September 25th, 2014

So today is September 25th, 2014. Tomorrow is the first anniversary of a very special date for all of us. It's been a while since I've had a chance to write about things. Much has happened since the last update. Maybe I should try my best to sum all of it up. Then again, perhaps not. I've spent a lot of time wondering why I even still bother keeping a journal. It's not like anyone is ever going to read this. If anything, the first thing anyone's gonna bother doing with my journals is hang onto them until it's time to hit the loo. If only I could've seen where it would all lead to, I wouldn't have gotten that English major. What good would it do me now? Bullets are what everyone wants, not words.

But I suppose I am obligated to keep writing my mind as we drift by, trying to survive. In case whoever that is reading this after I leave has different priorities than toilet paper or fire fuel.

The utopian "rebuild-society-from-the-dead-ground-up" that RP had in mind, whatever his far-reaching vision was, is no more. I guess we all saw it coming, except for him. But none of us did anything about it until bigger fish had shown up with more guns and organization than we did and forced us out of the school that had been our "sanctuary" since the world we knew fell.

It's been months since that. Too much of my time was spent trying to survive to even remember I still had all this paper on me.

Inevitable, some might say. But it didn't have to go down that way. They had been willing to negotiate. But RP's terms had been set in stone, unwilling to change. Idiot. Couldn't he see how well-armed they were? In spite of the façade of initial friendliness they had put up for us, they were trained. Unified. Like a fucking militia. And still he wanted to force them to play by his rules. I'm surprised it took as long as it did for them to lose their shit.

They gave us the opportunity to stay at the school, integrate into their society. But other than Laura, none of us took the chance. No one said anything, no one stepped up or made any sort of decision for everyone. I just walked away, and the rest followed. What would the use be, of trading King RP for a new set of kings? Couldn't convince Laura otherwise, couldn't be convinced.

I'll miss her though.

RP's dead now. Can't say I that I shed any tears when he died, or that I miss him and his leadership. And for us, things could've gone worse. Nobody was dead at the end of it all. At least on the surface.

One last note. It's never something that I would've done if I had seen a dead man lying on the pavement with a pool of blood expanding all around him. But when I did it, I didn't even have a second thought about it until I had already begun riffling through RP's pockets. I'd hoped he'd have something on him, like a Driver's License, that would tell me what his real name was.

But he'd already trashed everything, from cards to cash. Maybe he did see ahead, and saw how what once made the world go round would never be needed again. And so he remained to us only as RP.

September 26th, 2014

After RP's death, Mr. and Ms. Smith took unofficial leadership. No one elected them, they never made any sort of statement, but it's obvious who calls the shots now. The two walking at the front of the line. We keep walking, picking up any supplies we find. The roads are scarce, the days long. We keep walking, but to where, I don't know. All I can do is hope that they know.

We took a tangent off the highway a while back. Now we're shuffling through the woods, following a map we picked up from a park station. The logic is that with the wilderness less populated, there'll be less of the infected in our path.

Dole bagged for us a rabbit and then we made a fire to cook it with. All the meat we come across is overcooked. Don't want to risk anything, now that the medical service is gone and we haven't picked up anyone who knows how to treat shit like stomach poisoning. A thought that's enough solace to almost mask the shit taste of the meat. But in this world, you've got to take what you get.

Today's the anniversary. So as we sat around the fire, contemplating as we took bites from our scarce portions of burnt shit rabbit, one of us just had to bring the inevitable question up. His name was Sean. A few days after we left the school, we found him on the road. He was good with a rifle, and friendly enough, so we took him along.

What were we doing a year ago?

Sean

When he saw that none of us wanted to be the first, Sean decided to throw himself into the fire. He'd been a police officer in a small town. It was his childhood dream, all he'd ever wanted to be. Someone who'd help people, take care of the bad guys. Sean'd been living his dream, although he never saw much action – what he called the type of stuff they showed on Cops – beyond drunks past curfew and parking violators.

Outbreak took him by surprise, that came as shock to none of us. He went on, talking about how everything had been completely engulfed by chaos. The sound of gunshots, by both hysterics and desperate authorities trying to get the situation under control. In and out of the town, people were streaming in. Running away from somewhere else, running away from here. But to where ultimately, no one knew. There'd been hysteria on the social networks and news channels, with all the nutjobs and conspiracy theorists getting in their good hits at spreading misinformation, before the Internet and TV networks had collapsed. And soon after that, all power utilities that they'd taken for granted went as well.

Without electricity, without heating, without water… it made living after the initial outbreak just as much of a hell as it was surviving Week Zero.

Their tight-knit society had crumbled almost immediately, and an every-man-for-himself rulebook was written by the panic. Their town was still crawling with the infected, and as he said, that was nothing to say of all their "human" problems like the looters. Their police force, or what remained of it, had tried to maintain order to no avail.

It was the first time that Sean had ever shot anything with his police pistol.

"It's nothing like the movies and TV, the ways the bullets make their marks on bodies and just how all that blood and gore comes out. And no amount of training ever prepared me could've ever prepared me…" He shook his head then. "And the sad thing is, what I was killing weren't human no more. They were already infected, but back then…"

He didn't finish, but we knew. Back in the earliest days after the outbreak, when it was hard to discern what was fact and what was utter bullshit. When we still thought that it could be possible that there was still a shred of humanity in the infected, that the human that they once more could've been salvaged. Maybe some people still do.

"The first human I killed were a group of looters. They'd been trying to break it into an apartment, but they hadn't expected on the occupants being present. We arrived, tried to defuse things. But my partner saw that things were turning ugly, and without making an order, he shot one of the looters to make the rest run. Just like that. He just shot the kid, couldn't have been any older than nineteen, right between the eyes. And you know, he was my partner. He'd been my senior, the guy I'd run with, since I joined the force. He was someone to look up to, the model cop. But then he just goes and shoots someone like that, the way he did it… and even though it was the right thing, that one death was better than a lot, I didn't feel good one bit about what we'd just done. They weren't bad people… they hadn't been looking to hurt anyone. All they wanted was some food, medicine, clean water… they were just looking out for themselves and their close ones and they'd gotten desperate."

So what happened, one of them had to ask.

"We were going to collapse, all hell would break lose, that was certain to everyone who hadn't run or died yet. But one day, there seemed to be some hope. They'd come to town at last, when the smoke from all the fires we'd been lighting for warmth was still hanging in the air, making the sky black. We hadn't seen any fully blue skies forever. You should've seen them. Roaring helicopters, giant tanks, dressed head-to-toe in body armor and carrying an armory that would make Rambo blush… we thought they were here to save us. After all, we were American people. They were American military personnel. Wasn't that their job? And instead…" He sighed, almost futilely. "I was one of the survivors. I ran. Didn't know what to make of the world after that. Everything I thought I knew had rotted or gone. I burned my uniform, after that. Too many people saw that, hoping that I was someone they could latch onto… I tried to be that, for a time. But I fucked up. Too many people died because of me. So I tried to solo things for a while…"

"So why'd you come with us?" I asked him.

"Crazy as it sounds, I just missed human contact… the good kind."

Dole

I'd been living in my car out of the parking lot of a dingy motel in a shit-end map tack mark near the state border when the outbreak hit. I was lucky, in that regard. All of them had been in towns or cities, but me? The place I'd been living at, trying to find work, wasn't even on the map as far as I knew. Less than a hundred folks were living there. Yeah, there were infected, but nothing on the scale that everyone else experienced.

But on the road afterwards, that's when the world started to turn red. There were many times when I felt a desire to stop and try to help, but I just drove by. Tried to blink what I'd seen out of my memory. I had to survive, no matter what. My thoughts became fixated on Katie and Jess.

Eventually, I ran out of gas. I hadn't been keeping up with current events to my best. All I knew that some people had gone crazy and they were killing… fuck, even eating other people. Like a goddamn Romero flick, only these fuckers were fast. Didn't even have a gun on me. Just a rusty crowbar. I hoofed it to a gas station, and was about to walk in. That's where I met Dole. When he tackled me like it was the Super Bowl.

After initial misgivings, and a broken nose and a black eye, he took out a flashlight he was carrying and he shined it into the gas station. That's when I learned from him what the spores did, and how I'd almost fucked up myself. He let me join him in his car, a Mustang, with two buddies of his. Gave me my first gun. He said he and his crew had come out of Philly. The city was on fire and the streets red when they'd gotten out. They were heading to Pittsburgh. They'd heard rumors about a special fort-like place being built there, a Quarantine City or something around that line.

We lost the two buddies on the way, but me and Dole stuck together. Became friends, in a sense. He was the muscle, and while I wasn't the smartest of smarts, I was resourceful. We never did make it to Pittsburgh, but what mattered was that we survived. Survived long enough to make it to the town where the high school was and there we continued to try to survive.

Dole didn't say much about himself to us. "All you need to know is that once, I was someone else." I noticed Sean seeming very uncomfortable when he'd said that. And I started to worry. Divided we fall, they say. "But I'm not that person anymore. The past is the past, and I want you all to know that I'm here to help you all."

Rad-Man

His real name's Brad. But we've all come to call him Rad-Man. Because of the radio he carries on him. The thing looks like a Frankenstein of nuts and bolts, but it works like a charm. He was at the park station, fiddling with its knobs. He's tech-savvy, so that was enough of a reason for us to bring him along with us. But I've seen him with his Cabela. He's not the next Buffalo Bill, that's for certain. But still, the signals the radio picks up keeps us up to date. Some of the things we've heard, we couldn't have guessed would've ever happened…

In a third-world cesspit, sure. But not in America…

I guess that was always the problem, maybe a part of the reason why the First World was hit so hard by the Cordyceps outbreak. But that's a can to be opened another day.

Brad had always been on the fringe of society. Too interested in building things to care about the world outside of the one he lived in. He said he'd been good at staying unnoticed and running. That's how he was able to survive the first week. He'd run to his parents, hoping they'd know what to do, what was going on.

"Instead, that's when I woke up." Brad said as he shook his head. "They'd… my mom and dad, they killed themselves. They didn't even write any sort of notes or anything that explained why. They just sat down next to each other on that old couch where they used to watch TV when I was a kid and… and… they didn't own any guns. Or anything that'd make it quick. They'd slit their wrists, both of them, and died together. And after seeing them like that, my parents, I immediately knew that I didn't want to end up like that."

"How the hell did you survive?" Sean asked him. "You don't look like the type of kid whose folks shipped off to survival camp…"

"I loved the Internet. There was always something new to learn. And you know, other things…" He actually blushed. "All this irrelevant shit that built up from surfing the Web, some of it helped. But it only got me thinking when it wasn't keeping me alive by less than an inch. How could I remember this but not what my mom used to say to me every day before I went to school? Shit, whenever I think about them, I feel like I wasted my life and I feel horrible. And now this comes and happens…"

The Smiths

Mr. Smith gave their names as Jack and Jane Smith. Right… and I'm starting to wonder if their last names really are Smith, either.

They were twin siblings. They'd always been close. Liked the same shit shows and bands, attended the same athletic activities and never liked playing on opposite teams, and always made sure to get each other gifts at Christmas and birth dates. She was her brother's best friend and he was hers, Jane said. They were college kids, who were rooming together. They had driven home for the weekend to visit their parents at the hometown. Right before the outbreak.

Mom had gotten infected. Dad had died getting the two of them to safety. That was all Jane said before nudging a bit closer to her brother as he put his arm around her. Jack said that's when they'd run into RP and Chris and Stevie and Craig and some people who'd died by the time the rest of us turned up. The two had been their gym and science teachers respectively at the high school. With nowhere else to go, Jack and Jane had hitched back to the not-so hallowed halls of no-more-learning-anymore.

"I'm not going to let anything bad happen to Jane. So watch yourselves around her. If I think any of you are up to something, I'll be sure to…" Jack's words before she cut him off.

"Take it easy. All of you. Jack just really cares about me. And so do I. We've always been close. We got our black belts in taekwondo class together, we studied for our finals and aced them together, we survive together. Nothing will tear us apart. If my brother goes, so will I." Jane nodded.

That explains a lot. And opens up a few more doors of possibility regarding the two than I'd like. And their words made me remember people I'd loved once with that level of devotion. But my resolve hadn't been up to walking. All it had been good for was talking. And when that moment came, I didn't go. I stayed, with my hand half-heartedly held out, trying to reach for nothing. Letting everything slip by… the loves of my life.

Cipher

Says nothing. Said nothing tonight. Just trails behind us. Shooting, gathering, and then getting back to walking with her head downcast behind the rest of us. When Sean asked her, there was almost a glimmer. Something in her eyes lighting up, like she did have to something to say. But then it burned out almost instantly, and there she was back to looking down at the dirt.

Michael

What could I tell them? I just told them I'd met up with Dole, and I'd stuck by him ever since. Told them nothing else. Nothing about Katie or Jess. Nothing about Mom's funeral or how Dad died. And especially nothing about Dad's old rowboat he always took to the center of the lake and the time I took the rowboat to the lake to try and find answers I never did.

That's my life and it's been off kept to myself.

September 30th, 2014

We need a plan beyond the immediate game of hunting and gathering. We need to know where we're going. But no one's put forward any longshot suggestions thus far. We're almost out of the woods now. We haven't seen any infected for days now. But that's not much to celebrate over. Eventually, we'll run low. And with that, our moods. And soon enough, if that happens, we'll start turning on each other. And it'll be like the fall of RP's paradise all over again.

I don't want that to happen.

October 1st, 2014

"Why are you writing that?" Jack asked me as the rest were disassembling camp to begin another rough day of hiking through the wilderness and towards the edge of civilization.

"How would I know?"

"Because you have to have a reason for doing so. Otherwise you'd be using it to wipe your ass like the rest of us do with the papers we find."

"I never thought of myself as the writing type. But it's been something that I've been doing on and off again since I was a kid. Ironic, isn't it?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

"So, are you really Jane's bro?" Dole asked us as he walked up.

"Yeah, why are you asking?"

"Everyone talks about it, out of your earshot." I said. "I don't care what the hell it is you two are, but everyone thinks that you're awfully protective of her for a brother."

"Whatever you bastards really are thinking, it's no different from all the rumors they used to toss about us at school. And just like those rumors, they aren't fucking true. You don't know a single fucking thing about the bond I have with her. Sure, you may have had a brother or sister or something like that in your life, but you didn't have a twin, did you? You don't know what it's like to care for someone in a world where at any moment you could lose them, do you?"

"Yeah, I guess you're right." I said as I walked away as Dole continued to rib Jack. Petty, but I guess that's how Dole deals with the world around him. Got to get your laughs anyway possible or the world eats you alive madly.

October 3rd, 2014

At last, we're out of the woods. Too late for my feet, though. Both of 'em have gotten blisters. For a couple of days now. I've gotten used to the pain now, but this doesn't bode well. My socks are full of holes, and my boots are wearing away. If it rains, I think I may very well be fucked.

We're resting up at someone's hillside house. The type the wealthy would buy when they needed somewhere nice to live that was far away from all the little people like us, the way Dad worded it to me. It's not anywhere we can hole up for long. Food, medicine, most of that was missing in our inspection of the place. The garage was empty, and all the extra gallons of gasoline made off with. In the driveway was the rotting body that was being picked on by carrion. It looked like he'd tried to jump off the roof, but he hadn't died on impact. He'd had enough time to write "I'm sorry…" with his blood which had become smudged.

We saw why he was sorry. On a large bed in the second floor. Three bodies, covered up by sheets stained with large red splotches. Cipher ran out when she saw them. Rad-Man later told me that she was crying outside and angrily kicking the body in the driveway before Sean pulled her away.

I think the sooner we're out of this place, the better.

October 4th, 2014

I've been thinking more about writing. I've described myself as not the writing type, but there has to be a reason, like Jack said, for me to have done this since childhood.

And now, I think I know the reason why. It was the only thing that I ever was really good at, something that I could come back to over and over again. Not like all the jobs I've held. Not like the parents, growing weaker and weaker with each day. Not like my ex-wife and daughter, after I turned their love into hatred.

Writing is power. With a few words, people have made history. It was a sanctuary made from armor forged by typewriters and keyboards. It provided me with the tools to fashion a new record. To put words into mouths that were never there. To give me a power that I never had. But it's not working.

Because my father died by the hands of his own son in a fit of decades of repressed rage finally breaking. His body was in the rowboat when I took it to the center of the Minnesota lake where I dumped him, and then broke down completely in the rowboat. It was just a few days after Mom's funeral. I thought he'd finally done it, even as Uncle Luke kept telling me how much Dad loved her. I followed him to the lake after the funeral, and knocked him out with a shovel and kept hitting and hitting until my arms felt like they would fall off and the blade of the shovel had broken off.

After his water-bloated body washed back onto shore, I started running east. I tried phoning Jess but she hung up the moment she recognized my voice. Fuck, she fucking loved me. I fucking loved her. We could've had everything but I fucked everything up. And they hated me for it afterwards. I could never say sorry. Never never.

October 7th, 2014

We follow the road now these days.

And try to ignore the growling in our bellies, the soreness in our legs, the growing desire to fall asleep and never wake up again…

October 11th, 2014

We spotted a town off in the distance. Maybe there are other survivors there. Maybe there's community and civilization. And as far-fetched as it may seem, maybe there's hope.

It's also the one-year anniversary of my journal, but I don't have any more words to say.

October 13th, 2014

Tomorrow we reach town. Everyone's been talking about it. No one knows what'll be there. But everyone hopes that it's something good.

October 14th, 2014

Today I learned a new meaning of fright. We were passing through the town. It was empty, or so we had thought.

Ray-Man hadn't been looking where he was walking, and it was too late as we heard the wire go snap. Poor kid had no time to scream before a crude mechanism fired a bolt into him, pinning him to the wall. But he had plenty of time to start screaming afterwards. Dole took a step towards him, but then then a part of the wall burst.

Sean screamed something about a gun and we all scrambled towards cover. We could hear footsteps, rushing towards us. Five people dressed shabbily were coming out of hiding spots, with guns and hand-held weapons like clubs that looked like they'd been assembled blind from random objects plucked from the ground.

"Run!" Sean yelled at Cipher and the Smiths. Without asking, Dole and I stayed behind with Sean to cover their flight.

It did not surprise me, how easily… almost casually, we pulled the triggers of our weapons as we lined every attacker in our sights. How easy it became to forget that they were people just like us, and instead just see them as problems needing a quick lead wash-up. Everything was leading up to this point. Maybe everything already was at this point. Why else would we have had dark ages in history, where all civilization and society has been crumbled away and the only thing left is a burning, primal desire to survive… no matter the cost.

But we were running low on ammo, and their numbers seemed infinite. We were bound to be overrun… but then we heard something that was completely unnatural. A guttural, abnormal clicking noise. From the shadows.

And then they came from the shadows. They looked like the infected… but it couldn't be. At the moment, what we were seeing couldn't have been real. Couldn't have been believed. Their clothing hung on them in rotted tatters. Fungi-like growths covered all visible patches of bare skin. Their teeth were cracked, bloody nubs. And they had no eyes, for their heads looked like something had burst them open like a kernel of corn in the microwave. Seen but not believed… but they forced themselves into our belief as one of the clicking things lurched with a jerky motion towards one of our attackers. He tried to hold it off but its strength was abnormal. None of it seemed real, but the blood as it bit into his throat and tore it out was.

"Fuck me." Sean.

"Shit…" Dole.

"Run." Me.

"Don't fucking leave me!" Ray-Man screaming as the clickers tore our hunters apart in front of him. One of them heard his voice, and with a clicking noise, it cocked its head towards him before snarling and sprinting.

It was too late to save him. But we could change the manner of his death. A lose-lose situation, but sometimes, the degree makes all the difference. So Dole fired the shot and there went Ray-Man. But then they were realized we were there.

So we ran. With the sounds of their clicks following us all the way. It seemed like we'd never lose them, but then there was the sound of another gunshot. From behind us. The people who'd been hunting us still wanted us, it seemed. And the infected were off again.

That's when we figured out those things must've been guided by sound, like a bat's echolocation. So we crept, careful not to make any noise, careful not to run into anyone else. And the only thing I could hear were the beating thumps of my heart. I wasn't even sure if I was breathing anymore.

We caught up with the rest of our party later. There was a house at the outskirts of town. Jack and Jane were holding a woman and her two sickly looking children at gunpoint.

"Can you believe it?" Cipher said. Her first words to us. She pointed at a dusty dinner plate. On top of it were bones with cut marks on them. Bones that looked like no animal's.

"Don't… don't blame us…" The woman was whimpering to us. "We didn't mean anything by… by it… we're so sorry… sorry… but all of us are hungry. There's no more food where we can get it. Too many of those… those clickers. And we're tired of starving. Watching our children and families starving. We… we had no choice… we had to… to… set up the traps…"

"There's always a fucking choice." Jack said, but I put my hand on his shoulder.

"These poor bastards, either way, are in hell. Why waste a bullet?"

He lowered his gun.

October 21st, 2014

A week since the encounter with the cannibals and the clickers has passed.

We've moved on.

I don't know what's more unreal. Just how far will the infection develop, if the clickers are anything to go by? Or that already, people have become this desperate in our quest to survive. How long will it be, before we're exactly like the people back in that town? But I guess that's just the rules of the universe. Everything will eventually lead to chaos.

I should know. I felt it deep down, underneath the Michael mask I had constructed and worn for myself ever since childhood, during all those times. When I hit my daughter that one time and saw how afraid she was of her own father and I realized that I was truly my father's son. When Jess and Katie left me, and all I could do instead of say sorry or beg for forgiveness was stand and watch before going to brew in self-loathing. I can write it differently, but no matter what, the words I put in my head can't change my past. When my father recognized me right before I swung the blade of the shovel into his face and almost split his head. When I looked down the sights of a rifle and pulled a trigger, taking off a man's head because it was either me or him.

I know how far I'll go to survive.

You know, this reminds me of a talk I had with Sean yesterday. He was leaning against a tree, looking at something in his hand. It was his police badge.

"I thought you said you burned your uniform."

"I did that. But I kept the badge."

"Why?"

"It was my dream as a child, to wear it. And just for a little while, my dream was real. It ended like crap, but I would give up my can of beans just to live it again. I tried to throw it away, but I couldn't. It was once the world to me, and maybe it'll be again."

"You really think that?"

"Michael…"

"Call me Mikey."

"Yeah, whatever. But a man's gotta hope in times like these. Otherwise we all would've put bullets into our brains long ago."

And I had to think, why do we survive, even when we've got nothing to live for? There's no family, no civilization, no end… just us and the human race floating by.

October 31st, 2014

We were lucky enough to bag a deer. As we roast it over the fire, the night-sky hangs over us. But for the first time in ages, I think I can see millions of stars. Like the way I remember it from my childhood, when I could look up and still wonder, innocence still remnant. And I find myself reaching up, forming a circle around stars with my hand, trying to make out constellations. To find a future for myself.

We've been talking about the future, you know. We all want something different. Dole still wants to go to Pittsburgh, even though voices on Ray-Man's radio said that the people running the Quarantine Zones are gunning down anyone trying to enter.

"You aren't worried about being shredded by machine gun fire?" Jack asked.

"We can sneak in, you fool."

"And what are the odds of that?" Jane asked.

"If we didn't gamble with our odds, none of us would be here." Dole said.

In between all the talks of martial law and rioting in the big cities, there was a woman's voice on the radio.

"Remember, when you're lost in the darkness, look for the light. Believe in the Fireflies. Maybe that's what we should do." Sean's suggestion.

"Whatever you guys decide, I'll follow." Cipher.

"Head west. Far away from here as possible. Maybe with luck, we'll make it all the way to San Francisco."

"Why San Francisco?" Jane asked me.

"Hey, I've always wanted to piss into the ocean from atop the Golden Gate Bridge." I lied, not telling any of them that Jess and Katie had been living out of San Francisco before the outbreak. Maybe they were still out there… and wondering what happened to me just as I wonder what happened to them.

"We'll be dead before we even make it to border, in all likelihood, brother." Dole said dryly.

"Oh well. At least we tried. That has to count for something, right?" And I began to hum a familiar tune from a band my father hated and a band I loved just because of that. And before long, we had all joined along in sing-along by the campfire.

"Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday…"

I looked up at the moon shining above us. And I thought. I'm no saint. I'm not a good man. I killed my father because of an assumption. I was a lousy husband, a lousy father, and I drove away what mattered most to me. I should've killed myself. But I never did.

My moments of real happiness were long ago. With Jess by my side, Katie in my arms, hoping against reason that this would be it. Like the blue sky these days, they were covered up the clouds of misery and nihilism quickly. But the moments I had… I'd give up everything just to live them again ad infinitum.

But like Sean said, maybe one day happy days will come again. It's irrational to hope for such a thing, seeing the world like it is with us thrust back to the dark ages, but after every dark age – there's a renaissance. And sometimes, hope is all someone needs to survive. And I've found something to latch onto, something to fight for, something to keep me living.

That one day, I'll go far enough. And I'll see them once more. And I can see my wife and my daughter once more and tell them I'm sorry for everything.

It's something worth clawing my way out of hell for. An impossible, grandiose and ridiculous dream… but who better to dream big and impossible than a writer? So that's what I am, after the end of the world. A fucking writer. Oh, Dad would be laughing, if he wasn't burning in hell. I know I'll join him one day, but there's no reason why I have to make my life one despite all the signs demanding I do so.

Hope…

Good-bye blue skies, it was nice seeing you. And maybe one day I'll dance underneath your endless azure once more.