Day One Hundred Sixteen:

Day One Hundred Sixteen:

They nearly got me while I slept. I woke up to the sound of creeping nightmares snarling and growling and almost right on top of me before I knew what was happening. Fortunately, I was sleeping with my rifle underneath me. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to put in my ear protection and as of right now I am not sure if I will ever be able to hear normal again.

I remember screaming while I shot. Whether this was from grief, terror, or the sheer pain of gunshots reverberating inside a small tube I don't know. But I screamed the entire time as one after the other after the other died in front of me. The only light I had was the flash from my gun at first. Strobe light death. The ones behind tried to crawl over the dead or dying ones in front and before long, the entire tube was blocked with bleeding bodies.

When I was pretty sure I had a little breathing room I turned on my light and put a bullet through the head of one of them trying to force his way through on top. It only took me seconds to gather my supplies but before I left I could tell that the sounds of snarls had switched to the sounds of teeth ripping flesh. Why chase after me when you can make a meal out of your fallen monsters?

On the move, to where I don't know. At least I know which direction to head now since, my only other choice is now a death trap.

Day One Hundred Fifteen:

Day One Hundred Fifteen:

I lifted the manhole cover up only for a fraction of a second. Just long enough for me to see them running towards it and drop it closed again.

Back to square one.

Except, square one is now a different type of square because unless I'm mistaken, they might have made it into these tubes somehow. Sound is weird down here so I can't say for sure but, I think I can hear them trying to find me.

Good.

Fuck em.

Day One Hundred Fourteen:

Day One Hundred Fourteen:

Another day another 24 hours of misery and regret. Yesterday I walked the tunnels out a little bit, tried to make it back where I entered at. Think I was successful but I'm not 100% sure. Started making something of a map in my head and tomorrow I am going to have a look around up top even if that means the end of everything. Two days down here has depleted my rations pretty bad, and if I know those monsters they probably didn't leave any of our supplies uneaten. Hopefully they're too dumb to fuck with the guns though because if I make it out of here, I think it is about to be hunting season.

Day One Hundred Thirteen:

Day One Hundred Thirteen:

I've been down here for a day, listening. Every now and then I hear sounds, but more and more they sound like they are getting farther away. Hard to tell though since, I don't know where these tubes exit out and sound travels weird in a tunnel.

I should have helped him. He would have helped me. I don't deserve to live through this.

Day One Hundred Twelve - I don't know:

Day One Hundred Twelve - I don't know:

They're dead. They have to be. I don't know how the fuck I am still alive or for how long but on the off chance that someone made it this far into the story I figured I owed you at least this update.

We made it to Mississippi, maybe Louisiana... I don't know. We weren't really paying that much attention to the road signs, we were just excited to be moving west. I was driving a car full of supplies with Josh and Aj was driving the car full of extra fuel. As for Victor... he stayed behind. We tried to convince him to go with us but, he said he was sick of the whole Bio-Hazard routine and maybe he could help others if they made it to the Naval Station. I told him we were safer together, he told me we were safe where we already were.

He was right. We were all wrong. We underestimated the Ex-humes. We thought they were dumb animals, but they were more. Just waiting for the right time and when they attacked it was brutal.

I'm getting ahead of myself but, I wanted you to know what happened in case I don't finish writing this. I am in some type of drainage or sewage tube right now, I think I made it pretty far down here but for all I know I walked in a circle and once I decide to make a break for it, I might pop out five feet from where we were ambushed. For all I know they already found their way in here and are crawling towards me as I speak.

And I have no doubt about it, we were ambushed. There is no way that so many could have been there that quick. They either saw other vehicles get fucked up where we did, and then pushed the vehicles out of the road... or they set the trap themselves and just waited. Either way, the implications are bad for humanity.

So we drove, and somewhere near the Mississippi/Louisiana state line we ran into trouble. Or rather, we ran over trouble. We never had time to go back and check but I think we probably hit either sharp metal that was covered up, or a spike strip. Whatever it was it destroyed our tires and before we could warn Aj, he blew all four as well.

Almost immediately after shredding our tires we saw a swarm moving towards us. How many there were I don't know. Lets just say a lot. Enough that I knew we would run out of bullets before they ran out of bodies, and we had several thousand rounds of all different types of ammo. So instead, we tried to outrun them. But a car with no tires isn't exactly your best bet when making a fast get away.

It was enough to get us off the freeway we were on, down the off ramp, and into some podunk town before we decided we would be able to move faster on foot. The Ex-humes were closing in by then, their feet had begun to sound like thunder and I put our life expectancy at about 35 seconds. While I had been focused on driving, Josh had managed to grab a backpack and weapon for both of us. Immediately after coming to a stop I jumped out and saw Aj running for his life. His car was parked about 50 yards behind ours and after running half way to us he stopped and yelled "RUN!"

I didn't understand but Josh did, he started to pull me but I didn't move. He said, "We gotta go, NOW!" because apparently he had noticed the grenade in Aj's hand. I just kept watching, sometimes it is hard to look away when your world is coming to an end so instead of pulling me with him like would probably happen in the movies, Josh left me. I don't know how long it was, probably seconds but it felt like hours and then the ex-humes were at Aj's car right about the same time as his grenade rolled underneath it.

When he turned I could see the surprise in his eyes that I was still there. Seconds later I was lying on the ground wondering what had happened. My brain reorganized itself as I realized over a hundred gallons of gasoline had just made short work of the front line of the ex-hume army. Unfortunately there were a couple thousand more rushing towards us.

I want to say I ran to help Aj, I want that more than anything. I want to say I tried and found him dead, or he told me to run a different way, or something. But the reality is I noticed I was lying next to a manhole cover that I was able to pry up with the end of my rifle. Then I tossed my back pack in and without thinking I was inside it and already climbing down into filth before I even thought about Aj. At the bottom I remembered and by the time I climbed up to the sewer cover I could hear an unknown amount of their feet plodding across it directly above me.

So here I am, in a concrete tube expecting to die soon. Could Josh still be alive? Yes. Maybe he made it to one of the buildings and  is holed up somewhere. But odds are the feet I heard above me were running him down. Could Aj still be alive? If he had a better friend maybe, but since I am a complete shit no. I left him to die and now I get to die here or, up there.

Ok, I've wasted more than enough battery power to write this and on the off chance that I figure out a way out of here, I might regret that. But I just wanted to make sure that if someone found this, you knew what an asshole I was. I'm sorry Aj. I'm sorry Josh. We should have listened to Victor.

Day One Hundred Eleven:

Day One Hundred Eleven:

I know, sort of a joke that I am still referring to this journal on a day by day basis right? I honestly have no idea how many days have passed since my last entry or why I haven't felt like writing. Maybe because when shit is boring, I don't care. And when I don't care, I figure that you don't care. If there even is a you.

Everything gets too complicated when I try to think about why I am doing this. So instead I won't, I will just let you know that Josh figured it out. Or at least, figured out where he thinks those coordinates will take us. Somewhere in California called Live Oak. On the plus side, it has the word "Live" in the title. Maybe the government created some super secret shelter there simply because it had that name.

But, and this is a big fucking but. It is clear across the country. Fortunately we aren't in the movie version of an apocalypse since then the roads would be jam packed with cars. But on the negative side, even though it is probably only a three or four day drive back in the old world, that is now a three or four day drive, through unknown terrain, where you can't exactly pull into a Holiday Inn and feel safe, and where there could be a million monsters just waiting for you to slip up.

So now we have to decide what is next. I don't know why we have to decide though. We already all know we are going to go for it. I guess now, now we are just trying to pick a day so that we will actually have the guts to carry through with going back out there. If you are out there, if you are reading this... God I hope I get to enter another ten days in this stupid thing.

Day One Hundred Ten:

Day One Hundred Ten:

I don’t like this. I know I should. I should love the fact that I don’t have to look over my shoulder every day to make sure that some deranged monster isn’t going to try to destroy me. I know I should love being able to let my hair down and relax.

But I don’t.

I think this level of comfort, this complacency is more dangerous than any ex-hume we have crossed so far. It is amazing how quickly the mind can trick itself into feeling “safe” and the defenses it will drop or forget about as a result. Used to be we would all only travel in pairs, with loaded weapons, in a fucking tank. Maybe not the tank part, but close enough.

Now, well now everyone thinks that because we haven’t seen any ex-humes in a while, that they must not exist. But they do. Millions upon millions upon millions of them do exist and they are breeding and possibly learning. Learning what? Maybe learning to swim their evil bodies over to our little sanctuary and rip us to pieces, who knows?

Josh is trying to figure out coordinates, Aj is off making himself a margarita or something, and Victor is busy doing whatever it is that Victor does… I am cleaning my guns, watching the shore, and getting ready. Ready for what? Exactly.

Day One Hundred Nine:

Day One Hundred Nine:


Here’s the thing, I wouldn’t know how to find latitude and longitude coordinates before this whole end of the world thing happened, so I wasn’t able to give any real suggestions for how we could go about figuring it out now. Funny how if you take Google Search away you almost instantly have an entire country full of idiots.

Or almost. AJ and Victor apparently received real educations since both of them suggested Josh look for a world atlas in the library along with anything related to how to work with latitude and longitude. From there they figured once he had that, he could narrow it down and start trying to find either a state or country map My suggestion would have been to see if the government had somehow managed to download the entire internet before this disaster happened, and then run a search on it.

Everyone laughed and then Josh asked if Google Earth would work even without the internet? Before I answer that question, allow me to take this moment to say that apparently this entry is brought to you by Google.

After about an hour of trying to get a computer to load up that had Google Earth on it, we were saddened a little to find out that no, it doesn’t work very well at all. Stupid internet.

So while Josh is out scouring the Naval Bases library, we are all busy doing important things like… playing darts, and setting up bowling pins in the middle of the street and engaging in a rousing game of street bowling. Of course street bowling invariably ends up with us throwing bowling balls through the windshields of abandoned cars.

Why?

Why not?

Day One Hundred Eight:

Day One Hundred Eight:

So here’s the problem. We found the safe and it looks pretty safey. I am confident that Josh could open it with his impressive thermite skills but Josh is confident that if there is anything inside the safe, the thermite will incinerate it.

Any suggestions?

Haha, oh man. Remember Social media where you could actually ask stuff like that? Good times. Or hey, maybe I will just Google “How to open a safe with a ten digit combination lock” oh wait, that’s right. No internet. No anything. I suppose the library might have some insight as to how to get inside this thing but, christ… without a librarian I’m not sure trying to navigate the Dewey Decimal system would be any easier than trying to open this safe with a plastic spoon.

Instead we went through the drawers of the desk and tried to figure out who this room belonged to. After we had a name, Josh pulled out the driver’s licenses and military id’s of all the dead bodies we buried and identified one Dan Ganderfield who apparently was the man in charge behind the desk until the world went to shit.

Next we looked through every scrap of paper in the desk, every trace of information we could find in an attempt to provide us with a combination to the safe. Birthday, no. Address, no. Security Id, no. EOD date, no. No no no no no no no.

While we were doing all of this, Victor said “I got it open”.

Apparently Dan Ganderfield wasn’t too worried about people finding his secrets anymore since he left the actual combination still on the safe. All Victor had to do was pull the handle and make all of us feel like idiots for not trying the obvious.

Inside were documents sealed inside of a red folder with all sorts of warnings about how the information was sensitive and not to be viewed by anyone without the proper security clearance and even though the entire world is dead or mutant… I think all of us were worried for a second about getting thrown in prison.

Once that moment passed we opened the folder and found exactly what Josh was hoping for. Well, sort of.

It didn’t necessarily explain exactly what happened, but it danced around the issue long enough to create an image at least. Apparently NASA had been teamed up with an international symposium… is symposium the right word? Anyway, a group of countries and NASA all got together with the intent to figure out a way to make deep space travel possible.

No one seemed to be able to figure out how exactly to make cryogenics a reality so they opted for examining the hibernation patterns of animals and tried to create a way for this type of action to indefinitely suspend a human’s activity while they traveled across the universe.

Only problem is it didn’t work or rather, worked in ways they weren’t expecting. Instead of allowing human’s to hibernate, they created some sort of virus that instructed the body to cut off all non-essential brain functions and revert to what we see now with the ex-humes.

From what we can tell, it looks like the outbreak started overseas but it’s hard to decide whether or not that’s factual, or just the beginning of the finger pointing process. The message concluded with information that scientists were trying to reverse what they had created but were struggling to make any progress. It also mentioned that the mysterious people we found dead in this bunker were supposed to try to monitor the outside world and report if they were able to find anyone immune to the disease.

Last but not least was a scrap of paper with    39° 16′ 32″ N, 121° 49′ 45″ W   hand scrawled across it. Obviously some type of location but where or why we have no idea. I really hope wherever that fucking location is at is close though. Because if not, I’ve got a feeling we’re about to go on a journey.

Day One Hundred Seven:

Day One Hundred Seven:

If I read the bible this would probably be a good time for some type of belly of the beast quote. But, since I don’t I will fake it.

And Ezekiel said to Jebediah, thou shalt return to the scene of the horror. And yay we did. And yay we did.

Actually, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t use the phrase “Return to the scene” back in bible times but oh well. With Josh as our Junior Cadet leader we all went back to the house of death. Despite burying all the bodies there was still gore and rot everywhere we looked. Par for the course I know but, still something you never really enjoy walking through.

So we looked. Every desk was scoured, every table turned, in fact before we buried the bodies Josh demanded that we search everyone’s pockets for keys. At first there was nothing, and then… more nothing. We found a print out that looked promising at first until we realized it was just a really fancy worded inventory. Room by room until several hours later we ran out of rooms. At which point Josh asked if we would help him move all the furniture out of the bunker.

And that was when AJ had enough. He said “No, we’re not going to do that. There is nothing here. I’m sorry, I really am. I wish there was a magic lamp I could rub to explain everything but there isn’t. Not here, maybe not anywhere Ok?”

Josh said ok. Then he started pushing a desk towards the exit.

I wanted to take AJ’s side except, what did it hurt? If Josh wanted to empty the entire fucking complex, by God we would do it. Why? Because why not.

We didn’t finish today, but we didn’t have to. After emptying about ¼ of the place, we found something underneath a massive desk. I would have never even noticed it, but that’s the advantage of believing in yourself I suppose. Because somehow Josh noticed the faintest outline of a square in the floor. After closer  examination (With a crowbar) we found a safe in the ground.

A safe, underneath boards, underneath a desk. We haven’t opened it yet, but we will. And maybe next time we won’t doubt the kid.

Day One Hundred Six:

Day One Hundred Six:

After yesterday, I was 99.9% certain I would never set foot in those rooms ever again. The neat thing about life though is that there is always room for error.

Today as we were getting ready for the day, all of us still in an almost hung over depressed mood from our discovery of death the day before, Josh walked in holding a shovel for each of us. We asked him what he was doing and he said he was going back to check out the room we kicked him out of yesterday.

We told him not to, told him there was nothing to see. He told us that the people in there might not matter to us but, he had buried half the people on this island and was going to bury the ones we found whether we wanted to go back in there or not. He told us that if we didn’t want to go in there we could use the shovels and start digging some holes outside.

That put us all in our place.

He then explained that burying the bodies wasn’t the end but only the start. Once we were finished with that we needed to scour the entire room. There was a reason why those people were there and a reason they were behind an enormous metal door. And that reason is not because they were trying to quarantine themselves. If they were, where were the gas masks, the filtrations systems, the… he didn’t know what else you need to isolate yourself from disease but he was pretty sure it required more than a bank vault door.

Josh thought we would find something if we looked hard enough. Wishful thinking perhaps, but it was a distraction at least. Something to take our minds off the gruesome task of carrying out several children, women, and men who were literally falling apart.

I wish I could tell you we found something amazing but, after we spent several hours moving and burying bodies we decided we would spend the rest of the evening decompressing and focus on whatever it was Josh thought we would find tomorrow.

One interesting thing I forgot to mention though, is Josh didn’t recognize any of the people we buried. He kept saying over and over again, “I knew almost everyone on this island. These guys couldn’t have already been here, and if they weren’t, why were they here now. I don’t understand.”

Me neither, and I didn’t want to break it to him but… I think now more than ever we have entered a world of mystery and ignorance where not everything can be solved by searching for the answer online. Especially since the only thing online refers to now is maybe, clothes that are hung out on a line.

Day One Hundred Five:

Day One Hundred Five:

We should have left well enough alone. I don’t know what we expected to find. Surely if they had found a cure they would have shared it with others instead of locking it in a room on an island guarded by a juvenille. Maybe we expected to find some way of communicating with others, or a map where the government had created a quarantine zone safe from the sickness.

Instead we found death.

Death stacked on top of death stacked on top of death.

We stopped Josh before he could see all of it, but he still saw some. Some of the worst. The first room we opened were the children. All left to rot, most likely drugged. We should have known. The smell was there but, they had been in there so long it wasn’t enough to stop us. Because honestly at this point, we were all just used to that smell and didn’t even think anything of it.

But sure enough, after the children we found several rooms full of high ranking officers and their wives or in some cases, alone. The ones with the women took the clean way out, the ones by themselves opted for a messy end. Whatever we hoped for, we should have expected this. But we didn’t/

Hope blinded us. Made us think that this isolated island was only the icing on the cake and we were about to find the mother load. Instead, we found an endless well of depression. If morale wasn’t already low, we just kicked it off a cliff and set it on fire.

I always try to find the plus side to situations like this but this time, there is none. Sorry world.

FUCK!

Day One Hundred Four:

Day One Hundred Four:

Turns out that if you mix Etch a Sketch with Burnt Steel Wool in the correct ratio you get Thermite. Now, in case you don’t know what Thermite is since I didn’t know what it was, Thermite is basically what you would get if you mixed an actual dragon’s breath, with the surface of the sun, with an active volcano, with the center of the Earth with… you get the idea.

For some reason Thermite has a hard time burning through ceramic. Josh explained this, but before he got anywhere near to being finished I asked him how he knew all this. All he said was, “Kids have easy access to the internet these days.”

With that said, he rigged up a piece of ceramic at an angle on the door where the lock was and put some of his magical mixture on top. Then, using the worlds cheapest sparkler he ignited his homemade lava which mostly ran down the door but did appear to have made a small hole. That was when Josh turned to us and said, “This is going to take a while, I’ll let you know when we’re in”.

Aj and Victor wandered off but I stayed since, this was probably the last fireworks show I would ever get to see. What started as a small hole turned into a dent, the dent grew into a crevice and the crevice turned into a crag. Also, if those words aren’t in the correct order, sorry but you get the idea of where I am going here.

Before long Josh didn’t have to use the ceramic, he just packed the hole with powder and ignited it. Some would burn down into the door while the rest burned at an angle through it. I asked how much of the stuff he had made and he only laughed.

After about 3 hours of work we could see through to the other side of the door. It was still locked, but Josh said it was only a matter of time before we were through. And with that, I am going to sleep where I will probably dream of volcanoes.

Day One Hundred Three:

Day One Hundred Three:

Row row row your boat gently down the stream,
Merrily Merrily Merrily Merrily
Life is but a bombed out possibly radioactive still smoldering dream.

The first Toy Store we went into was non-existant. Just trying to figure out where it might have originally been was a challenge since any way of telling what street we were on, or lot we were in had been vaporized. I think at one point I was able to find what might have once been a Tonka truck, but it also could have been a wheel chair or a car or who knows? On a positive note, there were no ex-humes either which was nice.

After canvassing the area to make sure there wasn’t an entire toy store hidden underneath mounds of glassed over rubble, we went back to the boat. Before we got to our next destination we knew we might be in luck. Several of the buildings on the far end of the island were still standing along with various cars, trees, items you would expect to see in a world that didn’t need to explode in order to protect itself.

Unfortunately, this also meant there might be monsters waiting to rip our faces off but we made it to the half toy store without incident. I say half, because the other half was completely collapsed. After searching for about an hour we found a very dirty giant stuffed panda bear, a couple functional bicycles that we goofed around on, Optimus Prime, and drum roll please…

3 Etch a Sketches!

At first we were thrilled when we found them because we figured we’d hit the mother load. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an Etch A Sketch supply warehouse and because of that, the store wasn’t carrying 26,000 of them. Just three. One of the three was cracked open but we figured maybe it would still be usable so we took it as well.

With our top secret mission accomplished we returned back to the naval base. You might be wondering why Josh didn’t go with us on this voyage, because I know I was suspicious as all hell when he said he wasn’t joining us. But, according to him, while we were out scavenging for Etch a Sketches, he would try to gather up the rest of the necessary items he would need to make whatever can combine with an Etch a Sketch to open an impenetrable vault door.

Either that or he would set up some type of trap and we would be slaughtered the second we set foot on the Naval Base. Then again, he could have killed us day one if he wanted but, I don’t know. Still having a hard time trusting someone new I guess. Part of me still thinks Victor will try to cut my throat in the middle of the night. AJ is the only person left on this planet that I feel comfortable with.

Speaking of AJ, he’s been much more quiet than usual. I don’t know what is going on in that big head of his but, I hope he is ok. Can’t really afford to have the only person I trust go insane.

Back at the Naval Base we weren’t gunned down, but we weren’t greeted by our new friend either. He was back inside, along with a bunch of cheap sparklers, a mound of steel wool, some various ceramic pots, and what looked like a drug dealer's scale.

Either Josh really does know what he is doing, or he's on some drugs and we've been completely wasting our time. Guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

Day One Hundred Two:

Day One Hundred Two:

Josh showed us a fairly detailed map of the area today. Apparently, the map was the militaries before the military got sick like everyone else and showed pretty much everything that had been destroyed and/or quarantined. Is quarantine the right word? Hmmmm, it showed all the houses that had been cleared from top to bottom by soldiers.

At some point they had pretty much gone from Big Coppit Key on the East end of the island and worked all the way across to the bridge that connects the Naval Air Station to Stock Island. Similar to Sugarloaf Key to the East, they also flattened Stock Island with whatever ordinance they had on hand. According to Josh, on the plus side they did evacuate the entire island before blowing it to hell. Not that it mattered, everyone besides Josh died anyway.

This only left a few unknowns. Right off the Eastern Coast of the Naval Air Station is another Key called the Shark Key. From the map it looks like there are maybe 30-40 houses although if they were like everyone else then, the occupants of those houses all took shelter at the Naval Base like everyone else. A second question AJ had was whether or not Josh knew if the military knocked out Cuba. Although it's at least 100 miles across the ocean, you have to figure that some of the 11 million people over there might be uninfected and as a result, might be heading North to escape. I don’t know why they would wait this long to try to escape North but, a threat is a threat.

That leaves the underground portion of the base I mentioned yesterday. We were all set to explore it. We got our flashlights, weapons, protective padding, shoelaces tied, everything! Then after opening a door with all sorts of security clearance warnings that Josh had never ventured past, we walked down a flight of stairs and…

And found another much more serious door. A door that would probably need to use dynamite as a doorbell. On the plus side, whatever is in there definitely isn’t getting out. On the negative side, now we are all really really curious. And although there might not be any cats left for curiosity to kill, it is bound to annoy us to death if we don’t figure out how to get in there.

Josh mentioned he might be able to get past the door if we could find a toy store. According to him, there were two on Key West, if they hadn’t been completely bombed out. Pending that one of the toy stores was still standing, we would need to rummage around inside and find as many etch-a-sketches as possible. When we asked him why he only replied with, “I will explain why if you actually find them otherwise, who cares.”

Strange kid.

Well, it’s official. To paraphrase Chevy Chase if you remember who that was, “We’re on a quest, a quest for fun! Praise Marty Moose!” Also, I’m going to try to track down a copy of National Lampoon’s Vacation. Might be fun to have a movie night on this island.

Also, sorry if I fucked that quote up. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that movie, or a working television for that matter.

Day One Hundred One:

Day One Hundred One:

You know how I can tell I feel safe here? My biggest concern today was whether or not to titled the 101st day One Hundred One or One hundred AND one. I decided on the first since I think and is supposed to represent a decimal point.

Yeah, life on the island is good.

At first we were all thinking of requisitioning some of the nicer houses on the island but the more we thought about it, the more we thought it would be more prudent to stay together inside the confines of the Naval Base. Eventually we might branch out if we decide to stay put but, for now this makes the most sense.

Plus, during the last few months Josh was able to make the place pretty cozy. At first he was using gas powered generators to keep things running but then he managed to set up a pretty decent solar grid. Even has a makeshift shower in one of the rooms which is nice.

Victor was thrilled because we were able to give him his very own completely sterilized sectioned off section of the base. Josh even had a few leftover hazmat suits which he cleaned up and gave to Victor. A nice replacement for the filth and stench encrusted gear that we've gotten to enjoy for the last couple weeks.

Tomorrow we're going to explore the lower depths of the Naval Base with Josh. I can't imagine any ex-humes surviving down there for however many months they would have been stranded but I never would have imagined humanity turning into whatever it is now so who knows.

Day One Hundred:

 Day One Hundred:

If anyone reading this still remember the band Pearl Jam, for the entire day I haven’t been able to get the chorus of their song “Alive” out of my head for obvious reasons.

100 days, or more importantly, 100 not deaths. Cue the fireworks.

To celebrate our 100th day alive, we took a tour of a mostly dead island! Apparently, the people inside the Naval Base had held on longer than most but like the death camp that Aj, Victor, and I got to be part of eventually the sickness got through. When it did, every single person on the island either killed themselves or had this poor kid Josh do it for them.

Fortunately for him, some of the people in the Naval Base had enough strength to take care of his parents and siblings when they got sick. I obviously didn’t mention it to him, but it is interesting that one person being immune to this disease doesn’t necessarily mean anyone else in the family will luck out as well. Must be some type of recessive trait that… wow. Look at me talking like a scientist. Yeah, must be the third helix of the DNA reconfiguration of the Saturn Moonbeams celestial pull.

Right, back to talking about what I actually know about. Namely, our current situation.

So after the tour Josh showed us where we could set up shop if we wanted. Like everywhere else, food isn’t much of a problem. Everything we could ever want within reason can probably be found on this island. The only real hazard seems to be the fact that some of the lower levels of the base might have some Ex-humes still alive and kicking but other than that… for all extents and purposes this is paradise.

I haven’t talked with AJ or Victor yet, but if I had to guess I would say we will all be staying put for a while here and getting to know our new barefoot friend.

Day Ninety Nine:

Day Ninety Nine:

To say that someone decided to blow up the Interstate 1 bridge thing in the keys would be an understatement. I don’t know if they were worried about the ex-humes somehow figuring out how to make concrete and get engineering degrees and then rebuild the bridges but, someone at some point decided to completely obliterate about 20 miles of bridge. Then from there, they went and blew the shit out of mile long stretches of bridges for several of the nearby islands.

We weren’t able to tell for sure, but on my map there is something called the Sugarloaf Key which is probably the closest location to that Naval Air Station and it looked like they not only blew up the bridges but… destroyed the entire fucking island. Granted, at the time of the bombing 95% of the place was probably ex-hume central but does that justify killing people that potentially could have been like AJ and I?

This in turn presents another serious problem. If the Naval Air Station was responsible for blowing an entire community to hell and back, how likely would they be to welcome us ashore? Especially considering the fact that we observed several boats washed up on the shore that looked like they’d been riddled with bullet holes.

While AJ and I were trying to figure out what to do next, Victor put the boat in drive and started our approach towards the Naval Base. Before we could ask what he was doing he said, “We didn’t come all this way not to find out and I‘m not about to become a fisherman so let‘s get going.”

How do you argue with that?

About a mile from the Naval Base we were surprised to see absolutely nothing. Half a mile out, I was expecting some type of heat seeking missile to blow us up but no. Closer and closer we got without even the slightest amount of death blowing us to bits. It wasn’t until we got to shore that a bullet exploded in the sand in front of us.

This was followed by a voice, a voice that yelled. “I don’t want any trouble and I don’t want to hurt anyone so if you want to make it any further please leave all your items there until we can verify your identity.”

I think we all would have been more than willing to do this if the last time we agreed to such measures hadn’t result in us being locked away in a room and then infecting and slaughtering everyone Victor knew. So we agree, but before we agreed we all made sure we had a pistol in the back of our waistband and then yelled, “What now?”

The voice instructed us to walk away from our boat and then to sit down once we were about 100 yards away from it. We complied and after about five minutes we saw one skinny kid walking towards us decked out in soldier gear with an M4 rifle at the ready. At first glance he looked to be about 20 but as he got closer I realized it was just all the military gear making him look older. He said he was 18 but if I had to guess I wouldn’t put him a day over 16.

Not that it matters. Alive is alive.

He said his name was Joshua and the first thing all of us noticed immediately after noticing how young he was, was the fact that he was barefoot. When pressed on this issue he smiled and simply said “Always wanted to start a barefoot revolution, why not start now. Follow me”

And we did, always expecting for him to rendezvous with someone else, but after getting in his car and driving back to the Naval Base it became apparent that unless there was some type of underground bunker… this kid was all that was left here.

Day Ninety Eight:

Day Ninety Eight:

The good news! We found a nice 45 foot boat along with the keys and as an added bonus it had an almost full tank of gas.

The bad news: Within minutes of finding it, roughly half the population Florida decided to attack us which resulted in us leaving 90% of or supplies in our cars. In the movies this would be an incredible problem, in reality though… all we had to do was drive about a mile from shore, anchor the boat, and wait for nightfall at which point we drove back and heeding Elmer Fudd’s advice to be vewy vewy quiet, we managed to recover everything we needed without anymore attacks.

I guess it was kind of a bummer since we wasted an entire day doing this but, since I’m pretty sure the entire fucking world isn’t really adhering to any type of time schedule anymore I figure, one mostly wasted day is par for the course.

Tomorrow we will do our best to follow Interstate 1 or Highway 1 or whatever you call the damn road that drives over all the water in the Florida Keys. Hopefully the boat doesn’t get stuck.

Day Ninety Seven:

Day Ninety Seven:

We've been sticking to I-75, passed through Georgia today without any issues and decided to camp right near the Florida state line. Managed to liberate a more detailed state map of Florida from one of the now infinite number of abandoned gas stations. Victor now believes the most probable place for a government quarantine to take place would be at the NAS Key West.

I had no idea what NAS meant, apparently it is Naval Air Station. The problem is, since it is in the Keys if they did quarantine people there then they also probably blew the living shit out of the bridges that lead to that area. This concerned Victor until I pointed out that the entire boating population of Florida is now either dead, quarantined, or Ex-humed... and that we will have the pick of the litter when it comes to aquatic vessels he cheered up a little.

Also, AJ informed us today that he doesn't know how to swim and is terrified of the water. So that should be fun.