Day 2,185

 They call it the spring carnival like it isn't a flimsy cover for the fae to swoop in slit as many throats as they feel like before staggering back to the woods all bloated with blood. We started the parade through the woods in the hopes that they wouldn't be so ravenous with their prey so close by... it only worked once.

We made elaborate costumes to make us look just like them, hoping they felt enough empathy for their own that they might spare more of us. If anything it made them more cruel, made them take their time in cutting throat as slowly and deeply as possible. They made it clear we'd insulted them and we're still paying the price.

Over the last couple of years we've taken to drinking poppy tea to numb us in case we get taken, to help us slip slowly away instead of struggling against arms like tree bark as we choke on our own blood. We wear masks that represent something important to us, to make them realise we are deserving of life.

Sometimes it seems to work and they just stare into our eyes like they see something precious. Other times they strike deeper and harsher and take dozens down to gorge while the rest of us try to carry on, stepping over their bodies like fallen trees.

One foot in front of the other til next year's carnival.

Day 2,184

 The forest was burning too fast for anything other than birds to make it out alive. If it still had the strength to run, it ran until its legs were too charred to move and it succumbed to the fire. All others simply dug as deep into the cool earth as they could and hoped it would be safer or quicker than the fates of everything else.

Within a week there was no movement aside from the still-raging inferno, further spurred on by summer's warmth and the false promises of a storm coming soon, maybe tomorrow, always just over the horizon but far too late to save anything. The surrounding areas were evacuated and prayers were thrown up into the hazy sky.

Within a further week the fire seemed to stop spreading but continued to burn on as brightly as it had on the first day. Surely all the fuel must be gone, people thought, and surely with nothing left to burn it would soon extinguish itself and we can rebuild, people hoped.

Deep within the forest, near the heart of the fire, the ash covering the ground began to stand up. Hundreds of little bundles of ash wobbled to feet unused to existence but still remembering what movement was like back when they were alive and running from the warmth that embraced them now.

Day 2,183

The creatures were about 18 meters long according to the thermal cameras we sent down into the tunnels that had appeared beneath the city during the last earthquake. Everything about that earthquake didn't seem right, the vibrations weren't like anything we'd ever encountered before and now that we were confronted with evidence that the cause might be organic rather than tectonic, it started to make sense.

All our previous attempts at obtaining a tissue sample hadn't succeeded in the slightest. No matter what we sent down, no matter how many traps and sensors our drones delivered and setup, no matter how frequently we checked the feed to see if any of the creatures were near - nothing worked. As soon as they came even remotely close everything stopped working.

For quite a while we assumed they had some form of naturally occurring EMP pulse, like an electric eel on a much grander scale. We were only able to confirm that this was false when one of them followed a drone up to the surface and we were finally able to see them in their entirety.

They are so beautiful, so generous to choose our city as the entrypoint to their nesting grounds and we, insignificant vermin that we are, were blessed enough to be chosen as food for their new brood. As a member of the initial research team I will be honoured to be among the first to be offered as sustenance to the brood.

Long may they reign!

Day 2,182

 The care home was lost to the storms last year, no bodies surfaced but they were all assumed to have passed. By the time the weather had cleared enough for any of us to even remotely consider leaving our own homes most of the lower end of the valley was deeply submerged and covered in a thick layer of silt.

It took far more convincing than was morally right before the council organised diving teams to recover the bodies for burial but by then they'd adapted to the water. Hands as webbed as they were wrinkled gripped onto door frames and bolted-down furniture to haul themselves around as their fused legs weren't quite enough to use as tails.

Day 2,181

 We don't ask what's in the bottom of the iron well, we just throw it teeth and wait for it to speak. I think the bravest person in the world must have been the one who dared to find out that it doesn't need human teeth to speak. As long a they're freshly removed it doesn't even care about the source.

I heard from a friend of a friend that if you give it enough teeth in one go you can have an actual conversation with it - it'll even let you ask a question. I've always wanted to ask it where all the teeth go, nothing has a big enough mouth for the hundreds of years worth of teeth we've been giving it.

When I told my parents I got a job at the local abattoir they didn't so much as flinch. They just told me they knew what I'd be bringing back and that if I had any care for them I'd make sure to hare generously. I'm sure they've heard the rumours too, probably have just a many questions as the rest of the town if not more.

I don't know how many teeth is enough to ask. The friend of a friend hasn't been seen in weeks and it's still too soon, too insensitive, to ask how many teeth he offered. My parents raised me to be patient, to hold back and make my offering near the end in case its mood takes a turn for the worse.

I will find out how much it wants for a question and when I know I'll find everything out.

The world will lose all of its secret to me and all the cows who gave so much, asked for so little.

Day 2,180

 As I cut the tattooed map from his back I remembered all the times he made me skin deer in preparation for this exact moment. Honestly no amount of dead deer could have prepared me to flip over his dying body, tear the back of his shirt and begin the first incision as he tried to muffle the agony in his final minutes.

Nobody could get their hands on the map, he used to say to me - well, lecture me from each and every safe house we travelled to over the several years since the map's existence was revealed to the world. I only got a good look at it as I was cutting it from him and even now I don't really know where it leads, only that it's a better place than here.

Do you know much easier it is to preserve an animal's hide over a person's? I thought I knew but his skin is growing black around the edges and feels as damp as it did when I first removed it from him. All our hard work and I still managed to ruin it.

The only map to paradise is rotting and it's all my fault.

Day 2,179

The children are huddled at the far side of the playground, quietly chanting a new skipping song. It is not meant for adult ears, not meant for anyone not full of youth and lacking in the fear of death and willing to place their vibrant little lives on the line for mere minutes of entertainment.

 Six voices come from five throats - the game had begun.

The steps and verses grow more complex together. One hop becomes three hops, one half circle spin counterclockwise to face the person who last ate and one rhyming couplet becomes a saga that takes darker and darker turns with each passing sentence.

The children don't fully understand all of the things their five voices are saying - they follow wherever the sixth leads them just like the little scrap of paper that's been passed around eight playgrounds tells them to. Before long they start to forget what or why they are following and the game begins to lose its appeal.

All they remember is that they can't stop now that they've started. They all wrote down the name of someone they love on the back of the instructions and put it under a rock in the center of their little huddle - the person who would have to replace them in the game i they were interrupted or both would die.

As the end of recess bell rang they all leapt back to class, forgetting that they ever played the game to begin with as children often do. It became a part of the blur of activity that was the school day for them and drifted gently to the back of their minds as a nagging feeling of unease.

The following morning there were ten simultaneous deaths.

The following morning a sharp breeze would send the paper free from the rock.

The following morning the game would begin anew in the next playground over.

Day 2,178

 The guest left the convention hall several hours ago but somehow it still feels crowded. The booths have mostly been packed away and there's just a handful of staff remaining to do one last sweep of the entire facility before ending in the cleaner droids to sterilise every last surface ready for the next set of vendors the following morning.

I was with one of the older guys - the kind that insists you call him by a nickname with a long and impossible backstory like Steely because when someone tried to stab him their knife broke or Triple because he gave up three of his toes so his identical twin could use them as replacement fingers after a brutal car accident.

Fortunately enough his was a simpler story - he was called Sparky because he'd been hit by lightning nine times "and counting" as he'd always say. I blame the nerve damage caused by all the lightning for the fact that he didn't spot the body until he tripped over them.

I figured it must have been someone he knew from the way the colour drained from his face. Didn't surprise me that I was right when he told me they'd been in the army together. Did surprise me that they died overseas and they'd been cremated over four years ago.

They looked fresh though, just like they were sleeping. Sparky begged me to help move the guy into one of the dumpsters, said that two people couldn't possibly hallucinate the same thing so it must either be a sick joke or some ghostly vengeance for him hiding instead of saving the guy.

We passed off our late return as taking a smoke break and the rest of the team was none the wiser. We thought we were in the clear and had clearly been tired or overworked or something and mistaken a mannequin for a long dead friend of his.

The next morning our team was called into the office bright and early, way before our shift was due. I saw the issue before I'd fully walked through the doors. The cleaner droids had smeared blood everywhere, like their bleach tanks had been full of it or something worse.

Partially under a drenched sheet, surrounded by police, was a very familiar face. One I'd helped throw into a dumpster several hours ago. One who was now blanched white, utterly drained of all blood and wrinkled like a deflated balloon of skin.

One whose eyes snapped towards me as I passed by.

Day 2,177

It never mattered what time of year it was, when night fell it would snow and the snow always brought company. Being in the higher floors of the university's accommodation towers I always felt safe and distanced enough from the snow that I rarely bothered to barricade myself in like everyone on the lower floors did.

Not that it helped them physically, the snow and its company didn't seem to have enough manners to understand that a locked door is a barrier specifically meant to keep them out. They either phase through them or break them down and both happen often enough that we're all quite used to waking up to the sound of sirens alerting us that they've taken someone else.

It's become a trend recently for everyone on the lower five floors to appeal to the rest of us for shelter and safety every night. They don't seem to understand that the less people the snow and its company find on the lower floors, the higher up they'll travel until the find enough to satisfy them for the night.

Never the same number twice, I've noticed. Some days they'll take one or two and other days an entire floor will be decimated. The thing about students is that there are always enough fresh and desperate ones to take the suspiciously cheap rent and think of it as a miracle rather than a trap.

Day 2,176

Lord only knows what they faced that made them remove the floor to their buildings, leaving dozens of walkways and living quarters suspended over the thousand foot drop that they'd set their civilisation above. Between that and the countless tonnes of rock above them, the subterranean citadel was quite the sight.

All the laser image mapping in the world could never quite capture the sheer scale of it all, how everything seemed to sway to an unfelt breeze and how it all still stood after innumerable untouched centuries. We were so eager to see and to understand it all that we never bothered to check the chasm itself.

Why would we potentially waste our time at the bottom of a great pit when a long-gone people had carved gargantuan stalactites into reverse skyscrapers and seemingly left all their worldly possession inside all these years. It was looking like the greatest archeological find since Tutankhamun's tomb.

Everything was looking up, everyone was looking up... everything was looking up. The shadows were more intense than we'd initially anticipated and the air was stale and clammy, especially as the network of vents they once used had long since collapsed as the world shifted.

We briefly considered resorting to oxygen tanks but the walkways were frailer than they looked and we ended up travelling with little more than climbing gear and cameras. Gods above we were vulnerable to begin with and we just kept making ourselves more and more vulnerable right until the end.

I was in the remains of a nursery when the first strike occurred, safely obscured by dozens of cradles all hanging in various stages of collapse. At the far end was what appeared to be an adult sized cradle, perhaps meant for a guardian, which I climbed into when the screaming began and remained in until it died down and the shadows seemed to recede.

You have no idea how glad I was to see a few others had survived as well but they'd all sustained similar looking insect bites all along their legs. About two hours later we encountered what is now known as the second strike, one that I alone survived.

We're all holding our breath and waiting for the third strike, the one that will kill me and finally seal the mission's fate as a complete and utter failure. I feel fine, I truly do. Then again so did all those poor souls involved in the second strike.

Whatever the third strike is, I hope it's quick.

Day 2,175

I'd been on the job for about an hour when I realised that one of the security cameras wasn't showing the right time... period. It was the clothing that was a dead giveaway - nobody wore dresses like that anymore, not with skirts so wide or hats so large. That and I could watch someone walk into where the frame begins and not show up in footage at all.

I never raised it with management in case they thought I was out of it or on something or anything in between. I mean, if they never told me about it in training then it could easily be a figment of my imagination... which is what I thought until I witnessed a murder on screen.

Libraries still keep newspapers, you know, just like in the movies. I noted the time and date and found an article that described it to a T. It never mentioned who did it - it was a quick slash with a knife, all too fast for people to react to let alone notice the person running away in all the chaos.

But I'd seen them slouched against the wall, waiting for someone specific to come by and then screaming for help before anyone else had even noticed the man dying. It was a tad genius really, removing yourself from the list of suspects by trying to save your victim.

I should have stopped digging there but the next day that camera kept repeating that same moment the bleeding man took his final breath. Five hour into my shift, eyes flicking to the screen every now and then, I noticed it was slowly zooming in and none of our cameras could do that.

It stopped on the dying man's face, his watery eyes darting all over the place before gradually coming to a stop as he started to stare at me. That's when I began wondering if the murderer was still alive. That's when I began going down this hole that's led me here today in front of a nursing home with a knife in my pocket and a name on my lips.

He just wants peace.

Day 2,174

The last time I saw her, she was being pulled into a hole in the ceiling by emaciated arms with far too many joints to be considered remotely human. It gripped her neck so tightly she couldn't even gasp, if it wasn't for her shoe falling off and hitting the floor we wouldn't have noticed she was gone until much later that night.

We only wanted to get some creepy photos of the abandoned town hall before the council finally demolished it to make way for apartments. A few other urbex crews had told us there was still plenty of old furniture and government files left behind so we were all eager to get in there in those final few weeks.

I should have asked more questions. I should have gone last. I should have kept checking all around us, maybe I would have seen it following us sooner. There were so many things I should have done that I just didn't do and now we have to try and explain to the police that our friend went missing right in front of us and is probably dead.

Honestly part of me hopes she's dead, I mean it's been well over two months now and they're still finding fresh traces of her inside the town hall but they haven't found her body. With all the blood she's left behind she should be dead anyway.

I just hope they find her before it finds them.

Day 2,173

 They're awfully expression for beings that don't actually have faces. The smooth blank skin where a face should be on a human doesn't so much as twitch on them, stiffer than a marble wall and twice as pale. Imagine a group of eight people like this following you from the train station to right outside your home and that's been my life for the past eight weeks.

First few weeks were rough, not gonna lie there. The constant fear of wondering what would happen if they caught up to me and who were they and why were they following me in the first place took a real toll on the rest of my life. Every night I thought they'd catch up to me and kill me.

Then one night, about three weeks into noticing them, I finally got caught at a traffic light and had to wait five agonisingly slow minutes for cars that didn't even seem to notice my followers. The followers that also stopped several paces back. I continued to test them for the rest of my walk, finding that even if I ran at them they would do everything they could to keep their distance.

They stopped being so scary after that and were almost a comfort until they left me a note telling me to change my route back home or they wouldn't be able to protect me from the amassing Efenlæ. I didn't listen to them the next day and they paid for it when arms covered in mouths shot out from the shadows and tore them apart.

I don't think I've ever run so fast in my life. 

The news never reported their bodies but the next evening there was still eight of them. I change my route whenever they tell me to now, without question or complaint. Even if it takes me hours to get there, at least I'll get there without causing someone to die.

Day 2,172

The house was dying - plain and simple. There was nothing more for the family to do but gather what little possessions had survived its sickness and wait outside, keep it company til the end. It was the least they could do in return for all the years it kept them sheltered.

Slate tiles slid from the roof with each forced inhale, plaster and wood cracked on every exhale and each seemed as though it might be the last. There was always one more, though the many minutes between made the family hold their breath and hope it would soon find its peace and let go.

They didn't know why it continued to stubbornly cling onto life, in spite of the gaping abscesses all along its walls and broken chimney spine that flaked further and further away with each passing moment that the house did not pass away on. So they began to encourage it along.

First they recounted all the happy memories it had provided them - from comfort at the end of a hard day at work to the way that it always smelled faintly of last night's supper to the many generations of birds that built nest on its porch and lived long little lives with it.

This only seemed to strengthen its will to live, prolonging its suffering and inevitable collapse. They tried chasing it towards death's embrace instead - begging and pleading with it to just go and to go in peace. Stubbornly it kept taking those agonisingly slow breaths, crumbling gently and without care for the family who only wanted to make sure it didn't die alone.

The house knew that as long as it lived, it would never be alone and so it took its time to die, savouring the little lives that it held captive in spirit as every fibre of its being cried out and slowly fell to ruin. They would never forget their home - it would make sure of that.

Day 2,171

 She blinked and found herself sitting up in the top hunk of a prison cell meant to house hundreds na single room. She was alone when she should have been in the visiting area watching her useless husband blabbering away as if he could justify anything.

She wasn't as alone as she thought - somewhere to her right, somewhere the dying fluorescent lights couldn't reach, someone was pleading for help between ragged gasps. A part of her wanted to help, wanted to not be alone and find her way back out again but some waspish part of her didn't want to go anywhere near anyone else unless they were wearing a guard's uniform.

So she crept out of the bunk as silently as possible, even taking her shoes off to muffle her footsteps, and headed to the left. Even if it wasn't a direct way to the exit, it wasn't near whoever was obviously trying to trick her into getting within arm's reach and that was good enough for her.

What wasn't so good was the fact that outside of the colossal sleeping cell was a labyrinth of identical doorless, windowless hallways. After a few dozen of these constant twists and turns and reading less than helpful signs on the walls apologising for the diversion due to "budget cut" she was well and truly lost.

At least she wasn't so alone - the cries for help and frantic gasping for air seemed to be following her.

Day 2,170

We all remember where we were when we saw the world's leaders unleash every nuclear device they had against each other, when the blue skies turned ash grey and all our comms fell silent. I was repairing part of the solar rig when the shockwave bounced me about like a fly in a cat's paw.

One by one we headed to the dining chamber, speechless and heartbroken. We all knew that there was no chance of surviving down there, no chance of seeing our loved ones again. That was when we decided to put the station to the ultimate test and head out into the stars, hoping we could find a habitable world before our supplies or ourselves expired.

Either way we would die, so we chose to die in the middle of the unknown instead of the irradiated rock formerly known as home. The moon would be out first call, scavenging whatever we could from the old bases and abandoned lunar modules in the hopes of extending our lives by a few more days.

From there we would head to the Mars bases, picking up the last few remnants of humanity before setting out for mankind's final mission. If only we hadn't checked the comms one last time and heard the false voices of the control centre calling us all home. 

They said there were safe places where plenty of survivors now waited and they wanted us to come home. We were too buy celebrating and desperately trying not to think about how obviously false it was until we were back in Earth's orbit and the video feed came through.

Day 2,169

When we found an unmarked research centre, not on any map or website that we had access to yet it looked as broken down and bloodstained as everywhere else we'd been to, the first thing we noticed was how it smelled. Not like the blood and rot that had overwhelmed everything but... clean and sterile.

 After the world had fallen to the undead we grew used to everywhere smelling like rot - whether it was their rotting flesh or rotting fresh produce in the stores we scavenged in. In time we all became numb to the stench of decay to the point where the undead were almost camouflaged by it.

Strange as the smell of bleach now was to us, we thought there might be food or medical supplies inside and voted 9 - 4 to check it out. The floor of the lobby was covered in old bloodstains and dried out viscera so we knew the undead had torn through here as well, only long ago.

Somehow this was more unnerving than if they'd been waiting for us. We wondered what could have driven them away so quickly given how slowly they moved and how much their lifelong habits stuck with them, keeping them rooted to their homes and occupations even in death.

We didn't have to wonder for long as we opened the doors into a colossal operating theatre where a mass of pulsating flesh and sleepy-looking eyes gently writhed at the centre. It didn't appear to have a mouth but some hindbrain part of our minds told us it could still eat us somehow.

A few eyes stared balefully up at us, beckoning us silently to ignore the freshly slain bodies all around it and come closer. A few of us took a single step forward in unison which was enough to shake us all out of its spell as we sprinted for the outside, not looking back.

We've found a few other places like that in the area, all smelling sterile and all with one of those things waiting for the weak and curious to find them. We torched the last place, hoping it would kill the thing inside only to hear it scream for mercy in our minds.

Nobody's saying it but we can all still hear it and all the others calling us murdering monsters.

Day 2,168

 The clouds have always been hungry thing, we've just never noticed before because we weren't looking at them as living beings. They hide among the 'true' clouds like wolves in sheep's clothing, camouflaged and eagerly awaiting their next meal.

Planes go missing far less than they they used to but, of course, now they are big and crowded things full of too many lights and too much meat for a single 'false' cloud to handle and they don't seem to be able to get close enough to each other to share food.

When a commercial plane disappears we blame another country and we assume there will be a wreckage. Unfortunately some of the 'false' clouds have reached such a size where leaving even the slightest scrap of metal behind is highly unlikely.

If it weren't for an astronaut's lucky photo of a sunset, showing several clouds with milky grey eyes and gaping mouths swallowing entire flocks of birds, we might never have known there was anything but air and water above us. Not that knowing has changed anything.

Everyone tries to fly lower, use smaller planes and even avoid air travel when possible but it hasn't stopped the 'fales' clouds from existing. If anything it's made things worse and helped the smaller ones eat far more frequently and voraciously.

They are all growing at a faster rate than we could ever have anticipated and they are beginning to swarm.

Day 2,167

If it weren't for the foxes crying out in the distance he might have wandered right into the gaping maw he initially mistook for the underpass. The same stale air washed over his face but the tunnel, as far as he could remember, didn't have a tongue.

Taking carefully measured steps backwards he managed to make his way back to the lamppost at the crossroads to read the signs again and find that he'd, once again, taken the first left and not the second. It was a harmless enough mistake during the day but towards the night everything with teeth and an appetite for meat came out to hunt.

He made sure to tread as silently as possible past the first left, trying to ensure the false tunnel didn't see him, and ran for the right turning the moment he was clear. From there it was a straight road beside the dead lake and onwards to home.

In the low evening light he almost thought the lake was empty, as it should be for it namesake and the extremely corrosive runoff from the upstream mine. Unfortunately the waning moonlight gleamed against a pair of bulbous and cloudy eyes that might be - no, were definitely following him and slowly moving towards him.

The trick with night beings is to never let them know you're panicking. It only makes them more confident and more eager to taste your blood and makes you more likely to make a mistake leading to the aforementioned blood-tasting. Always walk quietly and with an air of ignorance untl you're close enough to sprint to safety.

And pray they don't meet you there.

Day 2,166

 Its serpentine coils wove in and out of the bleak white cubicles as terrified office workers perched on chairs, desks and dividing walls in the hopes that wherever the head was, it wouldn't see them. The survivors of this incident wouldn't ever admit it aloud but they all hoped that it would statiate itself in another department and leave theirs alone.

The ancient tunnels beneath the office blocks run deep but interdepartmental grudges run deeper.

It would be weeks before an official body count would be released, one that showed exactly five members from each department had gone missing-presumed-dead. Just enough loss to keep everyone's budgets within acceptable parameters.

Eyes turned to the CEO's office, ears pressed against the doors heard scales sliding against carpet.

Day 2,165

 Calling them pyre angels made murdering them seem like a kindness, like freeing them from their mortal shells so they could ascend to their true place at His side. Nobody ever asked which He we meant, too busy filling in the gaping chasms of their guilt with our meaningless platitudes as the sky filled with screams and their eyes filled with tears.

They were off to a better place, we used to tell their weeping loves ones, where there is no pain can reach them and sorrow will never find them. We never let them get too close to the bodies in case they caught sight of their rebirth and blamed us for it.

We'd been blamed for it before, back when we didn't understand that what we were sentencing to death hadn't been human since their sickness had miraculously vanished overnight. I used to think think that most of them didn't know they were already undead until one of our team was made to join their ranks.

Of all the pyre angels we've made, his is the one that's stuck with me all these years. The pure clarity of thought he maintained even though his heart hadn't beat for days and the rebirth was soon upon him. He told me he knew what he was as soon as he woke up to the sound of blaring hospital equipment declaring him dead.

We gained so much invaluable information from him, even as the fire ate him away to charcoal flesh and bones.

Day 2,164

 I don't have the heart to tell Sara she's dead just yet, not when she's sitting there smiling up at me like she used to back when everything was okay. She's still wearing the dress she wore on the day she died and she still looks exactly the same as she did back then. It warms and breaks my heart.

I remember burying her like it was yesterday, not that I'll ever tell her of course but any time the wind blows the scent of her favourite flowers around I picture how little her coffin looked when it was being lowered into the ground. 

She hasn't aged a bit all these years, not that anyone's ever mentioned this to either of us. In fact I'd be hard pressed to remember the last time I spoke to someone outside of the house or even went outside as a matter of fact. I'm sure I must have done at some point, though we always seem to have enough food on hand.

If I remember putting a gun to my head and waking up to her smile again, well that's between you and me.

As far as Sara's concerned nothing has changed.

And if I can help it, nothing ever will.

Day 2,163

 What do you suppose we do with corpses that can't rot? When technology is so obsessed with life that it forget about death to the point where our titanium reinforced bones and silicon strengthened skin don't allow for rot to seep in and break us back into our basest components.

Should we still bury them and all the harmful chemicals they're so pumped full of? Their loved ones would say yes, would say it's respectful, would say it's what they deserve. They won't consider how the medical-grade nanites will eventually exit the body and make their way into the next available living organism.

There are sightings of mermaids again, where nanites try to place the human template over a fish or a seal or a half-rotten whale carcass. The media has spun it into some fairytale come to life but when the poor bastardised creatures figure out how to speak they all beg for death

Day 2,162

 Not all generators were built equally, not every regulation was followed to the letter and nobody wanted to confront their failures. We sealed all the bunkers and pretended they'd never existed to begin with. In the aftermath of a global catastrophe they were just written off as inevitable deaths.

Maybe if we'd chosen to hide above the clouds, where the creatures hid in between striking down entire cities with translucent knife-like tendrils, more people might have survived. Instead the majority of us were allocated to government-built bunkers and the rest were left to fend for themselves against the impossible.

They were supposed to be the safe ones, the ones who'd restart the world if and when we figured out how to fend off or kill the cloud-jumpers. Lord only knows how hard we tried, how many times we failed and saw them wipe another city off the face of the earth, bringing clusters of neighbourhoods up into colossal mouths that never seemed to be attached to anything else.

We never managed to kill or even wound a single one. They just vanished as suddenly as they appeared and we had to try and put the world back together only to find that two thirds had already suffocated in perfect safety. It was unforgivable, unforgettable and yet they still managed to bury it all, bury them all.

Whether they chose to do it out of fear or necessity, those of us who spent years of our lives opening sanctuaries-turned-tombs will never accept them as inevitable. Part of me hopes the cloud-jumpers come back to finish what they started, purely out of spite for the willing ignorance of those who survived the bunkers.

Day 2,161

 The embankment was steep and the trees were so densely packed together that the harsh midsummer sun struggled to shine through. It felt like autumn was already in the air and the unseen eyes of the Wælgeuga were already locked onto the back of his neck as he tried to walk the gravel road as quietly as possible.

He could hear them walking alongside him, ducking behind trees whenever they thought he'd seen them and trying to get close enough to strike before the forest ended and the cattle fields began. Every step was placed with care appearing to be casual but cautious, deliberate but not overly so. Enough to be noticed by some but not enough to draw the whole pack down.

Occasionally he caught sight of a clawed arm reaching through the underbrush and gently staggered away, still desperately trying to maintain an air of ignorance. The entire time he thought he was succeeding, thought they didn't know that he knew where they were and that they'd woken up earlier than usual.

As jagged teeth sunk into his ankle and ripped him off his feet he realised they'd always been a distraction.

Day 2,160

The floor of the hotel was obscured by a thick layer of mist that seemed to blend in with the stark white sheets that covered all the furnishings so neatly strewn about every room and hallway she dared to tiptoe past. At that moment she knew two things for sure - she wasn't in the same hotel she fell asleep in and she wasn't alone.

It breath came out in wet, rattling gasps that seemed to shake its deceptively fragile frame. She'd seen it attack enough of the sheets to know it wa far stronger than it looked, seemingly triggered by them moving in the faint breeze coming through the broken windows.

She didn't mean to follow it but it seemed to know the area far better than her and had unknowingly showed her where to find food and shelter several times over the many days she'd been trapped in there with it. Slowly but surely they were moving closer to the main lobby and her chance to finally leave.

There was no way of knowing if the world outside was the same one she was from but it was her only option.

Day 2,159

Of all the places to hide from the undead, the crypt of a cathedral seems a little ironic. Who would've guessed they hate the bodies that can't rise to the point where they actively destroy them. As soon as they've desecrated the remains to their rotting heart's content they never return there and thus we find ourselves safer than those that chose to secure common buildings, shopping centres and cars.

We're right at the heart of the city, with hundreds of miles of catacomb tunnels branching out to within inches of the vast majority of the shops and outlets. We can break through a wall, raid the place and hide away among all the bone fragments before the first undead so much as sets foot near us.

Of course they are still slowly sweeping through the catacombs in front of us, many miles in front but still they occasionally come close enough for us to smell or hear them tearing down yet another load-bearing pillar of skulls. At least they're easier to dispatch when they're half buried under bones.

Day 2,158

The bus depot wasn't much more than a glass cube of a waiting room and a warehouse that was more rust than anything else. Both should have been torn down years ago, she thought as she sat in the stale air of the waiting room trying to not count all the reflections again.

Two were missing.

Two people who were not in the room, were in the glass. They looked like a normal elderly couple, like anyone she could walk past in the street and not think twice about it yet one seat was empty whilst the other was full of someone's shopping bags.

As her next glance up she saw them notice her gaze and stand.

In the corners of her eyes she could see them moving through the glass and see people moving out of their way in front of her, parting like they were being gently pushed as the reflections drew closer and closer and closer until she felt someone's icy cold breath on the back of her next.

Translucent hands reached out from behind her to hold her own and she felt all warmth fade away.

Day 2,157

There used to be eight of us on the island before the storm came. Me and my parents on one small farm, Einar, Ingrid and their children on the other with a few dozen miles of grazing grounds between us. Now there's me and nine corpses pretending to be all the others..

The storm brought a stranger on a boat made of driftwood tied together with seaweed and whale skin for a sail. Ingrid insisted on taking him into their home, saying they were better equipped for another mouth to feed - they always managed to have a room spare somehow.

We let them take him in, going over to check up on them every now and then, not really noticing the changes to their demeanor or the way their skin sat against their meat or all the flies suddenly about their home until little Arne's arm got caught on a gate and the skin tore clean away.

He was whisked inside their farm and we were told everything wa fine, we were just letting the sun get to our heads and imagining it all as the stranger stood by their front door and laughed to himself. I thought I must have imagined those flies coming through his lips but now I know it was real.

Whatever he did to Einar and Ingrid he also did to my parent when I went to the mainland for some supplies. By the time I got back I noticed the same off-meat smell that hung around the other farm only now it was coming from my parents and their smiles no longer met their glazed eyes.

I still try not to think about the piles of meat stacked up in one of the stables.

I've shored up in the lighthouse and moved all the furniture I can to barricade the front door. I won't need to for much longer though, not since they turned their attentions to the postal boat and the mainland itself. As soon as they're gone I'll be able to reach a phone and warn everyone.

I just hope there's still time.

Day 2,156

My nan had spent her whole life out in the woods in that little cottage. She met grandad when he was repairing the cable that fed electricity to the single light bulb in the living room and he eventually moved in with her. Never questioned why she lived all alone out there or where her family was.

Dad couldn't stand it out there, too full of odd sounds and too far from everywhere else. Soon as he moved out he said he felt something moved with him, keeping watch from the moment he left the woods and leaving him when he went back to visit.

I knew what he meant when I was old enough to remember feeling those eyes opening up in the back of my mind on our way back from the yearly visit. It was our first once since grandad died, I remember that much. Nan insisted on burying him in the tiny old churchyard even deeper in the woods and we had to get special permits as it was only technically consecrated.

It was where she wanted to be buried too, she told us, right next to him and with a very specific tombstone design that she'd already had carved. We'd only need to fill in the end date - she was practical like that. Practical enough to know what was watching us and know how we'd react if we knew at the time.

My parents still don't know what it is but they've gotten used to it and consider it as much a part of their live as a family pet. I only found out the truth when I went to visit nan's grave on the one year anniversary of her passing and heard it following me for the first time in my entire life.

Its footsteps were quiet but deliberate, like it knew I could finally hear it and it didn't want to scare me. I snuck the occasional glance back in time for it to slip behind a tree or dive into a bush. It was almost comical how much it didn't want to be seen until we got to the old churchyard.

That's when it started to cry.

Day 2,155

It started off as a cold spot in his bedroom that seemed to follow him up to the door. Over time it began to follow him just past the door frame, then to the landing to the top of the stairs to the kitchen to the front door and before he quite understood what was happening he was looking at his body smiling up at him.

Everything made sense after that. All those little hints of another person in his home - the creaking floors and slamming doors were never the house settling or the wind. The hands he saw in his peripherals when he was especially tired had always been there, waiting for him to finally slip up.

And now that he had, he was left practically untethered - just a floating set of memories vaguely tied to the meatsuit he once called his body like gently deflating balloons. Whoever was puppetting him was changing everything about his life, making and breaking friendships and crafting his life into theirs.

The worst of it was that he could see his life improving. Better job, kinder friends - the intruder was a better him than he'd ever been. What cut the final tie was when his parents said they were proud of him, setting him adrift and careening with the wind until he found himself stuck in an apartment in another country.

His chance to make someone better than they'd ever been - to continue the cycle of improving humanity one possession at a time. At least, what's what it was meant to be. All he saw was ameatsuit he could take and use to get his old body back so he could reap the rewards of that better life.

He started off as a cold spot in their bedroom that seemed to follow them up to the door.

Day 2,154

Judging by the waves breaking against the sides of the carriage and the full moon illuminating a dilapidated town in the midst of the seemingly endless ocean, he'd definitely slept past his stop. The only other passenger he could see was in the next carriage, face pressed against the glass and breathing so heavily they sounded like they'd just finished their fourth marathon in a row.

The train began to dive, the waves slowly rose and rose until he could only see the faintest moonlight shining through the water. Before long all he could see was his own panicked reflection and hints of bioluminescent fish darting in and out of view while the passenger in the next carriage peeled themselves away from the glass and turned to face the doors.

A voice garbled something over the tannoy that he couldn't understand and a dimly lit station rolled into view. The train pulled to a stop and the door signs lit up, waiting to be pressed. He heard the other passenger cheer as they slammed the open button and flooded the carriage as they stepped out into the sea. As they passed by his carriage they looked confused, gesturing to the door as if to ask if he needed any help.

He found enough of his voice to yell that he was a few stops down the line to which the passenger shrugged, waved and walked away into murky waters, little neon fish winding themselves around him like dogs greeting their owner when he's back from a long day at the office.

It felt like an eternity before someone else stepped into the other carriage and the doors closed behind them. The garbled tannoy voice came back with another unintelligible announcement and the train descended further into the sea. He wondered how much longer the air inside his carriage would last before they reached land again - if the train was even heading back that way.

After three morestops, three more passengers gesturing to see if he needed help opening the door and his frantic gestures back to say he was fine and his stop was a few more away, the train began to ascend. sharply. It was like the rise before the fall of every rollercoaster he'd ever been on and loathed and he tried not to hyperventilate in the stale, somewhat breathable air as he prayed they'd resurface.