I've always kept diaries ever since I was a child. I've documented my daily
life in journals, carefully labeled on the sides and covers so to keep them
in order. I'm on my one thousand and thirty third journal, and all
of them I kept in order on bookshelves. It's basically a ledger of my
entire life, or at least it was until my house burned down and I
lost all of them, all except for one that I never wrote. My
father and I were going through the wreckage. The burnt waters of the house
had blackened and charred. The smell of smoke and burning insulations still hung heavy
in the air. I looked through the pile of burned paper that had once
been my journals. I saw the family photos, all water damage from the
fire hoses, at least those not destroyed by the flames. Hey, what's
this, my father said, Leaning down, we both saw the edge of
something rectangular peeking around the edge of the ruined hole. He reached his hand
through a destroyed part of the wall and came back out with a dirty,
smoke brown journal. Spatters of what looked like dark ancient blood covered the surface.
I saw it was labeled one thousand and seventy seven. That is the
one thousand and seventy seventh journal I had started to write in since I was
six. But that's impossible, I said, more to myself than him.
I never wrote that journal. When the fire hit, I was filling out
by one thousand and thirty third journal. I knew this for a fact,
because I wrote huge numbers and sharpie on the front of each one. My
father rolled his eyes. He thought keeping a diary was stupid and only reserved
for girls, and he had often told me so. He flipped it open.
It looks like you're handwriting, he said, handing it to me,
if i'll grime me under my fingers. Its cover sprinkled with small patches of
black mold and blood, as well as darkened by smoke, yet all the
pages were still legible. I put it in my backpack and took it home
with me. It was the only thing that had survived the flames intact that
I recovered, and yet I know I never wrote it. I flipped it
open to the first page, seeing my own handwriting reflected back at me.
I read the entries laid out there with increasing horror. I read them all
April first, twenty twenty five, Today the world ended. I had driven
across Arizona and New Mexico with my fiancee, Stephanie. She wanted to see
the Grand Canyon, and I always said I would take her. So when
I made a couple million dollars in stock options short in the market after the
Chinese invasion of Taiwan, I decided to quit my job and travel. All
around us spanned endless desert. The sun looked down like a blazing, lidless
eye, withering everything in its intense heat. Only cacti and desert shrubs stood
on the great flat plain. I turned the rady one, but only one
station came through. It was some a m station talking about the recent Chinese
invasion. China has lost an estimated two million troops trying to take the island,
the reporter said. In response to the invasion, Taiwan authorized air strikes
and the three gorgeous damn yes Yesterday evening reports state that the Chinese air force
has in fact successfully destroyed it, causing flooding and likely millions more casualties among
the civilian population. Taiwan cities are all in flames. As I flipped the
radio off, not wanting to hear any more grisly news. I really need
to use the bathroom, Stephanie said, breaking my reverie. I looked over
Rader, seeing her large blue eyes looking at me. Small beats of sweat
broke out, and a light skin her blonde hair ran down past the shoulders
in shimmering waves. Okay, why don't I pull over right here, I
offered. She shook her head. Oh, I want a real bathroom,
she said, I sighed. I haven't seen a house or store in quite
a while, I said, But as if fate wanted to prove me wrong,
a small wooden building appeared on the horizon. A town sign stood in
front of it, Devil's Creek, population fifty two. The building looked like
some kind of old timey general store that had been renovated to have electricity and
central air conditioning. An ancient man with a face like a raisin sat in
a rocking chair outside, smoking a pipe and reflectively staring off across the great
empty desert. I glanced over to see what he was looking at. In
the distance, I saw roll after roll of razor wire surrounding a massive fence.
It had all sorts of signs with skulls, as well as warnings about
violating federal law by trespassing. We pulled up to the store. The man
finally looked over. His jellied eyes reminded me of an old dog waiting for
the needle. He was a small man, no more than five feet if
I had to guess. He wore a straw hat and a shaded flannel shirt
and smelled like sweet cherry pipe tobacco, Christ's straws. He said, in
his fluttering old man's voice. It sure it's hot out here today, I
smiled, agreeing. What's that you're looking at? I asked, pointing to
the electrified fence guarding the apparently empty desert. He gave me a serious look.
That is where the bombs I kept, boy, he said, the
big ones, the H bombs, minute man, threes and B sixty ones.
Well, so I hear people around town talk, you know, I
nodded. I wondered whether silos were Can I use your bathroom, Stephanie asked
hurriedly as she came up beside me. The man nodded. Back of the
store, young lady, he said, in a quavering voice. Then he
returned to his pipe and his meditation. Let me know if you need anything
else. I decided to sit down next to the old man. When I
felt the first quiverings of an earthquake. It started small. I stood there,
not knowing what to do. The old man's eyes widened and he dropped
his pipe. Embers and blackened tobacco spilled out on the ancient wooden porch.
What in the blue blazes? He started to say, when a scream of
powerful engines cut him off. A burning chemical smell filled the air and looked
over to the military site and to the ground. Pulling itself apart, secret
sliding panels covered in dirt opened as in normal. Missiles slowly gathered momentum,
rising up into the air from hidden underground silos. Jets of blue flames shot
out of them. They towered over everything else in the area, each sixty
or seventy feet tall. Within seconds, they began to move faster and faster,
lifting themselves skyward with a screeching of blue flames and smoke. Every minute,
more and more came out, dozens and dozens of missiles, firing and
rapid succession. Stephanie came out. I grabbed her hand, and pulled her
to the car. We need to get the hell out of here, I
screamed over the cacophony. Her face had turned chalk white. She followed me
like a lost child. I pushed her into the passenger seat and got in,
turning it on and peeling out of there. If this is a nuclear
missile sight, I said, vomiting the words as quickly as I could in
the panic of the moment. Then there would probably be an enemy missile coming
to tarkt It. Soon, American missiles continued to streak through the air like
fiery dragons, and their way to battle. We drove as fast as my
car would go for the next twenty minutes, breaking one ten and then one
thirty miles per hour. I had a very bad feeling about this, and
then I saw it, the thing I had been dreading. Missiles began to
drop down from the sky, not going, but now coming. I saw
a streak of white shoot across the sky in my rear view mirror. A
sonic boom shook the ground, and then the world exploded. Ah. I
heard someone say, God, what, Then I realized it was my own
voice. I opened my eyes, I felt warm blood, trickling down my
face. My car was flipped over. I saw the endless desert outside,
now upside down all around us. Great suffocating plumes of smoke rose into the
sky. He plotted out the sun and turned everything as dark as night.
I looked over at Stephanie. She was still unconscious, or maybe she was
dead, I couldn't tell. She hung upside down her seat bye, biting
deeply into her shoulder. Geez. I groaned, trying to unbocko my seat
belt without falling and smashing my head. I mostly succeeded. I crawled out
the shattered remains, and I flipped over car, my legs as wobbly as
a baby. Dear's jay, A voice said softly from inside the car.
It was so subtle I could barely hear it. I knelt down next to
the broken window and saw Stephanie stirring. Ah. She spat a little,
blood, wiping her mouth. Oh okay, yes, baby, I said,
with tears in my eyes, looking down the road. With a mushroom
cloud hung over us like the blade of a guillotine, We're okay. Luckily
we'd been camping prior to this, so the car was filled with the sinsaws.
Inside the trunk, I had a tent, sleeping bags, food,
water, and toiletries. We also had some knives, lighters, and lighter
fluid. Stephanie filled her backpack with as much as she could carry, still
wiping blood out of her eyes from a deep gash across her forehead. But
overall, I felt like we'd gotten fairly lucky. It certainly could have been
much worse if we had still been in the city. I shuddered thinking about
it. I wondered if any city still stood in the USA. The mushroom
cloud continued to grow. It had a combination of bright streaks of fire and
black plumes of smoke mixing in with the scorching cap. Its cap looked like
it would go all the way to out of space. Soon, the stem
of suffocating smoke shot upwards, seeming to unspool itself from the inside as it
rose. We walked down the dark road in a burning world. Jets flew
overhead, streaking across the sky. The echoing wine of powerful engines followed them.
Moments later, sonic boom after sonic boom exploded across the dead desert.
Where are we going? Stephanie finally asked. After an hour of walking through
this apocalyptic scene, we hadn't escaped the black clouds that hung over the sky,
though the smoke had started to dissipate as we got further away. I
looked back and saw a figure behind us. It appeared to be a man
casually walking down the road, but his eyes seemed to be on fire.
They shone with an inner luminosity, lit up like the eyes of a jack
o' lantern. Something seemed wrong with the man, and not just because of
his eyes. He walked in a jerky, twisted way. His head,
which had been looking down, ratched it up to look at me. A
shudder ran down my spine. I turned away, motioning for Stephanie to look
behind us, but by the time we looked back again, he had disappeared.
Away from that, I finally said, pointing to the mushroom cloud,
did you see someone just now? I think my eyes are plane tricks in
me. I could have sworn I saw someone following us. Maybe it's another
survivor, She said, maybe, I agreed, non committedly not telling her
about the eyes. He had been very far away, but I had definitely
seen him. I didn't understand where he had gone. There was certainly nowhere
to hide unless more secret government silos and tunnels ran under the earth. Here
he had simply vanished, like campfire, smoke and a strong breeze. What
do you think happened, Stephanie asked, and she took a long drink of
water. I think we all know what happened, I said, bitterly.
China started World War three. They thought they could contain the fighting to Taiwan,
but they miscalculated. Once a three gorgeous dam got blown and millions of
Chinese and the Yangtze River drowned, it must have escalated. I don't know
who fired first, were clearly the US and China are at war. Maybe
the war's over already, she said, hopefully. I nodded. It might
actually be. If it is in all the cities have been hit here and
in China and Taiwan, there must be hundreds and millions of people dead already,
maybe more. Stephanie didn't say anything to this, but she seemed to
go pale. You need to stop soon. I'm tired. We've been walking
for hours, Stephanie said. After another few hours, I agreed. We
hadn't seen a single car or person in that time, except for the man
with the eyes. My feet screamed at me with throbbing blisters and sharp pains.
My cellphone and watch had stopped working during the blast. Some electromagnetic pulse
from the warhead must have disabled all electronics in the area, so neither of
us knew how long we'd been walking. With the sky covered in black smoke
as far as the eye could see, I didn't even know if it was
day or night anymore. We set up the tent. I crawled in exhausted.
I felt like I must have walked for twelve hours. I took off
my wet socks, got into the sleeping bag, then instantly passed out.
I awoke, suddenly confused. Something had scared me. Maybe it was in
the dream, but no, I still heard it, a scratching sound,
light and insistent on the outside of the tent. Stephanie still slept soundly next
to me. I shoot her. She groggily opened her eyes. I looked
at my pistol next to my pillow, grabbing it up. Its solid metal
grip felt real and powerful in my hands. But when I remembered the glowing
eyes of the thing and how it had vanished in an instant, like a
puff of smoke. It started to feel much smaller. What is she began
to say. I clamped my hand over her mouth. Her eyes went wide.
I put my finger to her lips. She nodded, and I slowly
removed my hand. Now I could tell she heard it too. It was
like someone was running a long, sharp finger air over the outside of the
tent, walking around it in circles. Though I didn't hear any accompanying footsteps.
It was too dark to see any silhouettes or shapes through the thick fabric.
We heard a low, diseased breathing coming from outside. The rattling breaths
seemed to choke on their own fluids, like the gurgling gasps of a pneumonia
patient. I couldn't take it anymore. I grabbed the flashlight from next to
the sleeping bag and flicked it on. With my arms crossed, my gun
in one hand and the flashlight in the other. I motioned for Stephanie to
open the tent. She hesitated for a long moment. After taking a deep
breath, she ripped it open in a single pull. Yet no one stood
there. I looked out and the smoke, black and starless sky shadows bounced
and danced around the cacti and cracked pavement of the street. I heard a
very subtle sound from my right, a slight shuffling of sand in a blur
and with barely any sound. That diminute of man with the fire in his
eyes scampered towards me. His shoulders and vertebrae crippled like those of a hunchback.
His face only came up to the level of my chest, but he
seemed to straighten and grow as he got nearer. There was a crackling,
snapping sound coming from inside his body. It sounded like his bones were breaking
and knitting themselves back together. By the time he reached me, he towered
over me. This all happened very quickly, in the space of less than
a second. My vision became filled with a hypnotizing, strobing white light that
came from his head. But I glimpsed the rest of him too. He
had a mouth like an infected sore. Pieces of his lips were rotted or
torn away, and behind that mutilated flesh beheld a gibbering, gnashing mouth.
Twisted famberic teeth grew out at the tops of his gums, intertwining with those
growing from the natural spots. These dozens of overlapping fangs each looked as sharp
as a scalpel made to slicely flesh like butter. His nose was eaten away.
In its place, I saw a patch of ragged necrotic tissue that oozed
yellowish puss and blood. His skin was as dark as obsidian and seemed to
glow with a similar iridescence. Hello there, hardener, the gnashing things said
in a slow takes a straw. I looked away from its inhuman eyes seen
Stephanie, petrified in the doorway of the tent. She held a long buck
knife in one hand and a canister of ocy tear gas spray in the other.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. What do you want
from us, Stephanie asked in a quivering voice. The creature's mutilated cheeks parted,
shrewing more clusters of teeth growing out of every spot in his gums like
a tumor. Everything, he said, in a slow drawl, I want
everything. I raised a barrel towards his head, my finger tight on the
trigger. You want to rob us? Is that it? I? Asked.
The creature laughed, a tortured sound like shattering bones and grinding metal.
I don't give a damn about this crabby look around. It ain't worth a
damn to me. I want everything from you and the girl you square on
that. I'm going to give you three seconds to get out of my sight,
I said, before I start. The greatuous hand came up on a
freakishly long arm. The arm seemed to lengthen, breaking and regrowan as it
twisted towards me. I fired as it smacked me hard on the head.
I saw stars and went sprawling, the pistol flying off and landing on the
concrete a few feet away. The abomination grabbed a screaming, crying Stephanie from
the tent, carrying her under one arm as if he were simply moving an
irate toddler. He threw her in front of him. I saw with horror,
and my shot missed him. I I am the true king of this
world, he hissed as he knelt down over her. Aye and the endless
void between galaxies and the spinning black holes that rip apart worlds ay and forever.
Fire poured out of his hands and arms like lava. As Stephanie lay
on the ground, her eyes went wide as the first of the flames bit
into her skin. I saw a chest and stomach caught fire, as if
it had been sprayed with gasoline. With an animalistic strength, she jumped up,
still burning, She tried to grab the man in a bare hug.
The fires spread to his body, but he quickly pushed her away. The
fire spread up and down her clothes, into her hair. Her face began
to melt as she gave an ear splitting shriek of pure agony. Drops of
liquid fat and burnt, sizzling blood ran from a crackling, blackening skin.
I love to watch them dance, he gurgled in a diseased, raspy voice.
Stephanie jumped from a leg to leg, putting her arms straight in front
of a body to try and keep them from the flames. Covering a torso
with a fire seemed to have an inner life spreading across a flesh, as
if rivers of nape arms flowed over a body. I grabbed the gun running
over. I put it into the back of the man's head and pulled the
trigger. The fire had started to spread across his chest, but He had
no facial expression. He stood there, grinning like a skull. Thick chunks
of black flesh burst out in his destroyed skull. I saw no blood or
organs. With thousands of tiny dark worms writhing and slithering, he fell forwards
a few feet away. Stephanie also finally collapsed, still twitching and screaming.
Ran over to a pulling a water bottle from my backpack. I poured it
on her, but it was like pouring a bottle of water on a bonfire.
It sizzled and hissed as it turned to steam, putting out a small
portion along her chest for a few moments, and then the fire flickered back
up. She gave a choked death, gasped seconds later, and stopped moving.
My body had become little more than a blackened husk by this point I
looked at the evil inhuman thing that had done this to my horror. I
saw his hands clenching and unclenching, his legs twitching. The black worms had
started to restitch his skull back together, the tiny heads poking out through the
wound and moving tissue around like diligent little laborers. Sickened, I ran the
landscape had started to change. Rocky cliffs now loomed overhead, dozens of feet
high. I stumbled up the rock faces and eventually found a small cave.
I crawled in and with my flashlight, finished this journal. I know this
will be my last diary, my last will and testament, left in some
rocky cave of a destroyed world, because the true king of this world is
on his way here, and he loves to watch people dance