October 20th, 2012 / 1:45am – Two days until I die
The Greeks also believed in the River Styx. The River Styx was a giant waterway that divided the Earth and the underworld. General consensus was that when a man died, he crossed over to the other side of the river to exist as a new being after d**h.
What they never discussed, however, was the possibility of the opposite being true. Could a bein...g cross the River Styx from the OTHER side? Could the dead sail back from the underworld?
It is October 20th, 2012, 1:45am, and I write this entry as a pa**enger on a boat headed for Brooklyn.
Yesterday evening at approximately 5:45pm, there was an explosion heard around the world. Four, actually. QUIET Army outposts Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta within Quarantine Zone #2 were breached from the depths. The city winced as it watched us blow the bottom out from underneath our cage. The makeshift bombs swallowed the outposts in mouths of flame as the jaws of unrest feasted on the sugared facade of order.
Quarantine Zone #2 had been ignited, flooded by a lake of fire.
My comrades and I managed to clear the subway before it fully collapsed. As we emerged from the underground, we soaked in the intensity of the chaos that resulted from our insurgency. The will of the King played out flawlessly; each crippled outpost was overrun by us. There were simply not enough of QUIET soldiers to resist the sheer rabid onslaught. Soon afterwards, hundreds of thousands of intelligent, organized, furious Infected mobbed the remaining QUIET Teams that were patrolling Manhattan on foot. The QUIET Teams were decimated by the arsenal we were able to salvage from the wreckage of their command centers. Vacant houses in the Zone made excellent armories for the guns, ammunition, helmets, body armor, gas masks, and grenades looted from the outposts. Stolen QUIET Army Jeeps were used for travel as well as for on-demand weapons delivery. We were able to put our heads together and hack into the QUIET radio frequency network, so to communicate with each other and call in resupplies to be driven to us from anywhere in the Zone. We swarmed the QUIET Teams and we chopped them to pieces with gunfire, the streets soaked with blood as we turned their power against them. They were outnumbered and overwhelmed. Even with their training, a few hundred QUIET soldiers scattered on the streets were simply no match for the tidal-wave of thousands of militant Infected who woke up this morning expecting to die.
The prison camp on Manhattan island had turned into a Infected-controlled fortress with only one way in or out: the bridges.
We shredded Quarantine Zone #2 as we worked our way toward the bridges. k**ing any living thing in front of us, and setting fire to every solid structure behind us. My particular team was tasked to the Brooklyn Bridge. The King of Beasts urged us to get across by any means necessary and carry the revolution to the other side. As we neared the iron titan, I witnessed pillars of ash rise to the heavens and deaden the skies. Smoke trails…from a fire. They were on the other side of the bridge. Something larger was afoot. The radio attached to my acquired QUIET uniform chirped and a notice came though that sent a chill up and down my deteriorating frame.
…Quarantine Zones #1, #3, #4, #5, and #6 had just been bombed several times by the infected. Most of the outposts inside each had been systematically destroyed and overrun, weapons and armament looted. Lucien must have gotten in contact with the other zones. The infected housed in them were taking control by a show of militant force…and had actually broken free. Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx were where the other Quarantine Zones were located, and now they were being flooded by the newly freed infected. They were just like us: angry, rabid, and k**ing. I could hear the blood-gurgling cries of ma** destruction echo from across the bridge. NYPD had their hands full against their genetically superior opposition. The infected were heavily armed and showed little regard for civilian life. Panicked citizens flooded from their homes, filled their cars, and attempted to flee the city while our war raged on in the streets. A second message came over the radio: the National Guard had been activated and were on their way. A State of Emergency had been declared for the entirety of New York City. Citizens were being called to evacuate immediately. d**h toll in the thousands.
When one enters the late stages of Thytrizamine infection, after he has been fully endowed with increased senses, strength, and intelligence…a pinnacle is reached. The user reaches a state of such an advanced awareness that the body becomes overwhelmed and a k**-switch is flipped in the brain. Chains slip loose, the links begin to float independently of one another. Suddenly the user becomes out of touch, distant, delusional. This angers him. The rage is then doubled by confusion. It builds and builds to the point of rabidity. Veracity so severe that it is uncontainable. A circuit overload. At which point, the user's mind switches off completely. He becomes brain-dead as a result of the overwhelming intensity of thought. However, his body still lives. The body still scours the world, violently searching for answers to the questions he can't even remember asking. Before long, the walking shell will forget what those questions even were, and it will be left to aimlessly wander in search of something it has never seen, for reasons it will never recall.
We…were entering the stage where we are fighting so hard, for so much, for so long...that I fear we can no longer see our goal through the blood soaking our eyes. The “why” of it all doesn't matter anymore. Not even to me. We just had to get over there, we just had to help. We had to fight for our cause; we had to die for our cause. We just HAD TO. I'd rather to die today for SOMETHING…than die the day after for NOTHING.
Once we reached the bridge we saw that it had been barricaded, so we took to the waters. We k**ed as much of the Coast Guard as we could, boarded as many boats as we could find, packed them with as many of us as they could hold…and we set sail for the other side. We are headed back across the River Styx.
Long live the dead.