Journal:Marcus Payne
| Marcus Payne | ||||||||||
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DHPD |
| This user is a DHPD officer. |
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Fair Tactics Leader |
| This group leader has ratified the Coalition for Fair Tactics Group Pledge. |
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Fair Tactics Player |
| This user has signed the Coalition for Fair Tactics Player Pledge. |
5th of September 2006
A journal! Wow. I don't think I've seen one of the sort ever since my last one ran out of space in the first Caiger Siege. Sure enough, I had a ton of pencils, but with nothing to write on, they didn't really come in handy. Odd though, that I found more spray cans in schools rather than exercise books. Lord knows what these Maltonians have been doing before the zombies broke out and ravaged the streets.
Well, to start things off, I've been out here along the edges of the town, hanging around the Dunell Hills Militarized Zone (as Conndraka calls it). I still don't know his real name, but then again, I don't know a lot of people's names, as most of the folks here prefer to be called by their new names. Military callsigns or something they've picked up in their time here and used it. Not that I have a problem with that, since I'm accustomed to the way things are around here, and when you've been in Malton as long as I have, you get used to a lot of unusual things.
Zombies shambling around the streets are a common sight, and so's the usual trenchcoater. People from all walks of life, who might have been leading an otherwise uneventful life have somehow come across an abundance of those katanas and black, leather trenchcoats that you thought would have been normal in something like the Matrix. Funny though, since I met one of those chaps who actually owned such a shop once, and when he came back to his establishment after hiding out for a few weeks, his shelves were pretty much swept clean. I guess that's what happens when you own a shop that sells collectibles, Nazi helmets, bloody RAF uniforms and even a Garand or two. It's probably a matter of time before you see a nut running down the street with an MP40 in his hands and an SS uniform over his shoulders. As if the pirates and the clowns weren't bad enough.
And here I am, holding out on a random office building in Owsleybank, a quiet suburb right on the fringe of the city limits. Not too far from the Hills where I've now called home, running operations for the Dunell Hills Police Department, as a squad commander.
To think about that, me, a squad commander! To think it's been eleven months since I was last dropped into Wray Heights by chopper with the rest of my own mates. Almost been a year now, since that 27th of October when we were dropped in, trained to come up against the walking dead. I don't think, with all the guns that we had, would have prepared us for what we faced on the days that came, me separated from my mates, and from what I last saw of them, turned into the undead or just to fill their bellies.
Eleven months ago, and the thoughts of the other privates getting munched up still remains in my head, sometimes waking me up from sleep. Sure, I've seen more than my share of the dead come to life, seen more than what any man would need to see just to be convinced that these things exist. Mall seiges, running from rooftop to rooftop just to avoid getting clawed, just another day's work for me. And for the other men (and one woman) in my squad of eight. Stay long enough in Malton, and any other battle in the outside world would seem like a walk in the park.
But then, odd as it may seem to some, I have come to like Malton, Dunell Hills and everything around me. In the outside world, I'm a lowly private, a mere nobody with not much of a future ahead, not even a girlfriend to hold me on those cold, Saturday nights. Over here, I'm a squad commander of the DHPD, one of the command staff within the group, and heaps of mates that I would gladly call brothers (and sisters). Eleven months ago, if I could have seen myself today, I would have called myself mad, and would have had nothing more to do than to just get out of the damned city altogether.
But as I look out the skyline, the ruined buildings, the walls spraypainted with the slogans of those who call themselves survivors, the clicking sounds of ammunition being loaded into their guns, the plastic trees placed up against the doors, the donuts my men bake, and the beer they help to brew, this post-apocalyptic wasteland. I don't think I could ever feel more alive, just sitting out here, with the groans and moans of the undead in the air faraway from where I am, and the crackling speech from the radio by my side.
Malton is my home. Funny how it sounds when I say it out aloud.
