Update: 30 Jun, 1055

Tyler Collins
South Atlanta QZ/ARTCC, GA, US

Just got back. I have an hour or so, so here's an update.

After notification of the crash, myself and five of the eight Nat Guard guys packed up on the bikes and headed north to search for the wreck. It was easy with a large plume of smoke, but I confirmed using a radio tuned to 243.0MHz (the plane was using an old ELT that still transmitted on this freq, not 406MHz, which I couldn't catch with my type of radio). The plane went down in a pair of softball fields in Duncan Park northwest of here. It was maybe twenty-five miles by bicycle to get there, and the way was jammed with groaners. Most of 'em we just outran, but there were plenty of roadblocks and to get through we'd set up a small perimeter, sterilize a crossing point, lift our equipment over, and continue on. It was incredibly taxing, especially since the most direct path was through some hefty suburban areas.

We didn't reach the crash site until sundown, and that made things a lot worse. It looks like the plane was aiming for the farther field and fell short, instead plowing into the fields after skimming the trees of the forest to the north. The fuselage was intact, more or less, with the tail still on. The nose was bent underneath the front of the aircraft and the cockpit bulkhead was split.

After dismounting and carving through a ring of groaners, we came upon the crash from its port side wing root. The wing was maybe twenty meters away, wedged into the ground, spilling a bunch of fuel that was burning rather brightly.  The crash had attracted a whole lot of groaners, and they were flooding the aircraft. We didn't have enough people to handle them quietly and floods of them were closing in behind us anyway, so we went ahead and used our firearms. It was difficult in the dark, but there was a large fuel fire nearby around so we managed to get the outside clear in about two minutes.

The inside was more troublesome, since a number had squeezed inside through the split fuselage. We dropped the rear door with an emergency lever and let Shawn take out each of the groaners as they came. Two were trapped in cargo netting and were difficult to get rid of. The worst part, however, was the crew chief.

He was likely the only survivor of the crash, since the pilots were both dead in their seats. It's also likely that he was bitten shortly after the crash, because we arrived just as he was turning.

The guy heard us and started pleading for help immediately. We almost got to him before Shawn yelled a warning, seeing the ragged bite on his hand. The guy was pleading for help and then started getting louder and more upset until it devolved into incoherent screaming. Shawn shot him shortly after that.

The pleads weren't for help for his condition, but for us to kill him. It was everything we could do to....I haven't slept a whole lot since then.

With the craft secured, there were a whole lot of groaners still closing in on the light and the sounds. Under normal circumstances, we would have just abandoned the crash until morning and let a bigger group sterilize it to get the supplies. That night, though, we had far too many groaners all around us to make it out without help. Instead we settled in for a long night.

Because of the crash location, we were able to set up some great choke points with the softball fences and the entrances. At one point, they had me sprint out to a tree with a hatchet and chop it down over a fence breach--I ended up chopping it down in what felt like ten seconds and sprinting back before the thing even toppled. The hatchet broke on my sprint back when I used it to stop a groaner.

Because we were able to funnel them into basically two points, four of us could cover both points while five and six took care of the leaks. It also meant that none of us got any rest. I wondered why we hadn't gotten any help by the time the sun came up. Turns out that the radio repeater was out and no one had heard us until about noon on Friday.

By that point, we were nearly out of ammo. I carry an M4A1 that I took from a dead National Guard guy on my way out of Atlanta. I held onto it since any civilian AR-15s are as hoarded by their owners as the military-grade weapons are by the higher-ups. The convenient thing is mostly because of ammunition: everyone around me keeps .223/5.56mm NATO so we can exchange in an instant. I have two packs that I usually grab: the first is a light pack with two spare magazines that I use for our transits back and forth between ARTCC and the QZ. I have a "heavy" load with a bunch of camping gear and some longer hand weapons, and five magazines. Each magazine is underloaded with 23 or 25 rounds. I also always carry an off-brand modified Beretta 92 with one spare magazine.

On Thursday, I took my heavy load and thus had 122 rounds spare, plus 25 in the rifle and  one in the chamber. I spent every single round that night and morning, and darn if I didn't drop 125 zombies with 148 rounds. I also spent a magazine of pistol ammo, 16 rounds, for double-tapping. I never claim to be a great shot; I did barely well enough to qualify in training, but even if I'm inflating the numbers I feel really proud of that. At midday I was down to my pistol and the hand weapons, of which I had broken my two favorites. The Wal-Mart grade machetes and hatchets fell apart after maybe fifteen or so groaners, so they became the throw-aways that we only used in a rush. Our mainstays were the ones from sports stores. Gerber ones held up the best, but got dull rather quickly. You can still kill with blunt force, though.

Anyways, it was Friday night before five vehicles from the South Atlanta QZ showed up like the cavalry. The passenger, maybe ten or fifteen, sprinted out and started mauling their way through the small crowd of uglies around the fences. It was like something out of Braveheart, and frankly rather hilarious at first. Two of our rescuers got bitten in the process, though and...

We loaded the supplies onto a flatbed and headed out post haste, going straight to the QZ. As soon as we got there, they let the flatbed through and then put the six of us in quarantine through to Monday morning. None of us talked and we all tried to sleep. None of us succeeded for very long.

Well, we're back now, and the supply load turned out to be food and meds heading to somewhere in South Carolina. If you're reading this, SC residents, know that two men and one woman sacrificed their lives to try and deliver several tons of antibiotics and MREs. Dozens more succeed every day, but the dangers are real.

If you see a Hercules flying over, thank them.

Weird stuff

Tyler Collins
South Atlanta QZ/ARTCC, GA, US

I should get some tin foil. I've never made a hat out of one before. Seriously--I'm the type of person that goes to the greatest lengths to throw out conspiracy theories and hoaxes. It comes with being a scientist, I guess.

There have been a few new faces around the officers at the QZ in the last couple of weeks. I thought about it before and wondered where they'd come from, but I didn't really chew through it until now. They look different because they wear heavy work pants, military-style boots, and black button-down shirts, and always some form of dark sunglasses

Red flags:
1) Black. Shirts. Georgia. Summer. Long sleeves are good but black just soaks in the heat.
2) They're always armed. Sometimes its concealed (you can see them bump elbows with the handles, or favor a leg if it's an ankle holster), but often it's an open-carry. They use belts that are similar to law enforcement utility belts, minus the flashlights.
3) Their shirts always appear pressed. Nobody does any ironing out here.

They remind me a lot of something like a private military company that

Shit  C-130 went down north, maybe twenty miles will update

Still Cooling My Feet

Pastor Dan
Fox River Valley QZ
Eastern Wisconsin

It's been a little while since I posted. I am being watched, and as I type this, several very serious looking men with some SERIOUS equipment are monitoring the wifi signal. I think they are going to try to triangulate it, to find the source. It's the only reason they allowed me to log on.

It has been... interesting... the past couple of days. There were a couple of log on attempts under my name over that time and none worked. The first time when they used my old Google password it wasn't accepted. That got me into some trouble, and when I tried, I found it had been changed, with a clue I was able to decipher in order to find the new password.

Then they tried to log on with THAT password... and it had changed again.

Then I tried. And here I am. Writing what I want because the moment I step away from the screen, everything stops, and the commandant isn't desperate enough to go straight to threatening my life yet... especially as the QZ needs ME to log on at all. The reason they're letting me write any of this is, I think, to see if others are having similar difficulties.

It's funny. I haven't spared a thought for the groaners for days. Government guys with guns, though...

I am so worried about you all. We could handle the undead, no problem. But this... it has made targets of us, and a bunch of you didn't need that. None of us needed this... except maybe, maybe we did. Maybe being able to talk, to share,

Hell, I'll say it. I needed it.

Their machines are beeping and I think that means they're gonna pull the plug. I'll keep typing, though, and maybe the blog will save what I ty

There are a lot of ways to go...

Tyler Collins
South Atlanta QZ/ARTCC, GA, US

Sorry about the lack of an update last week. Heat stroke sucks.

After doing tons of field exercises and training stuff with CAP and the Air Force, you'd think I'd remember something I harped on so much when I was in charge. Alas, I did not, and I got far too dehydrated on Wednesday of last week.

All those water tests made me super-conscious of the water I was drinking, so I was being exceptionally careful with what I consumed. Apparently, too careful, because I wasn't drinking enough. In the middle of the QZ, while I was helping plant some stakes for a new tent, I suddenly got really nauseous and collapsed. Some Army people helped me into the shade and got an IV in and some ice packs on my neck. My body temp was way high and I wasn't sweating at all. I didn't even notice.

Be careful about the water, but remember what will kill you faster. Don't get dehydrated!

In other news, I did not go to the ARTCC last week due to the heat stroke and Steve had a really bad flashback. I wasn't there so I don't know what triggered it, but it was bad. They had to turn back a few flights because he was out of commission. The big Thursday lift still happened, thank goodness, but I wasn't there when I needed to be and it was my own stupid fault. Real people suffered for it.

Just a reminder that everything you do matters to someone and continues to have real world effects. Stay safe and stay vigilant!

Daniel

Name: Daniel Esteban Zapata
Date of Birth: January 12th 1993
Date of Death: May 11th 2015
Place of Death: Santa Bárbara, Antioquia - Colombia, South America
Cause of Death: Head trauma due to penetrating firearm projectile. Evidence suggest the lesion was self inflicted.
State: Deceased, not infected.

AAR FILE CLOSED.
CODE GRAY.

Something has Changed

Pastor Dan
Fox River Valley QZ
Eastern Wisconsin

I'm not entirely sure what is going on out there, but one thing is for sure... our writers are going quiet. I hope, hope, HOPE you all are still okay but aside from the waves of the dead beating at our various safe houses and quarantine zones, something or someone out there has become aware of this archive and isn't entirely sure that they like it, and I am not precisely sure why.

I came back from another run about a week ago and was met by soldiers who ordered me into confinement with no word as to why. At the time I assumed it had something to do with the Commandant's fear of religion, but Rose let me know that the other preachers, though still watched, are still out and about doing their thing. No one told her why I was being imprisoned, and we strongly suspected the only reason they even let her visit was so she could reassure those who still listened to me that I wasn't dead to avoid unrest.

Then, just yesterday, the Commandant came down and talked to me. About the archive.

He asked who you all were. WHERE you all were. How I had managed to reactivate this particular bit of the internet, and how I made it impervious to government interference. Apparently they've been trying to shut us down for months, to commandeer the archive as a form of inter-QZ communication, and it doesn't let them even log on.

So finally he asked, how was I doing it, and would I stop doing it in return for a better position within the command structure. I told him I wasn't doing it, that I didn't know how it was working.

So a word out there to ALL of you, to anyone who is left reading and writing. Something has, apparently, chosen us, and whatever that something is, it is making our governments nervous. I am writing this with oversight. In the future I might not be. I don't know what they'll do, or who it is who lets us write these words.

Who else is there?

Is anyone else still listening, or have your own oversight groups decided to shut you down?

Behold, a rider on a dirtbike, and hell rides with him.

Jason Duncan
Central Florida Panhandle near Big Bend

My friend Travis and I made it to Port St. Joe a week ago. We made it by the skin of our teeth. Somewhere north of Highway 98 four guys riding double on a pair of heavy-duty dirt bikes came screaming down a small hill from out of nowhere. They crossed the road about two or three hundred yards ahead of us. The driver of the lead bike saw us driving towards them and stopped abruptly right in the middle of the road. His passenger was carrying some kind of wicked little sub-machine gun. They spoke a few words then the passenger fired a dozen rounds into the road between themselves and us.

The message was pretty clear. STOP! Needless to say, we did.

Just then, a massive herd of screamers and groaners crested the hill behind the riders. The other bike had stopped by this point. The passenger on this bike turned around, fired a few shots from an identical weapon into the ever-growing mob cresting and overtopping the hill. None of the dead fell to these shots. In fact they seemed to move faster, closing the distance to the stopped bikes. The first driver and passenger were yelling at each other. The herd was getting bigger and bigger. The bikes took off hell for leather, heading south away from the hill. Travis slapped me on the side of the head. I was in the driver's seat and wasn't driving. The weird scene had me mesmerized but the smack broke the spell. I stomped the accelerator pedal and cut the wheel to follow the bikes off of the road down a dirt track I'd have completely missed had the two wheeled road block not stopped in my path. The truck bounced through the roadside ditch and up into the dirt track. The front ranks of the herd were just yards behind us as I accelerated hard, trying in vain to keep up with the powerful bikes. I fucked up and looked in the mirror. The group of screamers following us was bigger than any other congregation of these fucking things I'd seen. I saw wave after wave of the dead marching on St. Pete before the QZ there fell beneath their numbers. This crowd dwarfed that massacre by an order of magnitude. It was still growing. I don't know where they came from. I don't know how the riders had managed to attract this much attention. But I knew we were well and truly fucked...just as fucked as the guys on the bikes. We'd never clear this. The end is nigh. I knew it.

Then something even more strange happened. We were hauling ass down this dirt road. I know dirt roads. I grew up on dirt roads. We were hauling ass. Way too fast for anything remotely resembling safety. The passenger of the bike closest to us reached into a small pack slung over his shoulder, pulled something out, played with it for a few seconds, then threw it over his shoulder. It was a little white cylinder and it spun into the wood line to the side of the dirt track. As we passed it, a strangely familiar sound screamed over the roaring of the truck's massive diesel engine. That guy threw an air horn into the woods. It was one of the medium sized ones you buy at Walmart....bought at Walmart.... to prank your friends and scare your girlfriend. The screamers were still behind us but not quite keeping up. We were going way too fast.

Just then the bikes split up, one to each side of the dirt track. They stopped. With these fucking things chasing us, the bikes stopped. I had no intention of stopping. As I drove past the bikes, the drivers both waved me on frantically, gesturing for me to continue down the track. I wasn't going to argue. A second or two later, I looked back, and the passengers were again firing their weapons into the not-distant-enough horde now filling the woods behind us.

The track ended in a clearing that broadened out into a beach beside a lake. A dune lake. We had reached the gulf. I could see the dunes just beyond the lake and the faint haze of salt in the air beyond. We had nowhere else to run. Definitely fucked. The bikes came screaming out of the woods and passed me. I had slowed the truck down trying to figure the path ahead around the lake that was most likely to keep Travis and me alive for another minute or two. Oh. Yeah. Somewhere after the air horn, Travis had jumped in the back seat, opened the rear window, and started pointing my rifle back towards the screamers. He wasn't firing but I think he was getting ready to do so. I sped back up to follow the bikes. The drivers seemed to have some kind of plan in mind. They raced around the shorter curve of the dune lake, the right side, and were flying up and over the dune at what I knew would be the edge of the beach. I quickly decided the truck could probably make that climb too. The horde was only about a hundred yards behind us when I stomped the pedal and raced after the bikes. We hit the dune like a ton of bricks and somehow bounced up and over it without destroying the front suspension. I hadn't even had time to engage the four wheel drive.

Going to die. Going to die. That kept repeating in my brain.

We cleared the top of the dune and bounced over the other side. Travis hit his head pretty hard on the roof of the cab and landed in a fucked up heap in the back floorboard. The rifle flew from his hands and a round went off, punching a cute little hole through the roof. I started to take stock of the beach and my brain just went, NOPE. What I saw didn't register for a long time. The bikes had driven right to the water's edge and rolled up a ramp onto the front of some kind of small military boat, like a landing craft. I had seen videos of the bigger versions used in world war 2 so I recognized the concept. The boat was backing away from the beach as fast as it could. The really shocking thing in front of me was the three gray ships sitting parallel to the beach about a mile off shore.

With a few yards to spare I cut the wheel and sped off West down the beach trying to put some distance between us and the horde.

Then everything went nuts. I don't know what kind of ships they were, but they were armed. Heavily. The air split and thundered with whatever they were shooting. The shockwaves from the shells and explosions did their damndest to pick the truck up and throw it around like a fucking matchbox toy. I kept going. About a half mile from where I jumped the dune, I stopped and turned around in my seat. I could see the screamers pouring over the dune and flooding onto the beach. They were trying to flood onto the beach at least. The pounding coming from the ships was relentless. It was terrifying and beautiful all at the same time. Huge geysers of water, and sand, and blood, and bone were screaming up into the air with each round's impact. The bodies of the undead dead were torn apart like tissue paper. The firing continued for more than five minutes. I didn't even try to count the shots. They all blurred together in an unending, overlapping roar. The shells were so close to the water, I could see white lines of devastated turbulence racing from the ships to the beach with each shot. I've never seen anything so amazing in my life. After an eternity the firing stopped. Travis and I were just staring at the devastation in slack jawed amazement. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

I almost shit myself when someone knocked on the drivers window of the truck. The boat had pulled back up to the shore. One of the bike riders came up and decided to scare the life out of us.

We're on a ship now. I can't say where. I can't say much of anything. I have to show this to somebody before they'll "let" me post it. I'll find a way to fill you in as soon as I can.

We might be ok everybody.

Will advise.

Water Tests: SCIENCE!

Tyler Collins
South Atlanta QZ/ARTCC, Georgia, US

A shop-raiding group got a hold on some water testing kits, so I've been testing some stuff.

So, through the lists of things I tested:

Nitrates- from agriculture. We're almost exclusively on rain water now, so the stuff we drink is below the detection limit. Jackson Lake is utterly fucked, though. The test strip practically glowed from the 'positive' indicator.

Heavy Metals: The kit has a total check system that reacts with any 2+ transition metal. Unfortunately, that means that a positive result for something relatively benign, like Cu2+ could hide a positive result for something deadly, like cadmium. This result pegged on both rain water and water from Jackson Lake.

Pb/Cu test: I had to resort to what amounts to a first-year chemistry lab exercise to get a more precise idea. Using both water samples, I added a few different chemicals to each, including ammonia and hydrochloric acid. Basically by juggling these two, I was able to dissolve and precipitate lead, nickel, and copper as salts. There's a chart I used...it'd be easier to show than explain. TL;DR, there's about 14ug/mL lead in the rain water, which I was afraid of. It's just under the EPA max for drinking water, at 15ppb. Jackson Lake tested so positive, I'm surprised it hasn't started casting little figurines for us.

pH: Everyone knows what pH is. Rain normally has a pH of 5.5 or so, Our rain is right at 4.8 on the litmus (I'd tested this before, litmus paper was easier to come by than the full test kit). The lake is at 4.2. Please, kids, don't swim in that.

I don't even want to figure out what kind of intervention it'll take to fix the lake once all this blows over, not to mention the environmental consequences. As it is, I sent a few recommendations on water treatment up the chain.

The kit is also kinda non-specific, especially in the metals department. I'll see if I can talk someone into asking the commandant about testing other lakes nearby or even getting some better equipment. Doubt it'll amount to anything, but given how bad the water is maybe someone can talk them into setting up a well system.

They gave me an assistant earlier. Some guy named Aaron who was studying chemistry before it all went down. He's a good worker but there's a clear difference between a person who can run science experiments and a scientist. I can give him an itemized list and a series of instructions, but the way of thinking just isn't there yet. He'll get better at it.

Do what you can to keep yourselves safe out there from all dangers, not just the nibble-happy neighbors.