Journals of the Damned Read online

Journals of the Damned

  By GJ Zukow

  Copyright 2012 by GJ Zukow

  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 Japa
n 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