April 23 1993 - I don't know who will be left to read this, but I'm writing it anyway. For myself.

3 days ago the government changed my whole world. Chuck and I were down in Louisville doing some big city shopping and eating, but when we started home for our little house in Muldraugh, the military wouldn't let us anywhere near it! My husband and I ended up sleeping in our car parked up near the hastily erected fence. Everything we owned was in that house, and we didn't know what we would do without it, and all the family things we had there. Chuck heard about one of the boys from 2 blocks over taking trips into the fenced off towns, bringing back all kinds of things, and all kinds of stories, too. Terrible stories, like out of a movie. That boy, little Ronnie, the things he said didn't seem like they could be real, and I wasn't alone in thinking that he was telling tales, or at least exaggerating a hell of a lot. Sure he was a 23 year old now, but we all knew him since he was just a kid. It just seemed like a kid down the block talking hard to seem tough. We should have believed him. I wish to God we had.

We didn't. Least of all Chuck, who'd had some experiences bailing Ronnie out of trouble back in the day. He took every last red cent we had with us, even the money from my purse before I woke up. He gave it all to the kid along with a list of things he wanted him to get from our house. Ronnie disappeared over the fence and we didn't see him again before dark. Or the next day. And you know by the time it started to get dark and their boy wasn't back his mama and daddy were giving us the stink eye.

He showed up late the next day after we heard some shots coming from the woods not far from the fence. It had to have been them soldiers firing at people stuck inside there. That gunfire. That was the first thought I had that all this might be something serious. That maybe all of Ronnie's stories were truer than we thought. He looked terrible, and he hadn't gotten much from our house, either, not that it mattered much with what all happened. Chuck and I felt awful guilty for the boy's state and Chuck took to nursing him so his parents could look to their other children. I took all my time going up and down the lines of cars and makeshift shelters begging for anything that might help him get well. We didn't know then that there was no getting well for Ronnie. None of us knew that back then. We heard stories from the government about quarantine but nobody believed it because it seemed like a damn Omega Department episode. And here we were, the rubes who got killed off before the title sequence.

In the end I was the only one who made it. I came back and Ronnie was dead. Chuck was looking real bad. Ronnie got him good. Chuck said the kid had gone crazy and attacked him. Bit him on his chest near his arm pit and again where his shoulder met his neck. I couldn't stop staring at it. He wasn't doing well and it was more than blood loss, more than shock. And he got worse fast. He got pale and sweaty and started to have some kind of convulsive fit. The next thing I knew he was up and off the floor and trying to attack me. And he wasn't sickly. In a heartbeat he was not only well, but strong. Unnatural strong. And violent as hell. Not even like an animal. The only thing I ever seen like it before was when I was young and my daddy had to shoot a rabid coyote that came out of the woods and got into a fight with our dog, Stormy. And then he shot our dog, even though she was just barely bit. That was all I could think of. That Chuck got bit by a sick animal and now he was sick too. That he'd have to be put down. I ran. I didn't think, I just ran on instinct. Just away. I knew I couldn't be the one to do what had to be done. That fear kept me running hard for a long time.

When I couldn't run anymore, I walked. I couldn't stand still and I couldn't go back. I couldn't stop to think because if I did that I would cry. Like I'm crying now writing this down.

And that's when Bernadette found me. Somewhere on the outskirts of Riverside. She appeared like an angel in a big black station wagon and brought me to her base. There's not much I can help with outside. I can't face those creatures. I panic and they all look like someone I know. Like Chuck. But inside the base here at the boat club I can do normal things that I think might contribute a little. I cook for Bernadette and the few others that seem to live here. I keep the base tidy and put away all the supplies they bring back. And I clean up the blood left over from when one of them breaks through the defenses. It keeps me from thinking too much about things that can't be changed.

April 25 1993 - I've been here for 2 days now and seem to be falling into a comfortable routine. I've made a few trips outside to help gather things, but I always stay close to base and I run as soon as I see one of the creatures. I found a gardening fork on one of the bodies in the parking lot. I do what I can to help process the creatures bodies' they bring back. It's gruesome work, but rewarding when you find a scarce resource or the tool that someone has been looking for.