ENTRY 34:
It’s been really quiet around here after the drone incident. Everybody seemed a bit confused at first. Although Smoker tried explaining the nature of Neo-Civitus to them, they didn’t seem to want to believe him. It took a few other people with knowledge of the place to finally convince everybody that this was not good news. Smoker also went on to explain that the drones meant they could be coming in weeks… or years. In other words, we could never anticipate their arrival. I asked him why they’d even be interested in this place at all.
“Resources. Colonization” He told me. “Most likely resources, though.”
He seemed incredibly worried as he told me this, but I couldn’t understand why. I mean, if the only thing that they were after were some resources, then we’d just let them take it, right? No problems there.
“No.” He said sternly. “They don’t work like that. You see, nobody likes giving up their shit to an invading force, right? But nobody would ever even bother fighting back if they knew what kind of power Neo-Civitus has. Problem is… most people just don’t. That’s why they always retaliate at first. The battle never lasts very long.
He sighed, pausing for a bit before continuing. “Here’s the thing with Neo-Civitus… there’s never any paperwork with them. No deals, no negotiations, nothing. Wherever they go, they eliminate the native population, no questions asked. It’s just simpler that way. Besides… most islands that they land on are incredibly hostile, anyways. There’s no risks being taken with them.”
However, even as everybody started to prepare for the oncoming assault, Smoker just scoffed at them. “There’s no point.” He explained. “Once they land, we’re all dead. It's hopeless.”
“So what are you going to do? Just give up, let ‘em kill you?” I asked him.
He furrowed his brow. “Nah… I’ll be long gone before they arrive. There’s a lot of dignified ways to die. But fighting a pointless battle… that just ain’t one of them. I’ll have a better chance out there as opposed to staying here.”
Carrying nothing but a small sack of rations, one rifle and a few knives, he left just a few days later. He didn’t tell us where he was going. But... I'm pretty sure that he wasn't sure himself. Before his departure, he asked me if I wanted to join him. Despite the grim reality that seemed to be waiting for me, I declined his offer. I suppose that there was just a small part of me that thought he was bullshitting about this whole thing. But in retrospect, that didn’t make any sense. I guess I just didn’t want to deal with the horrors out there on this island. I guess I’m just taking my chances.
But… Kunz did eventually recover yesterday. So I guess that’s good news.
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ENTRY 35:
A few more months have passed. At this point, we’ve prepared to the best of our abilities. However… Smoker’s words still linger for me.
“There’s no point”.
What if he’s right? Hell, why would he be lying? He left for fuck’s sake.
What’s worse is that nobody’s really explained it to Jolan yet. She’s confused as to why everybody’s so tense these days. She knows that we might have to fight some people sooner or later, but she has no idea what the scale of it just might be. I should break the news to her but… I really don’t want to.
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ENTRY 36:
A few more months have passed, but we’ve finally come up with something. Smoker said that they’re most likely coming here for resources, right? Well this place is filled to the brim with zombies and other shit. That’ll pose a nuisance for sure. Not the ideal area to harvest/mine. You see, the creatures here are mostly attracted to sound. The more we make, the more congested the ground below us seems to be. So here’s the plan:
We’ve stockpiled plenty of food already, enough to last us months. We’ll start creating a lot of noise and draw a massive crowd of them over. The idea here is that once Neo-Civitus sees this, they’ll deem the effort to not be worth it and just leave us alone. It might work… actually I have no idea. It’s worth a shot, at least.
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ENTRY 37:
It’s going to happen soon. A few hours ago, about three more drones flew over. Two seemed to be mapping out the forests and surrounding areas while the 3rd hovered around where we were. We didn’t bother shooting it down this time. We wanted it to see the hordes of undead piled at the base of our towers. We wanted to convince them to call everything off right there. They left about five minutes after they came, so that’s probably good news. Now we just wait and see.
--
ENTRY 38:
I don’t know how long it’s been since that last entry. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t even know where I am. Fuck…
It was about a week since we sighted those three drones when they finally came. Now… I don’t know what I was expecting. What the hell anybody was expecting, for that matter. We were prepared to come face to face with the fucking cavalry. An army, if you will. But no. It was a single goddamn aircraft. I could barely comprehend what it even looked like. It was futuristic, but not in the traditional sense of the word. It was alien. Otherworldly. Not big, but beyond functional. It nearly resembled some kind of pod and moved with such smoothness you’d think that it was being controlled remotely.
As the shiny vehicle descended onto the shore about a quarter mile away from us, it started getting swarmed. It just sat there for maybe about five minutes. At that point, it had become buried underneath a pile of undead flesh. We were optimistic for a second. We couldn’t fathom how they were getting out of that. But then we witnessed the solution.
The sound was sharp at first, gradually devolving into a low hum. The pod emitted a light so bright that we all had to avert our eyes for a few seconds. When we returned our perception to the shore, we all went into a collective shock. The zombies had been cleared out. But that’s an understatement. They were eviscerated. No limbs, no bones, nothing. Just a red mist lingering in the air around it. We didn’t even know how to react. The undead that had been surrounding our towers started trudging their way over to the shore, attracted by the noise.
The doors to the space-age machine opened up. Out stepped three figures. Just three. That was it. They looked to be wearing some kind of armor. But they weren’t the massive, clunky kind that the guards at the prison had. Like the ship that they came in, it was advanced beyond our comprehension. They were sleek, black suits that seemed to bend and twist perfectly with every subtle movement they made. Their helmets resembled futuristic gas-masks, with two large circular eye holes that glowed with a menacing shade of red. The rifles they were carrying looked compact and deadly. They were also a very strange color – a dark bluish-green that seemed reflect every source of light that bounced off of it.
They walked for about five seconds before ascending into the air. It looked so seamless. Their boots didn’t even seem to have any thrusters, so it was unclear how this was possible. As they floated towards us, they dropped tiny blue orbs onto the ground below. As soon as they landed, every zombie within our perceivable vicinity appeared to start being electrocuted. Albeit, not for long. They dropped in seconds. As the stench of burning rotten flesh filled the air, the super-soldiers descended onto our towers. One landed just a few feet away from me. I saw what I assumed to be his name and position etched onto the barrel of his weapon – CPT. RIZZER. I caught of a glimpse of his suit up close. It was more intricate than I initially thought. It looked more like an EXO-skeleton than anything. It was outfitted with pistols and Tasers, amongst other things. There was writing on his chest. In big white letters, it read:
“NEO-CIVITUS: RECON DIV. 34”
He was also larger than any human I’d ever seen before. Larger than the Warden, even. He must have been around 9 feet tall.
They didn’t move at first, seemingly just observing us. At this point, I was holding onto Jolan tight. I also exchanged glances with Kunz, Lauren and Kagenori. It was almost a silent acknowledgement. We’d been through so much together. If these were our last moments alive, we wanted to make sure that we recognized this. I wasn't even prepared for what happened next.
Before I even had time to react, I looked in front of me to see the barrel of Rizzer’s weapon aimed directly at me. Or so I thought it was. I closed my eyes, bracing for bullets that were surely about to penetrate my skin. I heard the harsh automatic buzz of the rifle, but I felt no pain. Instead, I only heard screaming from all around me. And warm liquid soaking into the side of my shirt. I knew what it was. I looked down at Jolan’s limp upper body. Apparently, the rounds were so strong that they had cut her in half. Without being given even a second of time to grief, I felt a sharp, numbing sensation in my thigh. It eventually started to make its way up through my hips and then into my shoulder. I fell to the floor, hitting my head hard as I did. While I could still feel everything above my neck, everything below that seemed to be out of commission. I couldn’t even turn away from the horrific sights in front of me. They were killing en masse - women, the elderly, even children, without remorse.
A few minutes later, they picked up the ones they deemed fit enough to survive and tossed us onto a single tower. Everybody else seemed to be affected by the paralyzing agent as well. I could see Kunz and Kagenori out of the corners of my eyes… but no Lauren. We watched as the three soldiers walked around on the ground, planting what looked like small charges into the dirt. By this time, more zombies had wandered their way into the settlement area, but the soldiers didn’t even seem to acknowledge them. The creatures would bite and scratch against their armor, but it would do less than nothing. Eventually, the soldiers stepped back and one of them projected a hologram out of his wrist. I couldn’t tell what exactly he was looking at, but I had an idea. He pressed some virtual buttons before holding up five fingers. Once they were all down, a mind-jolting explosion echoed through the air. Bits of dirt and zombie entrails flew everywhere, pelting us in the face.
When the smoke cleared, we looked back down to see an enormous black pit in place of what was once solid ground. However, as I looked at it even closer, I realized that it wasn’t empty space. It was bubbling. It was liquid. The first thought that popped into my head was oil. That was a good a guess as any, after all. Soon after, one of the soldiers flew back up to the tower we were involuntarily sitting in. It was Rizzer again. He took out a large syringe-looking device filled with dark-red liquid.
“Don’t squirm. This’ll hurt a lot.”
He injected it into a few guys sitting around me before I finally felt the needle plunge into my forearm. What followed was an intense burning sensation that seemed to last forever. However, I seemed to be gaining the feeling back into my limbs as well. A few of us tried escaping, but were shot down without hesitation. The rest of us just sat tight. After he had finished up with everybody, he addressed us directly.
“You have two options here. Die… or do manual labor. Seems pretty obvious to me. You guys might be pissed right now… but let me tell you that I do not give a fuck. These things happen.”
As it turns out, we were forced to pump the dark liquid through tubes connected to this elaborate looking machine and then transfer them into metal barrels and then finally load them onto a larger aircraft that would come around once a week. However, the liquid itself was a lot less viscous than oil. It also seemed to be bubbling indefinitely. Safe to say, I had no idea what it was. I still don’t.
The only good thing that came out of this was that the soldiers had set up a moderate sized electric barrier around our settlement as to stop any additional creatures from interfering with our work. However, we also weren’t getting out. They also provided us with food. Unsurprisingly, they were just more energy bars. However... these at least tasted decent. Other than that though… it was absolute hell. It was prison all over again. By the time the first month had expired, almost half of us had committed suicide. In an apparent attempt to combat this, one of the soldiers announced that once we’d finished up, we would be given a place to stay in Neo-Civitus. Most of us seemed to buy it, because worker morale skyrocketed right after he’d said that. However… I didn’t. I’d always been good at reading people. And they were full of shit. They weren’t planning on taking us back with them. They were going to waste us as soon as they’d gotten enough of that damn liquid. That was the only outcome that could have been waiting for us.
I don’t know why I didn’t just end it myself. Blind hope, I suppose. But it was also something else. By all odds, I should’ve been dead at that point. Everybody around me seemed to be biting the dust, but I was still alive somehow. I shouldn’t have been. I still shouldn’t be. Something must have been working in my favor. Whether it was some kind of divine intervention or just dumb luck was irrelevant. It was doing the job for me. This train of thought kept me going. Somehow, I was getting out of this alive.
Turns out… I was right.
I don’t know how much time had gone by when it happened. Must have months, at the very least. Or a year. I don’t really know.
One day, we were working away when we started to feel the ground rumbling beneath our feet. We looked at the crater of liquid. At that point, we’d depleted a considerable amount of it. It must have been at least a few meters lower than when we started. The rumbling only got more severe. The Soldiers themselves didn’t seem to know what was going on. Eventually, it got to the point where we could barely stand up. The soldiers lifted into the sky, trying to make sense of it. The ground finally settled a few minutes later. All was still again. Without knowing what else to do, they just instructed us to go back to pumping. However, as soon as we flipped on the machine again, the ground beneath us started cracking.
We all stepped away on instinct. Suddenly, an enormous black creature burst of out the ground. I stumbled back, but got a better look at it in the process. It was a massive worm-like thing with slimy black flesh and sharp appendages sticking out at various angles. It burst into the air, lunging up at one of the surprised soldiers. At that point, all hell broke loose. The worm was followed by another. And then another. During the chaos, I remembered something. I had hidden the last few shards from the prison in a hidden compartment on one of the towers.
I rushed up there to look for it. I found it just as soon as the tower started collapsing. I cut myself mere moments before hitting the ground again. I looked up, witnessing the surreal scene in front of me. My fellow prisoners were mostly dead, being swallowed up by the worms at a torrid pace. I saw Kunz trying to hop over the now-broken electrical barrier before being cut open by one of their appendages. The three soldiers were throwing everything that they had at the creatures, shooting them down one-by-one. But they just kept coming up. As I was taking all of this in, something hit me from behind and flung me into a tree. As I lifted myself back up, I saw one of the soldiers being overwhelmed. The two others seemed to shout something to each other before one of them took a rectangular device off of his belt. He pressed one of the buttons on it before tossing it down onto the ground. As soon as he did this, they flew out of there, leaving their fellow soldier behind.
At first, I thought the device was going to be an explosive of sorts. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I watched as it opened up and a dark-purple light began emanating out of it. It started growing and growing, engulfing the surrounding area. I started running when I realized that it wasn’t stopping. However, as soon as I got up, I felt myself being tugged backwards. I turned around, expecting to see one of the soldiers, but there was nothing there. Just the purple void getting ever so bigger. I fell to the ground, clawing at the soil as I was sucked into an unknown fate. As the light consumed me, I felt weightless for a second. However, I couldn’t breathe. I looked around, only to see dark, vague shapes floating around me in a sea of purple nothingness. After about maybe twenty seconds, I blacked out.
I awoke an unknown amount of time later, face down in what I assumed to be sand. I groggily got up and looked around… but I could barely see in front of me. I was surrounded by what appeared to be a heavy, orange fog. It was pretty evident that I was in some sort of desert, but every other detail was obscured. I only realized that my hearing was gone when it started to come back. That’s when I heard the sounds of distant screams all around me.
Suddenly, I could make out a shape in the distance. It was hard to tell what it was, but it seemed to be getting closer to me. Getting too close. It was one of those worms that had burst out of the ground. I jumped out of the way just in time to avoid it as it lunged towards me. I scrambled backwards, as it buried into the sand. It slithered around, trying to regain its bearings before it seemed to locate me. As it tried to lunge at me again, it looked as if it was being held back by something. It tried a few more times before a heavy, guttural roar emanated from somewhere just behind it. Suddenly, the worm was dragged backwards and out of my sight. I didn’t catch a glimpse of what did it.
I got up and started running away, but I really had no idea where I was going. Hell, I didn’t know what the fuck this place even was. About every step I’d take, I’d hear these ungodly sounds coming from every angle around me. Every time I’d see a moving shape in the distance, I’d change directions. It took a while, but I finally stumbled upon a ramshackle cabin – it was the first indication that humans must exist somewhere in this place. It was old and rotting, but I was tired as hell, so I decided to go in and take refuge for a while. To my surprise, there was a bed in there, along with a pail of water in the corner. Although it was warm from the boiling temperature outside, it tasted like heaven to me.
That’s where I am right now. After writing this down, I’m going to need to pass out. I’m so tired. I don’t know how the fuck I got here. Maybe that device the soldier threw down was a teleportation mechanism of sorts? Fucking hell… then where did it take me to?
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Credits
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