User:BATTEUR/journal

You were searching through the rubble of an old safehouse. With a nostalgic half-smile on your face, you pick out old knick-knacks and junk that you had to leave behind when you left in a hurry that fateful night. Suddenly, you feel a sharp pain in your hand. Wincing and removing the appendage from the offending pile of rubbish, you peer down in shock at the perpetrator to your newly-found papercut. Digging out an old leather book from underneath the remains of a chair, you curiously flip open to the first page. In almost unreadable chickenscratch, you make out a hastily scrawled note on the inside front cover of the leather-bound journal...

A NOTE

Journal property of Zacharie Batteur. If found, I am most likely dead. No need to worry about going out of your way to find me. Stay safe, whoever you are, dear reader.
<3,
Zacharie

DAY ONE

When Hugo gave me this journal for my birthday last August, I was certain that I would probably only use the thing once, just to make him happy (if at all). Well, here I am now, barricaded in my own home, with nothing to do but write by the dim, flickering light of a candle I dug up from our basement.
I watch the shadows dance across the walls, setting an eerie mood about the whole place. I suppose I should be lamenting over the pain of loosing my family and feel anger and a desire to kill all infected beings dead/execute some sort of revenge plot, but instead I just feel sad.
I suppose that writing this journal may serve as my security blanket. What with all the shit I've been through so far, and what I am most certain is to come, I feel it necessary to have some sort of a normal habit by which to maintain my sanity and humanity.
I suppose it's time to talk about what happened today.
Per a normal Thursday afternoon, I was out and about in the city. Phillip was at work, Hugo daycare, and me enjoying the nice fall day from up on top of an old, crumbling, abandoned library.
As a (relatively) new and jobless father, I had gotten myself into a bit of a: "Shit! Life as I knew it is over! I have to do fatherly, responsible stuff now-- no more free running or urban exploration or back-alley deals on counterfeit/stolen goods!" (Okay, so maybe I didn't miss that last bit quite that much.)
So, naturally, I often found myself in places a younger me would have frequented, such as rooftops and decaying homes and tunnels. What else was I supposed to do while my family was out? Read? Clean? That made me feel like some dull old mother, so, no.
As I took another thoughtful bite of my tuna salad sandwich that I had brought along for the journey, I spied some odd sort of commotion all the way down on the pavement. Cautiously inching forward, I peered over the rooftop to get a better view of what was the matter.
Interrupting the violent flow of traffic down below the library was an unfamiliar woman. Of course, from 4 stories up, I couldn't make out her face too well, but it was clear to me that something was quite wrong with her. The strange woman swayed slowly, back and forth from her stationary position in the middle of the road. A busy, city road at that! I felt employed to do something, help her, however from my perch there was no way I could have reached there in time to pull her out of the street.
I remember thinking something along the lines of "Is she sick? What the hell is wrong with her?!" No sane person would stand in the street without knowing it was a deathwish. Suddenly, her demeanor shifted from vacant to absolutely barbaric, as she threw her heavy body on top of a honking taxi and began pummeling the windshield with her bare arms.
Eyes frozen wide in horror, I watched as the woman rained her flesh down upon the poor cab. The flow and ebb around the two came to a gradual stop, gapers gathering left and right. None tried to stop the woman or help the old cabbie unlock his door and get out. Then, the glass shattered.
Silvery shards flew all around the madwoman and the cabbie. I saw bright red liquid, presumably blood, running down the arms of the lady. The screams of the cabbie and the people around the two pierced my eardrums, even upon the rooftop it almost sounded as if they were right next to me. Horrified, I watched as the bloody woman yanked the fully-grown man out of his metal shell and threw him onto the pavement, hard. TO BE CONTINUED!