Journals of the Damned

if anybody (hopefully) in the future is reading this then they will have a better understanding of just what the hell really happened.

  I’m not sitting down and writing this because I’m a scholar or a historian, I’m doing it because I want to leave something behind. Time is running out for me, along with food. Eventually I’m going to starve to death here.

  I could try to find another place to hole up, but there are so many of them outside now. Sometimes I think the sheer weight of them outside will collapse the walls and they’ll come busting through, so much so that I spend a lot of my waking time just ensuring the building is secure.

  My paranoia has become so obsessive lately that I find myself doing nothing but checking the doors, windows and perimeter over and over again until I finally pass out from exhaustion. Even sleep is no longer any refuge, filled with horrible nightmares. Waking up from them is bad too. Most times when I awake it’s in a paranoid delusion that they have gotten in and are about to find and eat me alive.

  Writing this will, with any luck, take my mind off of the endless cycle of paranoia that has gripped me. Psychologically it may help to calm me, allow me to better come to grips with what has happened. Death doesn’t particularly scare me, (no more than most people anyways) it’s the walking undeath that does.

  When I get to the final stages of starvation, and the end is for certain anyways, I’m gonna take my .38 and blow my brains out. Although I’m ninety-nine percent certain that I won’t rise from the dead, I was never bitten, nor did I catch the Scarlet Fever, I will make damn sure that I won’t come back as a zombie.

  Until then though, I’ll tell you my experiences, as I remember them, starting from when I first heard of the Scarlet Fever.

  2

  It was another hot and oppressively humid central Florida late summer day. I don't remember what day it was exactly, (even back then when things were normal it didn't matter too much to me what day of the month it actually was) but I do remember it was sometime in the latter part of August. I know it was in August because that's the height of the slow season for cab drivers.

  The students from UCF and Rollins were for the most part, still on their summer break, having gone back home from wherever they came from. The "snow-birds", (who migrated from their homes up north to sunny Florida for the winter) hadn't even started to return. This was compounded by the fact it was the hottest part of the year down here, and it was also the rainy season. Nobody who knows Florida weather decides to spend their vacation in a hundred plus degree sauna. The rotten economy didn't help either, people without jobs don't take a cab unless they absolutely had to.

  Anyways, it was around that time that I started to hear of a new flu going around, like every year. I really didn't pay much attention to it though. It seemed every year the CDC and the government blows everything out of proportion and issues dire warnings for people to get some new flu shot. Swine flu, Bird flu, blah, blah, blah. To most of us it was just another effort for the government, in collusion with the pharmaceutical companies to sell more product to the public.

  This strain supposedly came out of North Korea, or so they speculated, as no news ever comes out of that crap hole except propaganda. The South Koreans were the first to officially report it, followed by the Chinese and then it rapidly spread throughout the whole of Asia and the rest of the world. The quick spread of the disease and the fact that about ninety percent of the population was affected by it was the most alarming aspect of it.

  It was quickly dubbed "Rat flu" as the local rodent population always suffered mass casualties wherever it turned up (at the time that seemed like a good thing to most people. Nobody likes rats). In humans though, it was a relatively mild flu, with a short duration and, for the most part, people responded to it like it was an allergy (like dust or pollen). The symptoms lasted about a week or so, but unfortunately that was only stage one of the disease. As the Rat flu spread around the world, and then just as quickly died off, the government warnings for children and the elderly to get their yearly flu shots died off with it.

  The CDC admitted that they still hadn't actually identified the virus, but they would continue to research it.

  "Whatever," was what I and most people thought. It seemed that it was just another knee jerk overreaction, as there were no actual deaths related to it.

  Soon after the Rat flu died off is when things started to take a really bad turn for the worse. First the animals went insane and then the disease entered stage two, and everybody who contracted the Rat flu automatically ended up with "Scarlet fever".

  I'm going to stop writing for the day. I'm worn out and constantly tired now. I have to make sure the barricades are still holding before I can try to get some rest...

  3

  Last night was bad, really bad. It was by far the worst night of my life. Around 3:16 am, according to my watch, I was startled awake by the sound of a transformer or something exploding. There was a huge flash of light followed by numerous secondary explosions and I swear I could hear the electricity arcing.

  I hesitantly made my way to one of the small windows, in what I suppose was the CEO's office here on the second floor of "Orange County Tool & Die". All the power was out. It was out as far as I could see. Granted, I could only see through a couple of small windows but it was pitch black out there. There was and is, no hope of the electricity coming back. The only light was a small glow to the west and I suppose that means whatever blew started a fire.

  I think I broke down last night. I had never been afraid of the dark, even as a kid, but since I've been closed up here I've used the desk lamp as a night-light. That weak little patch of light reassured me that I was safe. Without it I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. I kept thinking that they had breached my make-shift defenses and were shambling around downstairs, slowly working their way up the stairs to the offices here. I know now it was just the normal sounds of the building, all buildings have their own creaks and moans, but I was not used to this one’s peculiar sounds. I was too afraid to actually go downstairs and investigate. No way was I going to go down there in the dead of night to face down the undead of the night. I huddled up in a corner of the couch and basically sobbed and pleaded with God, the Gods or whomever would listen to my sad little prayers to let me escape this prison.

  It seemed like it took an eternity for dawn to break. When it finally did, I fell into a blissfully dreamless sleep.

  It is now early afternoon as I write this. There is a heavy smell of smoke in the air. To the west, where there was just a small glow in the darkness last night, I can plainly see buildings burning. Oh god I hope it doesn't spread and come this way. Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK! I don't want to die!

  I didn't pick this building to hole up in on purpose. At the time it seemed the most secure one I could get to, the old one having been over-run. Jannie died in that one. This one was close, the zeds were everywhere. A building made of solid construction blocks and steel doors. Windows only on the second floor where the rotting fuckers couldn't reach or look into.

  I thought I could hide in here for a day or two and then move on. They must have seen me come in here. I swear there was only a couple that could have possibly even seen me come in here, but the next day they had literally surrounded the place. Every day there's more and more of them. How the hell do they know I'm in here? How the fuck are they growing in such numbers? Are they communicating somehow?

  Dammit, I only have a few days worth of food left. I guess my options are limited now. I can hide in here until either I starve or die of thirst (the water went out last night too, no power to run the pumps to pressurize the water lines I guess), die by being eaten alive trying to escape or by burning to death if that fire spreads any further. Suicide may be a mortal sin but I think I'll risk hell after death rather than this fuckin' hell on earth.

  I know I've gotten way off track here... I'll get back on track and write again about when the chaos started and the Scarlet fever brought down
mankind after I check something out. I might be able to get out of here after all, if things go right for once.

  4

  I remember sitting in my cab at a BP station when things started to get weird. A squirrel literally started ambushing people. I first noticed it when it leaped out of a tree and started biting a middle aged, slightly overweight woman. She screamed hysterically as the "tree rat" viscously latched onto her head and just started to rip apart her scalp. As the poor woman screamed, she was practically running around in circles in the middle of the parking lot, flailing her arms. Every time she would try to yank the insane squirrel off of her head, the squirrel would bite a huge chunk out of her hand.

  Everyone who saw this was completely taken aback, and initially everyone involuntarily backed away from her. My initial reaction was shock, my jaw dropped, and I watched the scene unfold mouth agape.

  It didn't take too long before the disbelief of the situation wore off and a nearby older guy with graying hair, who had been pumping gas into a beat-up old Ford pick-up, ran to help her. His first attempt to grab the crazed thing failed, as the woman was by now completely hysterical and weaving around the lot. The guy rushed towards her again in his