When we were children growing up we all watched the scary horror films that lead us all to nightmares. We saw everything from gruesome monsters like Freddy and Jason to demons to serial killers like Jigsaw. As we watched these films we all thought "Wow that's scary but its only a movie, nothing like that would happen in real life." Well that statement is completely false at this point since something worse has occurred and wiped out nearly 95% of the population of the planet.
Right now if you are reading this then more than likely you know the answer to that question, but if by some chance you find this in the future (if we even have one) and don't know what happened Ill do my best to explain.
Before we get going to far into this I should probably tell you who I am and why I decided to write this out. My name is Pat, not going to worry about my last name since it really doesnt matter any more. I live in the great state of Arizona, one of the hottest places in the US. Im originally from Michigan but like most people from that hell hole I moved as soon as I possibly could. So I got this idea in my head to drive west to get away from it all and ended up here. I was here for 3 years before the proverbial shit hit the fan.
As far as how why I'm am writing this I just want to make a record of what I have gone through so that people who may read this later will not make any of the same mistakes I have made in my travels. It is also a sort of way out of the chaos that we live in everyday. Finally it all comes down to making sure that I remember those who I have come across and those who still out there fighting for survival.
So lets see, ah yes how this all started. Well that's a good question. For years no one had any clue as to what has caused the outbreak or how it was able to spread so quickly. It wasnt until a time later when files were uncovered that showed the people responsible and how it had been brought about. No it was not terrorists as many people initially thought but a group of misguided individuals who did not realize the consequences of their research. For now I'm not going to delve into the actual details of the organization or what they did, we'll get to all of that later...I hope.
So what is it you ask that has wiped us all out? Well that's hard to say as well. You see the things we are fighting against used to be everything living. I know that's a little ambiguous so Ill expand a little. What we are up against is nearly every living organism, including humans, on the planet. This range from the slow mundane zombie like "Grazers" (as we call them now), to the "Sprinters", and the various creature mutations we have come across. They have become feral killing machines with no regard for their own safety or that of anything around them. Hell the only reason any of us are still alive is because these things are so vicious and mindless that after wiping out the major populations they started feeding on each other.
I guess since I mentioned the "grazers" and the "sprinters" before I should probably give you some details about the things we have come across and why they are named that way. See the outbreak that caused the chaos affected different organisms differently. The grazers and aptly named because they are seen as almost acting like the zombies you would see in the old George Romero films. Slow bumbling creatures that are easy to escape but travel in large packs. The sprinters are the opposite of the grazers. They are fast and extremely edgy creatures that jump at and attack at any sound they hear. They usually travel alone since they have a tendency to attack each other as much as they do the living. The scariest things out there though are not the human organisms but the ones that started as animals and have now become something else entirely. They vary in shape and deadliness, the best thing to do is just stay away from anything you see moving.
The various roaming "monsters" are not the only issues we have to deal with for survival. The lack of supplies and distrust of anything moving has left people for scared of each other as well. At the beginning of the chaos people began to loot and steal from each other in order to try and insure their own survival. Hell I'm guessing we killed each other as much as they killed us.
So I think I'm going to start this little diary around the time that the outbreak hit the area I live in. You see I worked at a major university in Arizona that had a population of 65,000 people, hell that's more than some whole nations. Not to mention that outside of the area I lived in was the city of Phoenix, only one of the largest cities in the US. so we have a densely populated area and people who were unaware of what was spreading across the world. When the outbreak hit here is was quick to spread and the destruction was almost immediate.
The thing about this outbreak is that the effects on some people are immediate on some and take a while for others. When people become infected the only sign is some minor flu like symptoms, until it takes full control of you and you lose your free will. The people who showed immediate signs of infection where quarantined or arrested for being crazy. Little did we know at the time that those were not the only infected people.
I digress back to how it spread through Arizona. Periodically there were reports across the state of people just losing their minds and randomly attacking others, or of animals suddenly turning on their owners. The real wide spread of this occurred at the Arizona state fair. Without realizing how this spread, the fair was held and tens of thousands of people attended. In the end it only took one person to spread the disease to the rest of the state. There was a older woman at the fair with her family that was not feeling well but did not want to disappoint her grand kids. Looking back it would have slowed the spread if she had not been so damn stubborn. As she was waiting in line for the ferris wheel she slumped over for a moment and scared the kids she was escorting. A few seconds later the disease had completely taken over her free will and she began attacking those around her. People attempted to hold her down but to no avail as she thrashed and screamed, people just began to back away and wait for the police to show up. When the police arrived they told her to get down to the ground, but she refused to listen. She charged the officers and they used their bean bag rounds to bring her down. Unfortunately for them this had no affect as she felt no pain at this point and she just kept coming. She managed to tackle one of the officers and maul him viciously until she had torn large chunks of flesh from his face and arms. With no other choice available the remaining officers drew their pistols and started firing away. One thing that was learned that night was that in order to bring down someone who is infected you have to somehow stop the brain from functioning. This was discovered by the officers as the pumped round after round into the woman's body but she continued to stir and try to rise. Finally one officer walked up to her and put a bullet through the top of her head. By time this was all done though she had already done enough damage to the people that had tried to restrain her that the seeds for the outbreak had been planted. Within weeks all those who she had infected managed to infect those around them until the entire valley began to fall to the ensuing madness.
We later learned that this is similar to what occurred across the country then the world. The outbreak spread so quickly that there was no stopping it. Its funny as I sit here and write this out I am drawn back to the films I mentioned in the very beginning. At the time they were fun films that drew on our fears to entertain us. Now as I look back I see them in a different light...as P.S.A.'s designed to tell us how to survive in case this ever occurred. Well it is time to move so Ill try to give you guys some more info the next time we stop, but at this point who knows when that will be.
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