I finally got this damn thing working. My name is Lt. Commander AJ Green. We performed an emergency landing in the Dominican Republic twelve weeks ago in response to a distress call that sounded like a medical outbreak. I was very wrong.

We were flying in an HC-144A from Clearwater, FL to the old Coast Guard Station in Borinquen, Puerto Rico. This was during the brief period of time when the governments were still trying to gain control over the situation. Vaccines were being shipped to combat a virus that was mutating out of control, supplies were being shipped away like candy. We were to transport aid, vaccines, and supplies that were needed to continue the treatment of influenza victims in the Caribbean for the next month.

Lt. Jack Solomon and I were assigned two additional crewmen to manage the handling of  medical personnel and supplies.

Ensigns Amanda Briggs and Robert Calloway joined us in the cockpit after strapping in the fourteen relief personnel into the cargo hold with the hummer, the vaccines, all of the electrical equipment that needed replacing on base, and enough emergency rations for a small village to live happily for a few months.

About 30 minutes from our destination, we heard a very unique call for help. Someone on one of the islands we were passing had locked himself in the control room of a military outpost in Haiti. He was screaming (in broken English throughout broken static). The strangest thing I recall hearing was that his father was trying to kill him. Somewhere in there he mentioned his father’s funeral being several weeks ago.

We radioed back and decided that this could have been some new strain of disease in the outbreak that the doctors needed to attend to before it got out of control. We changed course and decided we were going to try to land at the old Cibao Airport in Santiago.

We landed at what was the start of the first of at least three hurricanes that plowed over the airbase. We taxied into the only roofed service hangar and did the only thing we could do in a hurricane. We waited.

A week went by of solid storms. We did our best to keep the hangar doors closed at all times, but mostly we stayed in the plane. The occasional bashing on the outside of the hangar was easier to ignore in the cockpit. The hangar had a bathroom, and the eighteen of us waited out the storms. Apparently the rest of the island wasn’t so lucky.

When we emerged from the hangar, piles of debris were everywhere. Over the course of the next two weeks, half of the island came down with some strange strain of the disease. One of the doctors on board tried to explain it to me, but all I got from the conversation was that it wasn’t swine flu, and it was blown here from another island thanks to the hurricane. Mosquitoes, maybe?

Five of our medical personnel died that week from it. Another eight (including Lt. Soloman and Ensign Calloway) were on death’s doorstep for about a week before a few of them died. Calloway, Jack, and another one of the doctors eventually pulled through, but the other five didn’t make it.  Ensign Briggs and I, with the help of Dr. Gerald Samuel (the only other person in good health), buried the dead outside the airport limits behind the hangar. We really wanted to get out of there, but Calloway and Jack weren’t exactly making a speedy recovery and the doctor didn’t want them to be moved at all. During his copious amounts of free time, Samuel was able to determine that all of the victims had mosquito bites. Very peculiar.

I took one of the luggage go-carts out of the hangar with Amanda, and we drove through the airport looking for a fuel pump or a tanker truck. I didn’t know where we were going next, but I sure as hell wanted a full tank of gas when we left.

That’s when I first saw them. Coming in from the other side of the airport, a small mob of about a dozen locals was shuffling their way towards us. Briggs wanted to speak with them, but I couldn’t help but feel like something was off about them. There was nothing wrong with how they looked, aside from being locals. It’s just that they didn’t move like they were supposed to. It seemed…inhuman…the way they swayed and staggered about while they approached us. It was almost as if they’d forgotten how to walk. I saw a tanker truck and decided we’d make for that instead. Briggs and I ditched the cart and hopped into the truck. There was some debris in the passenger seat (someone left their windows open), but we took off across the tarmac anyways.

We ran into another problem outside the hangar. Those doctors we buried the week before…they were limping around the corner to greet us. Covered in mud, staggering the same way our pursuers were giving chase they were all converging in on us at the hangar.

That was probably not the best time for Robert to come out to investigate the strange knocking noises he was hearing on the hangar walls.  They were on him and dragged him behind the hangar before we had a chance to do anything. I couldn’t see what they were doing to Robert, but no one came out from behind the hangar for quite some time. We capitalized on this window of opportunity to open up the hangar, get the tanker in, and lock it back up before any of them had a chance to come back.

We started fueling and were trying to figure out a destination to get the hell out of there. Briggs suggested Puerto Rico, our original destination. Samuel suggested warning Haiti that there was some sort of epidemic on the island and to close the border. I really should stop listening to doctors.

We managed to get out of there without a scratch.  Apparently they aren’t too bright….didn’t think to use the door in the back of the hangar…they just kept banging on the walls until they saw we were leaving.

As I was setting the plane up for departure, that’s when I saw the rest of them. A giant mob of hundreds…possibly even a thousand or more…feebly approaching from the terminal. The odd thing was, as we were leaving the ground, I swear I saw the shape of a man on top of the control tower, beckoning them in our general direction. I had absolutely no idea what was going on at the time.  Now I know I should have shot the bastard where he stood. Or at least knocked him off the tower.

Damn it…the clouds are rolling in, and I have to get this equipment under some cover before it gets rained on.  I’ll explain more when I can, but I don’t have an awful amount of free time while we’re dealing with these border attacks. There always seem to be more of them after a storm…

Semper Paratus.

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I met a man named Nex Anhelo today.  His name means “death breather,” but the way he carries himself suggests to me that he is not the man his name implies.  It seems that here, in the swamplands of Fleshtown, a name makes the man; who you are perceived to be centers on your name.  Ithius, apparently, is a strong name here, but Nex tells me it will only get me so far.  I’ll have to earn passage into the inner portions of the city, to the banished spaces, and even to the darker portions of the Santa Cruz Mountains.  I’m still learning what that will take.

I’m not alone here, thankfully.  It would be suicide to be here alone.  I’ve had to call up a few favors through my father’s old business.  You could say I have an entourage, but these people only have my safety in mind.  There are two:  Erin and Bruce.  The latter has been here before.  He told me the other day that he fled the area after the big quake in January, the one that split the mountains right through where Highway 17 wound its way from San Jose to Santa Cruz.  You’d have to see the split to believe it.  It cannot compete with the Grand Canyon, but it has a demonic look to it:  gnarled brambles, spiked rock, and ash run-offs from the fires.  Fires still rage out in the deep mountains–old brush and overdue forests torn down by the heat, poor weather, and lightning storms.  Those are parts of the mountains where most people never go; it’s too dangerous.  If Mother Nature doesn’t get you, the mountain folk will.  I’d rather Mother Nature took my life, if I were to die out here.

In any case, Nex tells me that there have been rumors of the mountain folk moving downhill into what is left of the city.  I haven’t seen them, but Nex knew they had been about when a few farmers stumbled into Mission Quarter yesterday in rough shape.  The farmers had been raided by an enormous party of cannibals–at least fifty men and women, but probably more.  What was once a farming community of a hundred people had been reduced to a dozen or so people.  The rest?  Nex didn’t ask.  But you can guess where most of them have ended up.

I’ll end this with a word of advice given to me by Nex’s son, Vita:  ”When the trees shift and you hear unfamiliar voices in the dark; run.  An unfamiliar voice is a demon in the night.”  Poetic, sure, but out here and in these times, it couldn’t be any more true.  Santa Cruz is no place to be when the sun sets.

Hello, and welcome to the End of the World Times.

If you are reading this, you are one of the lucky ones who have restored internet connections. Currently, you are in the vast minority, but we are working to restore service to more pockets of survivors as they are discovered. This is no small task, but rest assured, I and what is left of Nordland Telecommunications are working as hard as we can to repair lines, restore power to the main hubs of the internet and reestablish the network links. Oftentimes, our technicians must dig out rubble and dedicate their lives to a location, food and supplies must be airlifted in to maintain them, and the work is slow and tedious, but it must be done. It must be done.

You are probably aware of what has happened locally wherever you are, but as communications networks fell in the catastrophe, news lost the ability to travel. Let me try to give you a brief overview of what has happened in the various places of the Earth.
There were some things that affected us all. When global warming caused the water levels to rise, Tuvala was the first to fall below sea level, but the oceans crept up on every coastal town. Venice, Florida and New Orleans were inundated. The refugees this created moved inland, to other cities, but so many died. We still have Disneyworld, but thanks to the wealth of the corporation, it is Disney Island.

But they were followed by the giant hurricanes of ‘10 and ‘11. Eighteen hurricanes of cat 4 in the first year, and twenty-three the next. We’ll see what 2012 brings, but it looks to be similar.

Then there were the flus. H1N1 met with H5N1, and the strains kept mutating, and people kept dying. The CDC kept up for a while, but the spread was too far too fast, and they soon ran out of resources. The 1918 flu seemed small in comparison.

When the United States Midwest, and Europe’s plains dried out, the food aid to other hungry nations ended. Food and water shortages led to hunger in even the most prosperous nations, and wars in the less prosperous. In the U.S., there was a large migration to the cities, and the overcrowding made life expensive. Many cities had riots for resources and housing.

This instability led to other disasters, mostly due to human actions. When Iran fired it’s nuclear weapons at Israel, and Israel responded in kind, it led to fallout spreading across much of the Middle East. North Korea followed in kind against China. It doesn’t exist anymore, and those that survived the fallout in South Korea spread throughout the world.
After all that we hardly had a chance, but it kept coming. Three large volcanoes went in ‘10. The big one hit in California in ‘11, resulting in a tidal wave that hit Japan hard. And when the asteroid hit Montana, the blast carried for hundreds of miles. The dust has cooled the atmosphere some, but getting plants to grow in some places requires artificial sunlight, and solar power is less efficient than it could be.

This brings us more or less up to date. As far as more details, our reporters will put the rest together through the course of their investigations.

Before I move on to introductions, it’s only fair to mention that our reporters are paid based on donations from you, the reader, so if you have anything to give, we take all currencies.

To start off the journal, we have Lori Kim heading towards Boston to investigate Conrad Blankenship’s community. Conrad took over a complex of buildings that started off as a green building project. Conrad’s project is now seeking self-sufficiency.

We’ll be catching up with more reporters and more locations as we go.

Thank you for reading. Good luck out there.

Editor,
Soren Ragnvald