Hey guys, it’s me again.
I’d like to apologize for ending things so abruptly yesterday. Sleep, right? Anyway, I’ve got enough time and energy to finish transcribing that entry for you. Sorry about the length. At the beginning, this was a lot to take in. I had to note down a whole lot of things. I started journaling more regularly after this point, so the entries aren’t quite as extensive.
I’ll just pick up right where I left off as to not interrupt the flow of things too much.
I awoke to the sound of crashing waves. They were muffled and distant. My body rocked slowly, gently back and forth. I was sitting upright, staring ahead into my eyelids. There was a throbbing pain in the front of my skull, a lingering headache from when I blacked out.
I strained my mind to recall my most recent memories. At first I came up blank, but then it started to fall into place; Alaska, the village, the bodies, the device. I wasn’t exactly sure what happened. Did the device blow? Where the hell am I?
I cracked open my eyelids and immediately saw yellow light. It was a sickly yellow, like that you’d see of a dying streetlamp. My eyes widened to a blurry scene before me. I tried to rub them, but my hands didn’t budge. They were bound together by cold metal and resting in my lap. Instead, I blinked several times until my vision cleared. The details of my surroundings were violated by the hue and dimness of the fluorescents above. I figured we had to be in some kind of navy ship or prisoner vessel—an elongated, almost claustrophobic cabin with metal walls and pipes snaking along them, benches welded some forty-five centimeters off the ground stretched across the length of either wall. I say “we” because the ship, or at least the cabin, was filled to the brim with other people. We all sat, shoulder-to-shoulder, silently. I looked to my left and to my right. I was near the middle of one of the walls. I was between two women. One was young, even younger than me. She had unbrushed brown hair with red streaks throughout, messy in the front, and tied into a loose ponytail behind. Her eyes were closed and her head was resting on the wall behind her. On my other side, there was a wrinkled, old woman with wiry, grey hair and remarkably thin lips. Both women were dressed in attire drastically different from my own, the younger one with a yellow skirt and denim jacket, the older one with a fuzzy, grey sweater and beige pants.
Where the hell was this ship?
As I looked around, I couldn’t help but notice that I was the only person dressed in such heavy winter clothes. Most seemed fairly normal. This was the most diverse crowd of people you could find. Aside from the fact that I couldn’t spot any children, there were people of every age, race, gender, and background. Some of them looked to still be asleep while others were wide awake. No one was speaking. Some stared down at the ground or gazed off into corners of the cabin at nothing. Others, similarly to myself, were looking at the other faces in the cabin. People tapped their feet and wiggled their hands, all featuring a good blend of confusion, agitation, and alarm on their faces, all of their hands bound in front of them. These people had to be in the same situation as me. Maybe others knew what was going on. I was feeling a great deal of panic rising in me, but nobody in the cabin was speaking. I couldn’t bring myself to break the silence.
The waves continued to steadily rock the vessel as I continued to silently scan the crowd. Nothing about this made any sense, and I racked my brain to make heads or tails of it. Last I could remember, I was the only living person for miles. I was near no large bodies of water, and the air outside was below freezing. So why was I now on a ship filled with people of all walks of life? What transpired between the moment I pressed that button and the moment I opened my eyes? How long was I even out for?
I saw a silhouette shift from the corner of my eye. Someone sitting toward the back end of the ship across from me leaned forward into the aisle. With a shaky voice, the man spoke.
“Where am I?”
If nothing else, it confirmed what I already believed; these people were just as confused as I was.
Another voice spoke out. This one was deep and commanding.
“None of us know anything about what’s going on. I was one of the first to wake up, and that was hours ago. Stay quiet or they’ll hear you.”
That last part was deeply troubling. This guy clearly knew something that I didn’t. The first voice then asked what I wanted to.
“Who will hear? Who did this to me?! Tell me what’s going on!”
His voice only grew more frantic as he asked his questions. He clearly wasn’t one to mindlessly follow orders.
“Just shut up until we get there,” the deep voice spoke calmly.
“How are you going to tell me to shut up right now?!” He was practically shouting by this point. “If you know what’s going on, tell me!”
“Shut the fuck up!” The man hissed.
Those words cut through the air like daggers. This person knew how to command an audience. The cabin fell silent again. I gathered that this had happened a few times by now as people woke up. I wondered what it was that the commanding man had learned during his time awake that made him so adamant that we didn’t speak. If there was to say he knew anything at all. He could well just be paranoid. I know I am.
As I pondered my situation, the ship continued to sway back and forth. It wasn’t for another several minutes that someone spoke up again. This time, it was the frantic voice of a woman somewhere off near the far end of the ship to my right. It was hard to make out, but in her direction was a small flight of stairs leading up to an iron door with a red valve in the center. An exit that led further into the ship, I presumed.
“Where am I? Who are you people, and why are my hands tied?”
The familiar deep voice answered again.
“Please stop talking.”
“Why are my hands cuffed,” the woman asked startled.
“We’re not allowed to talk, lady, so I need to—”
The man was interrupted by another female voice. It had the same commanding tone present in his own voice.
“No, I think you owe us an explanation. How can you expect us to just follow your orders and not say anything when you aren’t telling us anything? You clearly know something, and everyone here is terrified. Start talking.”
“I can’t,” the man responded calmly. “I’ve been made aware that we’re not allowed to speak.”
“You’ve had no problems telling us to shut up. You’re having this conversation right now. Nothing’s happened. If we can have this conversation right now, you can be explaining. Otherwise, I don’t think I’m gonna listen to another word from you.”
A few people murmured words of agreement after hearing this. Although I didn’t say anything, I found myself agreeing as well. This man, whoever he was, had no way of proving he had our best interests at heart. The fact that he even knew things that we didn’t was a red flag in and of itself.
He breathed out an audible sigh hopefully signifying he was ready to speak.
“Fine,” he said defeatedly.
“Like I said, I woke up hours ago. I looked around the cabin, and it didn’t seem like anyone else was up yet. Everyone was in a pretty deep sleep. It took a second for the panic to set in, but when it did, it hit hard. I was tugging at my restraints and shouting loud enough to wake a sleeping bear. The fact that I didn’t wake every person in this cabin up makes me think we were all given some kind of strong sedative. What did happen, though, was this tall military-looking brute of a man walking in through that door over there.”
He paused for a period and I saw multiple people on his side of the ship turn their heads in the direction of the door.
“He was covered head-to-toe in black riot gear. He held a rifle in his hands. He stepped down into the cabin and pointed at me. Said, ‘Keep it down. You don’t want me to come silence your ruckus again.’ Then he just walked out. Hasn’t come in here since, and I’d like to keep it that way. You people would wake up, and you’d start screaming and demanding answers, and all I can tell you is to put a cap on it.
“I’m just as clueless as every single one of you,” he continued. “I don’t know why or how I’m here, but I’ll sure as hell keep my mouth shut if the guy with the gun wants me to keep my mouth shut. Hopefully we can now all agree.”
His answer was sufficient enough for me. The cabin fell silent again, but not for long.
“What were you doing before you got here,” asked the same woman who had confronted him initially.
He didn’t say anything.
“It really seems like we’re able to just talk at a reasonable volume. Nothing’s happened so far. Why won’t you work with me?”
The man wasn’t budging.
“We’re all in this together, asshole. Your stubbornness isn’t gonna make the time pass any faster, so why won’t you just coopera—”
In that instant, I heard a loud creak echo through the cabin. My eyes shot toward the door; it was inching its way open. A lump formed in my throat when I saw the towering figure crouch through the door. He was well over six feet tall and built like an ox. He stepped into the cabin, the door left gaping behind him. The passage outside was illuminated by the same yellow lights as our cabin. The man who had entered was—I couldn’t believe it—completely covered in black combat gear that, from where I was sitting, looked exactly like what the first corpse was wearing. In his hands he held a heavy-looking black rifle. He stepped further into the cabin, and I squinted through the darkness at his right shoulder which faced the side opposite me. I just couldn’t make anything out from where I sat. The man’s helmet turned about slowly, and I felt his eyeless stare piercing each one of us.
A shrill woman’s voice sounded.
“What do you want from us?!”
I saw the figure clutch his rifle more tightly in his hand. He responded in a garbled voice, his tone remaining completely neutral.
“Do not speak.”
“What do you want from us?!”
This time, the plea came from a man who sounded not to be sitting far from where I was. In response, the soldier lifted his rifle and pointed it at the man. The lidless, black barrel of the gun was angled only a few degrees from where I sat.
“You are not permitted to speak. This is your final warning.”
An ear-piercing scream came from a woman sitting somewhere near the man on my left side. The soldier whipped to the left and pointed his gun at a new target.
“Please,” was the last cry that I heard before gunfire rang out through the cabin. It was a barrage of shots that sounded like miniature explosions. I was completely shaken by how utterly loud they were. Out of pure instinct, I closed my eyes and lurched forward, clenching my teeth and waiting for it to stop. The cabin erupted into more screams, and the gunfire kept going. I didn’t dare open my eyes until it was over and the air was silent again. The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than thirty seconds, but it was the most excruciating thirty seconds of my life.
“We’re almost to the destination,” the soldier’s distorted voice said. “Don’t talk.”
I forced myself to sit up straight and open my eyes. The sight was horrible.
I didn’t count, and I did my best not to stare, but it was still sickening. People slouched forward or limply resting against the person to their left or right, crimson stains spilling onto the floor or splattering the walls. The yellow fluorescents called special attention to the aftermath of the massacre. I saw horrified faces everywhere. It felt like we were all too scared to do so much as breathe.
The armed figure turned to face the exit, and as he did so, I caught a glimpse of a white armband underneath his right shoulder with a black, runic insignia printed on it. Visions from Alaska flashed in my mind.
The soldier began walking back toward the exit as if he hadn’t just slaughtered a fraction of our cabin. My hands were still shaking in their cuffs. I looked to my left and my right at the women sitting beside me. They were both clearly terrified, but they were alive. The younger one had tears drying on her cheeks.
As the soldier neared the door, something else unexpected happened. A loud klaxon alarm sounded from a speaker above the door. The yellow lights on the walls turned red and began flashing, casting all of us in a red light. Too much was happening too quickly. The soldier sprinted up the small flight of stairs and through the open door further into the ship, which was also flashing red. He didn’t even bother to close it behind him, just kept going until he disappeared from view. The people around me were clearly just as shocked and confused as I was, but we were all still too fearful to say anything. The siren blared for minutes and we helplessly sat and waited. It was futile, but I tugged and struggled with the binding on my wrists, trying and ultimately failing to free myself. Suddenly, the cabin shook and I, along with everyone else, jolted forward forcefully. A short yelp collectively escaped much of the cabin. An uneasy feeling was growing in my chest. From outside the walls of the cabin, I heard an unfamiliar sound that made my blood run cold. It was loud and guttural, and despite being muffled by the steel barrier created by the walls, it was distinct. I can only describe it as what you might imagine an injured lion sounding like, but deeper and more aggressive. The ship rocked again, and people cried out. No more than a few seconds later, the lights went out. With this, all hell broke loose. I could hear shouting and panicking from all directions. The ship shook again. I couldn’t see a damn thing, but between the shouting, the alarm, and the rattle of the ship, it was impossible to even hear myself think. The ship then began shaking violently. I was being jerked back and forth, unable to keep myself steady. I heard another deep, agitated roar as the ship rocked. My head slammed into the wall behind me, and I felt myself slipping from consciousness again.
When I awoke, my head was throbbing and my ears were ringing. For the second time, I had been knocked out for an undetermined amount of time. I was bleary-eyed and unfocused. I wondered if I had gotten a concussion. It was difficult to make anything out in the darkness, but the flickering light of the fire made it a little easier. A sudden burst of energy shot through my body upon the realization that there was a fire. I looked to my left, and there it was, small but growing. It was on the far wall adjacent to the door. I assumed it to be the back of the ship. I didn’t stop to focus on what had caused it or what was burning, I just fought against the cuffs on my hands to no avail. My wrists dug into the metal, and I felt a growing sense of panic welling up inside of me.
“Help!”
It was all I could think to say.
“Hold on, hold on, I’m gettin’ to ya.”
I needed to gather my bearings. I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
My eyes drifted around the room, doing my best not to focus on the shackled corpses, still fresh with blood and bullet holes. There were a few people standing. I reasoned that they had been bound just like me. A man with frizzy, black hair and thin-framed glasses was leaning over one of the other prisoners across from me. He fumbled with the prisoner’s handcuffs for a moment and then they dropped. He did the same thing with the rest of the restraints, and then the person, a shorter man with a mullet, stood up. Free of his binds, he booked it toward the stairs and exited through the open door. This guy had somehow gotten ahold of some sort of key, and now he was letting people free. I couldn’t have been out for too long—this guy was still unlocking people.
The fire, which was only growing in intensity, nagged at my attention. It was a looming reminder that I needed to get out of here if I wanted to avoid an almost certain painful death. I watched the man work his way along the survivors, freeing them one by one. Each one eagerly stood up. Most immediately made for the exit, but some stuck around. The man was making swift progress, but it was still an uncomfortable wait. I must have waited there for ten minutes listening to the crackling of the fire and the hushed chatter. The man finally made it to the old woman next to me. I felt terrible for her having to go through all of this. It was relieving to see that she was still alive. I looked to my other side at the girl. She stared down at the floor with her fingers webbed together. She looked defeated, but she was also alive. Hell, I was alive. The old woman’s handcuffs fell to the floor and she stood up, grabbing the man’s hand between both of hers and shaking it, thanking him profusely. Then he reached me. My attention moved toward the flames. I was ready to get off this ship as soon as possible. I assumed we were stopped somewhere. It didn’t feel like we were moving, and people were running through the exit. It didn’t much matter where we were.
The man unlocked my hands and then feet. He unfastened the strap holding me to the wall. I looked him in the eyes.
“How did you get that key?”
“Oh,” he said, before giving a smile unbefitting of our situation, “I took it off a dead guard in the passage out there. Had to get a little handsy, but I found it. Was tricky, too, not having my hands or feet. Had to hop around, and getting into his pockets with my hands cuffed was no easy feat, let me tell you. I was lucky enough to have my harness rip from the wall during the crash. Guess we’d all be dead if that didn’t happen.”
“Right. Thanks,” I mustered out before standing.
My legs were stiff and it felt good to straighten them. The man moved on to the younger girl sitting beside me. She looked up at him and gave him a weak smile. I turned my attention toward the exit. Some of the people lingering around spoke amongst themselves, and I paid little attention to what they had to say. My only focus was getting outside. The man who freed me said we had crashed. The soldier mentioned we were nearing our destination. I felt hopeful about our chances of being washed up on some kind of land. I took shaky steps in the direction of the stairs. I ascended them and stepped into the passageway ahead. It was still dark, but there was a wide opening along the right wall that looked like it might have led to the outside. I couldn’t tell from where I stood, but it looked like a trace amount of moonlight was coming in from the gap. I placed my hand on the wall and began to slowly make my way through the passageway. The wall was cold, but it guided me. About halfway through, my foot snagged on something on the ground and I fumbled forward, nearly falling over. I looked back at what I had tripped on. It was hard to make out in the darkness, but if I had to guess, it was the lifeless body of the armed cultist (as of writing this, I am working off the assumption that these men are cultists. I will call them this for lack of a better term). One of them, at least. I squinted, trying to see if his weapon was anywhere on the ground. I couldn’t spot it. It had probably been grabbed by somebody else making their way to the exit. I assumed he had been picked of anything he had of value. I knelt down beside him and felt for pockets on his pants and vest. I found nothing.
Disappointed with my search, I stood up and continued to the opening which I took to be an exit. Once I reached it, I was able to confirm that it was, indeed, an exit. The moonlight was a welcome sight, and the coastal breeze even more so. The wind cooled the layer of sweat that had formed on my face and I took in a deep breath of fresh air. I could now hear the crashing of waves again, and I could see the side deck of the ship. I had absolutely no idea what waited beyond, but I felt free. I took my first steps outside onto the deck and approached the railing. The moon hung low in the sky. Daylight had to be approaching. Had all of this only transpired in one night? It felt longer. Maybe over a day had passed. I couldn’t tell. The vessel was docked on a beach, though. From the looks of it, we had crashed into the sandy shores of some sort of island. The ship was angled at a tilt and it was lodged in sand. I wasn’t sure where we were, but I actually felt a glimmer of hope. I hurried toward the front deck of the ship, which was facing the island. Once I reached the nose of the ship, I looked over the stretch of beach. It gradually morphed into grass, and that grass reached a slope of land that leveled out at a forest. I couldn’t see much beyond that. I could make out distant silhouettes on the beach, though. Some were together, others weren’t. One had a flashlight and was shining it toward the forest. I couldn’t distinguish any buildings or signs of civilization. Either way, I felt safer on this tropical island than I did inside that vessel. I shed my gloves and winter jacket onto the deck. Seeing no other way down, I hopped over the railing at the front, braced myself, and dropped the four or so yards down to the sand below.
The sand broke my fall, but my knees buckled beneath me. I stood back up and looked to the east. The sun was just beginning to break above the horizon. It faintly glistened off the ocean and provided light to the island. Standing around wasn’t gonna do me much good. I decided the best course of action for now would be to follow the beach along the outskirts of the island. One foot in front of the other, I started to walk along the coast. I didn’t make it too far before I stopped. Maybe thirty meters from the boat was another dead body. It looked remarkably similar to the last. He was collapsed in the sand in a small pool of his own blood. More interesting, though, was what was next to him. It was a device I had never seen before. I knelt down to pick it up. It looked like a bigger, clunkier, lime green walkie-talkie complete with an antenna and all. The top was transparent, and I could see the mechanical inner-workings of the device. There was a label attached to the top that read “ACR”, and a lot of text printed on the handle. Reading it over, the word that stood out the most was “satellite”. There was a lot of jargon, but from what I gathered, this was some sort of tracking beacon. If I had to guess, this guy tried to signal for help before he bit the dust. If that was the case, I didn’t want to be anywhere near the thing. I hucked it toward the ocean and watched it break the top of the water and disappear. Then I continued to walk.
The waves were a comforting presence. Every few minutes, I would look back toward the vessel. I saw the last of the stragglers jump off, some helping each other down. I couldn’t be certain from the distance I was at, but I thought I saw the old woman being helped down by the same man who had opened our handcuffs. A separate large group—six from what I counted—made their way toward the forest together. Maybe they’d have more luck going that way. I hoped for their safety at least. Anywhere was probably safer than aboard that ship.
I was rounding a curve along the island’s coast when I saw something up ahead. Multiple things. They appeared to be small, wooden buildings at the foot of a rocky slope leading up to the forest. I was cautiously excited. Structures meant civilization. My walk turned into a brisk jog. The structures came more and more into view. Within minutes, I reached the wooden buildings and slowed to a stop.
There were three, and they were small, even smaller than the homes I found in Alaska. Each one looked almost identical; a porch along the front with an overhang. They were all supported by thin, wooden beams and had vacant openings for doors and windows. Each one was partially sunken into the beach. They were spaced closely together. I had a good view of the inside of the nearest one, and it seemed unoccupied. In truth, there didn’t seem to be much in it at all. I stepped onto the porch and slowly crept inside. Outstretching my arms, I could almost touch wall-to-wall. A rounded table inside filled almost the entire interior. There was nothing on it except for a few ceramic plates. Disheartened, I stepped back outside. Nobody could live there. There was no telling how long it had even been since someone stepped inside. This didn’t disway me from each of the other small buildings, though. In the second one along the beach, I found nothing. Just an empty space and a floor covered in grains of sand. With my hopes and expectations set disappointingly low, I made my way to the third beachhouse and entered. Inside was a small pile of boxes. Without expecting much, I opened the top box. Among the broken, dusty, assorted utilities and old electronics, I found a yellow flashlight. I was surprised to discover that it actually turned on. I rummaged through the remaining boxes but found nothing of use. At least I would be walking out with something.
I stepped back out onto the beach. By this point, the morning was bright enough to navigate comfortably without a flashlight. For the first time since all of this started, I actually thought about my bag and my camera. I glanced toward my side and was met with the sudden realization that my bag was gone. A momentary panic came over me as my arms began feeling at my sides. I felt my journal comfortably tucked deep into one of my inner jacket pockets, but no bag. I considered turning and running back to the ship, but decided against it. My bag had probably been confiscated. There was no telling where it was or if it was lost in the crash. I certainly wasn’t ready to risk my life for a camera, so instead I tucked the flashlight into the back of my pants. No camera meant that I would have no documentation of any of this other than what I’m writing here. As disappointing as that was, I had bigger concerns. Right now, I just need to find help. Standing on that beach, I could only worry that help was a little bit further away than I needed it to be.
I’ve got no idea where I am. I don’t know how I got here, and I only have a vague idea about who brought me here to begin with. Judging by the symbol they were all wearing and the discovery that led me into this situation, I’m still working off the cult angle. Grasping at straws maybe. I’m stranded with a bunch of strangers, and I feel like the past however-long I’ve been going through all this has had my life suspended by a thread.
Right now I’m just huddled up in one of the beach houses trying to write down as much of this as I can while it’s still fresh in my memory. If I’ve got no camera, I need to make sure every single detail is captured to a tee in this journal. I’m not exactly sure what to do going forward. For the time being, I guess I’ll just keep following the beach. I’ve eventually got to find something. I have to. I don’t wanna think about what’ll happen if I don’t.