March 20, 2024
11:05 PM
I was there today, during the retaking of New York city. Retaking, that was a good word for it, a joke or play on words. There were maybe ten, fifteen of us at the most. However many we could fit on two Blackhawk helicopters and still carry equipment.
I knew that teams like us were being sent all across the country to the major cities to establish control over the local branch of CDC. It was hoped that one of the Centers of Disease Control might contain the answer to fighting the Red Dream. So far findings had been promising, at least from the perspective of research material found. The only way to gain the information gathered in these places was by physically entering the buildings and taking it from the computers. The scientists in the branches could be of no help, they had died of the disease they were researching many months ago. People all over the country were dead, just like them.
Only the few survived, the small percentage of individuals that some how had a natural immunity to it or those that were able to receive the vaccine that was available in Atlanta before the crazies burned it. Then there were people like me, Army Special Forces or other military branches. Us being the government’s guinea pigs, we could never tell if we were alive because of a secret drug they gave us or because we lived sealed away deep in the underground facilities that were built to survive events such as this.
Majority of the SFs all across the country were dead, one popular rumor was that at least half of the trained-killers that seemed to be appearing out of the wood work came from Area 51 or were being cloned, manufactured by the government. I always thought that was a spooky thought, seeing as how one guy could look like any number of guys you’d seen before. I guess anything is possible.
March 21, 2024
10:56 PM
I missed most of the action entering the Big Apple. I heard from a buddy of mine that Team 2 had a small skirmish with a group of locals that called themselves Heaven’s Retribution. Another group of crazies. They seemed to be popping up every where, the survivors of the Red Dream being too deranged to just live. It was a shame. I wasn’t sure which was worse, the people that suffered from the delusional hypnotic state that the disease caused when it was in its dormant state or the people that survived believing that the Time of Reckoning had come. I think the latter were worse, at least the poor saps that went psychotic had a reason for what they did.
I spent a lot of the day carting bodies to a large truck that we were using to haul the dead back to a recycling center where they could be burned. The nice thing about plasma torch burners was that it burned things so thoroughly that there was little danger of releasing any toxins in to the air. Not that there was much chance of particles escaping from the plant. There was a sort of sick irony in it, in that the bodies that we burned with the torch powered the turbine that fed electricity to the now-vacant city.
The job didn’t bother me too much, although I couldn’t stand seeing the dead children. Their little bodies having decayed from the advanced stages of the disease, their faces contorted in to a strange sickly smile. I wasn’t sure if the smile was the result of the facial muscles tightening as they dried or from the narcotic state the mind was in during the advanced stages. I don’t think I care to know. It just makes me sick to see it.
March 22, 2024
11:14 PM
I’m told that we will be able to leave this Necropolis soon. Heaven’s Retribution has been awfully quiet lately, I don’t trust them. At least once a night we can hear the perimeter reflex guns open fire on something lurking outside of the apartments we chose as main base. Last night we even had to put out a fire where one of them had managed to toss a molatov cocktail in at us. The place still smells from the fire, but at least it covers up the stink of the rotting bodies outside just a little.
I’m very anxious to get out of here and get out of this combat med suit. That means getting back to a secured base where I can be scrubbed down thoroughly and the suit burned. Some place far away from this alien landscape that once was home to one of the largest cities in the free world.
I would like to have something solid to eat once again too. The only thing we get for nourishment is from the suit’s built in systems. They feed nutrients and vitamins directly into the bloodstream to keep us alive just like the pipes they shove in your nose at the hospital.
It was Sergeant Matthews that said we might be going home soon. He is usually right about this sort of thing, I hope and pray this will not be his first time to ever be wrong about something.
March 23, 2024
3:07 AM
I thank God I still have my pad. There was a large firefight with the crazies today and I got separated from everybody else. The Team’s MedMon shows no vital signs for everybody else except for me. I’m not going to lie to myself and pretend that it is a glitch in the software. I know they are all dead. But we hadn’t heard from Team 2 in a long while and had no connection to their team’s software so I had no idea if they were still alive or not.
Maybe if I stay alive long enough and keep transmitting data from my Pad, they’ll send somebody to pick me up. It is the only hope I have at this moment of getting out of here. The crazies control the city once again and the burning smoke towering in to the sky shows as a testimony to me that they intend to keep that control.
I’m not feeling too well now, but my limited knowledge of psychology is enough for me to know that the effects are a result of my morale, so I needn ’t fear being infected myself. Its too far to travel by foot to get out of the Quarantine Zones and I’m not sure my suit could survive the wear from travel anyways. I wouldn’t let myself think about it before, but I miss Kathleen more and more. I just wish things would be different in this world, that things would have happened differently if things were done over again. That I could be with her instead of sleeping in a back alleyway, inside this bulky spacesuit that keeps me alive.
I fear I’m growing a rash across my skin. I want so much to pull this plastic away from me and scratch and scratch at my flesh until it feels better again, but I cannot. I think the cathider is beginning to fill. If I am not out of this suit very soon, its baggy will overflow with waste material.
March 28, 2024
2:15 PM
Beware the Ides of March, it was once stated. No rest for the wicked, I’ve been busy. I found out where I might be able to get a truck out of here. Problem is that its guarded by crazy goons. I haven’t had food or water in over three days. I feel very tired, very ill.
I plan to grab the truck near midnight during their lowest guard. The bridge out of New York was destroyed during the height of the breakout of the disease, but I’m hoping the tunnels might be open. Preliminary reports indicated that they attempted to blow it up too, in order to completely isolate the area but had failed. That is where I will go.
March 29, 2024
5:24 AM
I managed to get the truck with relative ease. I only had to kill one person, the guard, in order to obtain it. This of course now means that they know I am here, since one of their own has been gun downed. I pray I can keep the heat off of me at least until I have passed through the tunnels.
The truck is hidden in a garage near the outskirts of town. I heard a lot of commotion down the street, so I am waiting until it dies down.
March 29, 2024
8:13 AM
They spotted me on the road a block away from the garage I was hiding in with the truck. There was a lot of gun fire and the truck got shot up. My shoulder is bleeding a lot where one of their slugs punctured the suit. Strangely I don’t feel anything, although now I know I am going to die.
I almost feel relieved, actually. Now that it will be all over. The team that destroyed the bridge that was going to destroy the bridge did manage to make it this far. I’ve found their bodies laying where they were shot down. I’ve only met light resistance here so far but I’m prepared for some heavy fighting.
I gathered all of the weapons from the fallen team and have them strategically placed where I can get to them while running. The team had the tunnels wired to blow. After I find the key on one of the bodies, I’m going to finish the mission that they started.
March 29, 2024
1:47 PM
The tunnel blew just as planned. It was the first time I had ever set off a detonation that large, it was quite impressive. I got first row tickets to watching it collapse. None of the locals attempted to stop me. Either they thought there was more then just me or they just didn’t care.
I then rewarded myself. Finally I got some real food from an abandoned super market. Most of the food was gone or spoiled, but I found a few cans of soup laying under the counters in the front where the cash registers were.
Right now I’m resting while trying to make some plans. I got rid of that cursed suit already, but I kept what equipment from it that was still useful. I plan to make my way back to the CDC center and see what I can do there.
March 29, 2024
5:06 PM
I made it to the CDC center and now I plan to rest. If my luck holds out, I will wake up alive in the morning. I hope my transmissions are getting through as these may be my last. I don’t think about it much at the moment, only what I can do now at this exact moment.
March 30, 2024
11:12 AM
I woke up alive this morning, just as I had hoped. After sleeping on concrete for any length of time, you would be surprised at how comfortable a hospital stretcher can be. I am surprised to find that the power is still active here. I’ve reviewed some of the scientific notes on the disease. I can barely understand most of them, but the information on the drugs they were developing are fairly specific.
I’ve started giving myself an experimental drug that, notes say, should prolong my life by at least a month. I’m going to stop transmitting my Journal from this night on and I’m going to spend my time attempting to copy all of their notes that I can find through the pad. I’m spending today gathering the supplies I need to survive all that long. So far things have been very quiet outside.
April 15, 2024
2:03 PM
It’s been over a month since I’ve bothered to write anything about my condition. The sores all over my body from the Red Dream have been very few at best and my condition is surprisingly stable. I did have a few incidences of hallucination, but I knew their trickery for what it is. I sleep a lot, but there isn’t much else to do and it keeps my mind at rest at least.
I only let myself think long enough to finish copying the last of the notes. I’m sending it in two formats, one through the pad and the other one through an Internet connection I found. Perhaps the notes I’ve copied will help advance the Off World researchers in to finding a cure. A radio I found brought me the news that the U.N. had decided to declare the entire planet a quarantine zone.
It gives me a laugh, picturing one of those stuffy headed scientists wearing their white coats trying to decipher my chicken scratch while floating in zero g. I hoped things on the Colonies were much nicer then this place.
April 17, 2024
7:15 PM
The sickness has taken a turn for the worse. Today I barely had the strength to get up from my cot to water the flowers. My garden sits planted out on the front of the CDC building. They were all plants that I had rescued from shops.
All I do is sleep most of the time. Maybe I will go to sleep soon and not wake up again. Maybe then I will see Kathleen once more.
April 19, 2024
8:22 PM
The garden is continuing to do well. Today I gathered all of the drugs together in one place and wrote in plain understandable English what each did and how to use them. They are all stored in plain sight where anybody whom wonders in can see and read about them.
April 21, 2024
1:12 PM
I woke up screaming today from the faces I saw in my dreams. The nightmares and hallucinations are beginning to happen, indicating the final stage of the disease has now begun to take form. I would already been dead had it not been for the treatments I gave myself from the researcher notes.
Looking through the list of drugs, I plan to take several combinations of them. I’m not going to let them take me, I’m going before they can come and get me.
April 22, 2024
3:03 PM
I miss and love you, Kathleen. I wish things could have been different.
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