From the letter written by Charles March, April 15

From the letter found by Kelly Vargas in a crossroads country store. The writer was found in a skeletal state with only the shreds of clothes left and this letter in his lap.

April 15, 2017

     My name is Charles March. I have no idea where I am now, I've been on the road for days and days, the last few by myself. For most of my journey, I was accompanied by my girlfriend, Willow Long, since neither of us ever figured out what happened to most of our family. My Dad died right at the beginning of March while he was on the phone with me. He'd been in Denver at a medical conference and they were overrun by the zombies and I heard him die, gurgling, and sounds that sounded like he was being torn apart and eaten. I never found out about my Mom. She and Dad had split and she was in California at her parents house when everything started.

     I was staying at my Aunts house when the horde came through. I was in the living room with Willow when we heard them. Her parents were with my Aunt and most of the other adults in town at a meeting at the High School. We heard the undead coming, so we hid in the attic of my Aunts house and watched through the little octagonal window as the undead filled the little street outside. It seemed like they kept going on and on forever, but really, it was only like 20 minutes and the horde was made up of hundreds of zombies, not thousands like some people will claim.

     We waited all night and all the next day, but neither my Aunt or her parents were seen again. We stayed in our little town for a couple of weeks in the hopes that someone else would come through before leaving to look for others surviving out there. That was several weeks ago.

     Last week, we ran into a group that was bad, evil, right from the start. They tried to separate Willow and I. I knew they were going to kill me and keep her for sex, so I got us out of there by running over some of them and their bikes. They followed us and shot at us. We fought our way away from them and I had to kill a bunch of them to get away. But we didn't get away clean. Willow was shot in the side of her stomach and she died within a few hours. I loved her will all my heart and I had to stab a knife into her brain to make sure she didn't come back as one of those things.

     Then, yesterday, I was found by those guys again. We had a long car chase and I ended up killing the ones who found me, but not before I crashed the truck I was driving and broke both my legs, left arm and right hip. I'm dead now. There's no way to survive this, especially since I am out here alone.

     Mom, Dad, please forgive me for not being there when you died, I now I forgive you for it now. Aunt Alma, I'm sorry I didn't go to the meeting with you and Willow's parents. Maybe if we'd been there, we could've kept you all alive. Willow, please forgive me for now being able to protect you, baby.

     I am not going to wait to be found by those things and be torn apart. I will end this on my terms. If you have found this letter, be wary of any strangers you run across. People are letting themselves be evil now and do whatever they want, no matter who it hurts. Keep the faith, keep your humanity and keep on surviving.

As a writer and artist, I appreciate any readers and their comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please, come read the other blog I write for our artisan collective, Raven's Castle Creations, on our website at www.ravencastlecreations.com. It includes posts on art, the mythology of symbols we use in our art, history and more! Also, come see the art we produce in our Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/RavenCastleCreations. Follow us on Twitter at @ravencastleart and on Facebook at @ravencastlecreations.

From the journal of Kelly Vargas, July 5

July 5, 2017

     The last couple of days have been uneventful, but my mind was still back at that gated community. It seems like every time I blink or close my eyes, I see those skeletons with the strips of decomposing flesh and remains of cloth. I see the remains, splayed out where they'd fallen. I saw the larger skeletons with the smaller ones, trying to cover the smaller ones with their pre-decomposed bodies. I saw the pictures on the walls of the two houses we'd gone through. The smiling faces of the families, the happy life they'd lived, shown through pictures, snapshots of normal lives.

     Then, I'll flash back to the skeletons on the lawns, some dragged there before death, some after when they'd managed to kill themselves before the bad men got inside their houses. All of them had been hit with blunt objects, the bones showed the cracks and breaks. Hopefully, most of them were already dead or too far gone to feel the additional pain from the breaks. That was just adding insult to injury.

     The last few nights, I've dreamed about that place. In the most horrific dream I remember, the skeletons started moving. At first it was just little wiggles, like someone starting to turn over in their bed. Then, they started getting up, if their legs were still close enough to the rest of the skeleton, others just dragged themselves on the ground. Even the arms and legs that had been separated from the rest of the body were moving, wiggling, and pulling themselves towards me.

     The skeletons started making that horrible moaning and growling noise that the undead make and I turned to run. But, you know those dreams where you try to run and try to get away, but no matter what you do , it's like you're standing in molasses and you can't move. Well, that's what was happening in my nightmare. I kept trying to move and trying to run, but my feet just wouldn't move. They were stuck to the ground like they'd been super glued and the skeletons were coming right for me from all sides. I was alone and screaming and trying to push them away from me and then I could almost feel their hands grabbing onto me and that's when I came awake.

     Now, I don't want to sleep and keep trying to think of anything else to keep my mind off that place and those skeletons. That's when my mind starts wandering towards what happened at the church and last night I had a dream that combined the two. Not only were there skeletons coming after me and mixed in with them were the undead from inside the church. It was terrifying but at least in that dream I had Manny, Connor, Alicia, Alex and Marny at my back. That made this dream, even with skeletons and the undead coming after us, not as scary as the one where I was alone with just the skeletons.

     Today, we pulled into this little market on the crossroads in the countryside. When we went inside, I found another skeleton, this one all by itself, lying on the office floor with a letter very messily written on it's lap. It was so far decomposed, I could only tell it was guy by it's hair and by finding it's wallet on the floor beside it. We took all the snack food and drinks left in the back and went to find a house for the night. I'm going to include the short letter in my journal, just in case someone besides me is interested in what it has to say. I wrote down the location of the store where we found it and the date and time, at least to the best of my knowledge.

     Tonight is going to be another hard night. Seeing that guys remains has brought back all the other messed up stuff I've seen lately. Please, let me get some sleep tonight without nightmares!

As a writer and artist, I appreciate any readers and their comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please, come read the other blog I write for our artisan collective, Raven's Castle Creations, on our website at www.ravencastlecreations.com. It includes posts on art, the mythology of symbols we use in our art, history and more! Also, come see the art we produce in our Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/RavenCastleCreations. Follow us on Twitter at @ravencastleart and on Facebook at @ravencastlecreations.

From the journal of Earl Thompson, June 23

June 23, 2017

     ^th. There's a huge horde of zombies between us and the Greenbrier, so we stayed here instead of trying to work our way to the hotel. I went for a drive early on the 21^st, to scope out roads or at least cleared spaces to fit our truck. I got to the edge of the forest to see if there was a road right there and instead was surprised to see hundreds of undead all stumbling along together.

We've been stuck in the Moshannon State Forest since the 20

     I stayed and stared at the horde for quite a while. Some of them were just regular zombies, starting to decompose. Others, though, were black and crispy, or melted looking and covered in soot. I wonder where those zombies come from. There was obviously some kind of fire and it must have been a big group of people killed, since there were crispy kids and entire families. I wonder if it was one of the emergency shelters that went up? I know the one we saw but didn't stop for was really over crowded and it wouldn't have taken much to set that tinderbox on fire.

Most of the centers started out in buildings, churches, stadiums, any big place that could hold people. But eventually, they all became over full and tent cities sprung up around most of them. And we all know that tents, blankets and kerosene lamps plus campfires and it's surprising they all didn't go up in flames.

     When I made it back to camp, the girls were disappointed and Phil was not happy either. None of us wanted to be stuck, basically in the middle of no where and with the minimal protection of the large rocks on the sides and back of us. If the horde had come through the forest instead of skirting it, we would've been trapped and up shit creek.

     When I got up today, I went to check on the horde and found it was still going, but it is thinning out a little bit from when I first saw it. I hope it doesn't keep us trapped here much longer, we will run out of food and water soon. I might have to go in the opposite direction of the horde and see if I can scavenge more supplies. I had enough for myself for months, but with Annie, Lisa and Phil, the supplies go a lot faster.

     Here's to hoping the horde is done soon and isn't headed towards our final destination, the Greenbrier and it's hopefully safe bunker system.

As a writer and artist, I appreciate any readers and their comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please, come read the other blog I write for our artisan collective, Raven's Castle Creations, on our website at www.ravencastlecreations.com. It includes posts on art, the mythology of symbols we use in our art, history and more! Also, come see the art we produce in our Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/RavenCastleCreations. Follow us on Twitter at @ravencastleart and on Facebook at @ravencastlecreations.

From the letter written by Karen Gallagher, April 18

This letter was found in the Archive by Ruth while she was organizing the entries. It was written by a teenager who ended up alone after the pandemic hit and decided to head for another relations house. It was probably more common for this to happen in the beginnging than people want to believe. How many kids and teenagers ended up alone? And how many of them ended up surviving past a couple of days, let alone for longer?

April 18, 2017

   

 My name is Karen Gallagher and I'm totally screwed. I'm only 13 years old and I'm totally alone. My Dad came home from work at the Home Depot and he'd been bit by one of his coworkers who was in the back room for who knows how long.

     My Mom still hasn't come home. I'm not surprised because she works in an eye clinic at the local health center. After watching the last news show, and I mean the last because the TV went off after that, I bet she got killed at work. They said that most hospitals were overrun by undead who came from the morgues and sometimes someone dies in a room and is not discovered right away and was able to turn. These first zombies were able to infect whole hospitals of patients who were not able to get away from them because they were already sick or hurt. This next wave of undead spread out from the hospitals to the neighborhoods around them and then even more from there!

It's been two weeks since Dad came home bit. I took care of him for a week before he died. He got really sick and I knew he wasn't going to make it that first day. The news had told us that anyone who was bit or scratched could turn, especially if the person got sick. They never said if anyone had lived after being bit, but I bet no one has.

     Dad got a fever and cough that first day after he came home, then he started shivering and shaking. I had to keep turning him on his side when he threw up or coughed up the stuff in his lungs and I didn't know what to do most of the time. The aspirin didn't help his fever and I had to throw him in the tub with cold water to bring his fever down, and I only knew to do that because I saw it on some TV show.

     By the end, he looked like a zombie that was still breathing and just hadn't realized he was dead yet. I was relieved when he finally died, sad, too. But I was relieved it was over. He was suffering so badly and I couldn't stand to see him that way. He was my Dad, he was always strong and brave and now he was dead.

     I was alone for the first time in my life and so scared I went to bed and huddled under the blankets for the rest of the day and night. That was a week ago. I've just been on auto pilot for the last seven days. But this morning, I woke up with a plan kind of formed last night. I'm going to head to Aunt Stacey's house. She is the closest relative to our house and is only 30 miles away.

     I wrote this letter in case you make it home Mom. This will let you know what has happened and where I'm going. The old Toyota is in the driveway and Dad has kept it running this whole time. The gas tank was filled up a month ago when Mom's car was broken.

     Mom, if you see this, I did what I could for Dad and hope to see you at Aunt Stacey's! If someone other then my Mom sees this, know that it wasn't Dad's fault that he died or Mom's fault she never made it home.

As a writer and artist, I appreciate any readers and their comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please, come read the other blog I write for our artisan collective, Raven's Castle Creations, on our website at www.ravencastlecreations.com. It includes posts on art, the mythology of symbols we use in our art, history and more! Also, come see the art we produce in our Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/RavenCastleCreations. Follow us on Twitter at @ravencastleart and on Facebook at @ravencastlecreations.

From the journal of Alanna Morgan, July 3

July 3, 2017

     I let Leslie read my first entry and he said I should explain why I'm writing this down. I was voted by everyone else to write down how we got to where we are. I don't know why I'm the one that was chosen, but I agreed to do it.

     Well, let's see, we left the little New Mexico town we had been staying in, I don't remember the name. I'd stayed in dozens of them over the years of making low budget horror films, all of us had. That's the life we lived. Moving from place to place with each new production, not making enough to always go home between movies, living from a bag in hotels and eating food other people made.

That night, we made it to this old, abandoned adobe house just over the Colorado border. We huddled together and made a fire in the middle of the roofless living room. We had set up a watch schedule and the ones on duty had the two pistols I owned and had brought with me for personal protection.

None of us slept very well. Every little sound made us jump and any movement made the ones on watch turn on their flashlights, which would wake up any of us who had managed to get to sleep. Most of us had given up before the sun rose the next morning and were up, making camp coffee over the fire. By around 9 am everyone was up and ready to move on.

     We got back in the truck and headed out after breakfast and by around 1 pm, we had found a compound of people who, while suspicious, were willing to take us in. They called themselves Alive Farms and had around 30 people already in their community. We met with their leader, Jose Pina, and were interviewed about who we were, where we came from, and what we had experienced so far. Jose thought it was amusing that when the zombies attacked, we didn't know because of the extras in make-up. Then he wondered if we could use this skill, along with something he'd seen in the Walking Dead, to get around the undead. In the show, they cut open a zombie and rubbed its smelly decomp on themselves to fool the zombies sense of smell. Jose wondered if this would work and we decided to try it sometime in the near future. They had tried to just do the smell thing, but the zombies could still pick them off, so if we do the make-up too, maybe, it will fool them.

     We spent a week settling in, everyone was given a job and a schedule for patrol duty, and we became part of their community. We've been here ever since and most of our skills have been appreciated. Jason, who was one of our carpenters to build sets and set pieces, has been teaching people how to properly build and fix the buildings that are already here. We also brought people from the catering team, who know how to cook and they've been working with some of the older wives to come up with recipes for what we have to eat.

     This place, so far, has been safe and secure and we are grateful they took us in. We had no where to go, since we all lived in Southern California, and we were going to die if we stayed out on the road. Whether it would've been death by zombie or death by mishap or death by people who turned to the dark side, it wouldn't have mattered. We would've been dead. And now, we have a chance to be part of this group, surviving and living. Please, keep us safe, anything listening out there. God, the universe, Odin, anyone listening. Please, keep us safe.

As a writer and artist, I appreciate any readers and their comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please, come read the other blog I write for our artisan collective, Raven's Castle Creations, on our website at www.ravencastlecreations.com. It includes posts on art, the mythology of symbols we use in our art, history and more! Also, come see the art we produce in our Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/RavenCastleCreations. Follow us on Twitter at @ravencastleart and on Facebook at @ravencastlecreations.

From the journal of Alanna Morgan, July 1

This journal came to me from a woman who was part of a zombie movie production when the pandemic hit. She survived to live in a large community that eventually got in contact with out community.

July 1, 2017

     My name is Alanna Morgan. I used to work on low budget movies doing make-up for horror and zombie movies. That's what I was doing in the desert in New Mexico when news of the pandemic hit. The crew all wanted to go home, but our director, Rick Hathaway, wanted to finish his picture on time, come hell, high water or zombies. I don't know why. Who would want to go see a new B, or really D, zombie movie when real life zombies were making an appearance and the end of the world is here.

     That was on March 1^st. Three weeks later, we'd just finished shooting a scene in a barn where our few survivors were overrun by undead and fought them off to escape and live another day. I think the crew thought the real zombies were some of the extras in costume, at least at first. Once they started attacking and eating people, though, I think everyone got the message. Our little bubble of safety, from being in the middle of no where in rural New Mexico, had burst and we were up shit creek.

     I was standing next to the open cab of one of the big trucks used to haul equipment and props from location to location. I heard the screams and turned in time to see one of our production designers go down under four undead, thankfully, she didn't scream for long. I immediately jumped into the cab of the truck and closed my door. I turned to the open passenger door and yelled for a couple of the other make-up artists to get in. Delia, Lori and Leslie made it into the cab. But Gene and Sabrina didn't make it. Leslie screamed, like the girl he has always wanted to be, and slammed the door shut just before the wave of zombies reached us. I rolled my window down a bit and started yelling for the others, fighting for their lives, to get in the back if they could.

     We ended up getting 27 people from the 250 or so people on set that day into the truck we were in and away from the carnage. I just drove down the dirt road towards the little town we were staying in. We could hear the screams for quite a ways as we drove away, but it did eventually die away. The 40 minutes it takes to get to town felt like it took hours. I kept seeing flashes of people I knew getting torn apart and eaten by those things. Sasha, one of the sound techs, surrounded by a group of them and torn limb from limb. Lucy, one of the caterers, trying to hold off the undead with her chefs knife. She did take out one before they pulled her down and her screams were cut off with a gurgle. Mario, the camera guy who I was supposed to go on a date with tomorrow night, pulled off his camera and his throat bit out by one of the zombies before others started eating his insides while he was still dying.

     We pulled into town and my foot slid off the gas pedal while everyone else just gaped. The whole street was covered in blood and body parts, some of the towns folk had reanimated, or at least, what was left of them reanimated. One of these newly undead things was just the torso, left arm and head. It was trying to pull itself towards the rumbling truck we were in, trailing its insides behind it. I put my foot back on the gas and ran it over. It made this little bump and a small popping sound, like one of those New Year's party favors that look like a champagne bottle and you pull the string.

     We drove down the four streets of the town and found the same mess everywhere we went. I made it to the little B and B I was staying at and the place was a disaster. The lady and her husband who ran it were torn apart on the front lawn. There wasn't enough of her left, but he had come back as a torn apart torso with a head and stumps for arms, waving them around and growling like the animal he now was. I stopped the truck and got down, Leslie kept asking me why I'd stopped. I finally told him I had a couple of pistols in my room and we needed them. I put the proprietor out of his misery and went to my room, got my pistols and went back out to the truck.

     I told everyone in it to get out and we had a meeting about what to do. The first thing we decided was that anyone who had been bit or scratched had to go their own way, or we could take them out. But they couldn't stay with us. Anyone who wanted to stay with one of them was free to stay. But anyone who wanted to come with me and the rest of us. We got out a map and chose a direction, North. Then we figured out who was staying and who was going. Of the 27, five were bit, three had scratches and two decided to stay with their friends. We collected everyone's personal things, it was least we could do to make ourselves feel a little more stable, and then we drove into this new world with no destination in mind.

As a writer and artist, I appreciate any readers and their comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please, come read the other blog I write for our artisan collective, Raven's Castle Creations, on our website at www.ravencastlecreations.com. It includes posts on art, the mythology of symbols we use in our art, history and more! Also, come see the art we produce in our Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/RavenCastleCreations. Follow us on Twitter at @ravencastleart and on Facebook at @ravencastlecreations.

From the journal of Rebecca Martin, June 21

June 21, 2017

     I can't believe we lost Brad. It's like a century of time just disappeared and things that used to kill us that we thought we'd conquered are killers again. The flu, pneumonia, water born illnesses, food born ones, too. Illnesses that we were able to cure with antibiotics and other medicine. We were able to keep people alive with machines through illnesses until they got passed the worst symptoms and were able to recover. We had pills for high cholesterol, heart disease, intestinal tract diseases, hell, we even had pills for people who couldn't sleep or people who couldn't stop falling asleep.

     Now, you can die of anything and everything! Any disease or illness someone had before all of this began could be deadly. A small cut could get infected and kill you. You could drink bad water and die of a intestinal bug that dehydrates you to the point of death. It's like being back on the frontier and have no modern medicine. And even if you do have some medicine, it's only good for so long.

Marvin Alexander

     Our elderly have been really helpful to the rest of us since they lived in a time when some of the same things were deadly, before modern medicine. Marvin told this horrible story of his neighbor as a child who died from bad water. He saw his neighbor basically shit himself to death and it took a week for it to kill him. He said the guy raved near the end, when he was so dehydrated he was out of it, raved about seeing all the people he knew who'd died. He said they visited him when he was alone and talked to him about what was going to happen. It was traumatizing to Marvin, especially since during the same time his family was dying of tuberculosis, one by one.

Walter Mandel

     Walter told us about his aunt who drank bad milk and died milk sickness. It's when dairy cows eat white snakeroot. It causes appetite loss, weakness, vague pains, muscle stiffness, trembling, vomiting, abdominal discomfort, severe constipation, bad breath, coma and possibly death. Some people recovered from it but not completely and a lot of people who got milk sickness never got better at all. His aunt died from it but and she lived in their house, so he watched it all happen.

Ginger Leigh

     Ginger talked more about losing her mom, brother and sister to tuberculosis. She talked about playing board games with her siblings while they were in bed, because it was all they could do. They couldn't run and play, they couldn't even play on the floor with dolls or blocks. They had to stay in bed and keep warm and not over exhaust themselves. She remembered that her mother was the first to get sick, but outlived both her sick kids. She talked about her loss and her mothers heartache that she watched the two young kids die. She talked about her father being broken after the three of them died and how she was sent to live with her mother's sister because her father never recovered from it all.

Ralph Stephenson

     Ralph talked about other family members who died of illnesses that became treatable. His aunt who died of the flu, his cousin who died from milk sickness, his pastor who died from cholera. He spoke about watching people die in the home before there were hospitals to take them to. He talked about his father, who probably had congestive heart failure, but there was no doctor to treat him.

     Then we all talked about loosing people and how long it can take to get over the initial grief. We are probably going to stay here tomorrow as well, then we'll figure out how we're going to approach the Greenbrier. Please, let there be other good people surviving there!

As a writer and artist, I appreciate any readers and their comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please, come read the other blog I write for our artisan collective, Raven's Castle Creations, on our website at www.ravencastlecreations.com. It includes posts on art, the mythology of symbols we use in our art, history and more! Also, come see the art we produce in our Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/RavenCastleCreations. Follow us on Twitter at @ravencastleart and on Facebook at @ravencastlecreations.