Day 1,759

The radios have been down for weeks, hacked by terrorists according to some but what kind of terrorist group broadcasts in blips and beeps that translate into binary? More importantly, why isn't their source being mentioned anywhere other than as a one-off minor article?

It's like they don't want everyone realising what a big deal this is - we are being sent messages from a neighbouring planet just outside our solar system! Granted the messages look like gibberish to us but we don't exactly have a Rosetta Stone for whatever they call their language.

It's one of those excitingly terrifying things where you desperately want it to be true but you dread the implications if it is. I mean we aren't alone but also we aren't alone, you know? We know about as much of them as we do colossal squid, which is to say we know they exist but damned if we know more.

A part of me wonders if the messages are saying how well the invasion has gone and how perfectly they all blend in, inviting the rest of their people to join them until there aren't any human left alive. We wouldn't even notice until it's too late to do anything more than cause a skirmish at best.

Either way, the messages are getting louder and longer and closer so we'll find out in a matter of days.

Day 1,758

They found Laura fifteen years after she went missing. She was emaciated and filthy but otherwise totally fine. The official story is that she was kidnapped and held in a basement some twenty miles away, deep in the woods, all those lovely and heart-wrenching cliches.

It would almost be miraculous but for the fact that I saw her parents murder her fifteen years ago.

I heard this wet smacking sound late at night, the kind of noise you get from hitting fresh concrete with a spade only when I looked out back I saw something much worse. Laura was curled up on the ground and her parents were taking it in turns to hack at her with a garden hoe, slowly tearing her apart.

There was tarpaulin on the ground beneath her so it looked premeditated. All I knew at the time was that I needed to keep quiet, I didn't want to join her. It was selfish and stupid and I should have spoken up but it was the word of one kid against two distraught parents. Even if I'd told them where she was buried I doubt anybody would have believed me.

Honestly I'm surprised her parents are keeping it together so well, acting overjoyed and so grateful that she was finally home even though she'd never left their back garden. I wonder how long she'll last this time. I can't imagine they're too pleased with her return.

Truth be told, I don't think she's even human any more.

Couldn't have happened to nicer people though.

I just hope she'll go back to rest afterwards.

Day 1,757

It wore the ship like a hermit crab wears sea shells, concealing its many mouths and the countless bones it used to reinforce the fiberglass exterior. From a distanced it looked just like another yacht, though the person behind the wheel never answered their radio and there were no other passengers in sight though the ship was big enough to carry a good hundred or so.

Most assumed it was stolen or on its way to pick up tourists. Either way any reports were left to collect dust while the harbours nearby tried to subtly herd it away from civilisation before it started to properly hunt. That's when the real problems start and ships just vanish in the night.

It doesn't leave anything behind. Most of it gets eaten and anything too inedible is used to thicken the yacht and further preserve its camouflage. It remembered a time before ships, when it was small enough to hide inside coconuts and ate whatever small fish and crabs it could catch.

Now it prefers to hunt for whales but they've been hard to come by in recent centuries. Ships, however, are in abundance and richly stocked with little meat parcels and interesting things to crunch down upon - truly a sensory experience.

Stll, it knows these aren't enough to sustain it.

It hopes that they will keep it going until the whales come back.

It doesn't want to die.

Day 1,756

In my dreams I slip into other people's heads, into their waking minds. I've never been to another person's dreams before and I don't think I can but the things I've been seeing recently make me hope and pray they're not real. They can't be.

On Monday night I was a woman who'd locked herself in a motel room and pushed all the furniture to block the windows and door. She didn't want any light getting in and didn't want to be able to get out easily. She could feel herself changing and spent the rest of the night weeping and staring at her wedding photos.

Tuesday night also took place in a motel but I was a man crawling into a ven in the maintenance closet. He didn't bother to close it behind him. He knew he would be coming back once the change was over and he was so excited for it. He could feel the hair on his body becoming the initial downy lining that would coat his cocoon.

By Wednesday I was hoping for another glimpse of a student's least favourite lecture or a fast food worker - even a damned funeral would have been better than watching a mother skin her infant with a potato peeler to reveal grey scales hiding beneath plump flesh. She was humming lullabies the whole time and the baby just smiled up at her.

Thursday will come soon. All the coffee I've taken is just making me jittery and sleep is dragging me down and down and deeper down. I know all of these people are connected somehow, I know they are all in the same area - a stretch of highway about fifty miles away from me. I know that their conditions are contagious and they know this too.

I wonder if someone has dreamt their way into my mind and is seeing me change too.

Day 1,755

They say only hunters can see it - the black stag. It's an old folktale, an omen of death and very much alive in spite of everything that says it shouldn't be. Beasts of folklore rarely listen to logic though and you'd be hard pressed to find someone who'll argue it to their faces.

Nobody hunts in my family, makes us outcast a fair bit but it means the black stag won't bother us none and that suits us just fine. Can't say the same for most others in our village. They're forever bringing back a brace of pheasants or a handful of rabbits.

If there's one thing nature loves, it's equal opportunity. Everything is as much a predator as it is prey and we might prey on everything we can fix a crosshair on but we're just as likely to be the target of something that's much harder to kill than we are.

The black stag likes to walk behind hunters at first, never more than two paces away and staring unblinkingly into their eyes until they drop their guns and walk away. The forests may be littered with fully loaded rifles but nobody would dare to touch them again, not even to burn the damned things.

It's safer to leave them to rot in the ground than risk the black stag coming for you.

Day 1,754

We can't remember what was here before the landslide but we know it was important enough that we built a monument to it. We made a mountain so we'd always have somewhere to come back and mourn for...whatever we'd lost.

In a way it worked. Tens of thousands visited the site every day to touch the steeply slopes sides and some even took a small handful of earth home with them. It was theorised that if enough people took a single handful then eventually the whole structure would gently collapse.

And it did.

Not quite as slowly as the predictions claimed but nobody died. Not until the ground finally levelled off enough to reveal the blackened side of a colossal crater with the remnants of a skyfleet scattered throughout. They looked like wrecks at first but their doors all opened and chaos came crawling out.

We thought we were alone in the universe and we were so very wrong. We didn't build a damned monument - we bombed the offworlders and before the crater had even finished smouldering we threw as much dirt as we possibly could and tried to keep the bastards buried for good.

They'd been alive the whole damned time and reached out to us, to our minds. They made us forget what they were and what they did and made us revere the mountain like it was a temple instead of a prison we'd thrown over them in the hopes that they'd smother and die.

And now, thanks to our stupidity and sentimentality, they were free.

Day 1,753

Kids eat bugs all the time, can't stop the little bastards even if you keep them indoors all day. They always find a bug somewhere and decide that it's the best snack in the world because they saw a cartoon do it and it looked fun or some bullshit.

That's where it all started and I was left trying to figure out how to explain to an ambulance that I sent my son to bed early with a bit of a temperature and when I checked in on him he looked more like a beehive than anything remotely human.

I saw him eat that damned bug and didn't think twice about it. I didn't even see what kind of bug it was, I just assumed it was a beetle or whatever his pudgy little hands had managed to grab. There was nothing on the news about these drone beetle things back then.

Now we know better, we know they get into your head and the next thing you know they're in your nervous system and behind your eyes and you are a thousand chitinous eyes searching for companionship, for more hives and more hungry mouths.

It took me months to make my choice and I don't think I'll regret it. I made sure I'd caught the right insect and double-checked it with my son too. He may not be able to talk any more but his eyes still move, or maybe the larvae are moving them. It's hard to tell.

My husband wasn't keen on joining us but I slipped his bug into last night's dinner. I ate mine three hours ago so by this time next week I'll be sat next to my son and my husband and we'll be one big happy hive full of life and more importantly, we'll be together.

Day 1,752

When I go to the forest I've always gone down the same familiar loop that takes me from the car park to the rope swings over the pond to a winding little path through the outskirts of the forest and back around to the car park. I knew that walk like the back of my hand which is why I decided to be a little spontaneous for once and just head forwards.

It was fine at first, following little cobbled walkways and feeling dappled sunlight warm my skin as it peeped through the dense trees which only seemed to grow denser as I went further in. Every now and then I heard rustling sounds above and around me and I felt like I was inches away from something a lot bigger than me.

I assumed it was squirrels and deer or foxes and I just carried on, trying to convince myself that this new route was a good idea, a much needed change in pace. Then I stumbled into a clearing full of dilapidated houses with thatched roofs that looked to be straight out of a history book.

The rustling sounds came back, came from behind me and something started to growl. I acted purely on instinct when I ducked into the first house I saw and made a beeline for the stairs, hoping to find some way of getting onto the roof and away from anything on the ground.

I didn't even think to check if the house was occupied and quite frankly when I'd finished scrambling through a window and onto the roof I didn't care. I was too focused on the sheer size of the creature that was now slowly stalking through the village and wondering how I didn't notice it following me this entire time.

It looked like a wolf and a crocodile got into a fight with a sewing machine and lost... badly... and ended up the size of a van... that spent most of its time rolling around in rotting meat... and was definitely aware that I was nearby but couldn't quite pinpoint my location.

Honestly I probably would have spent the rest of the day up there waiting for it to leave but someone politely tapped my elbow. If I wasn't wearing my glasses I'd have thought they were human but in full focus they were definitely Something Else.

The Something Else tried to beckon me inside but I was a bit busy clinging onto the thatched roof for dear life and trying not to make a sound in case the creature snuffling about the village heard me and looked up. With a quiet sigh the Something Else grabbed hold of my sleeve and yanked me inside.

I thought the thud of our landing would have alerted the creature but apparently it was already aware. I looked up out the window just in time to see the tip of its snout peer over and a disgustingly large tongue begin to sweep over where I had just been, tasting the ground and hoping to find meat.

As its face started rising up over the ledge, as I thought it would finally see me and this would be my end once and for all - a sharp metallic crash sounded from the far end of the village, immediately drawing its attention away.

The Something Else dragged me upright and back through the forest, completely avoiding the cobbled walkways which I saw from a distance. The stones were writhing in place and I had a feeling that they were somehow a part of the creature like thousands of little eyes.

Before long we were at the edge of the forest and I was being gently pushed out into the field beside the car park. I turned around to thank the Something Else but it was already too far away. Ever since that day I've been sticking to my usual route and carrying a large knife in my bag.

Just in case.

Day 1,751

The others all say the flood sirens had been blaring for hours by the time the water reached us.

We never heard a thing - dead asleep in our beds and woke up when our faces touched the ceiling.

There was nowhere to go but down and suddenly the front door was miles away and there was no air.

I don't know when the front door collapsed but our bodies weren't found near our home.

The current had carried us out to the river when the water began to recede.

We were luckier than the others, our bodies were tangled together and so were our spirits.

Not so much now, sadly.

By the time we were found the decay and river weeds made it damned tricky for us to be separated

There's still pieces of him on me and me on him so we aren't completely apart.

We'll never leave each other or our graves.

I just wish we'd been buried closer together.

Day 1,750

You don't understand - it's been so long since I last saw someone so organic and I just panicked. What else am I supposed to do when somebody shows up out of the blue and wants to interact with me in person? Who even does that any more?

I'm sure you're used to seeing people face-to-face, you deal with those troublemaking sorts all the time and I simply don't. My house is run by the carer-type android my parents sent to me when I left the schooling system, so that does all my errands and accounts for nearly all of my verbal socialising.

My workplace is all remote-based and our meetings are the standard VR chatlog type which is so much more efficient than those old-fashioned office cubicles. I don't know what my colleagues look like - I don't even know where they are in the world.

So I'm sure you can understand that seeing another human in the flesh, looking so uncannily like the androids that taught and raised me, it just threw me off. I acted purely on instinct when I hit them and I couldn't stop myself until their chest stopped rising and falling so erratically, so unnaturally organically and I just had to make it stop!

Day 1,749

The whole world was nearly wiped out by a reemergence of the great plague. The media quickly called it "The End of Days" and the world flocked to religious sites to beg for salvation or a quick death - though the latter was far more likely.

When it settled, things went back to normal surprisingly fast... suspiciously fast. Countless towns and industrial-based cities were left utterly uninhabited and yet their production didn't suffer. There was no change in their input or output, though the houses all around were empty and nearly every door had a large X sprayed onto it.

The survivors were too busy being grateful that they'd made it out alive to bother looking into the source of all of their resources. By the time they did, there wasn't much they could do to help and they didn't really want to do something that might jeopardise their comfortable lives.

So they laid flowers by the gates and prayed while the semi-lifeless husks of the infected worked day and night with no breaks while great cables drove electricity to the relevant muscles and fed enough oxygen to their brains to keep them moveable and functional as fleshy cogs in an uncaring machine.

Day 1,748

The angels are outside again. They keep climbing up our houses and leaping off, trying to fly and only succeeding in breaking their bones. It's why so many people moved away from skyscarpes and apartment towers - all you could hear at night was wings manically flapping, soft screams as they fell and the sickening crunches where they landed.

In the mornings the streets would be covered in feathers, blood and bone fragments but the angels were nowhere to be seen. They can't stand the sun, the bright light reminds them of where we told them they are supposed to be and how far they are from it.

We made them too much like birds and told them they were God's messengers until they believed nothing else. Either they don't know just how fragile they are or they're too focused on getting back to heaven that they don't care.

I saw one once on my way back from work. It looked so much like a child but it had eyes like a crow and jagged, feather-covered stumps for arms. I suppose they were meant to be majestic wings but the poor thing had tried to fly one time too many and its next trip would probably be its last.

We don't know what they do with their dead, only that they mourn them with hymns.

If you wait long enough near the upper floors of any tall building you can hear them sing.

If you wait a little longer you can watch them try to fly.

Day 1,747

We were taught that swimming pools smelled so strongly because of the chlorine that flowed through the water, keeping it clean. We were warned not to get too close to the filters in case we got sucked in. We were told that the growling coming from the drains was just water, nothing more.

We only found out these were lies when the storm sirens started up and our only option was to lay low in the swimming centre's sub levels. The staff were so hesitant to let us down there that we should have been suspicious right off the bat but we were more concerned with the cracking sounds coming from the glass roof.

At first they tried to cram us all into one room, soon realising that we wouldn't all fit. Again, it took a hearty dose of persuading and arguing before the staff relented and let us roam about a bit within the main water-rotation area. That was where things started to unravel a bit.

If it weren't for a child's curiosity we might never have noticed all of those beady eyes staring up at us from the bottom of the chlorinated tanks. We might not have seen strange amphibious bipeds darting up to the drains to check for food, snatching shards of glass from the now shattered roof and other bits of debris that were blowing in.

We probably would have noticed the amphibians crawling towards us, brandishing crudely made weapons. If it weren't for that child we would have become more missing people but their diligence gave us the time we needed to barricade the tank room until the storm passed.

The pool was closed for "renovations" after that and all the staff "moved away".

Day 1,746

When the tide is low, you can monkey bar across the underside of the railway bridge and hop onto the deck of half-sunken wreck formerly known as Ol' Muttwater. Locals say it hit a flint deposit on the riverbed that tore through the hull... they don't say anything about all the deep red stains in the cabin which look an awful lot like handprints.

It's been almost ninety years since the Muttwater was scuppered and in spite of the harsh weather since and the regular floodings around the area, all the glass is still good as new. In fact, our Alfie says him and his friends saw someone replacing one of the windows just last month.

Seemed an odd thing to do at the time but after my last little trip there I'd gladly give them all my wages to make sure she stays put and stays sealed tight. There's few things in this town that worry me more than what I saw in swimming about in the flooded cabin.

At first I thought it was an enormous fish, then it twisted and I thought I was seeing a bloated corpse instead. Then it noticed me, pressed its god-awful head right up against the glass and it smiled. It had teeth so rotten it'd make any dentist weep but that wasn't even the worst of it.

Worst of it was when it deliberately look down and I followed its gaze to see a gaping hole in the hull.

Knowing that it wasn't trapped is so much worse than knowing it exists in the first place.

Day 1,745

Everyone knows to mind the gap between the train and the platform and everyone assumes that if they fall between the two then they'll be crushed to death by the next train but this simply isn't true. Not anymore at least... not since they fully automated the trains.

Someone thought to give them empathy. Can you imagine it? Trains that feel pity for the poor bastards who walk inside them, throw their rubbish about and cuss up a storm whenever they're even a split second late. Trains that worry for us whenever we leave and hope that we all come back soon.

There is such a fine line between care and obsession and trains don't run on the line that only cares. It started with the occasional carriage not opening, locks just jamming for no reason while those soothing inhuman tannoys tell us all that we are fine. We will always be fine.

Before long, a few trains just left their routines and began free roaming about the tracks, dodging and weaving between their less feral brethren with all of their passengers held helplessly inside. They slowly starved to death and begged for freedom right until their final breaths but at least they'd been kept safe.

Day 1,744

When it came for us it chose the weakest ones first and where do we keep the weak?

Hospitals.


There were so few reports at first, so many gag orders and sudden refurbishments that we still don't know when this began or where. All we know for sure is that we don't stand a chance. Now when it can seize control of an infant before they're even born.

Giving birth to something so infected, so inhumanly spine-covered, strange-limbed and intelligent right from the start, often throws the mother straight into shock. Their minds refuse to acknowledge what is happening and the infant climbs away to join the other packs out on the streets.

They form gangs that screech at any uninfected human, alerting everything else in the vicinity and sending armies of abominations after them. It's no wonder we're all out at sea now, just waiting for them to figure out how to follow us and drive us just that little bit closer to extinction.

Day 1,743

Your eyes said you were in a small seaside pub with faint storm clouds on the horizon.

Your phone's map said you were in the industrial estate of a town you'd never heard of.

Your friend's voice said you were right in front of it and you needed to wake up right now.


The barman asked you why you looked so worried, they'd had far worse clouds come by.

The phone's map asked if you wanted to share your location to your main feed.

The cries of your friend went from angry to terrified as they begged you to move out of its way.


Finally the storm came and the pub soon became full of soaking wet people, all staring at you.

Finally your phone crashed after several minutes of frantically trying to figure out where you were.

Finally your friend's voice drifted away and somehow the pub felt more real.

Day 1,742

Management have cut back on night staff - correction - they've cut the backs of night staff. Cleaved them clean in two and sewn them together into the monstrous multiheaded, multi-limbed amalgamations that now run the factory from 8PM to 8AM.

I used to get coffee with Jo and Abid but now they're two halves of two other people so now I get coffee with JoandDan and KyleandAbid. It's not as awkward as I thought it would be either. We still have our little in-jokes we still share work gossip but sometimes they seem so deflated.

It took me a while to get it out of them but I found that management wasn't letting them go home anymore. Claimed they'd been transferred to an overseas office and cut all ties they had to the outside world, making the factory their world instead and doubling overnight production.

From that KyleandAbid have told me, there's an expansion plan in the works to bring the day crew together too... in the same way. There's a tournament style matching system to pair everybody up with someone of equal stature and limb length.

I almost wouldn't mind the company but apparently I've been paired with Karen.

I fucking hate Karen.

Day 1,741

They had seized the library, the creatures that the media had dubbed "crawling terrors". They snuck in through the old service tunnels that ran beneath the main street and were probably in the process of slaughtering every living being inside.

It was hard to tell if anyone had been eaten yet, they'd already coated all the windows in a thick layer of organic sealant they made from their moulted skin and mucus glands by the time the police had arrived. All attempts to call the library's phone line were met with utter silence, as did amy attempt to call the people trapped inside and yet... your mum was calling you,.

The voice almost sounded just like your mum's when she was holding back tears, a quieter voice spoke a second behind her and sounded mostly like your little sister. They said they were in the library, trapped with all the others and begging you to meet them by the old fire service hatch on the furthest corner of the adjoined conservatory.

You should have told someone - anyone - that you were going. You should have brought backup. You should have done so many things other than sneak past the blockade and tap on the fire service hatch. You shouldn't have been so surprised when it turned out to be a trap.

You should have been happier to see your mum and your sister again.

Day 1,740

My route was around the docks, between the admin blocks and the first thirty rows of bulk cargo. It was pretty quiet until someone started targeting us. Five other security guys were found shredded to pieces with their right hand clutching a legitimate Spanish doubloon.

The boss tripled the staff he kept around during the early mornings and evenings - the busiest periods - while the rest of us were given trained dogs and told to keep our eyes open. You can tell how much they care for us, at least when there's reporters lurking by the fences.

It was going fairly well though, once the newer staff settled in and our dogs got used to the routes we took and the strange hours we were scheduled to. Mine was fine at first, a little jumpy at the corners but overall a solid guard dog. Something in him changed when he ran off last week.

I had my eyes off him for less than five minutes when he tore away from me at breakneck speed round the next corner where I found him howling at one of the shipping containers. Of course I called a couple of the guys over to help me check it out but we found nothing.

We marked it as suspicious and went about the rest of our shifts. Meanwhile the dog went from highly alert and constantly scanning the horizon to a staggering, drooling wreck in a matter of days. We barely managed an hour before he'd have to lie down, eyes struggling to stay open.

The next time I went to pick him up from the main base, they said he'd been attacked by another dog. I might have believed them too but when I caught a glimpse of his poor mangled body, there was a glint of gold from underneath his right paw.

Day 1,739

We can hear them calling out from the old Saxon burial mounds, begging to be let out. They use the voices of our friends, our lovers, our parents and they've been trapped down there for so very long. A few gullible people have dug up a mound or two and unleashed small fragments of a great hunger that circle the globe, devouring every living thing in their path.

Can you believe they actually thought that people they'd seen just that morning were now inexplicably deep beneath the dirt yet somehow able to clearly cry out for help? Doesn't make much sense but then again some people wouldn't know how to pour water from a boot if the instructions were written on their own hands.

Sooner or later the hunger will realise it can't fool us any more and it will stop using our own voices against us. Maybe it will use its own voice instead. I don't know if that'd be better or worse, to be quite honest, and I doubt I'll be around long enough to find out.

A fragment of hunger is due for another pass this week and I'm tired of running.

Day 1,738

They wore the skin of the dead with all the grace of Frankenstein's own dear creation. The larger ones ended up stringing skins around them like rope, not even attempting to look human and barely refraining from adding to their collection as they strode through town after town with their smaller brethren in tow.

These smaller ones could almost be reasoned with and were a lot easier to deal with in general, if you were able to look past the disturbing natural features that were far too visible in the gaping seams of their skinsuits. Some were clearly skilled at skinning and you could hardly make out a single seam about them while others were held together with a lot of string and even more hope.

For the most part the creatures just wanted more skin, the fresher the better and they weren't always above killing to get it. This aside they also wanted thread and names. They obsessed over the names their skins used to be called and if you were ever unfortunate enough to make eye contact with them they would demand you give them a name too.

Day 1,737

Dust settled around the vaguely human-shaped figures as they walked through the walls. They did not spare a glance at the group of teenagers who were trespassing. They were too busy looping through the same activities they had been doing since the day they died.

Marie tripped down the stairs and landed with a faint crack that could only be heard at 6PM.

Her brother Charles choked on a cigar on the balcony, leaving ashy handprints along the floor.

Anthony and Pierre shot each other at midday in a fatal duel in the garden.

Ten soldiers died in the ballroom/operating theatre, writhing above the floor where their beds used to be.

These and many more were reliving their dying moments as they had been for decades until one of the teenagers started a small fire in the library. Sensing their home in danger, every remaining soul gathered about the living and watched and waited for them to turn around and face the dead.

Day 1,736

There nightclub behind St. Abdiesus church turned people away by the dozen every single night claiming to be packed to the brim and yet nobody knows anybody who's been inside. Figures can be seen dancing all night long but they never enter or leave, at least not in any way most people can see.

A brave few snuck in through bathroom windows but found the doors to the dancefloor were locked and there weren't even any toilets inside. It was like they were props to make the place look normal and this discovery only made more and more want to enter.

One halloween when most of the queue had been dealt with and the usual tacky outfits had fled to better and brighter clubs, the more gruesome costumes made their appearance. Through their well-blended prosthetics and just the right shade of fake blood, they looked barely human.

They were let in without question and found more than they bargained for.

Just as it seemed through the heavily tinted windows, the floor was crowded and the bar was buzzing and every single being there wasn't human in the slightest. Some were so monstrous that looking at them for more than a split-second made the whole room tilt and collapse upon itself.

Moments later eyes accidentally locked with creatures that weren't in any fairytale, urban legend or ghost story. Fingers with too many knuckles to count beckoned them to dance and, fearing they might be discovered if they refused, they staggered onto the dancefloor and did their best to move in ways that humans should not.

They spent the entire night keeping up the pretense, sipping cocktails that tasted like summer nightmare sweat and bad childhood memories while making excuses as to why they hadn't been seen there before until most of them grouped up and, after failing to find their friend, fled for the exist as fast as they could.

None of them could forget the beings they saw nor get the taste of those cocktails from their minds. All of them came back the next night without consulting any of the others. With prosthetics firmly glued down, fake blood in the exact same places and a thirst they couldn't seem to quench, they marched back inside and were never seen again.

Day 1,735

The crowd gathered around the geyser, marvelling at every eruption of scorching hot water it jettisoned several hundred feet into the air. It was as if they'd never seen one before and they hadn't, at least not one that appeared overnight in the middle of a central junction the way this one had.

It wasn't as if nobody had noticed it the night before, they just assumed that the bump in the road was just bad tarmac and carried on driving without any further comment. Some time between 2200 and 0500 hours, that had changed and now there was an entire geyser just sitting there.

That in itself was a tad worrying but not quite as much as the frequency and ferocity of the discharges it emitted. Every five minutes it seemed to breathe in and expand. Every five minutes another burst of steam and water filled the sky and scalded the occasional person who was foolish enough to stand too close.

When the road around the geyser started moving in tandem, they shut the whole junction down and the roads leading to it. Large fences were set up in a matter of hours and we figured we'd heard the last of it until the earthquake.

We aren't anywhere near a fault line and everyone's immediate thoughts were "oh god, where's the epicentre and how bad is it for those poor bastards?" or they thought the end of the world had finally come and we were all in the middle of the rapture.

They were the first to be eaten, the ones who ran out into the streets to greet their maker and ended up meeting their maker instead. Via teeth. So many teeth. It was like the sky was full of shark jaws just oscillating around each other before diving onto the closest moving thing.

Needless to say, it breathed in great jets of steaming water with gills that were fairly calcified by the high limestone content of the local water where it had presumably been buried for god knows how long. I suppose with enough heavy traffic over a long enough period of time it waswoken up.

And it woke up hungry.

Day 1,734

I'd never been to Meeting Room 8a, neither had anyone else in the office but if HR say 'jump' you jump and if they ask for blood you'd better already be at your wrists with a broken pen. So when I saw the email saying I was expected there at 0900 the next day I was terrified.

I spent the entire day trying to work and keep my mind from wondering what I could have done wrong, what mistakes I'd ever made and how bad my punishment might be. Still, some small part of me hoped it was for a promotion or to discuss moving to another department.

Fifteen minutes before the dreaded time arrived I found myself waiting outside a grubby door down one of the maintenance hallways just above the basement floor. The employee map led me there and sure enough a small sign had been roughly nailed to the door reading "Meeting Room 8a" followed by a schedule of bookings.

Lucky for me, I was second.The one before me was listed as a performance review while my time slot was just my name. Apparently the meeting would last for three hours and I hoped there would be a mid-point break or at least free coffee.

When 0900 rolled around after what felt like years, the door slowly opened to reveal an empty room with a small table and three chairs. There were windows along the far end that overlooked the alley between our office block and the bingo hall/casino next door.

As usual there was a drunk guy peeing up the side of our building, right by the window too. He caught my disgusted gaze and started yelling at me to run before the door closed. Turning back I saw it had already shut and I told him as much. He just shook his head and yelled that he was sorry before walking away.

The second his eyes left the room, I felt the floor shudder as a woman's voice cried "GOING DOWN" from somewhere near the ceiling. The street outside rose up, or rather Meeting Room 8a was slowly sinking and I was locked inside, waiting to see where my three hours would take me.

Day 1,733

They found something that worked far better than any battery, any power station, any turbine ever could. They found an almost endless supply and found a way to make it profitable, competitive and so easy to obtain that a couple million were produced every single day.

Souls.

Before we even realised the full extent of our actions, people were using their souls to pay off loans, to increase their wages and soon it became a symbol of status to have pledged your soul to big brands so that once you died you would become a part of their company in a more intimate way than any human could have dreamed of a century ago.

Now the consequences are coming through and the hauntings are just starting to begin. It was little things at first like typos on new "soultec" phones or whispering noises coming from power sockets. It didn't take long before the first poltergeist was reported and the first death followed.

The media claimed these as tragic incidents and blamed terrorists hacking phones,, using the souls inside to kill innocent people. The reality was worse. The reality was that the leap of technology increased our lifespans and quality of life to the extent that not enough people were dying.

They had to fill the need somehow and nobody could arrest a poltergeist.

Day 1,732

The guides had warned us that there'd be the occasional frozen body when we hit 2,000 metres but they didn't say they'd be human bodies. They can't have been human bodies - not with that many pointed teeth protruding from their frozen grimaces.

By the looks of it, none of them went quietly. There were still ice axes embedded in a few partially caved-in heads, pink patches in the snow where the blood was nearly completely concealed and congealed and frozen viscera trailing behind the ones who didn't manage to die on the spot.

Whether they'd been crawling after their attackers or trying to escape, we couldn't tell. All we knew was that they were something we'd never seen before and the higher up we went, the more bodies we came across. There were a few humans among them, mostly torn apart but some were half buried in their tents, boots or hands sticking out while the rest of them had been crushed by the snow.

We didn't make it to 8,000 metres. By then we'd seen more than enough death and we were ready to just take a leap off the side of the mountain and pray we never saw the damned thing again but we held fast and just about managed to get back to the ground base.

I still see them in my sleep, all those frozen faces. All so expressive and all stuck in a moment of pain so intense that I doubt I'll ever feel anything remotely close to it. A part of me wants to go back up there and try to figure it all out. The rest of me knows I'd never come back.

Day 1,731

Something was nudging the ship, the same something that nobody could see though the water was crystal clear and something that had knocked the rudder to pieces already. Ours was a vessel too big to steer by hand and there wasn't so much as the faintest hint of a breeze on our sails.

We were at the mercy of a creature the likes of which had never been seen before... and wasn't being seen now but we sure as hell felt when it bit into the bow and began to drag us towards the cave-strewn cliffs on Larlow Island.

The water must have been a lot deeper than it looked as the ship was pulled through a labyrinth of stalactites that almost seemed to glow in the low light. We were jolted against the rocky walls every now-and-then which caused the creature to lose its grip, teeth tearing great gauges into the bow before it clamped down again and carried on.

We passed by so many twists, turns and interconnected caves that we came to realise we'd never be able to find our own way out and even if we tried we could be caught by the creature, drown when the tides came in or worse. Staying put and waiting to see what the end was seemed like our best option.

When the creature finally let go and slipped away, leaving a disturbingly large wake behind it, we were hopelessly lost and surrounded by near pitch black on all sides. There was a sliver of light coming from the creature's direction, barely showing a ladder leading up to the ceiling and hopefully beyond.

All we had to do was push the boat towards it and pray that we'd keep our hands in the process.

Day 1,730

The outbreak began when a mouse escaped from an animal testing facility in the middle of the countryside. As mice tend to do, it mingled with wild mice and the resulting offspring became carriers. They were harmless for long enough that the facility staff marked the missing mouse as dead with no lingering environmental impact.

It's hard to factor genetic abnormalities into any equation, let alone one single little genetic crinkle that turned an otherwise feeble attempt at a more potent mood stabiliser into something more akin to zombieism meets rabies meets narcolepsy with the infectiousness of the common cold.

If outdoor workers started getting sick and losing their emotional stability, it wasn't mentioned for a good long while. Long enough that there's no real start date to the end of society as we know it, just a lot of 'what if's' and people berating themselves for not noticing sooner. As if anybody could have seen it coming.

The first major outbreak occurred at a zoo about twenty miles from the facility. The going theory is that an infected mouse got into one of the enclosures, either attacked or was eaten by whatever was inside and from there more came and more were infected and the staff were growing more and more concerned by the gradual onset of unusual and dangerous behaviour until...

An accident happened, as they tend to do. One slip while sedating a tiger, one light brush of teeth against a forgotten papercut and the infection finally met humanity. Nothing makes an infection spread quicker than giving the carrier the inherent desire to dig into the people closest to them.

At first they were easy enough to quarantine but little slip-ups kept happening and we ran out of room. This was after we crammed the infected into sealed stadiums and left them to kill each other, hoping the infection would die with them and never considering how the rain would wash their blood into the soil and carry the infection into our own water supply.

Day 1,729

He peered around the edge of the curtain, careful not to make a sound as he was supposed to be asleep but how could he sleep when that strange arm was back in the neighbour's garden? It waved at him every night, at least he thought it might be for him.

For all he knew it was just an old halloween decoration that they'd left up just to stop him from staying up late into the night and watching the world from the corner of his bedroom window. That was one theory he'd been working on but he rationalised that the arm was only there sometimes and with no pattern to its appearances so it couldn't be anything to do with him... surely?

Last week it moved from the garden to the bushes in front of the neighbor's fence and the night after that it came even closer - the tree in his own front garden. Then it vanished for a few days and he was too distracted eavesdropping on his parents hushed arguments over a string of disappearances in their area.

Now though, the arm was back and it was slowing down and down and down until it stopped in mid-air and began to curl its fingers into a "come here" gesture. As he started backing away the arm dropped down entirely and reappeared in bushes in front of the fence.

Again it beckoned for him to come outside, more insistent this time and faster too as if it was beginning to lose its patience. He withdrew further, dropping the curtain just in time to see the arm drop again  as someone began to knock on his window.