Hey guys. Here’s the second entry from my journal. This one was hard to re-read, especially considering everything that happened after this. Like I said, if you end up in the forest…stay safe and stay prepared. We were weak back then, even if we thought otherwise. Luckily, you have this to read. It might help you avoid some of our stupid mistakes.
Entry #2
Shit got worse. A lot worse. I guess I should probably pick up from where I left off. The next few days hadn’t gone great. Zach was fighting everyone about trying to establish some communication with other camps. Another couple at the camp, Cindy and Darren, agreed. They figured that the rewards outweighed the risks. Eight of us disagreed. That left another eight members of the camp in the middle, not sure where to go. Arguing and fights had reached an all time high. For whatever reason, people started looking to me for answers.
It was dumb, in my opinion. Roads and “building civilization” seemed like such a lost cause. In all those apocalyptic movies and shows, humanity comes back by finding a safe area and recommissioning a mall or a prison or a hotel or something like that. In all those shows, there’s something there. There’s something to build off of. Here, there’s nothing. Wooden lean-tos and shelters are all we have. Endless grass, shrubbery, and trees. Occasional waterways and fruit bushes were present, maybe the odd boulder or two. In the end, there was nothing to recommission. There was nothing to go off of. Closest thing we have to an engineer, or an architect is Cindy, who went to college for interior design. We really are useless here. On top of that, there aren’t some finite amount of zombies we can clear. The monsters are everywhere and endless.
Lando worked at a zoo before this, so he took charge of cataloging the creatures here. Lando knows more about animals than anything else so it seemed like the smart thing to do. He’s so far identified at least 14 different species. He also decided to catalog the creatures according to the following threat levels to make it easier to understand if anyone new picks up his journal. The first threat level is low, meaning these creatures are just like those back home. They might be able to bite, scratch, kick, or whatever else, but they won’t be aggressive unless they are forced too. The second threat level is medium. These creatures will attack but can usually be dissuaded with loud noises or fire or injuries or something like that. They are dangerous, but they are stoppable. The final threat level is high. These creatures seem to stop at nothing to kill us. At first, we thought they wanted to eat us like the medium creatures. Instead, they seem to just kill for the sake of it.
Five of Lando’s species are these low-level fish and amphibians in the rivers and lakes. One’s like a big, teal-colored frog Lando called Teal Frogs. He figured simpler was better and the aliens probably have the proper names for them anyways. He really is committed to his alien theory. The other four are these pretty big fish you can catch if you’re good enough at it. They act just like fish on earth. They have some spines, and you can cut yourself if you aren’t careful, but they’re just fish.
Another three of Lando’s species are also low-level. A pretty big type of mouse that has spines kind of like a hedgehog. They’re a little sharper and a little less dense, but it’s the same principle. The second one is a type of pigeon. It looks just like an earth pigeon, except it doesn’t have any eyes. Lando things it’s related to the bat-things somehow. I don’t know or really care. They won’t hurt us. Last ones are these iguana-things. Really big lizards that are in the underbrush of the forest. We’ve mostly been eating these and the hedgemice. Great meat and easy to kill as long as you don’t let them bite you.
The medium ones are a bit more difficult. There are four of them. The bat-things: blind, gargoyle-like creatures that drink your blood like some type of fucking vampire. They don’t just take the blood though; they take all the liquid in your body. It’s really, really freak. They’re pack animals who build these nests high up in the forest trees. The bat’s nests are really easy to just stumble into, which is what we think happened to James. Easy to kill and they are terrified of fire. They also can’t see you if you don’t move, which is helpful.
The second medium threat monster are the water-creatures that killed the Riverside camp leader. No one’s gotten a great look at one, but they just seem like these tentacle monsters that live in the rivers. No solid information on that, yet. The third medium threat monster are the wolves. These giant fuckers will destroy camps if you aren’t careful. They have packs of at least a dozen, usually two. Huge wolf-creatures with battle scars all over them are scary enough, but the scorpion-tails make it worse. These huge venomous tails, when they get you, kill you in minutes. It’s terrifying. All that said, some loud yelling and shows of force scare them off. Unlike most of the monsters, they seem to value self-preservation a lot more. You hurt one or two of them enough, and the others run off to fight another day. Really not that difficult to deal with, as long as you have the numbers for it.
The last medium threat species are the spiders. We haven’t run into a lot of them, but if you get caught in a web that’s it for you. Spears and stone axes can’t come close to cutting through the webbing. Additionally, the spiders spit this type of acid that just…dissolves you. Really gruesome shit.
The last two species are the high threat levels. The first are the Fungoids. Haven’t seen any of these myself, but Abdul and Nicky swear they are what took out their camp before Riverside. These huge mushroom things that were at least 9 feet tall came out of the ground and spread these clouds of suffocating gas everywhere. Abdul said that once they got back from running away, to see what was left, small mushrooms had grown out of the dead and were wiggling in the bodies. If I got out and become a host to mushrooms, I’m going to come back and haunt whoever the hell put us here for eternity. Hell, I’m gonna do that anyways.
The last high threat level species, and the last of what Lando has catalogued, are the dragons. It’s…hard to explain. They aren’t dragons. At least, not what some shows and stuff back home make you think they look like. There flesh is rotted, and they are dark colored. I mean they are solid black. It almost feels like they draw in the light around them. The only reason we call them dragons are because they fly and breathe fire, or at least what looks like fire. They don’t have scales, just this weird, tight, black skin. It’s really hard to explain, but I’m trying my best. You won’t see them often, maybe a glimpse once or twice a month, but you hear the roars all the time. You can hear them for miles and miles. They are the size of a football field, and entirely unstoppable. No one’s sure what makes them attack. That’s why I don’t think a city like Clearing exists. If there truly were thousands of people in a city, those things would have destroyed it by now.
So how did things get worse? I’m not writing this from our camp. Like I said, the fighting had gotten bad. Everyone knows to stay quiet at night. Everyone knows that. We ended up in this heated discussion about taking a vote. People were looking to me to see if we “could” take a vote. I said I didn’t want the leadership role. Zach said some stupid shit about me not deserving it, and Lando responded by saying that at least I didn’t get James killed on a suicide mission. Zach went wild. He started screaming, throwing things, making the loudest sounds he could. He had lost his mind.
Actions have consequences. It didn’t take long for the wolves to get on us. Like I said, they aren’t hard to beat if you’re ready for them. We weren’t. They leaped over our barricades like they were nothing. They took out at least a half dozen of us before we knew what was going on. Everyone bolted. I speared one of them, but realized it was about to be me versus a whole pack if I didn’t run. Lando grabbed me and we bolted. Everyone went in different directions, but some of us ended up together. Me, Lando, Abdul, Nicky, and Cindy ended up together. As the sun was coming up, we found something following us. Me and Lando got on it with our spears, but just before we stabbed it, it looked at me. It was Zach.
So now it’s the next morning, and we are trying to figure out what to do. On the good side, Zach finally shut the hell up. He hasn’t said a word since. On the bad side, I am now, somehow, the complete leader of this group of dumbasses. I asked what we should do, and they all looked at me. Lando was the only one who said anything. “On your orders, Sam.” He gave me a wink. God help me, they put me in charge. If and when we die, I blame Lando for that stupid fucking sentence.