Journals of the Damned

Journals of the Damned

By GJ Zukow

Copyright 2012 by GJ Zukow

Smashwords Edition

Journals of the Damned

Volume One

G. J. Zukow

Prologue

To whom it may concern,

I am submitting for your review two Journals, for inclusion into the Historical records of the Apocalypse, written by my mother and a close friend of hers. I have sent the original journals themselves, along with a transcript of them (included in the body of this message) and have included them as attachments (in standard form) for entry into the database. They are non-fiction, firsthand accounts of those dark days that occurred almost twenty five years ago.

My name is Katherine Lucile Kolkowsky and the first journal belongs to my mother. I'm eighteen years old and I realize that by the time she was my age, her life, and the lives of all who lived through those horrible times, were desperate periods of horror. The two journals cover the majority of the Apocalypse from the beginning, to within a few weeks of eventual collapse of the undead. They serve as a record of the times where the fate of whether humanity would become extinct or not, teetered on the edge of a great precipice. For just over a year and a half the corpses of our parents and grandparents were controlled by the single celled menace named Toxoplasmosa Mondus Omni. My mother recently passed away and I found these tattered and stained books with the rest of her most prized and personal possessions.

The second journal belongs to a man who's name I've heard of before but my mother rarely (almost refused) to talk about. Her difficulty in talking at any length about him isn't due to any anger on her part towards him, it was due to it bringing back extremely grim memories for her. Mr. Phillips' journal ends shortly (only a matter of weeks in fact) before the animated cadavers of our ancestors ceased functioning entirely.

Now that we have begun to pick up the pieces of what was, I am donating these journals not only for memorializing those who died, but to honor those individuals who lived.

The recovery of all the knowledge we have lost is important, so are the personal stories and experiences of those that survived. Toxoplasmosa Mondus Omni wiped away the old world and the new world we are building needs to include all of the human experience.

My mother's journal was lost when her safe house was over-run by the undead. She (to my understanding) never wrote a second journal after that, or at least I haven't found one if she had. The fact that she was able to recover both her old journal and the journal of her friend, and that she kept them, tells me that they meant a lot to her. Having read them myself I am glad I didn't have to experience any of those evils.

Thank you for taking the time to place these pieces of history into the official records. If you need to contact me for further information, please feel free to do so.

Book One

Jannie's Journal

Friday, August 17, 2012

My name is Jannet Marie Kolkowsky. I'm a senior in High School and I'm starting this journal for my creative writing class.

Although my name is Jannet, everyone calls me Jannie. People have always called me that, ever since I can remember. Even my mom calls me Jannie, so why my name is Jannet I don't know. I suspect my father is the one who actually named me and this is one of the ways my mother gets back at him for leaving us. Needless to say they don't get along very well.

I just turned seventeen last week. My birthdays have always been tied to the start of school, leaving me with sort of mixed feelings about it. This birthday was different. This birthday was the last time I'll have to be in school when it happens. I can't wait to graduate, finally.

Mrs. Johnson, who teaches my creative writing class, expects us to write at least three journal entries a week. I certainly hope I have something to write about. This journal is going to compromise twenty-five percent of my grade, but even now I'm struggling to find the words to write. Two hundred and fifty words per entry seems like a lot to me.

I really don't do very much besides go to school and (I feel) my life is pretty boring. Tourists come to Orlando, Florida all year round and I guess it's exciting for them. For me, a lifelong resident, I've done it all already. While Disney World and the rest of the theme parks are cool, they are way too expensive to ride the same rides over and over again while paying an arm and a leg for something to eat.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Mrs. Johnson said that we can write about anything we want to in our journals. Seeing how this journal is not going to be private, as it has to be turned in for a grade at the end of the semester, I'm choosing not to write anything too personal. In a way that seems to defeat the main purpose, IMHO. I brought this point up in class today and Mrs. Johnson said the reason she wants us to write a journal is to get us in the habit of writing on a regular basis. Knowing that I don't have to write about my personal relationships, idle gossip or my dislike of Missy Cavenaugh and her stuck up friends actually makes me feel better.

Today I'm going to write about some lesser known and hardly reported world news. I haven't seen anything about the mass die-off of the rodent population in Asia on the local news. Even the national news and the news networks barely gave it two sentences in their broadcasts. CNN, Fox and all the rest prefer instead to endlessly talk about some stupid movie actors’ marriage breakup. How Brad Pitt getting a divorce is going to affect my life I have no idea. The sudden and quick spread of the disease that is killing off almost all rodents does concern me though. It should concern everybody.

Forty percent of all mammals on the planet are rodents. The majority of people view rodents and their kin as nothing more than vermin, mainly due to their habit of eating the grains and seed that we also eat.

In medieval times people saw them as the bringer of the plagues and death. This view, while not actually accurate, (it was fleas that transmitted the disease to people and not the rodents themselves) still causes the rodent to be hated and shunned.

The importance of the rodent family in the ecosystem is critical. Due to their rapid reproduction they function as food sources for predators. Foxes, wolves, coyotes, hawks, owls, etc. all rely on the rodents for the main part of their diet. Without the rodent as a food source, all of these animals will also suffer starvation and they will die off alongside the detested critters.

The role of the rodent is also important because it acts as a mechanism for seed dispersal. Some seeds actually need to have their tough outer shell be partially digested in order to sprout. The rodents' droppings, after it has digested these seeds also spread the plants into the local ecosystem. Without rodents, many plant species will go extinct, causing starvation in any species that survives off that particular plant.

The final reason, (and the biggest reason by far) is their use as a natural method for calculating disease vectors. Mice are used in laboratories worldwide. For testing new medicines, genetic research, foods, make-up and the list goes on and on. This is due to the lowly mouse having a biology that is close enough to ours that we can directly observe the mouse and draw accurate conclusions about how what affects them will affect humans.

From what I've been able to research on the internet, just over ninety-nine percent of the family Muroidea (which includes hamsters, gerbils, mice, rats and many other relatives) get sick and die within forty-eight hours after exposure to whatever it is that is killing them. Rodents, such as squirrels, appear to get sick but quickly recover.

I found an online map of the spread of the disease and the epicenter seems to be in North Korea. In only a week it has spread to central and eastern China, eastern Mongolia, southeast Russia and all of South Korea. Disturbingly it also shows a possible airborne dispersal with the southern most main island of Japan and many of the islands around the Yellow sea and the East China Sea (including Taiwan) having been affected.

A South Korean news site had noted the fact that only three months previously the North Korean government had released an interesting (perhaps culpable) statement. The main point of the speech said that since the rich capitalist countries weren't giving them all the food they had required, due to the severe drought they had suffered over the summer, they had come up with a plan to eliminate the rats and mice that were eating what small amounts of grain reserve they had left. It was basically propaganda but it seemed to hint at them having genetically engineered something.

Nobody knows what is causing this yet and there is a huge apathy towards it. Nobody cares about rats and the general disposition seems to be that the rodent population will recover rapidly.

P.S. Mrs. Johnson, I hope I get some extra credit for the researching I did for this entry. I'm going to try to write about things that affect our environment. It's a subject I feel strongly about.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

I don't want to use this journal as my personal complaint log, but I do want to get something that's aggravating me off my chest. I live in the Pine Hills area of Orlando, just west north-west of Downtown. It's commonly referred to as Crime Hills. I've lived here all my life and never noticed any real difference in the crime rate here, in Pine Hills, and the rest of the suburbs of Orlando. Excepting of course Winter Park, where all the rich people live and their property taxes can support more police.

My little sister had her bike stolen last night. Lucy, that's my little sisters' name, forgot to put her bike in the garage last night and left it lying no more than ten feet from our front door. In the morning it was gone. My mother, who works as a nurse at the Winter Park Hospital, has to budget for everything. I honestly don't know how she manages to be a working, single mother. Neither my, nor my little sisters father, contribute a single dime to help raise us. It had to be some low-life crack-head who stole it. Who steals a little girl’s bike like that? It was just a child's bike (and a girl's bike at that), an adult or even a teenager would be too big to ride it right. Lucy sobbed until the bus came to take her to school, only stopping her tears when she knew the other kids would see her crying at the bus-stop. All my mom could do was admonish her for leaving her bike out. The whole thing pisses me off.

Enough of that drama. This morning before school and all night, ever since I got home from school, I've had to watch Lucy mope and whine. It sucks but she's going to have to learn that's how people are.

I've been following the rat die-off in Asia, the spread is unbelievably fast. Still nothing on the local news or the national news. Where before the big cable news stations barely said two sentences about it, now they say three sentences. The only reason they talk about it, I think, is so they can show a couple of pictures of a field of dead, rotting mice.

In the three days since I wrote about the disease, it has spread from the Ural Mountains to the Bering Sea. From Indonesia and the Philippines through India and into all the Stans (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and all the rest). Natural borders don't seem to do anything but slow it down for a day. It jumps mountains, oceans and seas like they were speed bumps. It has to be airborne.

Nobody who is looking into this knows for sure just how far it has spread in reality. By the time the rats and mice die, it means that at least forty-eight or so hours have passed. It means that the disease (or whatever it is), is actually two days or more ahead of the corpses. By now it probably has reached Europe and may have even reached the Americas.

Except for the handful of independent researchers trying to study this, nobody cares. In fact the consensus with most governments is that this is almost welcomed. The few people looking into this are saying that they won't even be able to figure what is causing this due to lack of money, labs and personnel for months. It may be a year or more, they say, before they can isolate and properly identify what is happening.

Friday, August 24, 2012

I'm sure the people who rejoice and say, Thank God it's Friday., never went to this High School. Every class loads me up on homework, including yours Mrs. Johnson. A five hundred word short story, on top of this two hundred and fifty word entry, plus a couple of hours for each of my other five classes means at least another ten hours of work I have to cram in my weekend. This is on top of my having to take care of my ten year old sister. My mother works the afternoon shift and on weekdays it's not so bad, as I only have to watch and feed her for a couple of hours until she returns. Saturday's and Sunday's I have to watch her for most of the day, unless my mom lucks out and gets her single day off on a weekend day.

Lucy is still moody about the theft of her bike. She's been difficult and picky about everything, making me cranky. I hope she snaps out of it soon. If she keeps being like this for much longer I'm going to rip my hair out.

Some girl's my age talk about having a big family when they get out of school. I, however, don't plan on getting pregnant for quite a long time, if at all. I sure don't want to spend the next ten years of my life changing diapers and wiping snotty noses after having a litter of children.

So ends the more personal section of my journal. Now on to my continuing coverage of World events.

People are getting sick, manifesting flu like symptoms. The reports are coming in from the same places the rat death started. The new Rat Flu is following the same dispersal pattern and rapid spread as whatever caused the rats to die off. Hospitals and medical centers in South Korea and southern China are flooded with the sick. There is no news from North Korea, there is never any news from that country so it's not surprising.

Now the CDC has finally decided to start investigating. If they would have started investigating this sooner they would have had that much of a head start.

The local news has started talking about the Rat-flu now, mainly saying that it's the start of the flu season and to Get your flu shots now. My question is how can I get a flu vaccination against a disease that nobody has identified yet. From what I understand vaccinations are only good against that single virus it was created for. Nobody has even isolated the thing yet and we don't even know if it’s caused by a virus. But here the government is, once again, offering hollow words to placate the voters. Only the national news and cable news stations are speaking of the rat die-off and the new flu, but they speak of them like they're two separate things. I believe they're linked, just as many others around the world do.

Since the last journal entry the mass extinction of the rodents is steam rolling along. The rat plague is in Europe now, as far west as Belgium. It has shown up in Egypt and Australia. Currently the disease has ventured into Alaska and spots along the Pacific coast of Canada.

If the sickness spreads among humans like it has in the rodent population, (and all the evidence points to this), then this is easily going to be the most contagious disease in recorded history.

For all anyone knows, this new disease could already be here. We could already be infected. We don't know what the incubation period for this is. For all we know, we may have been infected up to a month ago. The bright side to this is that there are no confirmed deaths related to the mystery disease.

My prediction is within a week there's going to be a lot of students staying home.

Monday, August 27, 2012

My mom had to put in extra hours at the hospital over the weekend, preparing for the influx of sick people that will soon arrive like a flood. According to my mom, every flu-season sends a ton of patients into the system and this one is going to be bad. The Hospital, all the hospitals, are bracing for a huge wave of individuals who are going to contract the new disease. From what my mom says, the new sickness isn't deadly but it is very contagious. The doctors expect that up to ninety percent of the population will develop the flu like symptoms. The very old and very young are at risk, as are those with compromised immune systems. They say there will be more deaths because of this, just like with any other flu but because this is so widespread, the numbers will be greater (but the percentage will be comparable to other flu strains).

The media has officially dubbed this strain the Rat flu. The subject is suddenly all over the news now, driving a slight panic and causing cold and flu medications sales to rise dramatically. The CDC has named this new virus their number one priority. Although there is debate about whether or not this is actually caused by a virus. Within a week the CDC promises to identify this new strain and will then begin working on a vaccine. That means the first of the real vaccines will be available for the public by the end of next month. That may be too late. The disease is spreading faster than the rat die off.

The Great rat death is showing up worldwide now. It has firmly established itself in the new world covering all of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. to the Mississippi river. South America and the eastern U.S. have isolated outbreak areas.

The spread of the infection no longer follows the outbreak pattern of the rat die-off. At first it did, but now it starts to rear its ugly head wherever the rodent death shows up. Does this mean the illness has mutated? Maybe. Maybe we are infected already, it could have silently spread around the world a month or more ago and it's just now manifesting itself. Either way, thank the Gods it's not a particularly deadly strain.

This may be something new, something never seen before. The evidence for this is the contagion isn't specialized or limited to one family or species of mammal. It is making all the mammals sick. Reptiles are immune to this it seems. No mammal, big or small, seems to have any real immunity at all. Animals all over the world are affected, catching the illness at the same time people do.

People are reacting strangely to this. Psychologists say it's the difference between the known and the unknown. Whereas before, with other flu strains, people could walk around thinking I probably won't get sick. Now people are fretting about the fact that they almost certainly will get sick.

Everybody, including the kids in school are wearing latex gloves and wearing masks over their nose and mouths. Everyone is using anti-bacterial hand sanitizer and are generally trying to do anything they can to minimize their exposure. It seems, even knowing that all their precautions won't stop them from getting sick, they do it anyways.

Myself, I take a come what may attitude. If the fates dictate I will catch a cold, then there's nothing I can do about it. It's just a mild flu in humans. No biggie really. It's not the end of the world.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

The Great Rat Death and the Rat Flu have reached Orlando simultaneously. It seems as if everybody is sick except me. There's a lot of sniffles, sneezes and runny noses. Other symptoms include itchy, watery eyes, a headache and some coughing. The symptoms are generally mild, in most cases, and resemble an allergic reaction more than a virus.

Both my mother and my sister have gotten the flu. My little sister wanted to stay home from school as soon as she felt the first symptoms of the illness. All she has is a case of the sniffles (as my mom calls any minor cold), so my mom told her she still needs to go to school. It's not like Lucy is going to spread the disease to anybody else, because everybody else already has it.

If I have to go to work then you have to go to school. Is, and always has been, my mother's mantra about staying home from school.

Besides, whenever Lucy runs a fever and has to stay home, that means I have to stay home from school also. Somebody has to watch her after my mom leaves for work around eleven in the morning to work the afternoon shift at the hospital. That somebody means me. Even on regular days Lucy gets home from elementary school before I do, but she spends the hour before I get home at old Mrs. Hoffner's house next door.

I think Mrs. Hoffner, who's in her late seventies, enjoys having some youthful company. None of her relatives visit her much, as most of her family lives on the west coast. I like the old lady but her house smells like the six cats she owns. The cats are what Lucy likes the most about staying there. An old shoestring is all it takes to keep the cats, and Lucy, playing happily until I come home. Lucy runs around, dragging and wriggling the shoestring, while the cats jump and try to catch it. Even Mrs. Hoffner is entertained by the antics. I sometimes wish I could be so content with such a simple thing as a glorified piece of string.

On the news the main stories are all about the flu. They talk about productivity being way down worldwide due to people taking their sick days off all at once. The stock markets are also down slightly, no surprise there. An interesting, slightly scary, news bit talked of how the vast majority of the lab rats (used for research) have died in their cages. Only those mice in highly secure and protected facilities (those with state of the art air and water filtration systems) have survived. The rats that have survived are those used specifically for research on highly communicable diseases (or military research into bio-weapons some say). The extreme safe-guards used to protect the outside world from them is the only thing that kept the outside world from killing them. Needless to say this may slow down the research into a cure.

My mother told me there's a lot of doubt amongst the doctors as to this being a virus. Some things just don't add up and every road to find the virus responsible for the outbreak has hit a dead end.

The CDC hasn't made much headway either, remaining quiet about what they have found.

The only silver lining to this dark cloud is being reaped by the big drug companies. Cold and allergy medicines are flying off the shelves. Drug stores, even the huge retailers like Wal-Mart and Kmart, can't keep anything on the shelves. Everything from aspirin to vitamins are sold out almost as soon as they get stocked.

The hospitals worldwide are stressed to overflowing with this non-life threatening epidemic. My mother used to get home around ten or so at night, but lately she's been getting home around midnight. One of her pet peeves about people doing this is that they should go to their doctor for stuff like this and not overflow the ER (which is meant for real emergencies, not a case of the sniffles).

I'm just glad I haven't caught the flu bug yet. I'm knocking on wood hoping I don't catch it either.

Friday, August 31, 2012

Everybody and everything, it seems, in the greater Orlando area is sick. In people the sickness is actually mild, with some variance (some people do seem to get hit harder, of course, running a fever and feeling extreme fatigue). There are some few of us that are naturally immune for one reason or another. The news programs state that less than ten percent of the population has escaped this virulent disease.

There's an underlying scent on the wind. There are literally billions upon billions (maybe trillions) of dead rodent corpses rotting around the planet. Where everybody was wearing masks to try and ward off the coming sickness before, now they wear them doused in colognes and perfumes to cover-up or overwhelm the stink. The smell taints people’s view of reality, as if it's some kind of horrible omen of things yet to come. In a certain way it's true, this near extinction event for the rodents and their ilk will most certainly lead to further deaths. With rats, mice, moles and the rest of the food removed from many animals’ diets, there will be another round of starvation and death. This cycle of death may continue for many rounds until the food chain sorts itself out again. For some animals it's a boon. Flies and insects who feed and breed in corpses are going to