Okay, I hope this is working. I don’t have much time, so I’ll get out as much of an update as I can with a bit of backlog on what’s been happening around here.

Those still here in Phoenix are having troubles getting the electricity to work properly. Solar power isn’t working well due to the volcanic eruptions from Mount Rainier a while back. The ash cloud has affected the normally beautiful Arizona sunset and it looks rather gloomy these days with a reddish haze. Rolling blackouts can last for days, which doesn’t help for charging my phone and laptop to bring you this information. As it is now, I have about half battery power, but it’s the connection I’m more concerned about. As long as the phone connection holds out, I’m good, since I have to use my phone to plug into the laptop for internet access.

The damage California took on in the earthquakes has affected us as well with any transformer that feeds Phoenix. Micro-bursts have increased during this monsoon season, causing more damage to transformers and power lines with not enough people to work on them, and I’m pretty certain I saw a tornado the other day moving across the Salt River Reservation. It’s not the first one I’ve seen, but that’s just a bit too close for my taste. Where I’m staying isn’t far from that rez and we had to hide in the bathtub with a mattress pulled over us. There are no warning sirens for this area, so if we don’t happen to see the tornado, we’re out of luck. My cousin’s house on the rez was completely destroyed by the most recent one. They’re staying with mom and me now.

Partially due to the blackouts, water is scarce now within the city, and what I do manage to find outdoors has become septic. Perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes, which carry a new strain of the West Nile Virus—the one that has people walking like the dead around here. It’s rather creepy and has my imagination resorting to all those zombie movies I watched as a kid. The heat doesn’t help the situation, as it makes them even more lethargic, and the monsoon clouds seem to hold the heat in as well as the moisture, bringing humidity levels to an all time high for the area. The virus is much more contagious than before, and with what’s left of the CDC focusing on the new flu strains that have mutated beyond comprehension, amongst many other new diseases that have popped up, they haven’t had time to keep up with WNV.

I’ve taken to the nearby desert surrounding what is left of the Phoenix area to hunt barrel cactus for clean water. Unfortunately, I must contend with the wildlife for this, so I always carry my 30/30 rifle with me in case a mountain lion decides I’d make a tasty meal, since food is scarce for them, too. My cousin Daniel comes with me on these ventures because it’s not safe to travel alone anymore. Mountain lion has a very interesting taste to it, by the way, and I’m quite glad my father took us hunting when we were younger. It’s difficult to preserve any perishable food, so anything killed needs to be eaten soon or dried. When we kill something that size, we share it with anyone else who might be still around. There are a couple of families left in the neighborhood, but they’re getting ready to leave, too.

When I woke up for my morning run, the power was out again. The run is something I still do, even though the world is in a bleak state of affairs and my sneakers are falling apart. It is a custom of mine that I can’t let go. Besides, the rattlesnakes are less of a worry at dawn because they’ve fed. Daniel and I run toward the sunrise and when we stop, we take in the sun as it peaks the horizon, waving our hands toward us to bring us its strength and energy. Thus begins our day, with a spiritual connection to the universe. It’s the only way I can remain sane in this chaos. I’m not so sure about Daniel, but the man is a rock.

Here’s a picture:

On our way back, I cut into a barrel cactus and soak a bandana with the water while Daniel keeps watch. Then I transfer the water to my canteen. It’s a bit tedious, but it’s the only way to get fresh water, and it’s hardly enough for all of us so we do it as often as we can until we’re ready to leave.

Hard to believe that only three years ago, I sat on my back porch doing homework, studying geologic disasters. I never thought I’d see so many happen in such a short amount of time.

The city is no longer habitable, and I’ve run into some people who are heading north, coming up from South America and Mexico. Most of them have expressed going to Canada. My goal is to find a place with clean water and a lack of mosquitoes. Somewhere my mother will be safe. I’ve heard about a camp up north around Montezuma’s Well, which makes sense because I know there is a natural spring there.

So that’s where I’m heading. I’ll be on the road for a bit and will report back when I get the chance to…

From the desk of Soren Ragnvald, Editor In Chief

The incidents in Fresh Kills New York are frightening, and I am grateful to the survivors of the incidents there for the safety of our reporter, Lori Kim, while at the same time, I express my sincerest condolences to the survivors for their fallen. I am going to send Lori to a safer expedition while I attempt to negotiate a resolution with Conrad Blankenship. I’m certain something can be arranged. There is no need for these kinds of actions in our world. We all need to rebuild. Lori, I’ll send you someplace as safe as I can make it for your next assignments.

We are able to receive word from AJ Green of what had been the Coast Guard, but unfortunately, I have no network in that part of the world. The Caribbean and Haiti did not have enough of a market to justify an entry to cover it. At the time of the trouble, Nordlander Telecommunications had only a small foothold in New England. We are receiving his broadcasts via satellite, but have no boats or resources in place for rescue. We will monitor the situation and look to provide resources as we can.

Ithius Sinclair continues to find stories in the Bay area in California. This area in particular has fallen on desperate times. Food and resources are scarce, and the competition for survival has divided the survivors into clans. The area is one of the most anarchic, violent and dangerous I have current reports on, and there are many rumors of cannibalism. Large wildfires still burn unchecked in the hills, while other places are flooded with glacial melt. Still, there are patches of survivors clinging on and rebuilding, and order has some hope of returning to the area.

In the Phoenix area, Michaela Blackhorse is just coming on-line. The area struggles for water, and the populations from Central America and Mexico heading to more hospitable climates to the north can lead to significant clashes. At the same time, there is a new strain of West Nile Virus that is finding a foothold in the area that appears to be exceptionally strong and has new dangerous symptoms. There is little ability to develop medicines or vaccines anywhere, and so this could spread to the rest of the continent if it isn’t contained there soon.

The End of the World Times continues to provide coverage of survival niches in our post-apocalypse world. Our reporters are independent agents who work on your donations. Please help us support their coverage.

Filed June 21, 2012

So I’ll pick up with Pickman. He didn’t say much as he led me away from the tunnel. Nothing more than “Stay away from them unless you want mushrooms. Not good people. Good mushrooms. But not good people.” or “Get behind me,” this latter phrase as he would sense some kind of danger, though none ever materialized that I could tell.

He led me back away from the harbor into the west side of Boston, and into a large industrial building. I know we passed Fenway Park on the way, but I’m not sure where we wound up. The building was huge. When he closed the door and locked it down his resolve softened.

The building had a few levels to it, and while it had an industrial purpose once, it now lay idle and strewn with refuse. He was a scavenger and a packrat. The refuse was piled in categories, so he was using it for something. One pile was books, from the looks of them, horror books. A lot of Stephen King. I counted three copies of Pet Cemetery alone, but there were more, Koontz, Lovecraft, Poe, Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Richard Matheson, Frankenstein, Dracula. All the stuff I read in high school before all of this happened. Good taste. Behind this pile was more, shelves, walls lined with books, separated by volume, ten or twenty of the same one, arranged by type as if the warehouse was a neurotic bookstore.

Looked like some spots in the walls had been patched and reinforced. Maybe that was what he was doing here. Didn’t get to dawdle long. He led me up to his office. It was up a couple flights of stairs, and looked like it had once been just drywall and windows, but now it was a steel cage, bars on the windows, with strategic ports in the diamond plate on the walls. Defensible. Not sure I wanted to go up. For fear I couldn’t get back out.

I asked if he could hold up for a minute while I caught my breath. He said he’d get me some water, and gave me the .45 just in case. In case of what?

The .45 gave me a sense of who he was. A .45 could shoot through the walls of his office, so he was telling me he trusts me. Easy for him to say. He wasn’t just almost eaten. He still had a hundred pounds on me and who know what kind of arsenal in that room. Plus, I knew I was valuable, and who knew what that meant.

He came back with a canteen and handed it to me, saying it was distilled and filtered. I smelled it and took a drink. It was clean and good.

His eyes wouldn’t land on anything for more than a second. He seemed almost wary.

I asked him what he does, and he came back with something completely unexpected. He said he’s a painter, but times being what they are, he doesn’t get a lot of time to paint anymore.

I asked to see his paintings and he led me up to the office. The room was larger than I thought it would be, and he’d kept the windows on the building unobstructed. Southern Exposure. The office had a bed and one wall taken up with a store of provisions, rice, flour, canned goods, supplies. He also had an arsenal in another wall, closet dedicated to ammunition. Bows and arrows hung from the ceiling. In the middle was a large table, covered with canvases, tubes of paint, rags, and the like.

He flipped the covers off of a canvas.

“Here,” he said, and then racked his rifle.

“Do you want this too?” I gave him the gun. I was at the point of believing he wouldn’t hurt me.

I looked around at the canvas, a hideous beast looked back, demonic and wild at once. It belonged on the cover of one of the books from the pile downstairs. He flipped the covering on another painting, and another. They were all the same.

It was then that I noticed something under a covering that wasn’t a painting or supplies. I tried to sneak a glance underneath it, but there was a commotion, and I only got a glimpse of dark gray fur. The door jumped open, and Pickman was grabbing his gun and shooting in an instant. I ducked for any amount of cover I could find, expecting bullets might ricochet in the steel cage. The table was fortified, and so I landed under there. From the floor I saw a feral cat, or what once had been a feral cat.

“Damned things. Demons keep attacking.”

Demons? I thought.

I stood up and looked at him in all seriousness. “Pickman, these are cats, not demons. You should be eating these when you kill them.”

He wouldn’t hear it, and this is when I figured Pickman out. He’d been a horror fan, a really ultimate fan, and confronted with the horror of the apocalypse, retreated into the worlds in his mind.

“You don’t know the people that live in Boston, they use magic, they summon demons, and send them after me. They’ll want you, but I can protect you.”

There’s things you never want to hear coming out of a psychotic’s mouth, and this is one of them, an indication of possessiveness that really just needs to be run away from.

I told him I was fine.

“No you’re not.”

I began to make my way towards the door, very slowly while I told him about my credentials and my assignment.

“I need to protect you. We must repopulate the world.”

That’s the other things you don’t want to hear. I made for the door, but he got in front of me.

“You’re not leaving.”

I kicked him in the knee, hard, but he hardly flinched. He picked me up and threw me across the room. I backed up, plotting my way around him, but he came at me fast, pushed me against the wall, and my shoulder broke a window. Glass cut my shoulder deep, and my head was bleeding too. I grabbed for anything I could and knocked him on the head. You’d think from movies and things a good blow to the head would knock him cold, but it doesn’t work that way. You have to hit people a few times. He caught my arm, and almost pinned me when the door opened and three people rushed in.

“Pickman!” they yelled.

He turned around.

“You can’t have her. She’s mine.”

This gave me the chance to break away. I kicked him in the small of the back and he dropped. I rushed over to the others, hoping they weren’t cannibals or psychotics. After today, the odds had to be in my favor.

They wound up talking him down from there. They “negotiated” my release with a copy of “I am Legend” and “The Cthulhu Mythos”, though I gather they were from the pile downstairs.

This is how I managed to come across my assignment. The people who rescued me were scavengers from Conrad Blankenship’s community. They stopped their scavenging and took me there.

They’ve been fixing me up. I got stitches in my arm and temple, and I’ve been recovering from the loss of blood under their hospitality.

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