Day 1,667

They say when the music box plays, you hear your fondest memory. I always lied and said it was the sound of the carousel from my favourite fairground - the last place I went with my parents before they passed away. I lie and say they passed away too, it sounds kinder and less planned than it was.

What I actually hear is roasting, bubbling flesh and brutal coughing that fades away into a roaring fire. The fire that killed my parents and set me up for life on their joint insurance. The music box brings me back to that day every time I hear it play and a smile comes to my lips without fail.

It was my worst day and my best day - the day I found out that starting fires was my everything.

Day 1,666

When Clara was dying she told us she wanted to be cremated and for her ashes to be left at the bottom of her favourite diving pool. We didn't think that day would come so soon- didn't think she'd kill herself to lessen her family's medical bills and yet there we all were, on a boat heading to Lamley Edge to put her to rest.

Clara might have gone there as soon as she had a moment of free time but most of us avoided the place like the plague. Too many odd-looking fish, too many meandering tunnels and too little light for my tastes. I swear some of them remind of of people I know, as in they share the same eyes or crooked grin.

It's not a good place to be and none of us know why she loved it so much until we took her urn there. It was me, her sisters and her boyfriend - the only people who went to her funeral and the only ones who knew where she wanted to be placed. Not another boat in sight and no hint of a sub or lingering divers.

And yet we weren't alone.

We didn't realise it until we got down there, formed our little circle and placed her in a shallow pit near the wall. There was a fifth person peering through one of the connecting tunnels, hair the same rusty blonde as hers and floating freely in the current. It was wearing the same striped wetsuit that Clara loved and for a moment we thought it was her ghost come to say goodbye to us one last time.

Then its head turned and we saw that its "hair" was some kind of fibrous find and tail as the entire head lifted off, fluttering towards us. It still wore an oxygen mask and trailed a tank behind it but the whole contraption looked organic. As it swam closer I saw that the writing on the "tank" was just darker markings on the scales that coated every inch of its body.

We rose up so fast I thought we'd all get the bends but even that was preferable to spending another second with that thing. Clara's urn may not have been as secured as we'd have wanted but nobody's volunteering to go back there any time soon.

We don't want to meet her doppelganger again.

Day 1,665

Every park has their own set of rules-unspoken ones that it.

Rules like -

1. Don't step on the grass when it's breathing... learnt that one the hard way. I thought it was just moving in the breeze like grass just does but then a bird landed right on top of it and it just flipped over, revealing its deep red roots and twitching spine. Poor bird was stunned by the impact and didn't even tweet when the grass rose up, turned over and snapped down on it.

Better a bird than me though.

2. If the bridge has feathers - don't cross. Wait until the feathers disperse and if they haven't budged in more than ten minutes, just walk away. Damned wood dragons keep pretending to be quirky architectural structures and the second you set foot on them they recoil and drag you down, choking you like the weird lovechild of an anaconda and feather boa that they are.

Absolute nuisance but great at keeping the squirrel population in check.

3. Keep out of the pond and don't go anywhere near it if the path is wet. You might see a pregnant woman drowning in the middle or have a small child come up to you and ask you to fetch their ball that somehow landed out there but don't fall for it.

The water smells like iron for a damned good reason.

Day 1,664

Just relax, steady your breathing and pretend that the thing you just saw doesn't realise you can see it.

You're usually so much more careful with these things, always taking the crowded routes with groups of obnoxiously loud and vibrant people to distract the world from little old you as much as possible and yet here we are today.

You - alone and walking through a disused forest trail.

Me - a literal earworm just trying to get you to survive one more day so I can find a better host.

And you're in the midst of throwing all my hard work aside so that you can go and investigate the strange sounds coming from the unusually big beaver dam. I mean you could have grabbed a few friends - should have grabbed a few friends so that they could be the meat shields we so desperately need right not.

But no.

Now we're stuck crouching in a bramble patch and watching those weird, webbed hand-feet appendages trot back and forth. If we're lucky they'll stop calling to the rest of their clan and leave. If we're even luckier they won't look down and see you.

Day 1,663

It's not very often that you get to meet another survivor, much less one who's so well equipped. Every corpse or old campout you came across seemed to have been picked clean already. You assumed the stranger had gotten there before you, had more luck than you. Nothing odd about that.

What was odd was the soft clicking your C-Dar constantly made in their presence. For a few days you chalked it down to the area and higher concentration of abnormal entities that seemed to linger about. None of them bothered you while you were with the stranger, you figured that safety in numbers must mean something to the abnormals too.

Sure their teeth looked a little odd and their speech patterns had unusual inflections but they were human and you were human and you were quite possibly the only ones in the area that weren't obligate carnivores with a penchant for food that could scream.

Red flags were all around them and you and everything about the damned world so that by the time you realised that the stranger was some kind of abnormal entity too - you were too late. It knew enough about you to predict how you would react, it had your scent memorised and knew all your little hidey holes too.

Well, almost all of them.

From your cave you had a pretty good view of the bridge it was pacing - furiously trying to track you as the wind shared your scent to the entire valley. Luckily there were enough overhanging plants to conceal the entrance. Unluckily the stranger was now dumping all of your supplies over the bridge...

Day 1,662

I made it look deliberate.

Made it look like an accident.

Made a victim of myself and gave the bastard a slow and painful death.

It was the least I could do after all the years he'd kept me from reaching my true potential and left me festering with all his other pet projects. He wasn't deliberately cruel, mind you, just forgetful and quick to lose interest which somehow hurt more than any beating could have.

When he brought home another stray, another lost little wretch pulled straight from the scrapyard, I knew my days were numbered. There wasn't enough room in the workshop for two people, let alone three and I was no longer amusing.

He must have noticed me moping and scrounging up whatever spare change he left around for my eventual departure. That was when he made his biggest mistake. He gave me the key to his heart - literally. The damned thing had conked out on him almost fifty years ago so he made his own and wound it up every night before bed.

And he gave me the only key in the hopes that I would... linger. As if this sudden spurt of interest meant anything more to me than the five years of nothing that predated it. No. All he did was give me the means to his end.

It was all set up so well. The kid would go to bed early as always and I would wait for him to call me to his office to turn his key for the night. Only this time, I used the wrong key - one of my own design. It caught the gears enough to feel like it was working but not enough to actually turn them.

I tried to hard to contain my laughter as he struggled for breath, beating his chest in the hopes that it might jolt his heart back into action to no avail. I went to bed and left him to it, knowing that come morning the kid would find him clutching his key and stone cold dead.


If only I had stuck around to make sure everything was alright!

If only I had woken up a little earlier!

If only he had the sense to make a spare key.

Day 1,661

Government cutbacks must be a right pain to deal with back on the mainland. Out here it's only been getting worse, everything is being reduced and relocated about to make all the numbers go up and down in the right kind of ways.

It's why the hospital is also the library and school. I mean, kids get sick so often that they might as well go down a floor to get treatment rather than risk missing a class and while they're waiting they can study and never have a moment free until they get home.

Honestly I don't see why they haven't added in apartments right beside the whole thing - call is a microtown and make it The Next Best Thing for us all. They'll all laugh and ignore everything else crumbling around it while all the people who have to live there crumble inside.

They've even cut back on security at the ports. Added in a few clauses to the contracts without telling anybody and now half the staff share a spine. Means they only have to dole out a single cheque as they technically count as a single entity.

The world's coming to a slow and bureaucratic end.

Day 1,660

Take care to walk in silence and whatever you do - don't wake the city.

Ignore the liquid shadow that flings itself from lamppost to lamppost, always closing in and never quite reaching you. Duck into empty doorways and overhangs to avoid it leaping onto you next but never overstay your welcome.

Don't spend this time staring into closed shops, no matter how brightly lit and tempting their displays may be. There's no guarantee that they'll even exist in the morning and neither will you if the doors open. If you hear someone knocking or begging for help, just walk away whispering apologies.

Try not to scream when the pavement gapes beneath you, it just does that sometimes. No hard feelings, no ill intent - just yawning. Your footsteps have been keeping it up all night and sooner or later it will get cranky. Tread lightly as the night continues.

Day 1,659

Something in the forest is mourning. Huge swathes of black fabric trail behind it, leaving a path of tiny bones in its wake. We think it might have come from the ruins of the asylum for unwed mothers. Perhaps it embodies their grief, their lost children and their anger at the society that ended them.

It's hardly the only one.

In the bus station by the harbour, figures dressed in old oilskins lead people to the railings. Most of the time something snaps them out of it and they pull away, carrying on with their lives like nothing ever happened but every once in a while they'll just tip over and sink.

The sea is full of their crying faces.

Even the local cafe has someone in it who isn't remotely human. She calls herself Lace and wears the faces of people who aren't scheduled to be on shift that day. Harmless for the most part but never accept her coffee - it'll suck the fluids right out of you and leave you little more than dust.

Welcome to Sutton Hagglegate - try not to stay for long.

Day 1,658

There is no road leading to Old Eyleholt, there's just the one lantern that floats to and from the otherwise unreachable village. Some say that if you have the Sight, you can see the creature holding the lantern but you'll die within the year if you do.

Personally I'm not sure why you'd want to see it, be near it or even consider following it to Old Eyleholt. The place was a shambles when it was thriving and since the marshlands went and swallowed it up, things haven't gotten any better.

Even the villagers are more marsh than human, their hair looks like waterweeds and their skin doesn't ever seem to sit right. It's like it's a size too big for them, like they're trying on their parent's clothes and got stuck somehow. Not much of them is normal anymore.

Day 1,657

I spent all my free time on a gangplank under the pier, especially in the off-season when our coastal town became a ghost town. Without summer's warmth we were just another lifeless husk of a dying community where the only way to make something of yourself was to leave as soon as you could.

Not everyone left, not the older folk who swore they'd live and die here and not the ones like me who just want to exist in peace and not dash about trying to Have A Career. I preferred staring into the water, watching the seals chasing each other about.

It's the main reason I survived the initial attack. You can't be killed if nobody can find you and nobody ever thought to look beneath the pier. Sure I heard stumbling footsteps above me and saw something dark leaking down but I just assumed it was one of the drunkards spilling his beer.

Nothing could have prepared me to face that carnage when I climbed back up the pier. My first thought was that everyone I knew was dead or dying in that moment. My next was to be thankful that we weren't in-season and so few of us actually lived here.

I don't think anyone expected to find a survivor - let alone be greeted by someone totally unharmed. I mean everywhere I looked I saw bits and pieces of the people I'd grown up with and I didn't have so much as a scratch on me.

Not a day goes by that I don't miss them and their noise. It's quiet everywhere now, even with all the newcomers flocking here from collapsed shelters in the cities. Our coastal shit-pit is becoming a proper town again but they're still all scared of their own shadows.

I can't say I blame them though, not with what they told me about the attacks and how the electricity came to life and jumped from the overhead wires, billboard lighting and even their phones. All at once the world was lit up like a candle and dark again in a matter of seconds.

Day 1,656

The castle has too many hidden entrances for the council to spot them all and seal them off under the guise of "public safety" without actually telling us what we were being kept safe from. It was implied that there were structurally unsound tunnels running the length and breadth of the town but nobody confirmed or denied anything.

We just went along with it, as you do. The whole 'it doesn't bother me so I won't bother it' attitude was a staple to our town and the reason we managed to stay relatively unscathed by all the unexplainable deaths that plagued our neighbours.

We could have gotten through the next century utterly untouched by it all but someone went and stumbled across an old entrance that the council missed. It was a large grate tucked away behind a holly tree at the far end of the castle gardens, measured about six by three feet, rusted as all hells with an iron lock that snapped apart with a single tug.

Things might have been fine if the idiot went down by himself but no! He went and grabbed a few friends and they all went down into the tunnel with nothing to protect them but the light from their phones and that teenage bravado that makes them all think they're invincible.

They were found a few hours later in the dungeons - flayed, chained to a wall and babbling on the eyes within the stones. Unsurprisingly they all died within minutes of each other in St Mary's hospital and whatever had killed them was now left to roam free.

Day 1,655

They were scared of the light - drove them madder than they already were. For now we had summer's advantage and we put every second of those long sunny days to good use while we could. We had to be ready for winter and the long nights.

By autumn we were down to a handful of survivors. Instead of working harder to secure our stronghold the majority voted to abandon all our hard work and move to safer grounds. As if such a thing existed outside of our barricades and bioluminescent traps and our canned food supply.

Personally I blame the ones who tried to cling onto their families. The minute they lost even a single member they lost their will to remain. They couldn't stand the memories they'd all forged here and wanted to forget those dying cries for help.

It was weakness. That choice is what drove us all to the brink of death and for what? So they could try to outrun their grief and put all of our hard work to waste in the process? So they could rush recklessly into the arms of danger because they had nothing left to lose?

Well some of us had lost enough and were fully prepared to do whatever it took to keep ourselves going out of spite if nothing else. So when we were outvoted we made a pact to keep our lives in our own hands and keep our hearts away from our heads.

After days of travelling and losing someone nearly every night we came across a town with lights in most of the windows - not a creature in sight. We knocked at first, expecting a reply and receiving utter silence instead. The doors opened with ease to reveal a floor covered in snow white bones, all picked clean.

That was when we discovered that they no longer feared the light.

Day 1,654

Sleeping in my car for five years was... an experience to say the least. You don't get the struggle of finding a decent parking space overnight until you find yourself checking to make sure it doesn't have barriers (in case you need to Get Out Fast), the office has a sympathetic attendant (you bribe them a little, they watch your back... mostly works) and most importantly - park in the darkest corner.

The trick is making sure only the right people know where you are, make your car look beaten enough to not be worth breaking into but not so beaten that some bored little shit will think they can take it for a joyride. Not doing that one again.

For a good few weeks I thought I found the perfect place - a midsize multi storey car park by the town's exit road, connected by a pedestrian bridge that was still closed after the last jumper made a less-than-neat landing. The road's still stained and if that wasn't off-putting enough, the closest bar was closed down three days after I "moved in".

It was basically a dead zone where the occasional drug deal took place in the basement levels while I parked up on the fourth floor under the ramp leading to the next level. You'd never spot me unless you were looking and that suited me just fine until the moment it didn't.

The moment I became predictable.

Turns out car parks like this are some kind of liminal space, somewhere not quite anywhere but just somewher enough for things to slip in and out of reality, soundless and starving. Sometimes I'd catch glimpses of odd shadows scuttling about in ways shadows shouldn't be able to move but I put it down to the early hours and lack of sleep.

It's a bit harder to do that when the shadows are tapping on your windows with hands that are inhumanly small and big and not even hand-shaped all at once, their bodies twisting, retracting and reforming in less than the blink of an eye while all their eyes are Fixed On You.

They all knew my name, whispering it like a mantra while they tried to open the doors.

Needless to say I kept to better places after that, bribing a colleague to let me sleep in their disused garage. I had to clear it all out first but at least the shadows there are smaller, domestic in a way that the car park creatures couldn't possibly be.

They still knew my name.

Day 1,653

To say that Podunk House stood was a generous description. To say that it was held together by overgrown ivy and spite was far more apt, given that the chimney was scarcely visible at summer's peak and stuck out among the withered vines like a dislocated arm when winter came.

Much as the ivy thrived, the rest of the gardens and indeed the fields around the house were barren as if the land had been poisoned. While it wasn't overly far from the truth, it sounded more believable to the local folk (as such material ideas are).

They gathered in the Magpie's Eye tavern a few miles south and prayed the wind kept its northern flow. Though they cursed the chill of it, anything was more welcome than the foetid stench that oozed from the air around Podunk House.

People reckoned the old plague pits had smelled better, and the elders were inclined to agree. It was an old memory of theirs but a memory nonetheless, much like the memory of the old house being built. They had all walked nearby during its construction yet never seen the makers.

After a few too many drinks, some wondered aloud if the house had simply formed itself from the ground and waited for inhabitants. They were promptly silenced and sent home - the mere thought of setting foot inside there was enough to drain all the forced cheer away to a worried susurration.

The house may have held the local's interest, as a deadly spider in one's room might, but not once had any of them been any closer than the far edge of its dead fields. Not one of them had peered into the windows to see if a face peered back or if there had ever been occupants.

If they had, they might have seen that the house had always been inhabited and that they were all watched from the cracks in the walls, tucked away beneath the ivy. They see their estate with too many eyes and too few mouths for any human family to possess.

A few passersby have made eye contact with the dwellers of Podunk House, whether they suspect so or not. It strikes them without warning and seemingly without source, the damp chill that settles about them, sinking deep into their lungs and drawing blood from their breath.

Day 1,652

She waded through the cloudy water, lugging a corpse behind her and hoping it would disguise her scent. It was her father once but his features rotted away pretty quickly. Now the sight of him sparked nothing to her - he was a tool for survival just like her mother had been to him and her own son to her until the water ate away at them too much for them to be useful.

Sometimes she looked back at him and wondered if her survival had even been worth drawing the winning straw every time and watching her son, mother and father kill themselves so that she could live just that little bit longer and travel just that little bit further. They'd all heard the rumours that town hall still stood and the water hadn't gotten through their defences.

It was the only promise of safety they'd heard since all the satellites died and fell to earth. The flooding came soon after, triggered by whatever the satellites had brought down with them. Whatever it was, it turned the water a sickly grey and rotted all organic material in a matter of days.

With the weight of her father behind her she knew she'd have three more days before he was gone for good and she'd be left to fend for herself against the creatures that managed to thrive in this new version of the world. They were always nearby - drawn by her movement and distracted by her father... for now.

They brushed against her every now-and-then as if to remind her how quickly the days were passing.

Day 1,651

As far as anybody knows, the garages behind apartment block 9B are all owned.

As far as anybody remembers, they've never been opened.

As far as anybody's heard, there's gold in one of them.

Of course the whole estate knows someone who knows someone who's a cousin of a garage owner but no-one is willing to share any names. They're as much of a myth as the contents of the garages themselves and potentially just as wealthy.

I've never told anyone but last week when I was heading back from a mate's stag do at something in the morning I saw light coming from the old car park and lo and behold all of the garages were slightly open. I was too drunk to recognise a trap when I saw one and too uncoordinated to get close enough for them to get me.

I ended up staggering slowly past them all, just out of the light's reach, bent over awkwardly to stare inside. I don't remember much of what I saw but I got the feeling that I was hardly the first to see it that night, judging by the iron tang to the air.

Inside most of the garages were bodies surrounded by cloven hooves. The first few had a literal stack of corpses which petered out the further along I went until I got to the final door and made eye contact with something I didn't think could possibly exist.

Day 1,650

The world slept after the bombs dropped, eyes closed tight against the sting of smoke and lips shut tight against the debris that surrounded them all. It was looking to be another long night and they were all so very far from the homes they once knew.

It may have made sense to place the superbunkers in isolated places where narrow footpaths were the only way in and out but it didn't stop the thousands of survivors from feeling so very alone. It didn't change the fact that, for all they knew, there was no world left and nobody else had made it but them.

When the ground stopped trembling and all the roaring died back to distant screams, they started waking up. Every movement was careful, silent and steady - as if the bombs could hear them deep down in the earth and their masters would come running back to finish the job.

Whispers flitted about like moths, did you ever see them - they snatched her up right in front of me and - there were piles of bodies all shredded like office paper - and still, nobody dared mention them by name. What good were their names now when everything else was ash and bone?

Someone said they wished the bastards were human so they'd be trapped in this dimension too, so they could be held accountable and killed for their crimes. A near silent chorus of agreement drifted around as they all contemplated how little they'd seen.

Imagine, if you will, an organic bomb the size of a small country. Now fill the skies with them til the sun is nothing but a memory. Now imagine their makers and their near incomprehensible scale. Humanity must have been like bacteria to them, brainless little micro-nothings that they'd swept away.

Now, thousand of meters beneath the chaos, humanity slowly woke up.

Day 1,649

You gave up your tongue, your teeth and yet it still asked for more. The insidious little creature had wormed its way too deeply into your life for you to cut it off like you'd originally planned. It would be like cutting off a limb and you weren't so far gone as to consider that... for now.

It asked for little things at first - a sip of water, a lock of hair, fingernail clippings etcetera etcetera until you found yourself spitting blood into a sink while it admired three of your molars. Back then you only wished you could have given it more, could have held off the pain for just one more tooth.

Now you try to find ways to trick it using meat from a freshly killed piglet you brought that morning. You even let it help you hold the poor creature down so it could feel the life draining away and hold it close until the squealing stopped. Even that wasn't enough.

That night it asked for your tongue and you quickly obliged. That night it offered you a powder that would ease your pain to nothing. That night was your first taste of cocaine and ever since then you've been trying to fool it into giving you more for the "agonies" you put yourself through for it.

If you ever had a conscience, it's now as lifeless and floaty as the rest of your mind.

At this point it's all you have left.

Day 1,648

Another world gazed through all the smoke and grease, staring longingly at everything they could not possess, weeping and cheering as they burned it all down in jealousy. Things could have gone so much better, so many lives could have been saved if they had just been allowed to come through.

When we found them, they were so frightened of our clear skies and soft earth that they sealed the entrypoint straight away. We thought we'd seen the last of them until they began peeping out as us in the night, lighting up the otherwise pitch black desert with a miasma of sickly green-grey hues.

Their world seemed to be bathed in this light, their sun was a bright emerald that shone dimly through thick, glossy clouds that left a sulphuric scent in the air all around their portals. They looked so very human but there was something too hungry in their eyes, something too sharp about their teeth for us to feel at ease around them.

We talked ourselves into believing that we were safe and they were safe and we'd finally found life like us out there in the universe. We didn't realise how similar they truly were until great jets of fire and metal came bursting through the portals, spreading with unnatural ease through the desert and leaving nothing but burning carcases in its wake.

They watched us burn, waiting for the fires to settle so they could merge their world and ours and buy themselves a few more years. We don't know how long they've been doing this for but as we wait in the polar zones of the world, watching as the ocean evaporates before our eyes, listening to the dying screams of every living thing that called this world home, we couldn't help but wonder.

Would we have waited so long to do the same?

Day 1,647

He was dead.

The burglar was dead and bleeding on your floor and yet someone was still walking around your house.

You could hear them wandering from room to room, opening drawers and making no real effort to hide their presence in spite on the gunshot that they surely must have heard a few seconds ago. Perhaps they didn't care, perhaps there were several more waiting in the hallway and downstairs.

Stepping over his body as quietly as you could, you crouch-walked your way towards the staircase. After it all seemed to be going well, you made the mistake of treading on that one creaky floorboard right by the landing and all the noise downstairs came to an abrupt stop.

Footsteps came rushing towards you, fast and heavy sounding and coming up the stairs. You tried to hide behind the laundry baskets, feeling them brush past you yet you couldn't see anyone. It was like a brief gust of wind - if wind sounded like a grown man muttering curses under his breath as he stormed about the second floor.

Doors opened and closed and though the light was dim you could clearly see that there was nobody there. When the unseen man found the body of the unfortunate burglar the cursing grew louder and the footsteps headed towards you again.

This time you felt eyes glaring at you.

You still saw nothing.

Day 1,646

He thought he'd been studying the midnight zone and all the oddities that lived therein but for the past four hours his lights hadn't been working. He'd sent error message after error message to the upper habitation spheres to pass onto IT but there had been no reply.

The luck bastards must've been having too much fun being able to see all the lifeforms they were studying while he was stuck gazing out into nothing but the void. He couldn't even see the usual flickers of distant light from the roaming anglerfish that brought him as much amusement as they did comfort.

At this point he was beginning to wonder if they'd all forgotten him down near the abyss. Panic began to bloom and he swore he could feel the extreme pressure that the ocean exerted that far down. All that water just pressing down on him, barely letting him breathe the heavily recycled air.

The whole habitation sphere seemed to spin as he spiralled down and down and deeper down into despair, praying he'd wake up back home and that this was all some cheese-inspired nightmare. Tears welled up in his eyes and just as he was on the brink of a total meltdown he caught sight of a flashing light on the control panel.

They'd received his many messages and reported back that the lights were working but something was blocking all the cameras - something big. According to several reports from the upper spheres, they were all looking down on something large and deep grey, skin all wrinkled scales that stretched further than their eyes could even see.

He gazed out into the darkness, trying to comprehend it all... then the darkness blinked.

Day 1,645

The girl was back again, her tilted head peeping over the fence and smiling like she'd just won the lottery. I wasn't supposed to bother her or even acknowledge she existed yet every Friday without fail she'd spend all night staring up at my bedroom window.

Sometimes she'd wave to me and I'd hear her faintly asking me to come outside and play. I made the mistake of telling my parents this and they boarded my window up for a few weeks. She didn't like that though and came into the garden for the first time.

I remember being the first to head downstairs and the first to get a decent look at her. That was when I realised her head had never been tilted, it was sideways like someone pulled the head off a doll and tried to glue it back on badly.

Her mouth ran the entire length of her face and most of her neck too. The whole thing opened when she spoke and asked me to come out and play. I lied and said I was grounded for killing the class hamster (worryingly the first thing that came to mind) and she called me out.

She said she already killed it when my windows first got blocked. My parents came rushing downstairs before I could ask her anything else and they dragged me back upstairs. Needless to say a discussion was had without me and my windows were cleared before lunchtime.

She never came into the garden again, she just peered over the fence and asked me to come outside.

Day 1,644

She opened her mouth and maggots pour out but, poor manners aside, she was a lovely person. She was one of the few Turned who seemed to recognise that he didn't mean them any harm, that he was just another survivor like them, only more... living.

Any time he steered his boat passed the half-sunken library roof where she camped out with a few others, she was the only one who didn't snarl or rush at him. She stood and watched him go, eyes never losing sight of him all the while. He came to think of her as a friend, perhaps the only friend he'd ever have.

She wasn't always at the library, sometimes he'd catch a glimpse of her crawling into an open window near the water and wonder what she could be searching for. As far as he knew, the Turned didn't eat - they were eaten slowly by parasitic larvae and collapsed as soon as they'd given their condition to the next poor bastard.

He'd lost everyone to it and hadn't seen a single familiar face in almost three years. She became familiar to him, a landmark out at sea in a world that was all but drowned. The tips of skyscrapers jutted out of the water and all the supplies they contained had sustained him quite well but he knew his days were as limited as hers.

She'd be entirely consumed soon enough and then he'd be left alone with two options - carry on and turn back. To carry on meant to sail to another city, keep following the trail of skyscrapers and old monuments and their supplies until there's nothing left but open ocean and a slow death. To turn back meant to Turn and lose everything he currently was.

He resolved to keep going for as long as he could see her.

When she went - he would follow.

And he knew it wouldn't be long.

Day 1,643

I had my eyes closed for the worst of it and he had his hand over my mouth, constantly whispering at me to keep quiet and wait for them to move onto the next room. They were attracted to sudden movements and had already learned what crying sounded like.

The sounds of screaming and meat tearing slowly faded to contented munching as yet another poor bastard lost their life. At least we assumed so. Once the sound of skittering claws across tile faded we both just stood there, pressed into the corner of the room, breathing as quietly as we could and praying they were too full to attack us next.

I nearly screamed when something wet grabbed my ankle. He wouldn't let me look but I knew it was someone's hand, or whatever was left of it. In that moment I knew someone had survived, was clinging onto life and instead of helping them he dragged me out of the window and practically threw me onto the fire escape.

As much as I hated him in that moment for not letting me go, not letting me try and save the others, I can look back now and thank him for saving my life. I just wish he'd let me have my hands free to cover my ears but I guess I might have tried to shove him away and race towards the danger to fight it head on.

I would have lost. The creatures have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain and they know it. They're utterly ruthless and have more sharp-clawed limbs than I've ever been able to count. Mostly because they never seem to stay in one place long enough - too scared that they'll get trapped again... kind of like how they've got us trapped in our cities, scared of our own shadows.

Day 1,642

We didn't know the underpass was there until the road collapsed nearly three years ago. Instead of breaking the whole thing down, filling it in and starting from scratch they just kept pouring cement in until it stopped flowing. They never even bothered to find out where it began or ended - that was someone else's problem.

Soon after they re-opened the road, pale figures started to appear. They kept trying to cross the street, getting hit by car after car and getting back up again and carrying on but never reaching the other side. Most of them seemed to just vanish about half way, collapsing into the ground and appearing the same time next week.

When one of the figures was recognised as a missing person, the campaigns to dig up the new road and check the underpass for bodies began. They found the first one last night, a well-preserved child still strapped into their pram and mother's hand still clinging to them.The rest of her hasn't been dug out yet.

Day 1,641

It never occurred to you that the spider-like fleshy beings might have been human once - let alone children and yet there one was, trying to ride a bike with a body that was simply not meant for it. The sight was almost enough to make you feel pity for it, were it not for the fresh blood splattered all over its pulsating body... that spoiled things a bit.

You knew the spider-things killed people with the venomous tips on the end of its limbs that definitely didn't remind you of fingers right now. You knew they signalled to each other and coordinated their hunts in a way that was totally dissimilar to the games of tag you played as a kid. You knew that their bodies looked a little bit like two or three people smushed together and yet you didn't connect the dots until now.

From your vantage point in the attic of a nearby house you watched as the little spider-thing finally managed to arrange its (or was it their?) limbs so that they could ride the bike along, chittering and gibbering away as it cycled towards the centre of town, driving over human remains with gleeful squeals.

Day 1,640

The creatures were sneaky, I'll give them that. They'd clearly been studying us for long enough to know where we'd be most likely to hide and the easiest ways to break into our shelters, bunkers and hideouts. After a while of utter silence we began seeing posts from other survivors, ones who were living in unconventional places and managing to thrive in spite of the odds.

People were hiding in scrapyards, warehouses, recycling plants - we were anywhere the creatures weren't. Five of us stayed in one of those gigantic storage facilities for almost eight months, living on whatever people had left behind and occasionally managing to sneak into the nearby coffee shop for further supplies.

We could have stayed there longer but we got too cocky and were seen. We didn't know how until a survivor living in the supply tunnels under the mayor's office told us how she'd seen them using the city's CCTV network to note down who was where and how many.

She told us to break our patterns and find somewhere less hospitable, less observable, to hide and we never heard from her again. Slowly but surely we all organised an exodus from civilisation back into the surrounding wilderness without thinking that the creatures might have first spawned there.

With most of the world dead, we had nothing to tell us otherwise and people don't tend to live long enough to make detailed observations on the very things that are driving us to the brink of extinction. We came across their nests without really knowing what they were - all we saw were sinkholes full of broken rocks... strangely hollow rocks but just rocks to us.

The deeper in we got, the worse our internet signals became until we lost track of each other, of every other survivor in the world and our world shrunk to the three of us. Somewhere in the forest we lost two people in utter silence and didn't even notice until morning came and their tents were gently packed up by the same inhuman hands that had left their skins hanging up nearby.

So now we're living day by day, writing things that will never be read and waiting to see who else will get taken overnight, if any. It's been almost four weeks of walking and waiting and walking some more and at this point I think we're all ready to go.

The suspense of living is somehow so much worse than the thought of dying.

Day 1,639

There's an old water park behind the town hall, half-hidden among the newly built hotels and office blocks but you can still see the slides if you're high up enough. People like to say it's been closed for thirty-ish years but you remember going there as a child so it can't have been closed for more than ten at least.

You'd go there in the summer holidays, usually at weird times when they had special offers on and your family could get in for next to nothing. There were never too many kids around at those times but you still managed to find a friend who you'd meet nearly every time you went.

When you mentioned this to your parents, they grew very quiet. They'd hoped you wouldn't remember any of it, much less the friend you made there. You wonder aloud where they might be and if they're still in the area which only makes your parents frown and glance at each other in silent debate.

Your mum walks away and comes back with her album of important local news clippings - articles she'd been collecting since she was a child that ranged rom weird cloud sightings to mentions of your school to whatever held her interest that day.

She offers you a slightly crumpled article that reads "Missing Children Found In Fatal Filter Accident" with a little row of smiling children- all found dead and tangled together when the staff finally cleaned out the main pool filter after countless complaints of weird smelling water.

You recognised one of them as your friend. The article said they'd been down there for several months judging by the state of their decomposition but the two of you had played together almost every day. They seemed like just another unsupervised kid - alive and carefree and always soaking wet.

At the time you thought it was normal for them to be constantly drenched and that they were just taking a while to dry off. They did seem to spend as much of their time by or in water which you played off as them being too hot.

Now you remember how scared they looked when the two of you went too far from the water and how they never ate and how cold their skin was and how their parents were never around and how thin they were and how the water just poured and poured and poured from their skin like it was coming from inside them.

Now you remember the stories from people who'd broken into the old water park - children's laughter and garbled voices from the water, the sickly-sweet smell of something rotten coming from the main pool... little figures running in the corners of their eyes.

Day 1,638

It must have been a hell of a lot easier for people to hide from the machines in the cities but out here in the middle of podunk and nowhere, anything on two legs is a target. I mean, you can hide in a herd of cows for a while but sooner or later some itsy bitsy scout-bot will catch a glimpse of you and alert everything in a fifty mile radius and you can just kiss your ass goodbye at that point.

Trust me - been there, seen that.

The best way to keep safe out in the countryside is to stick to the fields by the major roads. They're all so littered with cars that you can easily duck-and-weave between them all and before you know it you're out of the sticks and back into civilisation where you can grab your supplies and leg it back to your secluded old barn in a field with little to no drama.

Of course there's still the risk that the machines have put trackers in the food you just grabbed and have already been notified of it moving and are now heading towards you by ground, air and if there's a river nearby- that too. There's always that risk but starving's a slower death than most would prefer.

At least if the machines do get you, you do have the slimmest chance of joining them instead of being 'recycled' for bio-fuel. It depends how well-fed they are when they catch you. I had a chat with one of the poor bastards who they enrolled into their ranks last week. Decent fellow he was, said he'll never forget the agony of being modified but it means he'll live another day.

I just don't see how he can live with himself when he's running on mulched humans for sustenance.

Day 1,637

We really should learn to clean up our dead. The ocean floor is littered with so many of them it's a wonder that this didn't happen sooner and yet when it first reported it was shrugged off as another hoax or some idiot who tried to surface too quickly.

Even when the evidence walked right up to them and demanded answers for their very existence they said it was all just a prank. Now we're cohabiting with what can only be described as some kind of deep sea slug that ate enough human brain to start to think like us.

There's a few hundred of them as of today, all staggering around in whatever form of diving suit their host died in. It's mostly army uniforms with oxygen masks stuck fast to wrinkled, bloated faced whose mouths mostly move because they're full of smaller lifeforms.

Occasionally you'll see one of the classic diving suits - those brass and rubber monstrosities. They seem to be the ones in charge of the rest, the oldest and easiest to understand when it comes to speaking, well, water-garbled mumbling mixed with a lot of pointing.