Public
After the day of the Cape Town massacre, Paul and I hid ourselves away from the world, in a cabin - far from the madding crowd, you might say. The need was great for a plan which would help the world survive the outbreak of the highly contagious infection, Solanum.
But I write this not to defend the plan, but to describe the world as it was, not days before we were brought here.
One by one, cities and nations were succumbing. There was chaos. Have you heard of the battle of Yonkers? A disaster. A complete waste of life and resources. They - those infected who rose from the grave - slaughtered the Americans there. But first (the first to become televised, to reach international fame) was Cape Town - my home.
Fame is such a filthy word for it.
In South Africa, just as in most other industrialized nations, no one believed that the disease could ever reach us, though refugees had been flooding in from all the darkest corners of the continent - some with their infected friends and family in tow.
It happened in darkness, at Cape Town: the surge of undead swept through like a wave, making it all the more terrible that they moved so slowly, so inexhaustibly. If they had come like locusts, perhaps it would have been better.
I recall as I watched that the night was beaten back by fire. The slums burned, and we could see that people did, too. We could hear their screams, smell them...
And the undead. Shambling, sorry corpses, mindlessly seeking prey. Many with flesh torn by the jungles, or limbs missing from previous attempts to stop them.
Cape Town became the very mouth of hell that night.
South Africa was not the first to fall, of course; there were reports of cities in China and Nepal that toppled, who streets knew only the footsteps of the dead. These stories were not allowed to be reviewed by the media.
Cape Town, however, awakened the world.
[There is a long pause in writing.]
Now let me tell you of the disease itself, as one would tell a fairy tale - one which does not have a happy ending:
A man goes hunting one day, early in the morning, when game is good. He bids his wife and young children goodbye, and leaves with his rifle.
He is walking through the forest, when he sees the wife of a dear friend, who he thought had been ill. She looks grey in the early light, and staggers to and fro, weaving as though she is delirious. The man hails her. She turns, slack-jawed, and see him, and stumbles toward him.
He realizes, too late, that she is not...normal. Her arm is missing, torn at the elbow. Her eyes are glazed over, milky-white. She moans, an unearthly sound, and, though his mind reels, he realizes the truth.
He fends her off with his hands when she attacks him. She bites his hand, and he remembers his rifle. He shoots her in the head, and she falls. The nightmare is over.
But his hand...what can he do? If he returns home, he will succumb to the infection. His fever will spike, his muscles lock...and it will be a "slow burn", as they called it. He might have a day, maybe a week. In the end, he will die under the horrified eyes of his wife and children. An hour will pass, and his dead body will become animated again, and he will, perhaps, murder his family.
There is a decision to be made. He is a dead man, either way.
He puts the rifle under his chin, and makes his choice.
This story, sick and disjointed as it sounds, as through written by a deranged mind, happened to a colleague, in the early days, when things were hidden from the public eye.
Perhaps you have seen the story.
"High-Ranking Government Official Involved in Murder-Suicide Pact".
[After fifteen minutes, the following is added to this entry:]
Mr. Wagner, we must speak.