Day 1,011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 1,010

Excerpts from "The Great Extinction" series

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

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

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

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Can nobody else see that everybody is being swapped out?

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

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

Their replacements don't understand how hair works.

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

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

Why isn't anyone else reacting to this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 1,009

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

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

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

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

Day 1,008

There's a thirst in the long roads, the ones we don't build our homes around. Something older than the tar we've poured over the ground has started waking up and it's got a hunger in it that rain can't tame.

I've seen it creeping along the motorways ever so slow. You'll notice it when traffic's heaviest and there's no room for anybody to move more than an inch. It waits for the smaller things to get roadside, lured by whatever we toss out our windows.

It's harder to realise you've run something down when you're barely moving. The crunch of their little bones is so easily drowned out by our engines and that's when the old roads comes out.

Ever notice how roadkill doesn't bleed? It's always those shrivelled up little sacks of fur that you see and rarely anything fresh and dripping. The road soaks it all down and down and never-endingly down to depths we can barely imagine.

Day 1,007

It's coming to the time of year when we ring off the dead trees, for the good of everything else. By now you can tell by sight which ones are gone and that's a blessing for sure. In the months before spring there's always that worry that you'll brush against a tree that's died and carry that death with you to the next living thing.

Everyone knows that passing the death on ensures your own but for some they'd rather be dead than sent into isolation on one of the thousands of micro-islands that have been made since we found it could only spread through touch. The centuries before were fraught with misunderstanding and countless unnecessary deaths.

Some say that we made the death as a bioweapon against foreign forces, others say nature is trying to reclaim its place in the slices of earth we've carved out for ourselves. I choose to think of it as something in between, after all everything adapted from somewhere and what better place to start than a laboratory somewhere deep in the north pole, one slightly cracked window and a strong arctic wind to share whatever has been created - for better or worse.

I've lost count of how many times I've seen people trying to shove each other into dead trees out of anger, spite or some petty argument but I never thought I'd be next. All I did was smile at a stranger and not even an hour later I'm being pushed through the protective ring by their jealous partner.

There's no way to tell who carries the death, it's the only thing keeping me here.

Day 1,006

It begins when the school bell tolls at 3:15pm exactly, though the building itself hasn't been in use for ninety or so years. There just weren't enough children in the area, not since the mines began collapsing causing most of the town to be declared too unstable to live on.

Still humans are and always will be creatures of habit, keeping to their old schedules long after their bodies are gone and so the children went to school every weekday, returning to wherever their homes once were at the school bell's toll.

People used to gather around to watch their lifeless shadowy figures chase each other about as they gradually made their way down the hill before separating at their former doorsteps. Most were still houses, carefully preserved for the parade of little ghosts while others had fallen into the old mine-shafts and were little more than rocky dips surrounded by tarmac and carelessly cordoned off.

Some of the children would act out their old routines of doing homework or rushing upstairs to play with old toys (even if their homes had long since fallen) while others, slightly older and larger than the rest, would just stand and look around them.

It was as if they were trying to remember what they were doing or perhaps they were physically stuck in their route but completely conscious of their state of departure and, having no other option, were left to contemplate their predicament indefinitely.

At 8:30am sharp, the school bell tolls and all the dead children rush to get into school, seeming to vanish as soon as their feet pass the threshold. It isn't known if they are still taught or if they even exist once inside the building.

It is wondered if they will ever rest.

Day 1,005

"Remember when you thought there was a house buried in the fields? Or the time you told me that Mr Brookby steals people's pets and paints his fence with their blood?" Mum said, laughing at my childish imagination that had apparently run rampant throughout my youth. All I could do was grin and nod - if she didn't believe me when I was five, there was no way she'd believe me forty years later. Not even when I had proof.

There was a lot that I'd "imagined" over the years and she hadn't believed a single word. At this point I do wonder if she actually thought I was making it all up or if she was just trying to convince herself that what I was seeing couldn't possibly be real. Now that I'm older I know that there are reasons for things being as they are, reasons for nobody believing me and reasons for these things happening in the first place.

They are all connected to the buried house out in the barley field.

It was built in the mid 18th century, a rugged stone thing with what might once have been a mossy thatched roof, now calcified and almost the same muddy grey as the rest of the building. When I was young, there was enough space to crawl inside through both the old window and the door. First time I fount it I went through the window, never even saw the door until I went back last month just to see if I'd made it up after all.

The window's too small for me now and I wonder how I ever fit into it at all.

Some part of me hoped it had all been daydreams but the floor was still covered in animal bones, the collars all nailed to the walls with the mouldy "missing" posters behind them. I took so many photos that day, using the flash on my phone without even checking any of the other rooms first in case the Resident was still at home. I saw glimpses of them in some of the images when I checked later on, their serrated fingers dripping from their latest meal of whatever Mr Brookby had stolen for them.

I'm sure they told me their name when I first saw them but I've long since forgotten it, just like I tried to forget the collars and posters and the entire house but I just can't seem to. I tried so hard but every time I come back to visit my mum she reminds me all about it. Not explicitly, at least not always, but in the little ways.

The tiny metal trinkets she kept from my childhood room that the Resident gave me are dotted all about the place, leaving faint stains underneath them like the way the pink sea-salt has stained my windowsill all these years later. Mum says I brought them from a local stall during the summer carnival but we both know she's lying on that one. I'd bring those little objects home, knees always bleeding, eyes full of tears and begging her to tell the police that the missing animals were all found.

Last week she phoned me to say that Mr Brookby had passed away. He was found stone cold dead in the same field where I'd played as a kid, where the house was buried, where he'd been feeding the Resident all his life, just as his dad and grandad had before him.

I felt my blood turn cold when the letter turned up yesterday from his lawyer.

He's made me his heir.