July 1, 2023
Dear Journal,
We left the ranger station this morning.
Not because we wanted to, but because we had to.
Too many signs. Too much unease. That figure in the trees—I still don't know what it was. Man or something else. But the longer we stayed, the more we felt it watching us. The silence around the station never lifted. It was the kind of quiet that crushes your chest when you breathe.
So we packed what little we had, rationed the last of the food, wrapped the baby in every layer we could find, and walked southeast—toward the town Naomi remembered from an old map: Whitfield.
We didn't make it in one day.
The woods stretched for miles, thick with overgrowth and the weight of things left unsaid. We spoke only when necessary. Even Marcus, usually sarcastic when nervous, said nothing. The deeper we got, the more the air pressed down on us. We followed what used to be a trail, now overtaken by vines and debris.
It was around noon when we stumbled upon the first corpse.
At first, we thought it was another walker, but it wasn't moving. Naomi approached, blade ready.
It had been a man. Young. Maybe late twenties. Worn jeans, shredded hoodie, broken glasses half hanging from one ear. And no bite marks. His skull was crushed—blunt force trauma.
"Human-made," Naomi muttered, frowning.
The ground around him was disturbed—footprints, old and shallow. A fight? An ambush?
We kept moving.
A mile later, we found the second body. This one was older. Woman, early forties. Shot through the chest. Dried blood trailed from her mouth.
And then, another. And another.
Six in total.
All dead in different ways. None bitten.
Someone—or something—had been hunting them. But not for infection. Not for turning.
Just… killing.
Naomi and I exchanged a look, both thinking the same thing:
This was no random violence. It was methodical. Calculated.
We pressed on.
By mid-afternoon, the trail opened up to a road—cracked and half-buried under years of weather and abandonment. Rusted signs pointed us toward Whitfield. Six miles. We decided to follow it, hoping for faster progress, even though it felt more exposed.
That's when we saw it.
A line of skulls.
Yes, skulls.
Human, animal—hard to tell. Strung along a bent length of wire that stretched across the road like some kind of morbid fence. Bleached white. Clean. Purposefully arranged. Like a message.
"You are not welcome here."
Marcus stopped dead in his tracks. "I've seen some messed-up things," he said, "but this?"
No one responded.
Naomi walked forward and sliced the wire clean through with her machete. The skulls clattered to the ground.
We moved past them in silence.
The last two miles were the worst. The road narrowed. Trees pressed in on both sides, clawing at us like they wanted us to turn back. We heard distant rustling—nothing distinct, just enough to remind us we weren't alone.
The baby whimpered again, a thin, exhausted sound. Nora held her tighter, whispering, "Almost there, baby, just a little further."
And then, at last, we saw the town.
Whitfield.
Or what's left of it.
Collapsed rooftops. Shattered glass. Cars flipped and rusting in the middle of the street. Signs burned or faded to ash. No lights. No people.
But there were structures still standing.
And where there are buildings, there might be food.
Or medicine.
Or answers.
We reached the outskirts just as the sun dipped below the trees. No time to search. We found a two-story hardware store with metal shutters mostly intact and locked ourselves in for the night.
We're camped in the back storage room now. It smells like oil and mildew, but it's dry. Naomi set up a perimeter using noise traps made from nails and cans. Marcus boarded up the windows as best he could. Nora finally got the baby to sleep.
I should rest. We all should.
But I keep thinking about the skulls.
The bodies.
And that figure in the woods.
Someone is watching us. Following us.
And I don't think they're just scavengers.
I think they enjoy this.
Tomorrow, we search. Carefully.
We need supplies.
But now, I wonder what the price of finding them will be.
Yours in unease,
J.K.