort... Camp Pendleton is the safer option, and it has a lot of empty mountains and training grounds… Assuming the nuclear reactor at San Onofre is still functional and hasn’t been compromised, it seems to be the safer option...

Heard noises in the ravine below. Remember gents, one of the Marine Sniper’s Rules: Life is precious, ammo is cheap. Anything worth shooting once is worth shooting twice.

Edits: Formatting, damn it.

Sorry I haven't updated in awhile. There's been...a lot going on lately. There wasn't a car at the house like I'd hoped, still I willed myself to stay a few more days, knowing I might not find shelter again soon, before fleeing out of paranoia. There was so much forest around the area, and that only made me more paranoid. Out of some kinda miracle, however, I managed to find an abandoned station wagon in some bushes down the path. It took all of my strength and remaining mental stability, but I got it up on the path. But not before finding my missing fishing rod and various other items that had been taken from my shack. I guess the burglar of mine was camping out in the car, knowing it would be nearly impossible for me to find them. At the moment, I couldn't even will myself to care. I'm not sure how the engine was still working. I jump started it(I guess the burglar didn't know how or didn't know the engine still worked). Now I'm driving and typing at the same time. It would be dangerous if there were any cars on the road. In a few hours I'll be in Steilacoom. But if I get ambushed along the way or get killed, I'll leave my mark on these pages: My name is Ty Langley. I am 22 years old. And I live in a world that has ended.

Sure enough, the train began to slow. Imperceptibly at first, but once those brakes went to work, there was no mistaking the bone-vibrating din. It took several long minutes, which was all for the better; Sophie had begun to drift off, not wanting to stand, or talk, or move, or live. The gradual screeching halt of the train gave me time to rouse her, enough that she silently agreed to make one last push, one final struggle for life and freedom; after that, there'd be no telling what the future would hold. If there would even be a future.

As the cars rumbled to a clacking, hissing stop, I looked out once more into the night. No longer were we in the desolate fields and tumbleweed towns of America's abandoned heartland. A massive terminal building loomed ahead of us, floodlit from below by harsh exterior lights. No power outage here, then. The architecture was grand, and heavily shadowed lettering proclaimed this Washington Union Station. We had come to the center of it all, D.C. at last. One way or another, I was determined to find answers here.

Despite everything, there were other trains. Dozens of them, and slowly worming lights in the distance spoke of more approaching. Each one a grim collection of steel box cars; rolling crypts, delivering countless dead to the nation's capital. It was nothing less than the funeral procession of America itself.

Hopping down to the tracks, Sophie and I stumbled our way past cars, under cars, over steel tongues, trying not to trip on the unending rails and buried ties in the dark. There were people about, waving shaky flashlight beams, slashing the night. A dog barked somewhere off, and Columbia whined, but didn't chase off after it. We scurried like that forever, our hearts thumping wildly, our mouths dry and our breaths shallow and ragged. How long had we been in that damn train, with nothing to eat or drink? It was so hard to go on; dying would have been easy. Nearly everyone else was dead. Why should we be any different? And yet, not knowing why - why this all happened, why we'd been left to fend for ourselves, why were being hunted down like vermin - kept driving me forward. And I kept driving Sophie forward. It would have to be enough, for now.

Finally, exhausted and gasping for air, we collapsed at the mouth of a drainage culvert, wrapped in still blackness. Columbia curled up beside us, huddled in the gaping tunnel, dripping water echoing somewhere deep within. From there, we looked out at the great expanse of rail lines converging on the station, and the sporadic lights piercing the night sky beyond. We saw the Washington Monument in the distance off to our right. I came once to D.C. as a kid, but had little recollection of the trip, or of the city. Wasn't the Lincoln Memorial that way? The Capitol Building would be the other direction, then. Where was the White House? More importantly, what the fuck was I doing? What was my plan? Not only did I not know the city, I didn't know where I wanted to go. All this time, I'd been focused on just reaching D.C. I thought for sure I'd find someone there who could explain it all. But along the way, I realized anyone able to explain was just the kind of person I was trying to avoid. Now that I'd finally made it, I was terrified to be seen, much less willing to seek help. What the hell was I suposed to do now?

Sophie leaned against me, her strength fading at last. She seemed asleep again. I could feel her weak breathing against my chest. I looked down at her, though I could barely see her silhouette. I wrapped my arm around her tighter, angry, afraid, tired. So tired. Maybe this was enough. Maybe we should just stop running, stop chasing. Stop surviving. With Sophie in my arms, it felt enough. It would have to be. I closed my eyes.

A footfall echoed in the tunnel, somewhere behind us.

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Related entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

Well, the neighborhood isn't what it used to be. It might be paranoia on my part, but I don't like the look of about 7 choppers flying in formation above a major city. There are a bunch of armored dudes doing sweeps block for block, I've been hiding on roofs and observing them. They look pretty paramilitary, but those tactics seem to indicate a little more. I'm thinking about finding a way to hold one hostage. The naive side of me wants to trust these people, but I know that these days the trustworthy are hard to come by. They've been annihilating infected, so I have that to thank them for. Signing off, stay safe out there everyone!

I gotta go quick, I don't know how much longer this battery will hold out.

Here's the breakdown:

The 'Control' organised a mass evacuation to a small, inland town - Alice Springs - for regroup, medical checks, and eventually a flight to 'Controlled DC'. There were a bunch of Americans in Alice Springs. Lots of Australians, too. Other survivors. When we (TraitorBlade, TroubledViking, Sottik, BarryBoganus and me) arrived, the place was bustling with not just depressed and strung-out survivors, but builders, soldiers, doctors, even some fucking therapists. Like they thought a good brainfucking will fix these peoples' problems. Sottik told me earlier in the week that he thinks something's up with the way the people look, and how the people are doing things. He said that one half of these people are working diligently, doing their shit, getting stuff done, and doing it happily and without question. The other half looks the same, but they have these shifty eyes and they look sketchy. Sottik told me that he thinks half the people here are some sort of militia here to sabotage the town somehow. I told him he's just getting loopy from the apocalypse sickness (what we called the headfuck of trying to make it in this shithole earth we have).

Our plane got suited up and revved up and loaded with shit. Um. A couple of us decided to stay. It doesn't feel right telling their stories for them, so I'll just say for now that Sottik and I are on this plane. Sottik nudged me before takeoff, gesturing to one of the guys across from us. He was dressed a soldier but his handgun was a Sig Sauer, not a Glock like every other soldier had. This guy saw me looking at his piece and when my eyes found his he put a finger up to his lips as if to say shhhhhhh. I nudged Sottik right back. Shit's about to get real on this plane. Were a few hours up already. I think they're gonna wait until we're over American soil. But it's pretty clear that this plane, and probably every plane before and since, is getting hijacked by a random feral militia.

I don't know what's happening back in Alice Springs. Whether the guys chasing us are actually the same dudes about to jack this plane, or if there's more than one group, or if Zack is knocking on their door as I write this, or even if TraitorBlade's documents were useful to anyone. To tell you guys the truth, and I would never lie to you, I find it insulting after all I've been through to be corralled like cattle into meals, rooms, planes and plans that aren't mine. To have the only possessions I've got be taken away as soon as The Man found out I had things of value. So fuck the 'Control' whoever the fuck that is. When the hijack starts, I think I'll take their side.

I'll post again when we land.