The Dead Don't Write

They didn't make it. We found you in their car. I know it's you because I have read you from first to last. An all to early last entry. But at least I can do to you what I cannot for them. I can bring you back to life.

We found the contents of the backpack during a search for fuel and provisions. You previous owner was right about one thing; the Isle of Skye. It was one of the safe zones the Government used as a base to regroup and fight the Infection. I can't confirm the other locations. Your infected... zombies they call them. Infection spread everywhere. Quarantine and decontamination procedures at Skye helped slow things down, but too many people already had it. That's where we came from. All the people there, all the chaos... All the blood and bodies and death and butchery. It's obvious some of us have natural immunity. Nobody could have avoided it there. Maybe more people would avoid Infection if they weren't killed by the Infected. Or by the army. That was the final straw for the population; finding out that the disease control centers were just execution and dumping grounds. Mass graves everywhere, but even they weren't deep enough and in the end we just had mountains of corpses to burn. All the soldiers involved became Infected of course. A small kind of justice I suppose.

And then came the Shutdown. Tipping point where there weren't enough healthy people left to keep things running. All the utilities went. Once electricity went, everything else began to fall. We were ordered to Skye to keep the peace. We knew what that meant.

No TV, no radio, no news. People quickly get lost. They rely on all these things so absolutely. You have no idea how vital they are to the daily toil of normal life until they are gone. Once people realised being refugees was going to get them nowhere, they became savages. Anybody that managed to escape the Infected grouped up or went feral. The rest died or became Infected.

These are the gaps I am filling in. This is what happened around the rest of the nation.

Manchester was a test. It failed. Infected had already spread too far. Infection was even appearing outside of the UK. Being with the army we heard more of what happened after the media services went off the air. The USA, China, France. Didn't hear about anywhere else, but we knew it was everywhere. Still nobody seemed to know where it came from. Manchester was where it all started. After the bomb was dropped we did our duty and rounded up as many infected as we could. Shot them all. Did the same with anybody who was sick. Then with anybody we caught breaking curfew. Finally with anybody we caught outside at all. No chances were taken.

Do I feel guilty? Of course I do. Guilty for killing all those people. Guilty for surviving. Guilty for being too much of a coward to take the only sensible route out of this mess. And guilty for not doing a damned thing when they screamed and pleaded for the lives of their children. Guilty as charged.

I feel guilty alright. But do you want to know a hard truth? If just one of them was Infected, they all were. That's Infection. That's how bad it is. It's not fast, but it's nearly total. Two people left Skye. Two out of thousands. I've seen some more on my way here. I've read about you three. Even you might have not avoided Infection. Perhaps that's what caught up with you. What did you really have that laid you low while everybody around you died? Did the boy pick it up from the Infected family he captured? The soldier? Maybe you just ran out of luck.

You are dead now. I envy you. But I cannot join you. I must search for more survivors. I must find others, like me, and help them. I must atone for my sins.

And that's why I will carry you, and continue you. And I hope one day that I can give you back if you are still alive. And ask for your forgiveness too.