Clampdown

The second night of the lockdown is when things went to hell in a handbasket.

We could watch through the cameras the owner of the hostel had set up - we could see all of the Grayskins outside. And, stranger, most of them were bleeding from the nose as well. I learned from some of the other guests that this was a sign of being "scarlet marked" and that a Fear called the Red Cap was probably controlling them. It didn't matter - the Choir was still there, we were still trapped.

And then we learned that one of the guests was still outside. Kenny told me her name was Sandy. I hadn't seen her before we got there, but I could see her now on the monitor. She was a sitting duck. She had the smarts enough to figure out something was wrong, but now she was trapped between the Grayskins. Hiding could only help somewhat.

And then Kenny did something stupid. He went outside. He was trying to save her. Someone he didn't even know and he was trying to save her.

So I said fuck it and went out after him. And behind me were some other people who had also apparently decided to it was better to go out swinging than slowly suffocate inside.

The first thing I noticed went I ran outside was the horse. I don't know how I missed it when I first arrived, but now I could see it. It was huge and black and very good at stomping Grayskins, I'm happy to say.

I couldn't find Kenny anywhere, but I did see a few Grayskins and that's when I brought out the molotov cocktails. I know I shouldn't have taken any pleasure in their deaths, but I did. I watched those fuckers burn and I enjoyed it.

And then I saw her. A young woman, twentyish, coy smile on her face, with a red scarf around her neck. She walked beside the flaming Grayskins without a care in the world and I knew. This was the Red Cap the others had talked about.

She approached me and I wanted to throw another molotov cocktail at her, but my arms were suddenly heavy and I dropped them. I could feel my heart beating even as the white noise became silent in my ears. Even as I heard her voice. "You can become one of mine," she whispered from so far away. "You can become scarlet."

And then someone tackled her. It was a fucking beautiful tackle, too. Another woman, older, graying brown hair, had jumped the Red Cap woman and they were fighting. I could see scratches cutting deep into her flesh and then blood seeping out...and then the blood didn't seep, it jumped and I could see it being drained from the Red Cap woman and pouring itself into the other one.

I think it was then that I passed out. I don't exactly know why, I just did. I woke up a few hours later back in the hostel with this lady hovering over me. "Good," she said, "you're okay." Then she left.

And that brings us to now. I've been resting - I don't know what that Red Cap woman did to me, but it seemed like all the energy just went out of me. Kenny is gone though and Lyron left after she made sure I was alive. So I'm back to being alone.

I should probably get going soon. I don't want to stay here long enough for the Choir to come back.

But someday, I think I will have to face the music.

Life During Wartime

We were here at the hostel less than a week before Lyron told us we had to leave. "It's too dangerous," she said.

"I thought we were safe here?" I asked.

"Not anymore," she said. "I've been reading the blog they maintain and the protection I thought they had is no longer in place. So any runners here still have whatever Fears are after them -- including us. So we need to go."

We got our bags and went to leave. We were at the front door when we heard it. It was a very low-pitched noise, right on the edge of hearing, and then I stepped outside and starting vomiting my guts up.

Kenny pulled me back inside. Lyron, apparently, had stepped outside too and suffered the same effects, so he went to pull her back.

The man behind the front desk saw what had happened to us and came over to help. He passed me a towel and as I wiped down my face, asked me what had happened. My throat was sore and I could barely speak, but I was able to utter one word: "Choir."

The man's eyes went wide, then he walked back to his desk and called someone. I heard him say the word "lockdown" and then he hung up and got out a ring of keys. He went around the room, shutting the windows and lowered steel shutters down to cover them, and then locking the front doors.

And I knew why he was doing it. They didn't have the protection they used to have, so they had to make due. They had to protect themselves. The Choir was outside and it wanted to get in, so the hostel was now in lockdown.

And we were stuck within.

We're here.

The Wake-Up Bomb

Well, I finally have a fucking chance to write something. And that something will be:

I told you so. I fucking told you so.

Okay. We're staying at a motel right now, but we have to move on pretty quickly. I can feel it when they get near -- the air thrums. It feels like I'm in an airplane and we're going up up up and my ears are popping like crazy.

I think perhaps Proxiehunter was right. I think they just started pumping out infrasound, making us feel as bad as we possibly could. Because it started on Monday. I was feeling well, just on that verge of puking, when I saw that Kenny was rubbing his stomach, too. We were both nauseous, so either we had both eaten something that was disagreeing with us, or something was affecting both of us.

I went to find Lyron, to see if she had any nausea as well, when we heard it. The shrieking.

Have you ever heard a feedback loop? Here, take a listen to this. That's what it sounded like...only amplified by a hundred.

The windows cracked. I saw a hand covered in gray fungus push against them and they just shattered. Kenny had jumped up when the noise started and was covering his ears. I had put on my noise-cancelling headphones, but I still had one hell of a headache and it was getting worse.

Someone was coming in through the windows. Well, something. I guess when you are covered in living fungus, you may not count as human anymore. They didn't exactly look completely human either. When I took a look at their face, I saw that their jaw was hanging open at an unnatural angle, longer than I had seen a jaw hang before, like it had broken away from their face and was just hanging by their flesh and fungi. The entire inside of their mouth was lined with the fungus and that's where the noise was coming from.

I grabbed Kenny -- who was still holding his ears to keep the sound out -- and lead him to the back door. Our stuff was already packed and waiting for us there. We were paranoid enough -- and savvy enough -- to realize we would need to get our stuff quickly, so we prepacked everything and made sure we were ready to go before the attack.

I scrounged in my pack for my extra pair of headphones, then passed it to Kenny. He gave me a thumbs up. Together, we opened the back door.

There were four more of those Grayskins out there. They stood like statues, then open their mouths wide and let out their screams. Even with the headphones on, the noise echoed in my skull.

We were stuck. We couldn't go forward or backward. One touch and the Grayskins could infect us or melt our brains or whatever the hell the Choir wanted with us. My vision got blurry and when I wiped away at my eyes, I realized that they were bleeding. I looked at Kenny and saw that his were bleeding, too.

We were crying bloody tears and going to die.

And then Lyron -- sweet Lyron, whom I couldn't believe actually worked for monsters before -- then Lyron appeared at the edge of the yard and opened fire. She held a big fucking handgun and managed to clip two of the Grayskins, one in the shoulder and one in the chest. The others turned to her and let loose their scream, but she was wearing those ear muffs they have at the shooting range (which is where she probably was at before the attack, now that I think about it), so she staggered but didn't go down.

She yelled something at us, but we couldn't hear it. She was waving at us to move. I couldn't hear the thing behind us still screaming, but it was nothing compared to the onslaught happening to Lyron now.

So we grabbed out packs and ran. We ran past Lyron as she picked straight into the mouth of one the Grayskins to shut it up. Its gray matter splattered onto the grass. After that, she lowered her gun and tossed us her keys. Kenny caught them.

It took a few seconds for me to start up the car -- it's been a while since I've driven, my license is probably crazy expired -- and when I did, I reversed out of the driveway as fast as I could. The backdoor opened and I saw Lyron get in behind us. She said something and I didn't have to hear to know what it was: "Drive."

So I did. I drove until the sun rose and then I drove more.

Their still following us. I don't know why. Perhaps their after me. Perhaps if I go off alone, they'll follow me and leave Kenny and Lyron alone.

Lyron says she knows a safe place where we can stay, though. She says that she's heard rumors of a place, a hostel, that apparently caters to runners. So after tonight, that's where we'll be heading.

Let's hope it helps.

In the Air Tonight

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while. I wish I could say there was some sort of reason, but really, it was just lethargy. I went over and over the research Lyron had given me, looking for those tidbits of information, and the rest of the time, I just enjoyed having a roof over my head.

Thanksgiving dinner was...awkward. Both Kenny and I were still engrossed with the research, but we still paused to eat the turkey that Lyron had generously bought. It was pretty good, even though I am not sure when she had time to cook it.

There is a diary in with the research. It had one of those old stamps in the front where you fill in your name; in the space was the name "Alicia Cook." It looked like the diary came from the early 20th century, probably during the First World War (Alicia makes reference to the fact that her father has gone off to fight in the "war against the Hun.")

She also makes references to something she calls "the Music of the Spheres." It's music only she can hear, music that influences her thoughts and what she says and does. She believes that it is the singing of angels and "their invisible influence helps me survive in this world."

Halfway through the diary, Alicia notices a gray patch of mold growing on her leg. Removing even part of it hurts, so she leaves it alone and it grows and grows.

This is the last entry:

i was wrong about the music. it was not my invisible angels singing to me. i think, instead, it was the devil himself and i gave into his temptations. his voice bombards me now. the grayness has spread across my chest and neck. it hurts to even touch it. 

the music sings to me now. it wants me to spread this infection. it wants me to walk from city to city and spread its influence, like typhoid mary. i have barely any resistance left. it can make me do whatever it wishes. 

tomorrow is guy fawkes night. our remaining family shall build a bonfire. and when it is as hot as the fires of hell itself, i shall perform my last rebellion against the devil and throw myself into the fire. i shall burn this infection and myself along with it. 

god forgive me, 

alicia cook

This corresponds to other instances of the Choir turning their victims into Carriers or "Grayskins."

I still wish I knew more, though. There is just this...foreboding in the air. Like we've rested for so long, something must happen. Something is bound to happen, no matter what.

Girl Anachronism

Part of me wants to leave this house. Part of me wants to get on the next bus or just take off running. Part of me wants to burn it to the ground.

Why, you ask? Because we've been here a few weeks. A few weeks with a roof over my head and a soft bed at night. A few weeks of hot showers. A few weeks of no worries. Hakuna matata motherfuckers.

And I know it's going to end. Because it has to. Nothing lasts that long, especially if you are a runner. Something will happen - Lyron will get tired of us and try to kill us (probably not likely, but possible), one of the Fears she doesn't work for will attack (most probable), a comet will crash into the earth creating a thousand years of darkness (very unlikely, but still), maybe none of those things, but something will happen.

And we will have to run. And we will miss the roof over our heads and the soft beds and the hot showers. It's like Lyron is saying, "Here. Here are all the things you are going to miss. Go on, enjoy them, that just means you'll miss them more."

In other news, I have been reading about the Choir. Lyron gave us packets of information and mine was filled with reports and articles and studies all about our good old grey fungi friends. Needless to say, most of it is contradictory, most of the witness statements are less than useless, but there are nuggets of gold. I just need to find them.

Speaking of Lyron, she and Kenny were put off (well, that's putting it mildly) to something I said during the interview. I think she's avoiding me, which is fine by me. Kenny, however, seems so inquisitive that I think he's going to ask me a million questions whenever we're in the same room.

Well, back to research. And I thought I wouldn't have any more homework when I started running.

Know Your Enemy

So here's what we've been doing for the past week.

Needless to say, it is not what I expected.

Lyron is nice. It's kind of disconcerting, knowing that this person who serves multiple eldritch abominations is  nice. And she's not like, nice-to-meet-you-now-leave-nice. She has a genuine niceness. A sister-niceness.

Which doesn't mean I won't burn her house down if I have to. As soon as she set us up in her spare rooms, I set up several contingencies in case we needed to leave in a hurry.

I also don't have any qualms about spending her money. Money is money, doesn't matter where it came from. Hell, a majority of the money in the US has cocaine on it. True story.

I just wish Kenny would ask her for information already. I don't think the Choir will mess up his information - but it may mess up any questions I ask, so I've been trying to avoid talking. Believe me, I've had to hold in a million questions and if Kenny doesn't start asking soon, I may toss my apprehensions about the Choir aside and ask myself.