Jeffrey - 26th September, Early Hours + When The Sky Brightens

26th September - The Very Early Hours of the ‘Morning’

I reached the river, and again I saw nothing but death. It lay empty, not a drop of water to be found. Nothing on its bed but an inch of that disgusting black ooze littered with the tiny clean bones of the occasional fish here and there. The trees here are all dead too, stripped of all their leaves and dyed a deep, charcoal black. I tried to break the branches of one to use as firewood before it got dark to get some light and warmth but when I grabbed the wood it turned to dust between my fingers and was carried away by that stinking wind.

I am hungry, and I am thirsty. But I have been hungrier and thirstier before, and I will find food. When I wake up (if I can sleep) I will travel as far as I can before dark again, and hopefully I’ll come across some sort of good news. I’m trying to remain optimistic but it’s pretty damn hard.

The air seems to be getting as thin as I am, and I am beginning to get horrible fits of coughing that leave me gasping and wheezing, shaking in pain. My phlegm is beginning to become flecked with blood and pus. It’s not hard to imagine my lungs becoming like those trees.

…And the howling… that awful howling. It has returned again, closer than ever. I am almost certain now that whatever makes that sound has no good news for me, and is probably about as welcome to me as this apocalypse is. I am trying to be brave and not fear noises carried by the wind, but the fact of the matter is that I am possibly the last man alive, and the sounds that seem to be following me may be something less than man, something monstrous. As an atheist, I find it bitterly ironic that I am starting to pray.

The damned screeching sounds so nearby, I find myself trembling in fear despite myself. The war was never this scary. I shouldn’t waste anymore of this candle, or risk exposing myself to the demons of my imagination any longer tonight. When the day brightens - I can’t say ‘when the sun rises’ because I haven’t seen it since Before, and for all I know it may not even be there anymore, I will keep searching.

Tonight, I will sleep under this small stone bridge, as it provides shelter from the foul wind and blocks some of the howling out. I am trying to tell myself that I’m not also using it to hide from whatever may (or may not, though I am not a lucky man) be lurking out there in the stupid excuse for a night that this dead world has.

26th September - When The Sky Brightens

Oh Sweet Baby Jesus, oh my God. It was inches away from me. It was sniffing for me, it knew I was there, I know it knew, and it just left me. I’m not alone in this world, I’m sharing it with monstrous beasts, terrible creatures unlike anything I have seen before.

I woke up from another painful dream where the world hadn’t ended yet and being homeless seemed not all that bad in comparison, and I woke to the sound of sniffing and squelching. It was like having a dog by your ear that was eating a bowl of jelly. I opened my eyes and then immediately closed them, as I saw a shadow looming over me in the dank light of the miserable and dead day.

I held perfectly still, not daring to breath and as I heard my heart pounding in my ears, even it sounded far too loud. It sounded like it was as loud as a jackhammer and that the creature would surely hear it and rip it out. My body felt icy cold and I was covered in stinking sweat. I listened for it, and I could hear it right beside me. It breathed in a laboured way, and every movement it made as it rustled through the dead leaves and undergrowth by the old bridge was accompanied by sniffing and disgusting sucking sounds. I heard another one of them call nearby, and I imagined a crowd of them converging on me and ripping me to shreds.

I fought back the urge to get to my feet and flee, rather than just sit here and wait to die in the dirt. I had the strangest feeling that as long as I held as still as I could, this creature would ignore me. The one nearby responded to the howl with its own, and they called to each other in a hideous and hellish chorus. I felt my bladder let go and I closed my eyes even tighter, willing myself to turn invisible.

The creature starting moving away with incredible speed, judging by how quickly the squelching noises grew fainter and fainter. I slowly turned my head and opened my eyes, curiosity getting the better of me despite my fear. It was more horrible than I could have even imagined, if this was possible. It seemed to be made entirely of some sort of putrid red jelly, but as I looked harder I realised it was flesh.

It was shaped like a man but ran on all fours like a beast, and it had no skin. It was just stinking, dripping flesh over a layer of dirty yellow bone. As it pounded away across the dead land, it left red imprints of blood and flesh in the ground. It’s skull poked through the back of its head grotesquely, and there were clumps of matted hair and there stuck in the flesh around the gaping wound.

I wondered if it used to be a man, I wondered if these things were what happened to those unlucky enough to not be reduced to dusty old bones. The thought made me shudder. I lay still, watching after it and not daring to move until the cries in the distance disappeared and the only sound was the bubbling of the sludge in the river and the whistling of the disgusting wind. I took a deep breath and coughed violent. Climbing to my feet I staggered to the edge of the river and vomited into the black sludge.

The vomit was mostly blood, and of course there was no food in it. My empty stomach rumbled with anger at me, and I knew that I would likely never find water to wash the bitter taste of bile and the tangy metallic taste of my own blood from my mouth. Around my sleeping bag that I had swiped from a shop in the town, crimson footprints danced an evil dance, and I could see drops of blood on the sleeping back as well as hairs and thick clumps of flesh. I ran my hands over my face and they came away bloody. I tried to vomit again but my stomach was empty. How long had it stood over me, sniffing me and bleeding all over me?

I hoped that it hadn’t got my scent and that it wouldn’t hunt me down and slaughter me when night fell again. I looked again at those disgusting prints, and they were unmistakably human. Or what used to be human at least. Tonight I’m going to sleep in shelter, very good shelter. A maximum security prison, a tank, or a fallout bunker. Anywhere! I'm not going to be stupid enough to sleep out in the open again.

- Jeffrey Winchester, 26th September.