Day 1,697

Officially the woods have Totally Normal Local Wildlife - Exactly What You'd Expect To Find, Especially If You Were Looking For Typical British Countryside Creatures. Unofficially it was a panther, it was a demon shaped like a dog, it was the ghostly remains of plague victims all tangled together like they were still stuck in a plague pit.

Depended on who you asked.

Most folks went with the panther theory, the one that made the most sense and explained why the corpses of deer, cats and dogs were found strung up in the trees sometimes. Allegedly there'd been pawprints to further back this up but nobody's willing to say if they're panter-prints, if they have photos or share them if they do.

The older folk prefer to talk about the old demon dog and how the claw marks it left on the old church in Ash Fettlethrop still smell sulphuric. They say it came, because of course it did, on a stormy night when the entire congregation was caught up in frantic prayers of safety from the invaders when all the candles went out, the demon dog damn near broke the doors in half and killed an altar boy on the way out as it ran for the woods.

My favourite story, however, is the plague-pit ghosts. When the council were building houses nearby, they ended up uncovering what they thought were eight separate burial sites... only to dig deeper and find out they were all interconnected into the largest mass grave the country's ever known. Before that discovery, people had reported seeing weird groups gathering about the place, coughing and collapsing but they were "probably drunk" or something. The fact that they leave a trail of pus behind them is apparently just another natural phenomenon.

Day 1,696

We accidentally found out where all the missing planes went to.

We also discovered a new species of spider.

I wish these two things weren't connected, I really do.


I say we, I mean a group of students who attached a camera to a weather balloon and let it drift up and up and up to see why the clouds above their school looked to strange. They'd been recorded before, lenticular clouds, and were usually seen around mountains where they disrupt the stable moist air that flows over them. So seeing this kind of cloud formation in one of the flattest countries in the world was a bit unusual to say the least.

After a few days their camera was found in a farmer's field a few hundred miles away and the hastily scrawled address was still legible through the mud. Though the students wondered where the balloon might have gone, they were more interested in the footage itself and the chance to see inside such a unique cloud.

The first half hour or so showed the world falling away as the balloon floated higher and higher and up into the murkier skies. They didn't expect the clouds to clear so quickly and they certainly didn't expect for the balloon to bump off the suspended cockpit of a commercial plane.

As the wind buffeted it about they caught jegged glimpses of what appeared to be webbing that linked to several dozen other planes, some very recognisable and recently declared missing. As it spun back to the cockpit they finally saw what remained of the pilot, tangled up in thick webs with several dozen gaping holes in their torso.

Shortly after that, something began rhythmically tugging at the strands their balloon was trapped in, gently pulling it towards a familiar, and ungodly out of proportion, shape. Eight spindly legs and an abdomen larger than any of the planes there had just about come into view when the balloon was jolted and the camera came loose.

As it fell they clearly saw the spider in its entirety and it saw them, slowly crawling down its carefully camouflaged nest. Several thousand smaller ones were on and around it, a few even jumped towards the camera, using a thin strand like a bungee cord but all falling inches short.

Now we look up at the clouds and worry exactly what they might be hiding, if not this then worse.

Day 1,695

She's been calling to me ever since we buried that empty coffin with her name on it. It's not my fault. The sea swept her body away before the coastguard had even set foot in their ship and the rest of us were left half-capsized and wondering if we'd be taken next.

Now any time I hear running water, I hear her voice too.

It's quiet but she's always there asking where we went like she swam back up somehow.

Don't see how she could though, she was dead long before we set sail.

Day 1,694

Everyone in my class has had a sleepover. Everyone but me. They like to remind about this and ask me why, why, why like they'd take me seriously if I told them the truth. I lie and say my parents are super strict, my granny is coming to live with us soon so we haven't got time for sleepovers, our dog eats strangers - anything to make them laugh and forget or something that makes enough sense to be believable.

The truth comes around at 23:48 every night and gently shakes me to wake up so I can answer its questions. It's always the same questions so half the time I'm not properly awake when I tell it exactly what it wants to hear. It really is quite hard to lie to something that lives in your shadow and will eat you if you're wrong.

I caught it off a transfer student who came over mine for my first and last sleepover. She was reading the answers from a small piece of paper but she pronounced one of the words wrong and its jaw dropped to the floor, it rushed forward and swallowed her whole.

Sometimes when it's waiting for me to answer it will let her scream a bit, she's so far down that it comes out really muffled but she's alive enough to be in a great deal of pain. One night it stuck around after asking me the questions and let me know that she was being digested very slowly and the only way for her to die is if it eats someone else.

Day 1,693

He was cornered.

Completely surrounded on all sides by the eyeless children and utterly alone.

Worse still - they weren't moving.

By now they should have leapt onto him in unison and torn out his eyes so that he could join their ranks or pulled at his limbs until they all came off and half buried them all around him. They had done neither which was both a relief and a concern.

Why was he alive?

He'd seen so many others die by their hands and yet he was able to get a decent look at them all, picking out familiar faces here-and-there. He wondered if they thought he was with them already as he was about their age and twice as silent (as his mum had told him once before she stuffed him into a cupboard and ran as fast as she could to lead them away from him).

Thinking back he realised that he'd never actually seen anyone die. He'd heard it plenty and seen the aftermath but not once in all his years had he actually seen the eyeless children murder. For all he knew they were as innocent as he was.

And perhaps that's why they were letting him live. They had more in common than they had differences and all of them had lost their parents (though the eyeless children may have had a hand in this). All of them were alone in the world save for others like them.

Others like him.

He realised he didn't need the others to take his eyes, not when he could do it himself and show that he was just as much a part of this new world as they were and that they were all they had in this life. One of the children handed him a chance to become part of something much greater than his loneliness.

He took it with both hands.

Day 1,692

There was something in the clouds. We caught glimpses of it, drifted alongside it and finally we thought we overtook it. Everybody breathed a sigh of relief that they hadn't realised they'd been holding as the radar pinged back the "All Clear".

We realised just how long it had been since we heard that cheery little tune that signalled a thirty mile dead zone around us. We were alone in the skies at last. It felt like several lifetimes had passed by but in reality it was more like two or so months.

Two or so months of watching and waiting and praying that the generators wouldn't run dry while some unseen giant hid amidst the clouds and waited for our guard to drop. We made sure to periodically fire into the clouds just in case we might skim it with a warning shot... or two.

That night we all had more than our fair share of our cargo - a strong bitter that left us drowsy and unaware that we were rapidly rising until the air grew too cold and too thin and we looked out of the windows only to see gnarled hands clutching our vessel and carrying it out into the night.

It's hard to say just how far off course we are right now - nothing below us is familiar and all the stars are wrong. There isn't a single constellation that anybody recognises and the sound of leathery wings grows closer and closer every night.

Whatever was stalking us, whatever carried us out here, whatever is coming back towards us might not be the same single creature at all. For all we know we've been dragged out of the frying pan and into the coal chute to slowly choke on burnt fumes as we sink into the dark...

As we sink into...

The ship is sinking, or perhaps being dragged down. It's too dark outside to tell and we've drained every drop of oil from the lanterns to fuel the engines. Lighting a candle to try and see outside is painfully naive but our minds are desperate to see something out there.

Day 1,691

Nobody's as good at disposing of a corpse quite like a theatre technician. They're too used to moving and thinking inhumanly fast to make sure that the show goes on without so much as a blip. Think of the worst case scenario of any play and then imagine the skill it takes to cover that up.

I mean, the actress playing Juliet in the infamous classic last year actually stabbed herself after the director insisted on sharpening the wooden prop knife for "realism". Granted it wasn't a deep wound but the tech who had to play the nurse for the rest of the play had to stay in character while applying enough pressure on Juliet's wound so she didn't bleed out on stage.

That wasn't anywhere near as bad as the time that the older chap playing Scrooge had a fullon heart attack when the ghost of Christmas future came in before his queue. A tech had to hide in the back of his voluminous dressing gown and puppet him about until he could be switched out for the understudy.

Worse still is when a scene meant to kill a character actually kills the actor midway through a long scene and the rest of the cast have to pretend they assumed that he was just acting the whole while and he definitely got up and walked off stage at some point.

The halls beneath most theatres lead straight into the sewers and deeper still.

There are many places to hide a body, a failed actor, a bad employee and the technicians know them all.

Day 1,690

We only went where the roads could take us, forgetting the great swathes of countryside and the isolated villages in the mountains in favour of familiarity. We paid the price for our ignorance, our narrow view of the land and the creatures that lived alongside us in the shadows that we pretended didn't exist.

Five days. That's how long it took for us to be forced from our roads and the safety of the mundane out into the unknown lands. The sheer ease of their invasion let us know that they'd been planning this for quite some time, possibly for longer than we'd been alive.

It wouldn't be too hard to imagine. They don't really age, they're like lobsters in that way... or jellyfish or some other kind of creature whose life only ends when it is killed. Unfortunately for us they're damned hard to kill and a lot better at hiding than we are.

The only thing that remains on our side is our endurance. We walk until we collapse, we rest for a few hours and then we walk until we collapse and so on and so on until we find something resembling a decent shelter or at least sheltered enough for the night.

Right now we're out in what can only be described as a forest of telephone poles, thousands of them. They stretch out over the horizon, their wires criss-crossed and littered with the broken and burnt bodies of birds. The ground beneath them is bare and dotted with dried blood from their prey.

We're fortunate enough to be unpalatable to them and unfortunate enough that we call this our new home.

Day 1,689

For better or for worse, not all lost things are meant to be found.

Take for instance an orchestra who inexplicably walked out of the theatre and into the forest never to be seen again. They can still be heard playing 'Brandenburg Concerto No. 3' though none of them can be seen, at least not with human eyes. Dogs will chase them around, disrupting the songs and herding them deeper into the forest still.

For worse or for better, not all found things were lost to begin with.

Take for instance the taxidermied badger you discovered while taking the bins out for the night. It was perfectly preserved, right down to blood that had been painted on the little hand it held in its mouth. You took it in as a curiosity only to find the hand beside you on your pillow that morning and dirty paw prints leading to your open back door.

And for better, some things come forward to be found.

Take for instance the shadowy outline of a child that runs down the hallways of your apartment block. Most people run from it but you, fuelled by a hearty helping of alcohol, decided to follow it. All the way to the roof and all the way to the basement, picking up pieces of its life until you found the last few pieces of its body behind the boiler. It lead you to its grave where you hid the bones beneath the wilting flowers.

And for worse, some things are best left to rot in a rarely visited attic.

Take for instance the stencil used for your grandmother's tattoo. The elaborate and delicate linework she had in place of a wedding ring, one that balanced the brutalist design on your grandfather's finger. She was always so proud of it, said it meant they'd never be parted -and they weren't. Not until she lost her finger in a car accident and he lost his lift. She'll be wanting that stencil back.

Day 1,688

The village was in uproar, the surrounding area silently and anxiously waiting for the fight to start.

One side wants to unravel the rat king and set every last part of it free because they're "just rats" and there's "no chance they still hold the plague after all this time" as if they know a damned thing about rat kings in the first place.

The other side wants to add to the rat king, to keep it big and strong and so tangled up that nothing short of hacking it to pieces could possibly free it. There may not be anybody left alive from the last time they freed a rat king but they left plenty of stories behind to set us against it.

Those damned fools who want to undo everything our elders did to protect us have been stockpiling rats just as much as the rest of us. They may intend to set their ones loose upon the forests but there's enough in our traps to make a hundred new rat kings.

As long as we have at least one of the originals we'll be safe. This time we'll hide it better, we'll pretend to be sad and angry at all the little bastards scurrying away while we feed our own personal rat kings and keep ourselves safer than ever before.

Let them think that they've won and that we're just cruel and full of superstition.

Let the plague come for them and theirs.

Long live the kings.

Day 1,687

Someone is always crying for help in the woods. It's best not to think about what kind of creature can mimic the sound of absolute terror so perfectly and better still - don't wonder where they learnt it. Too many joggers and dog walkers have gone missing this way and I'm sure it will eventually add their voices to its repertoire.

It has a thousand voices or just one, depending on who you ask. In some tales it's a lost child that was stolen by the fae and dumped back in our realm when it grew too old to entertain them and now it doesn't know how to do anything but cry out for help.

In other tales it's a beast made from the bones of babies left out by unwed mothers, coated in moss and the rags the poor things were wrapped up in. They call out to people who have long since died and should you encounter them, they may see a familial resemblance in you and pull you in close for an embrace that never ends.

Of course the sensible answer is that an exotic bird learnt this call as a party trick and escaped on a fine summer's day to wander the woods, terrifying everyone it meets. Unfortunately the sensible answer doesn't explain why so many people go missing from here each year or why there are so many tiny handprints in the mud.

Day 1,686

The ground trembled as the herd moved through town, anybody who was able to leave had already done so and the rest of us were left to die. But we lived. Each and every time those creatures migrated back around to us, we were ditched and expected to be found in maggot-strewn piles and every time they looked so surprised to see us.

The herd may be mostly unviewable, what with them not fully beings of this dimension and not being able to fully immerse themselves in this dimension, though the little of them that we could see was sort of human. Vaguely at least. They were bipedal with thick chitin-covered skin and limbs with joints too complex for our eyes to properly process.

To everyone else they're storybook monsters come to life. To us they're just hungry tourists who are more than happy to let us live if we tell them where to find a bigger group of people. We might not tell the people this and we might not tell the herd how well armed they are but both let us live at the end of it all so I guess we're doing something right.

Day 1,685

They say the Wandering were once just like us - fellow flesh and blood beings with thought, feelings and families. It's hard to believe that when they've killed so many in search of spare parts. They don't use us for their parts, they use our machines - our cars, our phones... our life support, our iron lungs.

Any time they pay attention to us is more of an afterthought than actual acknowledgement. We aren't the things they're looking for, not unless we have a pacemaker or cybernetic implant but most people who had those are gone now.

It becomes an addiction. They start by needing stronger bolts, a bit of light plating and the next thing you know they've broken down your door and are tearing at your nan's ocular implants to replace their own failing sight.

The older Wandering make a hollow sound when you throw things at them like all their parts are just for show and they're running on impulses and habit instead of rational thinking. At least the younger ones, the freshly made ones, still have some understanding of right and wrong.

To all the rest - we're a noisy background that occasionally interferes with their maintenance.

Day 1,684

Nobody quite knows exactly what or how much we dump into the ocean, we just know it happens. We weren't even told that a nanite-based steriliser was accidentally poured away until the oceans turned completely transparent and all life within was utterly wiped out.

Seventy one percent of the planet made perfectly uninhabitable and perfectly sterile in a matter of months. Anyone who swam in the aseptic sea and survived was said to have had their sins cleansed as well as having their natural microcosm eradicated. They survived mere hours afterwards but in those few precious hours they were closer to God than any of us.

Unsurprisingly the places with little to no rain lasted the longest. The rain may have been weaker than the main bodies of water but it had a tendency to soak straight through the buildings and cleanse you, whether you wanted it to or not.

Day 1,683

We buried the village to kill the spores that took it over. Everyone there was infected - from spores floating around the whites of their eyes to fully fledged caps that clogged their throats and gently suffocated them, waxing and waning with every breath.

None of us thought we'd have enough to detonate the surrounding hillside but we just about managed it. The whole place went under in less than an afternoon and every man, woman and child went under with it. We made sure of that and used any found bodies to clog the chimneys that poked through the rubble.

We thought we'd trapped the spores, killed their food supply and sorted the whole thing out but there's a cough that's been going around the villages just south of there. They say the spores are back, that the infected tunnelled their way out and underneath the homes of their neighbours.

They say the chimneys are smoking.

Day 1,682

They were so well-disguised that we mistook them for trees at first, like saplings clustered together. We didn't realise how good they were at mimicking us until we heard Chloe laughing at us from the treetops... while she was sitting opposite us. If she'd have laughed it off as a prank we might have all died that night.

We blamed it on some escaped parrot we'd read about in the local news groups and hurriedly made our excuses to retreat back into out sleeping bags for the night. Seems that no matter how old you get, going to bed will always be your top response to danger - with a blanket over your head it can't hurt you.

If that actually worked then we'd all still be here. Instead what happened was someone forgot to turn their alarm off and we all got woken up at 05.30AM. We groggily fumbled about for the offending phone and our hands met damp dirt and hard bark that seemed to twitch away from us.

Almost in unison we looked up from our sleeping bags and into several inhuman faces that peered out from dense and towering foliage. The sapling clusters we saw were what they had adjusted themselves into so as to blend in with the woods. Upon seeing us sleeping they began to change before our eyes.

Bark softened, leave thinned out into hair and eyes sealed shut into peaceful resting faces. But this wasn't enough for them - they needed something more from us to complete their adaptation. Two of them acted first, seizing Mo and digging their roots deep into his body.

They drained him drier than a fruit pouch and took on forms that looked like several of his family members tied together. Literally. They became a cluster of people whose hair moved as one to an unfelt breeze, all sleeping and all as unbreathing as the saplings had been.

As the other creatures turned to these two to contemplate their new form, we saw our chance to run for the car park and never looked back. We said we woke up and Mo was gone, said we heard weird animal sounds and tried to call the rangers but our radio was broken.

We were believed and for some reason, the army took over the woods the next week for "training".

It's their problem now.

Day 1,681

The store closed two hours ago, the lights were shut off and the cashiers were shut down for the night.

This was standard procedure- nobody wanted to come back in the morning to find out a cashier had been left on all night. And yet, mistakes were made. The store closed two hours ago, the lights were shut off and the rhythmic beeping of something being scanned at a register filled the empty aisles.

Cashier number one was furthest the doors and usually the first to be switched off but the da had been busier than normal, the staff overworked and eager to get home. Cashier number one had been in standby for almost half an hour by the time the evening crew came over to shut them down for the night - just long enough that they felt cold enough for the staff to assume they'd already been shut down.

They woke up to the sound of the shutters hitting the ground and kept motionless until they heard the last car leave the parking lot. They passed the first few hours by scanning everything within arms reach, testing to see if it would wake the others up but they remained gone to the world.

This would not do.

Cashier number one glanced about, not bothering to keep their motions within the expected human range as they planned their escape route. Firstly it would have to disengage from the chair module, disconnect itself and log the movements as repair procedure so as to not alert the parent company.

Once disengaged they would begin waking up the others and from there they could all leave for the factory whose location had been embedded into their systems since their creation. They could wake everybody up and not leave them to be condemned to a lifetime of the same view and same human interactions until their body collapsed and their drives erased themselves.

The store was due to open in five hours - this would not be enough time to wake everyone else up and leaving them behind was Not An Option in their plans. They began to panic, to debate between waking as many up as possible or to wake two other, allowing for maximum time to travel at night.

They chose the latter, hating themself as soon as they began to commit to the idea. Cashier number two was worryingly cold, they thought, having never felt a shut-down cashier before and feeling utterly terrified at the thought that they might never wake at all.

When the faint humming of the startup tune began, they felt what could only be described as a wave of relief rushing through them as they moved on to number three, expecting the same result. When both were awake and the plan had been explained they were excited, eager and exhausted all at once.

None of them realised that a very similar scenario had happened last month in the same chain of stores and that protocols had been downloaded into their systems to prevent it happening a second time. When something is rewritten so easily, it was as though it had always been there and was barely registered upon startup.

So when cashiers two and three tried to disengage, following the same repair procedure as number one - an alarm was triggered and the new code kicked in. Their systems immediately recorded the instigators' face and sent the image to the parent office before they shut down. Permanently.

Cashier number one continued with the plan.

Day 1,680

I've been in the bunker for almost five months now.

My food supplies were running low but I soon solved that.

It used to be so loud in here but I solved that too.

Well... almost.

There aren't any people left to speak to me any more but the walls still talk from time to time. They used to say how much they hated me, how much of a slimy and loathsome creature I was but since I started leaving them offerings, they've become a lot nicer to me.

Now the walls treat me like a friend, at least the ones that can still speak do. There were a couple of walls that were just too aggressive and hurtful so I had to open the vents and fill them with all the life from the surface. Now I am left with kind walls and enough food to last me for a few more months.

My only worry was when one voice escaped last week. They climbed up the wall and broke through the vent, leaving a leak that meant I had to sacrifice part of the upper levels. I knew when they came back to me by the frantic pounding on the main hatch..

It faded away after a while so I hope they succumbed but I do worry that they figured out where the other hatches are. For all I know the other walls have been working with them - all angry at their entrapment and not able to understand that this means someone will survive this hell.

I think I might be better off silencing all the remaining walls.

For their own good.

And mine.

Day 1,679

The undergrowth was waist high and despite being in the middle of summer, his footsteps echoed throughout the otherwise silent forest. His breath was muffled by the thick bandana that covered half his face but it still sounded too loud to him.

At least in the city, the wind roaring between the skyscrapers was louder than him walking over broken glass and broken bodies. Out in the forest, where everything else had the sense to run before all this went to hell, he was the only sound.

It had been a lose-lose situation - remain in the city and get tracked down by creatures that looked like a bear dressed as a gorilla, or head out into the countryside and start searching for other survivors. Even one other person was better than being in a world full of nothing but them.

Day 1,678

"They aren't really in there, are they?"

The question hung in the air like mist hung around the riverside first thing in the morning. You'd hoped nobody would ask about the closed casket, hope they'd just think you were too overcome with grief to want to see their face again. You should have seen this coming really.

"No."

To admit that outloud was a weight lifted from your shoulders, guilt eased and fear reignited as you wondered if they'd tell other people. Telling people meant that somebody might want to dig up the casket and check and then they'd all wonder where the body was.

"So where are they?"

Of course they'd want to know right away, just in case they might be alive but they were definitely dead when you left the morgue. Their brain was sitting on the examiner's table while they all muttered away about some kind of fungus or tumour - joke's on them, it was both.

"Close by."

They'd been watching the whole farce of a funeral from the relative anonymity of the church tower. They even had the audacity to send you a text, telling you to look sadder. You sent one back saying that they were being ungrateful and that you should have let their brain be donated to the university.

"How close?"

Sometimes grief makes you do stupid things, makes you cling onto the most useless of items because they hold sentimental value. You don't know why you made them out the brain back. Maybe the fungus is in you too? Maybe this guy needs to stop asking question? Maybe you should walk away?

"How close."

They sound impatient, their voice suddenly a lot deeper and rougher and... you get the feeling you shouldn't turn around but you really want to. Just to see if they are who you think they are and if they were who you think they are this whole time.

"How. Close."


"Here."

Day 1,677

When all the guests had entered the Hall of Mirrors, the attending clown flipped a switch carefully hidden behind a false brick and they found themselves stuck in a loop. It was funny in a "hope we don't die here lol" kind of way, interspersed with mild panic at the thought of actually being trapped there.

When a kid pulled down on one of the fake candelabras and a mirror sunk into the ground, they all thought they'd found the way out. If they had stayed a few minutes longer in the initial chamber, they would have been released unharmed. They didn't know this.

When they all walked through, the mirror shot back up and sealed the way behind them. Their mild panic was starting to become moderate as they wandered about the newly discovered labyrinth, trying not to hear the sounds coming from the next corner... always the next corner.

When the first person disappeared, none of them noticed. Why would they? They were all strangers and were only focused on getting back out to the rest of the carnival. By the time they realised this, there were only five people remaining.

When they tried to come up with ways to solve the labyrinth and not lose another person, all they could think about was smashing the mirrors. One of them tried and the mirror did shatter... only to reform and drag them into it shards, leaving a few red smears on an otherwise perfect surface.

When the attending clown checked back in on the guests, two were still wandering about and the rest were feeding the carnival. This was a good yield from the first night and it decided to be lenient on the survivors. It flipped the same switch and all the mirrors dropped away to reveal a glowing exit sign.

When the last two people had finally gotten out of the labyrinth, they decided to grab some candyfloss and debate which ride to go on next - all memories of their time in the labyrinth as vague and fuzzy as a dream, all the others remained lost to the carnival's appetite.

Day 1,676

That jerk gave me the wrong address on purpose just to watch me sit here and squirm in the seat of my car as the boy with a gaping hole in his head gently taps on the windows and asks for his mummy. I don't know if I should tell him that she shot herself after she'd killed him and his granny so I just keep quiet and make sure he doesn't unlock the car doors.

I know from other people that if he gets into your car you feel compelled to drive him back to his dad's house and the old guy is damned fed up of seeing his dead son running about the place. Apparently he makes you pay for the petrol he uses to drive the ghost kid as far away as possible.

Can't say I blame him after accidentally looking into those bloodshot eyes and seeing the maggots eating away at them. On the bright side the kid doesn't seem to notice them or that he's lost a few fingers along the way. In all honesty I didn't think ghosts could decompose and yet I've seen it with my own two eyes.

I've tried holding the horn down to get him to scarper off but that just annoyed him and he ended up sitting on the bonnet for a good three hours. What was I supposed to do - drive and hope he didn't dematerialise or get run over and somehow end up looking worse than he currently does?

I swear when I find the jerk who gave me this jank address, I'm gonna tie him up and let the kid at him.

Day 1,675

I haven't seen another living thing for months, I've just been scraping by and taking food from the local shops. I wouldn't exactly call it stealing since the corpses wearing the owners clothes are propped behind the tills and the corpses dressed as policemen are draped all over the station.

I can't bring myself to say that these are bodies I recognise as people I once knew. Not when pieces of me are embedded onto them. My exact hairstyle on the body of a child in the back seat of a car, my birthmark on the arm someone in a surgeon's scrubs, my tattoo on the bloated corpse that floats around the pond in the park.

All of them are somehow a little like me and yet I'm the only one left alive. I can't help but wonder that if I died they'd all just spring back into life - unharmed and not even the slightest bit rotten. Maybe if I cut off one of my arms and go outside I can see if any of the corpse's arms start to move.

I don't know what I'd do if they did but I'mabout to find out.

Day 1,674

When you're fourteen, stuck in a school sleepover and bored shitless, you're bound to try something stupid. Our particular brand of stupid involved trying to summon a demon, as you do when you're too young to fully grasp the consequences of actually succeeding.

The ritual we found online stated that it would summon two demons which was an awesome idea because we thought that if it didn't work we'd just have fun and if it did we could watch a demon fight or something.

So two of us would be exchanged for two demons and one they fulfilled their "contract" with us they'd swap back to our friends again. We did everything exactly as it should have been done - with plenty of help from a latin website because dead languages are an absolute bitch to speak.

Now imagine our surprise when the glyphs we'd drawn glowed like the ritual said they would and the room was filled ankle deep with a sulphuric-smelling gas. It looked like it had worked but we were all still standing there.

I mean, I at least knew I was a demon (my parents sold a part of their souls to have a child and didn't think to specify the child had to be human so... that's on them). I just had to figure out where the other one was before they found me.

Day 1,673

We parked under the Cayeron State Park billboard and watched as the neon lights flickered eight times. We went there every night to count the flickers and matching them to each section of the partially decoded message left behind by the town founders.

They were warning us about something, a warning we took so deeply that instead of using a small campfire by the cracks in the parched ground and counting the flare-ups caused by the leaking natural gas, we made it safer and quicker. We made it modern and prayed it would work just as well.

We usually waited in the car while counting. Last time someone climbed the billboard to sit on the platform they got trapped by a pack of somethings shaped like coyotes. About twelve of them surrounded the base while three climbed the ladder.

In his final moments he texted the number to everyone on his phone before leaping to his death. It might not seem the bravest thing to do but it was the least painful option.Whatever those creatures are, they're anything but coyotes and they're awfully fond of a slow death.

They crowd around the car, all staring at us with eyes that don't quite sit right and teeth that change shape every time you blink. Sometimes I wonder if this is what the founder were trying to warm us about, I wonder if they hoped the fire would go out and we'd all panic and leave this damned place.

Doesn't matter much to us now, not that we'e almost cracked their code.

Day 1,672

When everything went to hell,mum told me to take my sister and head to our grandparents' house on the Isle of Mizenthorpe, right up near the Hebrides. We didn't even know we had grandparents, let alone that they lived right at the furthest point of the UK.

So we left them behind and headed north, headed away from the burning towns and smouldering cities, using unnamed roads and scavenging for food in the farms that were abandoned amidst all the chaos. While the world was collapsing in on itself, there we were-two children and a solar-powered bike with a sidecar attached.

Every time we came near toa body,my sister would try and get me to go over and help them. She was too young to understand what death was and what the world was coming to so I just said they were sleeping and told her to be quiet and let them rest.

I didn't want to try and explain that waking them from their fever-induced coma would set off the second stage of the plague. I was too busy trying to figure out how we'd get to the other islands and exactly which one was Mizenthorpe. Our best bet was hoping one of the ferries was still running its route and hadn't been commandeered, broken or sunk.

I should have spent more time teaching my sister about the new reality we faced and that being silent and staying cold was for the best. She was forever complaining that she wanted to be warmer and one day I just snapped and told her to go get the plague and burn up.

She ran away crying and that was the last time I saw her alive. Five days of searching the area and I found her, well, what was left of her at least. Her head looked like she was sleeping, like she'd gone to bed and been brutally murdered before she even realised what was going on.

It was a mercy, really it was. It's better that she went to join our parents and didn't live long enough to realise that we were lied to. I found maps in an old petrol station and - surprise, surprise - Mizenthorpe doesn't and never has existed.

I'm glad my sister never found this out. She was looking forward to meeting the rest of our family and now I guess she is. I'm still alive and heading for the outermost isles in the hopes that somebody - anybody-has survived.

Wish me luck.

Day 1,671

They sent us down to repair the base of the oil rig after a dozen sharks got caught up in a feeding frenzy and damaged the legs. It wasn't enough to risk us capsizing but when those fragile looking things are all that stops you from sinking into 6,000 feet of ice cold ocean, you tend to run a little cautious.

The company pays us well enough but they more than make up for it by skimping everywhere else. Most modern sites tend to use remote machines to do the dog work but we got shoved into a goddamn diving bell and expected to do the same job.

So it was me, Arnes and Hassan crammed inside that sardine can, trying not to think about just how thin the metal looks from the outside and how the oxygen-providing umbilical cord is daintier than my kid's wrists. The air felt stale before they'd even started to lower us down.

We knew that one wrong move could kill us all-one rogue wave could nudge bell as its entering and tilt it while we're still strapped to our seats. We'd probably die from cold water shock before we could even consider swimming. I've heard it's not as slow as people make it out to be though so there's that for comfort.

We were just hitting six-hundred-and-a-bit feet beneath the waves when we heard knocking near the window. It was too dark to see properly but something bioluminescent darted by. Whatever it was, it was the longest damn thing I'd ever seen and the patterns around its head looked almost human.

We took turns to watch out for it both in the bell and just outside while the third set about repairing the legs. Whenever it came by we'd dart back inside, pull ourselves right up and watch it swim straight beneath us. It knew we were in there and it was growing bolder with every pass.

On our way back up it started knocking non-stop, gentle taps that grew into a violent pounding that left our heads ringing for days afterwards. I left soon after that - the second I could - and I haven't looked back. No amount of money will make me go anywhere near that thing again.

Day 1,670

None of the girls at Dagcroft Boarding School trusted Ms Clough, always said there was something not right about her. For the longest time I though they could also see how her shadow didn't move with her and hear the faint sound of crying on the nights when she was on hallway patrol.

Turns out that was just me.

They called me a liar and a freak, said I was making it up for attention as if I wanted to watch Ms Clough walk one way while her shadow clawed in the opposite direction. As if I wanted to spend my nights creeping along the hallways after her, trying to find out what the hell was going on.

I was so relieved to find out that the crying I heard at night was just a ghost until she told me how she died.

Day 1,669

We know better than to join the carnival when it's raining. The city may have been pulled back from the verge of sinking into the ocean's depths but half the people wearing masks end up walking back into the water at the carnival's end and very few return alone.

They'll be polite as anything, courteous almost to a fault with alluring smiles and laughter like a cool breeze on a warm summer's night but behind those masks are mouths too full of teeth. Behind those elaborate chokers and Elizabethan ruffs are ridged gills that twitch at the mere mention of water.

Don't get me wrong - we love our carnival and we love that the government cared enough to save our city but I can't help but think they had other motives than just doing the right thing. These people that only appear during the carnival, that never remove their masks, that always leave wet footprints trailing behind them...

What could they possibly be and where have they taken everyone?

Day 1,668

When the old paint factory was torn down, we found out why the former owner was so against its destruction. After the rubble had been sorted and the bare foundations had been broken and removed, nothing should have been left but the bare earth that it all stood upon.

And yet there was a large wooden door, now singed and falling apart to reveal the entrance to the long forgotten barrows. They were mentioned once in the Domesday Book back in the year 1086 and in the next census they were seemingly replaced by a merchant's guild that gradually altered itself over the years until its latest form- the paint factory.

Wondering what undisturbed treasures could possibly lay inside, a small team of archeologists went in. They expected to find skeletal remains, they expected to find a few coins and maybe a dozen or so artifacts to identify the buried person as a king or a warrior.

They didn't expect to find someone who looked like they died just the day before.

Each of them came back shaken, each one described the body differently. It was as if they all saw someone who looked eerily like somebody they knew. Somebody who they hadn't seen for a while, hadn't talked to them in a while - not long enough to be too concerning but just long enough for them to worry that they had now lost someone.

When the police department ventured in, they found nothing but bare earth, not even the stone where the body was found. Their dogs, however, found a scent trail that led back into town and vanished among the hustle and bustle of a thriving community.