Log #1418

Who to trust.

Stella, 48, Sacramento, CA.
Smart. Evil.
Trust rating: -11

Fran, 21, Bend, OR.
Toughening up.
Trust rating: +9

Gabrielle, 28, San Diego, CA.
I don’t know.
Trust rating: 0

Javier, 23, Tijuana, Mexico.
Going to hell. Soon.
Trust rating: -9

Wendel, 26, El Centro, CA.
Probably joining Javier.
Trust rating: -1

Joel, 32, Sacramento, CA.
The good Stella.
Trust rating: 2

Kelvin, 17, San Diego, CA.
Jerry-ish, but more talkative.
Trust rating: 2

Bridget, 36, Eugene, OR.
Strong, gritty.
Trust rating: 2Things have gone drastically downhill, and that’s not an exaggeration. I am not the same man I was when this started. My soul has escaped me.

I should come clean about Javier. We weren’t separated. I left him. We were found by a horde of Infected, in the dead of night, and I ran. I left him handcuffed and asleep. I told the others I’d lost him, but that was a lie. I was lying to them and to myself.

Well, what goes around comes around. He wasn’t as dead as I expected he’d be. It turns out he was saved by a gang of burly men.

He led them here.

When we were coming out of the Hibbert Street building we were set upon by a group of zomiters. Bridget wanted to take them on but I told her we had to run. Ruby called for us to follow her and led the way toward the warehouse at the back of the building.

I’d forgotten that the way was blocked by one of those huge containers–by the container that fell on Mike and Sergio. But there was a reminder.

Sergio’s torso was flat on its back. Legs and hips missing. Gloopy entrails hanging out, shattered spine showing. Bridget tried to stop me approaching him, saying he might be “one of the monsters”. Ruby stood back, shocked. I told her and Bridget to watch the door and I went to Sergio, to close his eyes.

Just as I crouched down next to him, he grabbed my hand. His eyes moved to stare straight at me. He was still… undead.

I asked Bridget to finish him with a blow to the brain, but she seemed to think I was trying to trick her or something. She was suspicious. So she made me do it.

Getting out of there was messy. It was traumatising. The way those zomiters move, the noises they make, the smell–it’s disgusting. But knowing what they can do to you – having seen what they did to Pen – it’s so scary to confront them. They practically explode if you shoot them and you can’t get close enough to take them out with blunt objects without risking being covered in virus-acid.

When we got back Joel and Kelvin were banging on the shutters. They wanted inside, but Stella had refused to let them in. Joel recognised my uniform and said that I had to help. Went off on this rant about my obligations as a UN troop.

I told him to shut up and unlocked the door in the shutter, bringing him, Kelvin and Bridget into the Station, then getting into an argument with Stella about it.

Next day Stella was outsmarted by the new guy, Gabrielle finally spoke up, Fran interrogated me and Javier turned up with the posse of self-righteous gangsters who turned our little haven into hell.

Midnight fifty-seven. Battery’s about to die, so I’ll have to end this here. If I don’t write again, well, it’s probably for the best. As I said at the start of this log, I’m not the person I used to be. While that might not mean anything to you pencilnecks, it means a lot to me.

It means everything to me.

– Titouan Denaux