ENTRY 32:
I’ve been having a hard time trying to wrap my head around Kagenori’s words. It… it couldn’t be, right? I mean, how the fuck could the world have come to this?
Well, I didn’t need to wait much longer for further explanations. Kagenori woke a few hours later. After devouring some forest-creature meat, he finally told me and Lauren how the hell he ended up here.
As it turns out, he went into hiding in Paradise X after our initial break-in. But since the whole city was kind of a mess to begin with, he was never actually caught. He tried staying hidden on the streets for a few days before he started going delirious from the lack of food in his system. Eventually, somebody stumbled upon him singing to himself in an alleyway. The guy took him into his apartment and fed him some energy bars.
“Those things were fucking vile” he told me. “But you gotta eat something.”
The guy – named Ace, was nice enough to let him stay. But from the way that he described it… the place sounded like absolute hell. While there was running water, it always scalding for some reason. In addition, AC wasn’t really a feasible amenity, so they were sweating buckets in there. But the worst part was the “neighbor”. Ace explained that he didn’t exactly know what it was in the room next to them, but that they weren’t supposed to risk “letting it out.” That meant at night, they were forced to listen to something stomp around next to them while letting out a ghoulish wail. And for whatever reason, it only moved around at night.
Eventually, Kagenori started working at a food production factory, in order to help with the rent. It was the same one Ace was employed at. It was easy for him to land the job because the staff turnover was staggeringly high. I almost gagged when he told me what those bars were actually made out of.
Anyways, a few weeks pass and he finds himself walking home alone at night. But even though the place was lawless, crime surprisingly wasn’t a huge problem. However, I guess it made sense. Everybody in that place was essentially a walking shell. Just a ghost wandering around in hell. Nobody would really bother trying to rob anybody else. It just wasn't worth it.
As he’s about halfway back to the apartment, he spots somebody up ahead. In any other instance he wouldn't have cared, but this person seemed familiar. It was Rust. He caught up to him and they started talking. They were both about as equally surprised to see each other. When he asked Rust how he’d gotten here, his demeanor soured. Apparently, the settlement that we’d first stumbled upon years ago was decimated by the Paradise X soldiers. The reason was unclear, but it probably had something to do with our break-in. He said that he’d seen innocent children get slaughtered in front of his very eyes. This… was not pleasant for me to hear, of course. I felt that I already had too much blood on my hands. Fucking hell… Anyways, as it was about to be his turn, he tried reasoning his way out of death. He claimed that he had skills that could be useful to them. This was true, of course. The guy had three engineering degrees. After an extensive period of pleading, they decided to give him a chance. There was a helicopter that needed work, and nobody over there had the technical skill to do it. If he could fix it within a month, then he’d be spared. If not… well, you get the picture. It took him 29 days, but he finally did it.
After that, he was essentially employed as a mechanical engineer. However… he wasn’t planning on staying. He told Kagenori that "he had something big in mind.” What that was exactly, Kagenori would just have to find out. Rust instructed him to survive for two more weeks before meeting him at his place.
“That was all that he told me” Kagenori stated. “I just trusted him. There was nothing else I could do, you know?”
He waited, just trudging along for the next couple weeks before knocking on Rust’s door. He didn’t say much when he opened up. Just told Kagenori to follow him. That the plan was “already in action”. He led him to the factory where he’d apparently been working at. The soldiers guarding it asked Rust who the hell Kagenori was. In response, he pulled out a nail gun and shot them both in the head. And since all that they had were batons, they couldn’t do anything about it. Reeling in shock, Kagenori asked him what the hell he was doing. Rust just told him not to worry. That this was the only way out. They walked into the place and started heading towards the back. Once there, Rust swung open a metal door and they found themselves in a tight maze of corridors. This is when Rust told him to run. They maneuvered around the claustrophobic space, taking out more guards that were scattered throughout. After a while, they started hearing distant yelling and footsteps behind them. Kagenori yelled at Rust to let him know what the fuck was going on, but he was just told to be patient. He soon realized why. About twenty seconds later, a thundering explosion could be heard from outside. As Rust would tell him later, he'd been spending his free time working on crude explosives with materials he’d stolen from the factory. He’d been discretely setting them up near the barrier walls, day by day, until it seemed enough to create a considerable entrance hole. A hole big enough for the creatures to get in.
Eventually, they found themselves in a control room with a ladder leading upwards. There were two more guards in there, which Rust also took out. It was perfect because after that, he’d run out of ammo. They hurried up the ladder, sealing the entryway with scrap metal, as they climbed onto a rooftop. There was a helicopter sitting there, about ten meters away. This was the one that Rust had been commissioned to fix.
You see, he’d been planning ahead for a while. Even though he’d essentially fully fixed it within the first few days he was here, he pretended like he hadn’t. He did this in order to have more time to tamper with the controls, as well as asking around and trying to get a sense of what each button and lever did. In the back of his mind, he knew that flying away was the only way off the island.
Eventually - on the 29th day, he’d figured it out completely. That’s when he started planting the bombs. The thing is, even though he’d fixed the engine, it still took an exorbitant amount of time to power up. About an hour and change. That’s why he needed a distraction. If he just sat in the aircraft waiting, the guards would’ve easily gotten to the rooftop in time and smoked him. But thanks to the explosion, now they were forced to deal with the horrors outside the walls.
As Rust started up the helicopter, Kagenori looked down at the chaos that had plagued the city. Monstrous abominations were rampaging the place, killing everything in sight. The guards tried quelling the ungodly assault, but to no avail. At one point, a large crocodile-looking thing started climbing up the walls to the roof, towards them. It took Kagenori about 22 swings with a baton before it eventually decided to crawl back down.
About an hour passes before they start to hear banging coming from the rooftop entrance. It sounded like somebody was using a battering ram. Fortunately, the helicopter had taken off before they had to deal with it. As they ascended into the murky sky, Kagenori looked back down at scene below. As it turns out, Rust underestimated how strong his explosives were. A huge chunk of the wall and the surrounding areas had been decimated. There wasn’t even much movement on the ground anymore. Everybody was either dead or in hiding. That’s when it dawned on him… Rust had just inadvertently killed a lot of people. A lot of innocents, in fact. He was about to say something when Rust seemed to read his mind and stopped him.
“Those people down there… they didn’t have lives worth living” He told him. “I just put ‘em out of their misery”
Kagenori didn’t try and argue with him. Deep down, he agreed with him. He just didn't want to admit it. They flew around for a few hours before he finally asked Rust where they were going. In response, he just sighed and said he didn’t know. But that anywhere would be better than Dusk Blue.
Eventually, they spotted an island and decided to descend. The engine needed to cool down anyways, so Rust thought this was a better time than ever.
The island itself was insane. Just off the flat shore stood mountains that apparently put Everest to shame. The whole place was full of them. At the base of the monumental Alps were what appeared to be vast, open cave systems. They explored the place cautiously, not wanting to draw any attention to themselves. However… it seemed that there was nothing on the island at all. Just them.
Rust told Kagenori to stay back and watch the helicopter while he explored the caves. While he initially objected to this, he figured that it’d be safer on the shore than in the darkness of the caverns. Rust put together a make-shift torch with some scrap wood and disappeared into the entrance.
Kagenori said that he waited there for what felt like hours. He was starting to get worried. Eventually, Rust finally surfaced from dark. He seemed unharmed, but his expression told a different story. He looked horrified. He was also holding a small book. Kagenori asked him what had happened before Rust just handed it over. It was old and the cover was peeling off, but there was no denying what it was.
A Bible.
Kagenori had been protestant for the longest time, so he’d essentially memorized the first few pages by heart. He read it over and it lined up perfectly. Rust explained that he found it sitting in the middle of a crudely drawn symbol, like it was part of some kind of botched ritual or something. They just sat there for a while after that. None of them had any words to say. This was a troubling revelation, after all. Rust broke the silence a while later.
“That wasn’t it.”
Apparently, he’d also seen cave paintings in there, along with pieces of what looked like torn manuscripts. He pulled them out of his bag, but they were all in Latin. Fortunately, Rust knew the language. From what he’d pieced together, something happened in 2026 that sent the world spiraling into what we were in now. It was unclear what this event exactly was, however. The writings were all vague, with words like “Corrupted” and “Reborn” popping up a lot. However… that wasn’t even the most interesting part. The year 2014 also seemed to be significant. Rust’s conjecture was that somebody had done something back then that took 12 years to fully manifest. Again, what really happened remained a mystery. All he had was the dates.
There was one last significant thing that he saw in there - a painting of a map on one of the cave walls. It seemed to be an outline of the new world. Apparently, the only thing that Rust could somewhat recognize was North America and East Asia. The other continents were torn into pieces. However, there was one small island that seemed to worth noting. It looked to be on the equator line, around where South America should have been. There was an arrow pointing to it, connected to a single word:
“Liberatio” – Latin for deliverance.
“That’s where we’re headed” Rust exclaimed. "Maybe we'll find answers". Kagenori asked him how the hell they were going to get there. “I’ll figure out a way” was Rust's only response. Right after he said that, the ground beneath them started rumbling. They soon figured out why there was nothing else on the island.
They looked over at the mountains behind them. They were shaking, but it didn’t look like an earthquake. There was a pattern to it. Almost as if they were being caused by footsteps. Eventually, they saw something moving in the distance. Something colossal. They didn’t waste any more time, hopping into the helicopter and getting the hell out of there. As they left they island behind, Kagenori watched as a creature around double the size of the mountains made its way onto the shore. Since it was obscured by some kind of mist, he couldn’t quite make out the details. But it was humanoid, for sure. What disturbed him the most was the bellowing laugh that it let out afterwards. The voice was deep and guttural, sending ripples through the sea below. It was also sinister in tone. Like it knew what they had just discovered.
After that, they flew around for a few more hours before Rust admitted that there was a problem. He didn’t know how to get to the island depicted on the cave painting. He suggested that they scavenge another island, in order to find materials for a compass. However, there didn’t seem to be one in sight. They weren’t low on fuel just yet, but that could change quickly.
The situation got even worse when they flew into a brutal storm. Kagenori claimed that it happened so suddenly. One second the skies were dry, the next, they were filled with heavy winds, rain and lightning. It was inexplicable. But then again… in this world, that seemed to be the norm.
It got so bad that Rust told him to put on one of the parachutes, “just in case”. There were no doors on the aircraft, after all. As it turns out, that was a good call. As a particularly strong burst of wind titled the helicopter to the side, Kagenori’s fingers slipped from a railing he was holding onto and he fell out.
As he made his harsh descent, he tried to gauge what he was heading into. However, the rain had gotten so bad that he could barely open his eyes. He made a swift judgement, waiting 10 seconds before ultimately opening the parachute. As he felt himself floating downwards, he started feeling the rain subside. He opened his eyes, being both surprised and relieved to find land waiting for him below. There seemed to be people on it as well. But as he got closer, he came to a horrifying realization. Those weren’t people. Or at least… not anymore. He’d made it to dead man’s land. After landing, he freaked out and started running away from the horde of zombies that had now focused their collective attentions on him. Eventually, he’d come across the settlement that we were in now.
He’d been here ever since, going on regular hunting trips and establishing himself as part of the community. But about a year ago, he’d been captured by the psychos we encountered yesterday. As it turns out, they were bat-shit crazy. They took turns torturing/toying around with him, as well as the others that he was with for pure entertainment. At one point, they were driving out, planning on tying him to a tree and letting the zombies swarm him. Fortunately, that was also we crossed paths with them ans saved him. He seemed to be getting light-headed as he finished telling me this. The nurse told me that he needed more rest, so I let him be. However, he let me know one more thing before slipping out of consciousness again:
“I don’t know if Rust is still alive. I don’t know where he is... I don’t know…”
I’m sitting here now, pondering the implications of Rust’s discovery. If this really is the future… then what the fuck happened in 2026? How could that have led to this? What was on that island Rust was trying to get to? Were we ever getting the out of here? But like Kagenori... I guess I just don’t know.
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ENTRY 33:
I woke up this morning to heavy commotion. Everybody seemed scared of something. I asked around, eventually finding out that some kind of machine had been shot down over the island just a few minutes ago. I walked over to where they were keeping it. Smoker was already there, holding it in his hands. It was small and compact, looking extremely futuristic, which made sense now. I asked him what the hell it was. He stared at me, eyes wide:
“Neo-Civitus” he uttered out “This is a scout drone. They always send these before they’re about to invade.”
Confused and shocked, I took a closer look at it. In big bold letters was the phrase “NC military” written right on top of it.
Fucking hell. Not sure what’s going to happen next. But based off of everything that’s happened so far… it’s gonna be one hell of a time, for better or for worse.
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Credits
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