20170528

Day 1,011

What we left behind was wheezing when we last saw it. God knows how long we'd been running but we didn't seem to be any closer to the outposts than we'd been when we set off late last night which meant that we were either further away than we'd calculated or we were in the grasp of a Warper.

Old Grace is always saying that the crew of the Bilge-Brown Rats had chased the last of the Warpers back into the sea and rigged the beaches with enough Deterrents to keep them in the depths for generations and yet here we are eyeballing the same algae-smothered pool in the same back garden of the same bloody ruins that we've somehow been circling because Captain Helpful can't read a fucking map!

I'd say Old Grace is full of shit but in all honesty her mind's been pudding since before society crumbled. She's at that weird point in her old age where she's just coherent enough that we can keep her around but not quite with it enough that you can be sure that what she's saying is totally true.

Bless her dear little heart, she has no clue what a Warper actually looks like so for all we know we've stumbled head first into their nest. Which, as you can imagine, is just perfect. Absolutely wonderful and splendid and everything else that means we're completely screwed if we are indeed facing a Warper.

If it's just a regular Bio-Mutant then we'll be fine, or rather less likely to die. Radiation poisoning's only a worry when you're up close and personal which we've managed to mostly avoid so far, Greg aside (because of course he had to try and headbutt the bloody thing like the Glaswegian stereotype that he is).

We're camping out in the remains of a shed for the time being, just long enough that the wheezing abomination loses focus on us and we can regain our sense of direction for long enough to get well out of its range. The next outpost is apparently only five miles from here, wherever here is. Captain Helpful won't let anyone else see the map so we can only assume he's got us on the right track.

That or we're screwed and he's expecting us all to die soon.

From the stuttery breaths outside, I'd say the decisive moment is to bloody close for comfort.

20170524

Day 1,010

Excerpts from "The Great Extinction" series


Earth's lights went out slowly. At first only Doctor Jay noticed - kept a record from the first sighting up until what we'd dubbed "The Eclipse". We got all our info from the home site as normal, even after all the lights went out but from what we could tell, ours was the only working space station around. Even the Russian Salyut went dark but carried on like nothing was wrong.

They didn't seem to realise their lights were down, that or we weren't talking to the crew of the Salyut any more. At some point they started making sounds that should be impossible for humans to make - whirring clicks and metallic gulping.

We can only hope that the supplies being sent from home site are actual supplies and not... company.

----------------------------------------------

Can nobody else see that everybody is being swapped out?

They shimmer, vanish and come back so fast I miss it if I blink at the wrong time.

Still, I can tell when someone's been taken.

Their replacements don't understand how hair works.

It either hangs limp no matter the breeze or wraps around their head like a nest of snakes.

Can't help but wonder if I'm the last actual human left.

Why isn't anyone else reacting to this?

----------------------------------------------

The earth always has a way of dealing with invasive pests, be it with fire or flood or the gradual development of a deadly disease. We used to think it ridiculous to personify a planet, to treat it as though it was alive and conscious on the same level as us.

Then some rich bastard dug right to the planet's core and found out what it was truly made of.

Turns out that the core isn't super-heated metals but some organic substance very similar to our own but far more dense and to complex that the tiniest sample brought back had more computational power than every electronic device on the planet.

Of course the reaction we spurred by doing all this only seems natural, I mean we're effectively fleas that managed to trepan into our host organism's brain and took a piece away.

We were existing on borrowed time for as long as we've existed.

I can see the thick clouds of neurotoxic gas coming my way so it'll all be over for me in about three minutes if I can believe what the news said.

I'd make a joke about being on the Frontline (like the flea spray) but everything's getting awful dizzy

20170511

Day 1,009

The carnival is humanities' last hiding place. Ever since all the mirrors shattered and our reflections stepped out, their jagged limbs cutting us down like an overripe harvest. What remained of society were the ones who found ways to change their physical forms enough to mimic the new majority, laying their irregularities down as "a circus thing".

It's worked well so far - that or we're too amusing to kill, like a deformed pet-turned-internet sensation. You keep their interest and pity in equal amounts, living to limp through another day while their bloodstained edges remind you of everyone you've lost.

But smile - you're still here in the heart of a glass hornet's nest and they haven't forgotten the thrill of murder just yet, nor may they ever. Some still gloat to you and the other performers of how they first sliced through the human who looked almost exactly like them.

Nothing makes a show run well like the ever present reminder that out there in the audience that you can barely see through the harsh glare of the spotlights, there may be something made from your broken bedroom mirror watching you and waiting for the final curtain.