There was always talks, way back in school. About how strange I was, how weird I was. The little intricacies that folded me into a category all of my own. A wallflower, they said; That boy will never make it past the front door. They never knew how much their words stung, or how they  rang with a hard bent truth.

The feelings before the Outbreak occurred were strange for me. For some reason I could feel the slick tension that seemed to buzz from the core of anyone I was around. As if the wild was waging war on our internal clocks. Calling to each other in an unknown fear that none of us could really pinpoint.

It happened like a whirlwind, exactly at the point during your day where you wish it would never happen. That's how it happened to me. I can still feel my blood pumping into my ears as adrenaline and disbelief flowed over every face at work. That very moment where everything you had worked so hard to achieve was now horrendously void.

Run, they screamed. Run for your fucking life because this is the last thing you're ever going to see. I never felt such a disjoined detachment from reality until that moment. The tablet pens, paper, and pencils seemed to no longer hold the world in beauty. Not when you could no longer trust your neighbor or the raining hand of the government.

Arklay Island became whispers of a far off land that would soon be considered paradise. Cut off from the world, from them, from others. Even thrown into the pits of the woodlands did I find myself heaving for breath. The anxiety of it all swimming at the forefront of my mind. I needed to make it there.

The only thing keeping me alive now is instinct.

God is dead.

God is so fucking dead.

Keep your head above the water, or we'll all drown.

- I