Hey there. This seems like the best place to post these because it’s not like anyone else believes me. Just want to say, I made it out. These are entries from my old journal. It was the only think I got out of there with. I figured…even if they don’t cause a stir or prevent anything, maybe they’d make for some good light reading. Also, if you end up in there…try to remember what you’ve read here. I didn’t make it out of there out of just luck. If you have any specific questions, I’ll be glad to answer them for you. Always down to help anyway I can. -Sam
Entry #1
No one knows how we got here. Sure, everyone’s got a theory, but no one really knows. Funny enough, no one knows how long it’s been since we got here either. Everyone’s got a different count of the days. Some people stopped keeping count, said it would drive them crazy. Those who do try to track the days always have that different number. Two years, seven months, and somewhere in between. On top of all the things that no one knows is one really horrifying fact: how many are here? We know there are no kids, there are no elderly. Everyone I’ve met was in their 20’s or so. Youngest person I’ve met said it was his 20th birthday when he woke up here. Oldest was a girl who said she was 28.
One of the guys in my camp goes by Lando, like the character. He looks like him too. Anyways, his theory is a bunch of aliens pulled up all the “healthiest humans” to save us from some planet destroying disaster and put us here to save the species. Makes a lotta sense until you remember that no one can get pregnant here. Claire and Xander have definitely been testing that, no luck. Also, if a bunch of aliens put us here to save the species, why would they put predators in here? Lots of them too. Our camp has only existed about 5 months, and we must have taken out dozens of them. Some camps have tried to clear them out, to get rid of them all. Now, most people think that, just like the forest, they never end. So, an unknown amount of people in an unknown forest of unknown size for unknown amount of time facing an unknown amount of monsters…what could go wrong?
What do we know? Not much. We know there are a lot of humans here. My camp has about 20. Some are bigger, some are smaller. We’ve heard stories of a city somewhere far east called Clearing that had thousands. That doesn’t seem realistic to me, but none of this does. That’s another thing, how are there that many people? Even if they teleported all the humans in their 20’s on earth here, how many would there really be? How many Americans and Europeans? I’ve only met a few non-Americans out of the hundred or so people I’ve talked too. Most were from Europe. One guy was from Niger but spoke English. I thought I found my first outlier. but it turns out he was in NYC on a tourist vacation when he woke up in the forest. Maybe it’s just people that were in the US, right? Nope. Get this, one of the Europeans I talked to? She was in Niger as a member of Doctors without Borders. It was kind of funny those two found each other.
Abdul and Nicky ended up following me to this camp when everything went bad at Riverside. It wasn’t really a camp back then. We found this flat piece of land with a pretty low tree density and got to work. There were six of us back then. We’ve grown. I guess they look at me as a leader now, maybe the only leader. I don’t know if I really want that. I’ve had a bunch of group leaders over the last few months. Shit always goes sideways. The camp leader at Riverside got absolutely shredded while he was fishing. One of the water creatures just tore him to shreds. I have no clue why I’d want the same thing to happen to me. That’s part of the reason I haven’t been fishing since. Our camp mainly survives off trapping some of the…friendlier…creatures here. Although, I’m not sure if you could call them that truthfully.
One of the newer guys to the camp, Zach, is obsessed with roads. I mean, it’s kind of weird. He has this whole speech he goes into about how important roads are for communities and he’ll go on and on and on. He’d been begging for us to go to the nearest encampment and talk about building a road between the two of us. It sounded silly to most of us. I mean, the nearest camp is at least 10 miles west. Probably more. We’d only been there once. Ten miles of clearing forest debris and trees and marking a path sounded like a lot of hard work for nothing. The only reason we agreed to see how it goes is because…well…what else did we have to do?
We hadn’t made it two miles west before we got an encounter. Only 6 of us went. Me, Abdul, Nicky, Lando, Zach, and this one guy James. James was a newer addition to our team. He didn’t talk much besides simple sentences and responses. Always figured I’d get to know him when I got the chance. Never got that. The bat-things came down on us out of nowhere. Normally they’re only active at night, but we must have walked through a nest of them or something. The rest of us knew what to do: freeze. The bat-things don’t have a lot in common with actual bats. They’re much bigger, have claws instead of…whatever bats normally have. They kind of look like gargoyles if their wings were on there arms. Anyways, one thing they have in common is that they are blind as a… well you get the idea. They track by hearing or something. Figured out early on that if you don’t move they can’t see you. No one told James apparently. I have no idea how he made it that far without knowing this. It’s kind of a 2+2 type of thing. So well-known no one thinks to say it.
They were on him in seconds. Pretty soon he was drained and then the 30% or so left of him was left in a heap on the ground. The five of us waited around for a bit and, when it was clear, we went back to camp. Zach keeps saying he wants to try again, but all of us are more than a little frustrated at him right now. The idea was stupid, and I was stupid for going along with it. The people in camp are blaming Zach for getting James killed, but it was me who gave the okay.
That’s pretty much it for tonight. It’s been a long day. I’ll write something else in here at some point, I’m sure of it. Not much else to do. One things for sure: no more fucking roads.