July 9, 2023
Dear Journal,
We didn't sleep.
Not even a little.
We waited out the night in the loft, listening to the drowned ones slosh below us—never climbing, never reaching. Just drifting, like they were biding their time.
By dawn, the rain had weakened to a whisper. Gray light bled through the warped wood panels and broken shingles. The flood was still deep, but the corpses had vanished sometime before sunrise.
We waited another hour to be sure.
Then we climbed down.
The water was cold, slick with something oily that clung to our boots. The barn stank like a grave. Marcus didn't speak as we picked our way through the debris. Naomi kept her knife out. Nora carried Clara, wrapped tight in blankets like a bundle of fading warmth.
We left the barn behind.
And then we walked.
Miles passed in silence. The wind had teeth, but the rain was gone. The sun never fully broke through—just a dull, wet glow behind the clouds. Every breath steamed from our mouths. Even the birds had gone quiet.
That's when we saw it.
A house.
Two stories. Slate blue paint faded to the color of ash. Porch sagging, shutters half-ripped from their hinges. One window on the second floor was shattered, jagged glass still clinging to the sill like broken teeth.
It looked empty.
But then again, everything looks empty now.
Marcus led us in.
The front door was cracked open, hanging slightly off its hinges. He pushed it gently and let it creak wide, then stepped in, pistol raised.
"Clear," he said after a moment.
We followed. The house smelled musty, like old wood and mildew. The kind of smell that once might've meant forgotten Christmas decorations and boxes of baby clothes.
Now it meant something else entirely.
Something wrong.
The walls were covered in old family photos. Dust-coated frames of smiling children, parents on a couch, a dog with its tongue out. The kind of life you don't think much about until it's gone.
Clara stirred in Nora's arms.
We found a couch that wasn't completely molded over, and Nora lay her down. For a few minutes, we just stood there, watching her small chest rise and fall. Still fighting. Still burning up.
That's when I noticed the smell.
Not the mold.
Something metallic.
Sharp.
Marcus caught it too. "Basement," he muttered.
Naomi narrowed her eyes. "I'll go."
"I'm coming with you," I said before I even knew why.
Maybe because I couldn't stop thinking about that voice in the station. Maybe because I needed to feel something again—besides fear.
The basement door was just off the kitchen, half-hidden behind a pantry shelf that had been dragged across it. Naomi pushed it aside. The smell hit us harder then, a wet slap of rust and rot.
We went down.
The stairs creaked under us. The light switch didn't work. My flashlight barely cut through the dark.
The smell grew thicker with every step.
And then we saw the walls.
Words.
Smeared across the concrete in dark, drying blood. Some written with shaking hands. Some with fingers dragged desperately as if the person had been pulled while writing.
"They never sleep."
"I gave them everything."
"Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me."
"THE DOOR WON'T CLOSE."
Each word felt like a scream that got stuck in time.
There were bones in the corner.
Small ones.
A child's backpack, mold-eaten, sat beside a decaying teddy bear soaked through with blood.
Naomi didn't speak. Her mouth was pressed into a line so tight I thought she might scream or shatter. But she didn't.
She just knelt and stared at the blood.
And then we heard it.
From upstairs.
A thud.
And Nora screaming.
We ran.
Clara was convulsing on the couch, her small frame twitching like something inside was trying to claw its way out. Her eyes were rolled back, mouth foaming.
Nora was holding her, sobbing. "She just—she just started seizing—"
Marcus rushed forward, grabbing Clara. "We need to cool her down. She's burning up."
We filled the bathtub upstairs with cold water. Naomi and I stripped off Clara's sweat-soaked clothes and gently placed her in the tub. She was barely conscious now, her lips cracked and blue, skin flushed like flame.
"I don't think it's just a fever," I whispered.
Marcus didn't answer.
Because we all knew.
We've seen this before.
She's turning.
Not fast. Not like the biters who change in minutes. But slow. Like something growing inside her brain, blooming behind her eyes.
But there's no bite.
No scratch.
So how?
How?
Nora won't leave her side. She's singing something, soft and broken. A lullaby or a hymn. I can't tell anymore. Everything sounds like a prayer these days.
The sun is setting now.
The blood on the basement walls still clings to my thoughts. Those words. That panic. That promise that something else is out there—something worse than death.
The house is quiet again.
Too quiet.
Naomi hasn't moved from the upstairs window. She's watching the woods across the field, like something is going to crawl out and finish what the storm started.
Marcus is pacing. He does that when he doesn't know what to do. It scares me more than if he yelled.
I've been asking myself: What do we do when the sickness doesn't come from a bite?
What if it's in the air?
The water?
What if it's in us?
This house was someone's home.
There are family portraits still smiling at us from the mantle. A toy left in the hallway. A calendar still stuck on June 22nd.
The same day everything ended.
Or began.
Maybe both.
Tonight, we'll stay here. Because the storm took everything dry. Because Clara can't move. Because we're too tired to face another night outside.
But tomorrow—
Tomorrow, we leave.
Even if it means leaving the girl.
Even if it means walking straight into hell.
Because now I understand something I didn't before.
This world doesn't want survivors.
It wants witnesses.
And blood on the walls.
—J.K.