Journal:Arizhel
| Arizhel | ||||||||||
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May 20
At least I think that's what day it is. I've been dwelling in Malton for some time now, having moved here before the outbreak. Job transfer, you see, to St. Paschal's hospital in Peppardville. I was a doctor - it seems like it was in another life - a pacifist and a healer, trying to better mankind. I couldn't have taken a man's life if it had come down to him or me. Now... I hesitate to think what I have become now. I've -been- dead. Rather, I've been undead. I'm a desperate woman, clinging to life by any means possible - and that means killing. But can you really kill that which isn't truly dead? I wrestle with that question every day. Some of the walking dead seem to -enjoy- their unlife. I can't imagine it...
Yes, I have been dead. But not today. And so here I sit in the ramshackle ruin that is Giddings Mall, writing into a journal that I happend upon in the ransacked remains of a bookstore. It's pink, and covered in hearts, and has a little white kitten pictured on the front. A child's journal, matching pen included. There's something comforting about it, to tell the truth. I can hear them outside, the walking dead. Scratching at the barricades, and when they get really worked up, hammering at them with their cold, dead fists. I've seen more than a few -gnawing- at the plastic trees and sofas that we block their entry with. Better that than gnawing on my skull. Better indeed.
It's been a good siege. Not too many casualties, and the ones that there have been have had the antidote administered in fairly short order. I curse the day NecroTech brought this plague upon our heads, and in the same breath, I admire them for bringing the cure as well. But mostly just the former. We wouldn't need the latter, if not for that. Yes, a good siege, and that's why I've got a quiet moment to share my thoughts at last. Well, it sounds like they're getting restless outside. It's time to shore up the barricades, and maybe put a few rounds into the frisky ones.
Indeed, what have I become?
May 21
All's quiet outside (well, as quiet as it gets, anyway, meaning nobody's smashing at the barricades), and a good number of people are asleep. Me, I can't sleep, not with the groans of the hungry undead echoing through the mall. Well that, and it's my turn on watch, making sure that none of them come inside for the smorgasbord. God, there's several hundred people in here, all fighting for their lives, and a couple hundred zombies outside trying to take them away.
I've found myself thinking back a lot lately, over the past months since the outbreak. So much has happened. I took it upon myself to learn how to use a gun, something that I swore I'd never do. Just about anything can be a weapon to me now - axe, crowbar, hell, even a plain old kitchen knife, though I don't think I'd want to fight a zombie with one of those. I'm pretty sure all that'd do is piss it off. So... yeah. I'll stick with the axe in a pinch.
I'd been wandering Malton on my own for a long time. Originally, I stayed holed up in the hospital where I was working, patching people up that needed it. Eventually, I learned to tell which ones needed attention without asking, even the most minor injuries. I think it's out of sheer necessity, to tell the truth, just like the guns. Few things will stop one of the walking dead in its tracks like a few shotgun rounds to the head. For awhile there, I was a walking armory, carrying as many guns, clips, and extra rounds as I could carry. Guns, guns, guns.
That's when I met up with the CDF. Creedy Defense Force, a group of people that I've come to call family. I'd wandered away from the Peppardville area after ending up undead several times, looking for greener pastures. But then, I heard of this sort of military organization working out of Fort Creedy, supposedly one of the biggest and best-organized groups in Malton. So, I figured I'd check it out, you know? I figured maybe, just maybe, there was strength in numbers. How right I was. They've got people, they've got guns, and they've got their act together. Since I knew how to operate NecroTech's devices by now, I ended up as a medic/reviver out in the Pimbank/Roftwood area.
Not too long after it started up, that squad got shut down. The CDF had problems back home at the fort, and resolved to solve those ones first before going on an expansion run. I got reassigned to (well, more like I volunteered for) the Peppardville squad. Actually, I recently got promoted to a full member of the CDF, included in some of the more sensitive discussions. I guess my efforts at the mall got noticed by the people in charge. I'm still a medic/reviver, but I've honestly been spending most of my time lately barricading this damn mall. Being a medic makes me a lot happier. I've turned in my guns (most of them, anyway) for first aid kits and a pack full of syringes. I mean, there's plenty of people out there willing to kill every zombie in sight, but what use is it? They just stand up again. But when survivors fall... well, they need someone to give them a hand back up. If that hand happens to be holding a syringe, well, that's all the better.
It's been two weeks since the zombies laid siege to the mall, and still we're holding them at bay with plastic trees, broken televisions, sofas, and shelves. We scavenge what we can from the remains of the shops, and thank God, it always seems like there's something to find. How long can we last? How long before they get bored and shamble off?
God, there they go again.
Date Unknown
The page is covered with random scribblings, as if a small child that had no clue about the alphabet were attempting to form words while writing very very hard with the pen. Indeed, the writing is so forced that it indents the pages below with the imprint of the pen strokes. The markings are wholly illegible, and appear to trail off into a single, frustrated line, angling downward across the whole bottom half of the page. In fact, a ragged tear splits the bottom of the page in two, along with the bottom edges of a few pages behind it.
June 21
It's been exactly a month since I could find the time to write. My birthday has come and gone. The only reason I know what day it is is that someone else told me. It's so easy to lose track of the days, especially since I spent maybe a week total as a zombie. I got killed in a break-in at the mall, and was turned into a light snack for a particularly vicious brain-rotted specimen when I went out looking for others that, much like myself after I was attacked, wished to be returned to their previous, living states.
I found the one that chewed me up. I'm not sure how I knew, but something in my hazy, instinctual meanderings told me that he was the one that condemned me to undeath yet again. I say 'he' because the human body it inhabits is male, but really it's an 'it'. They all are. In any case, it's academic. I clawed and bit until it was a mismatched pile of rotting flesh and tattered clothes, lying at my feet with limbs akimbo.
I shudder to think of it.
Since the last time I wrote, the military has gotten radio communications working again. This seemed like a Godsend for the first couple of days, until everyone realized that Malton was full of idiots with nothing better to do with their time than jam up the airwaves with all manner of drivel. Apparently realizing this, the military restricted civilian communications to certain frequencies, leaving a few of them open for trained radio operators. I asked one of the guys to train me on how to use the radio so I could use the restricted frequencies. Unfortunately, it seems like there's just as many jerks that can use them! I leave my radio turned way, way down most of the time because of the sheer amount of idiocy that comes through. Why not do something constructive with your time? Go barricade a building, or heal up a fellow survivor, for Pete's sake. Or heck, go kill a zombie. That's something that we can never do enough of.
The rest of the time, I've been assisting in Peppardville with barricading and reviving, killing brain-rotted zombies, and the occasional medical patch-up. I was called away from the mall siege to help lock down the entire suburb, keeping buildings safe for the unaffiliated survivors in the area. It seems like we've got the area pretty much secured, with only a few minor break-ins to be reported. The siege at Giddings is over, too, the zombies seemingly having gotten bored and wandered off. There's only a couple of other times in the history of the outbreak that humans have held a building against the walking dead and actually played their cards right to come out on top.
Nobody really seems to know where all the zombies from both the area around the fort and from Giddings Mall got to. Surely they're off causing mischief somewhere. It seems like we're content to let them go on their way for the moment. After all, why pursue an enemy that you cannot possibly hope to best? Better to pick our battles, and just try to keep our little neck of the woods safe.
For now.
July 31
It's been a long time since I've had time to write. Also, I lost my pen there for awhile. It was in the bottom of my pack, under the first-aid kits that I managed to scrounge up. For some reason, some of the human survivors have been killing a lot of their fellow humans lately. I can't imagine why they'd want to, when we have a common enemy - the zombies. They pontificate and say that the CDF is so horrible, and we're trying to rule Malton with an iron fist. At least, that's what it seems like. You'd think we were killing and eating babies from the way these people talk about us, when really, we're just trying to keep everyone organized. Organized means alive. Don't they understand that?
We don't want to rule. We just want to survive.
We're back at the mall again for another 'siege'. This one looks to be pretty ugly. I'd better quit writing and see if I can go scrounge up some more casings to make syringes. God knows enough of us have fallen already that I've used up quite a few. Even our fearless leader (or perhaps -especially- our fearless leader - the zombies and the crazy human murderers seem to take special pleasure in killing him) ends up out there as one of the shambling dead every so often. Best to stay stocked up, so I can help our guys come back to the right side of things.
The live side of things.
