18

How about some help just to make things fair?

I've been trying to decide...

I've made my decision. I'm heading out now. I'll find her. If she really is still alive I'll find her. I will search every inch of those mountains day and night until I find her. If it's a lie? Then I will die knowing I died doing the right thing. 

Revealing.

So The Dying Man contacted me today... The ground began to open forming letters. The cracks moving and changing to form the words it spoke.

Hello Ray. You can no doubt guess who is speaking to you so I will forgo introductions. I wanted you to know. I know where you are. I know what you're doing and I could take you whenever I want. I have taken the world. The Earth itself is a part of me. The ground you are walking on is me. So why do I let you continue? Because once I take every one of you there will be nothing left to amuse myself with. Being all alone in the universe isn't any fun. So I let you continue. Together we will play a little game. 

Those infected you snuck past I placed them there. They knew you were there but I let you sneak by. That is the way of this little game. Have you ever played a stealth game. I'm sure you have. If you ever thought about it you realize. the game knows where you are at all times. Therefore The NPC's as mere extensions of the game must know where you are as well. They are however programmed to remain oblivious until you do something to alert them to your presence. That is how this will go. I always know where you are but my infected will remain oblivious to your presence unless you foolishly alert them. You will carry on forever hiding from my infected fighting my creatures and occasionally I will force you into certain challenges when the normal game gets too boring. If you fail there are others. If you all fail I will make more. Speaking of challenges. I will give you one now. You are currently in a forested area of northern Vancouver. You ceased getting messages from your wife and child because they no longer have access to the internet. They were not a trick she really is still alive and she is currently somewhere in the Rockies. I won't tell you exactly where. I will give you 18 days to go find her. If you don;t find her in that time I will kill her and your child. Of course I could be lying about all of this. It could even be a trap. Your decision. Choose whether to risk losing your life or risk losing your wife. In fact I'll give you an extra day to make that decision. If you truly loved her the decision shouldn't be hard.

So yeah... After that the cracks closed with a sound like laughter. I have to decide now...

Been a while.

I'm sorry I stopped posting. I figured I'm the last one alive who the hell am I writing for?

Then I remembered an old theory prevalent among those in the know about the fears.

The theory, based on the strange phenomenon that seems to let us read and communicate with stories of the fears obviously taking place in other universes, hypothesizes that somehow knowledge of the fears connects us even through universal boundaries. Some force connects us and makes sure that we will always be able to read each others stories.

With that in mind I will continue writing for anyone who may be reading this from a universe luckier than my own. Perhaps even some less lucky.

So to get you up to date. I am not on an island or at least if I am it's a rather big island. One also inhabited.

I ran into three ordinary looking people. All three however were quite obviously infected. They moved as one and didn't speak at all. I watched them for a bit. they moved in a rather predictable pattern and I was able to sneak past them with little difficulty. I also ran into some infected animals. There's a strangeness about infected animals that is well documented in this universe. They do not pass on the infection. Instead they merely act like normal animals with insatiable blood lust. I had to fight and kill one of the creatures but was able to outrun the others.

That's all the interesting things that happened.

Oh er except there have been an abnormal number of low level earthquakes recently. Well I assume abnormal. I still don't know where I am. Maybe earthquakes every five minutes is normal here. 

Landed.

I found a secluded beach. With any luck this is a deserted or uninhabited island. I don't know though. I'm going to sneak around and see if there are any people here.

Ok this was a bad idea.

The weather is getting bad. Rapidly. Storms are buffeting my ship. It's not made for stormy weather. I really should have foreseen this. In retrospect it's obvious The Dying Man has control over the weather. This was a really stupid plan!

I need to land somewhere but there's nowhere safe?

Oh god what am I going to do?

If one can hide.

The best place to hide would be at sea. The Oceans covers 70% of the planet or so. I don't know exactly how many square miles that is but I'm betting it would be a hell of a lot to search just to find one small craft. Everybody on the planet still alive is probably infected. Every one of them could take to a boat and begin searching and I could still probably avoid them for ever. The oceans are the perfect hiding place. I brought with me a gun with ammo and enough food and water to last me at least 2 years. I don't expect this to be a good life but I do expect to live. The Dying Man can't get me now.

Sure after the food runs out I'll have to go ashore somewhere to get more but I can do it if I'm careful. I can probably survive to a ripe old age like this while the rest of the world dies.

Enjoy the world Dying Man I'm out of reach.

Boats on the horizon

Yeah it's started the invasion is coming. We're all doomed. Or at least all of you are. I've been planning. When they arrive I'll be long gone. In fact by the time this post comes out I'll already be gone.

So long and thanks for all the fish suckers.

Wow...

Ok I really need to start being more careful about what I write. Apparently if you tell people to go nuts they actually will. The crime rate has jumped higher in the time since that post than it has been in the last 10 years...

So... Ok Guys calm the fuck down. Stop raping and murdering everything with a pulse please. Er and stop raping and eating things that don't have a pulse. That's just wrong... No contact with The U.K. so just gonna assume they're all dead. No contact with my "wife" either so gonna assume The Dying Man gave up on that front or just doesn't care anymore.

Oh and of course The River People have now taken over all the aerial and naval defenses so any day now infected will be entering the continent.

Huh probably shouldn't have posted that on the same post I'm trying to calm people down on...

Fuck it can't get any worse.

I apologize for destroying civilization as we know it.

So apparently ending my last post on such a pessimistic note was a bad idea. Apparently faint glimmers of hope were all that was keeping the remainder of humanity sane. Two hours after that post The River People gained about 50 or so members and took over the "government buildings" and began executing the leaders. I was of course captured since communication is considered a rather high post. However The River People called me "Death's Chosen" and let me go. The fu... Well anyways guess what anyone out there still alive and sane it's anarchy. Go fucking nuts.

Going Numb

So apparently today I heard that The U.K. is slowly dying from the inside out. The cannibal problem has resulted in a police state style crackdown which has resulted in open rebellion which has resulted in mass slaughters throughout the country. They won't last much longer. Either they'll all kill each other, All starve or their internal squabbles will cause them to miss An infected approach. Is it wrong that I feel nothing in regards to this news. Millions or more are dying and I don't care at all. What's happening to me?

In other news. The River People do apparently exist. Two more members were caught trying to sabotage some of our aerial defenses. This is bad.

Of course The Dying Man has not given up on his personal attacks and more contact has been made with my "wife". I should just delete it automatically but I guess some part of me still wants to believe it.

Lastly I mentioned something about a plan a while back and a few people have asked me about that. Sorry I forgot about it. It was stupid. To be completely frank the plan pretty much went: Let The Dying Man in, All commit suicide somehow, hope that there are some uninfected left. Yeah... There was also some guy who seemed to be under the impression that if we killed one dying man the others would all die... Basically the plans were nonsense.

We're all doomed deal with it.

Apparently life is like the movies.

The Cannibal in the U.K. was caught and publicly executed. This did not have the desired effect. Apparently murder and cannibalism is becoming a widespread problem there now. Meanwhile here someone tried to assassinate one of our "leaders". The man was stopped by a random citizen who tackled him. The man claimed to be a part of a cult that worships The Dying Man. They call themselves The River People. If this isn't just one crazy this could be a serious threat to our safety.


Lastly... I got a message. From my wife. It claims she's still alive and uninfected. Hiding in secluded places where humans don't normally go. It claims that as such she has not encountered the infected and they have not found her yet. It also claims that one of our two children is still uninfected as well. The other was infected while they fled.

I know it's a lie.

Damn you Dying Man...

Special report

A panicked communication came in today from Japan. The correspondent was screaming about the ocean eating them. Yeah. As far as I can make out Japan is gone. Aerial satellite pictures confirm this. Japan was just swallowed into the sea. Fuck... I hope that doesn't happen to us. Also new informational reports from The U.K. say they have confirmed reports of A cannibal murdering and eating people there. They are working to find and catch this person. In less depressing and actually somewhat amusing, or at least amusing in comparison, news.  A Dying Man apparently tried to swim his way to Australia today. He was sighted swimming near the shore and was taken out by a sniper. An interesting tactic. It can't be desperation we know he can have us whenever he wants really. Maybe he was just getting bored and wanted to see what would happen.

Some scientists have come up with what they think is a plan to defeat The Dying Man. I'm sure this will be good. We're going to hear it soon. Maybe it will actually be a good plan. I doubt it but we can always hope.

Hope is all we have.

Besieged

So a little more information. The Government collapsed after a little while and the remaining places are now all in a state of constant terror based anarchy. The closest we have to a system is small groups of knowledgeable people put in charge of defenses and food rationing and stuff. I'm part of this system. My job is to keep communication of some kind with the other countries still uninfected. From these reports it seems like Japan is running out of food incredibly quickly and my compatriot there has been talking about reports of cannibalism. That can't be good. On the other side The U.K. is apparently doing pretty well but the weather is causing some extra problems there. Apparently they're being buffeted quite frequently by hurricanes. I'm not entirely sure what's causing the winter or the hurricanes or the earthquakes we've been experiencing here in Australia. Someone came up with the theory that perhaps The Dying Man has actually possessed The World itself. I sincerely hope that's not true. Fighting the ever present surge of Infected is bad enough but there's no way we can fight the planet itself.

Oh another worry that's come up is the fact The Dying Man still has access to Quite a few nuclear weapons and other long range weapons of mass destruction. If he starts firing those at us we're kind of screwed.

This entire war seems pointless. We're doomed that's pretty much a certainty. Every day I wonder why we don't just all put a gun in our mouths and end it now. Not that it hasn't happened. Reports of suicides come from all over quite frequently.

I really wonder what is it that's stopping me.

Genesis

It started in a town called Portsmouth. Some kid let loose one of the pieces and it destroyed him and quickly began to spread unimpeded. The other fears' attempts to stop the spread were impeded by attacks from a crazy piece wearing a deer skull and another piece that took over their forces. Meanwhile The Portsmouth piece and others that are lesser known continued moving throughout the world spreading like an unstoppable plague. North America and about 80% of South America were completely Dying in a matter of days. The Fears gave up entirely around then and their forces fell to The Dying Man as they simply left the universe. The first Dying Man to end up on The European continent arrived three days later but spread faster than they had in The Americas. It took them less than a day to spread throughout Europe and into Asia and Africa. Only The U.K. was untouched. By Now the world had realized something was happening and The U.K. destroyed any boats or planes that tried to come from the mainland. Many of The hosts were killed but so were many of the survivors attempting to reach safety. It was a necessary sacrifice. By now the rest of the world still out of The Dying Man's control had begun to fight. The few nuclear countries uninfected went nuclear on the ones that were. This didn't stop the spread only slowed it for a while. Then that same covert piece that had been used to undermine The Fears used it's skills to infiltrate the uninfected areas and infect their governments. The spread reached back to it's original pace. All of Asia and Africa were taken. Only The U.K., Japan and Australia managed to stay uninfected by becoming isolationists who reacted with extreme hostility to any attempt at entry.

An unnatural winter started up about a month later and lasted up to the present day so far with no sign of letting up. The foliage began to die and so did the animals. The last bastions of uninfected humans were dying out slowly.

That was a week ago. I'm one of the survivors living in Australia. I studied The Fears before The Dying Man took over and was able to realize what was happening. Unfortunately I couldn't convince my family. I moved to Australia when the Dying Man began to spread but they didn't come with me. They are undoubtedly part of it now. As stated plants and animals are dying out in this perpetual winter and as such we humans will eventually begin suffering shortages of food. We won't be able to hold out forever.

As such this is what you could call a record of the last days of A Dying World.