We are not welcome in this world anymore.
That’s what my father used to say, and I wholeheartedly agree. The world has been turned inside out and it wants to digest what’s left of us.
—May 13, 02:45
Many years ago, my father witnessed the dawn of this terrifying new age, the collapse of everything they ever knew about. He was in his teens when it struck and he can’t really jog his long-lost memories. It might’ve been truly terrifying. Maybe it’s for the best my mother didn’t live to see what the world has come to. Rest in peace, mom.
To me, it seems like mother nature was really upset with our ecological tampering and decided to punish us for good.
We still have fuel and enough food for weeks to come. I hope we’ll get to find some kind of community shelter. My father keeps it to himself, but I think he caught a fever.
—May 21, 23:15
Maybe, it was meant to be the dusk? Perhaps, at this point, the pursuit of any made-up destination is moot. We don’t have any directions - not even a map. We can’t really see what’s ahead of the road, past our headlights. The thick fog keeps holding us back, keeping in suspense, toying with us. I don’t think we’ll ever know what is kept away from us. What follows us.
The radio station has been silent for weeks now. I’m not even sure if anyone is still out there, alive. Maybe, we shouldn’t have made that turn. We’ve run out of gas and we’re stuck here, amid nothingness in the silent backwoods.
I’ve lost my father.
—June 9, 06:30
I’ve been fighting this drawn-out battle for survival for a long time now, and this is a losing battle. I’ve seen it through, I don’t think I can go on.
I know it’s there, just outside the van, even if I can’t see it. I feel it lurk there, creeping for me. It’ll get me when I least expect it, when I all curl up on my deathbed, having spent my pitiful existence hiding in this musty, rotten hearse.
The truth is, as much as I’d like to cling to some illusive semblance of betterment and hope, I believe I wasn’t truly born into this every-daymare…
I was stillborn.
—August 19, Unknown
Background and Story
The story follows mankind’s dwindling remnants in their struggle against the apparent ecological cataclysm that, in a chain reaction of extreme natural disasters changed the face of the earth once and for all; the old world fell into ruin and the overturned ecosystem brought about new, hazardous living conditions, serving as the onset of the extinction event.
A cloak of a ubiquitous toxic haze now shrouds the land as far as eyes can see, with those who managed to survive the catastrophe suffer from toxin-induced memory loss, delirium, and varying stages of immunodeficiency.
Decades from that dreadful turnabout, in a roughly-defined sector of Toil isolated survivors are forced to exist in sterilized environments, makeshift protection suits and, as a rare commodity, hermetically-sealed mobile homes, and vehicles, with every outing into the open-air environment posing a risk of the lethal infection.
Highly contagious, the insidious airborne virus is suspected to be responsible for a lot of disappearances in isolated groups. Victims of the disease who wander out from the safety of their shelters are never found again.
By this time, crops have failed, with most of the natural foods and water resources already contaminated and rendered unsuitable for consumption, except for sparse canned and bottled reserves out there.
Desperation is at large, with most scavengers unable to afford sufficient protection against exposure and frenzied, disease-stricken bandits prowling about make those survival odds quite dire.
Although wildlife is believed to be extinct, some strange sightings of uncanny creatures persist, which are often attributed to the delirium.
Technology and Communication
Most of the modern conveniences are forgone, with web access becoming derelict; survivors now resort to limited means of long-distance correspondence such as through two-way radio or morse, or a more discreet means of dead-drop messaging between acquaintanced groups.
The only active radio station, the Emergency Broadcast Channel (EBC) forecasts regional environmental changes, hazards, and contingency reports, coming on air on an irregular basis and is assumed to be military-operated. If powers that be are still at play is largely unknown.
Hosted and narrated by:
Mykolaus (Vangate)
Started 02/12/20.
Scenes played: 1
License: Host License
