The Dystopian Diaries

by K. W. Callahan

  I really didn’t want to, preferring to get back to Miles, but my body just wasn’t responding the way I was telling it to. I still don’t know what that dude, Luther, hit me with, but whatever it was, it packed quite a punch.

  I passed out again after I made it to the mattress. By the time I woke up, it was dark outside. Jesse and Madeline offered me something to eat, but I politely refused in an effort to get back to camp. They urged me to stay the night so that they could keep an eye on my wound, but this time, my concern regarding Miles overcame my pain and discomfort, at least until they reminded me that Luther was likely out there lurking. Madeline explained that Luther was unpredictable and sadistic, and that if he found me out in the woods, at night, injured and alone, there was no telling what he was willing to do. She then proceeded to remind me, as she nodded to my head injury, that while my concern for Miles was sweet, if Luther got a hold of me on the way back to camp, I likely wouldn’t be much good to anyone.

  I countered with the argument that I was armed. And I didn’t think it likely that Luther would just be waiting around for someone to wander along in the forest at night. But Jesse countered my reasoning by saying that there is a difference between us and people like Luther. “People like that don’t think like us. They don’t act like us,” he said. “Luther is highly unstable, and he’s willing to do anything and everything in his power to stay alive. And waiting to take what we have, or take his revenge, is probably exactly what he’s doing now that he’s free.”

  Jesse’s words reminded me of the world we now live in, and they also made me feel incredibly guilty for letting this psychopath free.

  I feel even worse now as I wonder if Luther might have some hand in Miles’ disappearance. Jesus, after what Jesse and Madeline told me about the guy, it sends shivers down my spine just thinking about the possibility. Speaking of which, it’s closing in on nine-thirty and still no sign of my buddy. This CAN’T be good. If he was able, he would have made it back to camp by now. Something has to be wrong. There’s no way he would miss so many meals voluntarily. Either he went chasing after something and got lost or detained in some way, or someone took him, although I can’t imagine why they’d do that. But it can’t be anything good, whatever happened.

  It’s killing me just sitting on my hands here. I think I’m going to head out again and do some searching. At least when I’m looking, I feel like I’m doing SOMETHING.

  October 21st

  12:22 p.m.

  It was cold this morning…VERY cold. There was frost on the ground. I didn’t have my sweet Miles there in bed with me last night to help keep me warm.

  I found that I couldn’t write anymore yesterday. It wasn’t from lack of energy; I just couldn’t bring myself to write my experiences, they were all too raw. Hell they’re STILL too raw. I feel that by putting the words to paper it’s going to make this feel very real. But I need to do it, sometimes truly feeling the pain is the first step to accepting it and coping with it. I don’t really want to do either, but I know that I have to.

  So after I decided to continue looking for Miles, I hiked around to the other side of the lake to where Jesse and Madeline’s camp used to be. Miles and I had walked over there together several times after the couple’s departure. I wondered if Miles hadn’t gotten hungry while waiting for me and remembered the garbage bags the couple left over there. I figured that he might have thought he’d find some good stuff to munch on, the temptation being too strong for him to resist while I was away for such a lengthy period.

  After a while of searching, I found my ol’ buddy, at least what was left of him.

  Uh, this is terrible. I can barely force myself to write the words. Someone or someTHING had gotten him. His poor pudgy body had literally been ripped apart. His innards were all over the place.

  I couldn’t tell what had killed him initially, but it looked like wild animals had their go at him after the fact from the best I could tell. Maybe it was a pack of coyotes that had taken him down. I’m not sure. Maybe that’s why he broke free from his rope. Maybe he got scared and tried to make a run for it. Jesse and Madeline’s old campsite might have been the only place he could think of where other people might be to keep him safe since his neglectful owner wasn’t around to protect him.

  I can’t go on. This is just too much.

  1:12 p.m.

  I’ve recovered enough to finish my account regarding Miles. After the discovery of my sweet doggie, I walked back to camp, got a couple garbage bags, hiked back to where his remains were located, and gathered as much of him as I could.

  It was a gruesome, gut-wrenching process, but I couldn’t just leave him out there to be eaten away, potentially by the same vicious animals that killed him.

  Then I returned to camp, dug a whole beside Ben, and buried what was left of my faithful, and at this juncture, ONLY friend. I never planned on living beside a cemetery, but that’s what it seems to have become down there at the base of the tailings pile.

  A pretty sad state of affairs. Leaves me wondering what’s left in this world for me.

  October 23rd

  11:19 a.m.

  It’s cold out again. I think the last of fall is pretty much gone. I have a feeling that it won’t be long before the first snow of the year.

  I spent much of the last day and a half just lying in the tent. I know I need to get motivated, it’s just so hard. Miles’ death is weighing on me. The Ben situation is weighing on me. The memories of my arrival to Woodcrest are weighing on me. You’d think that in this world of no work and no real-world responsibility, the weight of the world would be off my shoulders, but I feel more burdened now than at any point in my life.

  I need to be out collecting more wood, fishing, and preparing my camp for winter – that or finding somewhere new to stay. I thought about seeing in Jesse and Madeline would have me, but the shed is barely big enough for two, and I don’t want to burden them with my presence. The world has been burdened enough with my poor decision making as it is.

  Maybe I should make another attempt to get into town. Now that Miles is no longer with me, what do I have to lose?

  October 24th

  8:11 a.m.

  I spent most of the remainder of yesterday once I finished my journal entry, fishing, gathering wood, and retrieving most of my remaining supply caches.

  And I spent most of the night freezing my ASS off!

  There was a light dusting of snow on the ground this morning when I woke. I’m glad I collected wood yesterday because I just finished building a roaring fire in an attempt to thaw the sticks of ice that are my bones right now. I can barely write I’m so cold. I have to keep pausing due to all the shaking I’m doing. In fact, I had to switch to writing with a pencil since the ink in my pen was frozen this morning.

  The reason I’m getting my supplies together is that I’m planning to take another trip into town. After last night, I’ve come to the definite conclusion that there is absolutely no way I can make it through the winter out here in my tent. Food or not, winter clothing or not, I think that conditions will just be too harsh. Three or four generations ago, my ancestors might have been able to weather this weather, but my blood is too thin, my stamina too low, my heartiness not hearty enough. I guess I should probably have devoted more time to building a more long-term shelter. I’ve just been so busy trying to survive out here. Plus, I was thinking that I could use one of the club’s beach structures for my winter housing, but that’s no longer an option after someone (probably Luther, maybe Jesse and Madeline) torched them.

  I not only want to go back to town to try to find a better place to live over the winter, but to re-attempt contact with any remaining residents. I don’t know if it will be worth my effort, but I need to do this not only for my personal security but for my personal peace of mind as well.

  Oddly enough, it’s not the change of environment or even the risk to my own safety that bothers me the most, it’s leaving Miles behind. That might sound silly cons
idering he’s dead and buried, but there’s still a strong attachment there. Even though he’s no longer with me in physical presence, he’s still with me in spirit. But I guess that means he’ll follow me wherever I go, just like he used to.

  4:49 p.m.

  It has been a busy day as I continue to make my preparations for departure. I spent a large part of my afternoon fishing and recovering my hidden supply caches. I’ll probably spend the rest of the evening (what little is left of it since it gets dark earlier now) cooking up the fish I caught earlier in the day.

  Right now, however, I’m ready for a break. I’m not sure how this trip into town is going to go, so I feel I need to do some writing before I leave, just in case I don’t make it.

  Okay, I need to get this off my chest. It’s been bugging me since I got out here, and I feel that since I have no one else to talk to, this is my next best way of relieving some pent up guilt. The Catholics have their confessional – I have my journal.

  For as bad as seeing the guy get killed at the sporting good store was when all this started, my arrival at Woodcrest was what really traumatized me. So I got here two days after the whole sporting good store debacle. The highways were already jammed, and people were going nuts. Some vehicles were running out of gas. Some were overheating. It was a complete cluster. I left my apartment at around seven in the morning and it took me almost seven hours to make it out of Chicago to Woodcrest. Thankfully, I filled up with gas the previous evening because I used almost the entire tank just getting out here.

  My plan was to fill up again along my route, but the gas station I stopped at was out of fuel. So once I got to Woodcrest, I stopped at a gas station (one of two) in town. The place was pretty busy, but nothing like the station I stopped at on the way. That place was jammed up like New York City gridlock. I was all ready to fill up my tank when I noticed a sign on the pump reading “cash only” and that customers needed to pay inside before pumping their fuel.

  Inside the station, it was pretty jam-packed with people. There was a decent line waiting to pay at the register. I guess a lot of people were trying to pay in large bills, and the person working the register was having trouble making change. So I’m like fourth or fifth in line to pay, watching those around me huff and puff about how long it was taking. I really didn’t care. I was in no hurry, and I was almost to the club. Plus, I was finding the whole thing kind of interesting, at least until these two dudes entered the station.

  The minute these guys came in, I sensed that they were trouble. They just kind of had that look about them. When they both pulled guns, I knew I’d been right. They ordered everyone down on the floor and proceeded to rob the joint, taking not just the sizeable stash of cash the place had accumulated, but loading up garbage bags with whatever food items they could get their hands on. Well, they were taking their sweet ass time, and more people kept coming into the store. The guys had to stop their stealing with each new person, which was apparently agitating them and making them jittery.

  Eventually, one of the dudes lost it, “I’m gonna shoot the next person who comes through the fuckin’ door,” or something like that he said. And he held to his promise.

  But then, it was like he’d popped his cherry and had nothing left to lose. He started shooting the people already inside the store execution style. He shot two of them right next to me. Of course, this made everyone else in the store start freaking out. Some people started to get up or tried to hide. This made these dudes even angrier. The guy who hadn’t shot anyone yet tried to calm everyone, telling them that no one else would get hurt if we just shut up and stayed put. Then he told us that if anyone else moved or tried to run, we’d ALL die. That seemed to settle everyone back down – or at least MOST of us.

  But I wasn’t hanging around to find out whether these dudes were men of their word. I shot out that front door like I was an Olympic sprinter. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I didn’t wait around to find out whether the robbers killed the rest of their hostages.

  Now I’m left wondering whether I’m responsible for the deaths of eight or nine or ten or however many people were there with me. It’s something that’s been weighing on me ever since. I feel like such a coward. But at the time, all I could think about was not dying. Like I said when I saw the guy get shot in the sporting good store parking lot, it doesn’t happen like in the movies. I didn’t find myself wanting to play hero and try to take out the bad guys. I just wanted to survive. But now that I’ve had to live for a while with the potential repercussions of my actions, I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt. I even wondered if I should write this down in here. I don’t know how other people reading it might one day take it. They’ll probably look at me with contempt. “What a loser,” they’ll say. “Why didn’t he try to help those people? How could he have just run away like that?”

  All I can say is that it’s totally different when you find yourself in such a situation…at least it was for me. I can only hope that the gunmen didn’t follow through with their threat. I mean, I didn’t hear any gunfire as I ran back out to my car and high-tailed it out of there. That doesn’t mean much, I guess. That’s part of the reason I want to go back to Woodcrest again. I’d like to try to find out what happened. Thing is, I’m not sure I want to know. Part of me wants to learn the truth in hopes of relieving my conscience, but the other part is terrified that I might discover I have the blood of multiple people on my hands. The terrible thing about it is that I’m not sure I can live with either. There’s the questioning and fear of the unknown if I don’t go back paired with the overwhelming guilt that accompanies the realization that I was the cause of other people’s deaths if I do.

  In my own mind, I can justify my actions. What was I supposed to do, just sit there and wait to be killed? If people want to be led to their deaths like lambs to slaughter, then that’s up to them. But then I think about what might have happened after I ran. I replay the scenarios over and over again in my mind. I don’t know. I may never know. But it’s something I’m going to have to deal with – LIVE with – for the rest of my life…however long that is now.

  So I guess that brings us to the here and now. And now what? Good question. I wish I had someone else here other than myself and the goddamn birds to answer it. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe if there was someone else here, they’d try to kill me. Take my food. Steal my tent. God only knows what the hell else. I’ve never been raped. Wonder what that’s like. Jesus. What the hell am I writing? It’s weird to just be alone here with my thoughts. Kind of scary in a way. Sometimes you don’t realize what screwed up crap runs through your head when you’ve got no distractions to occupy your mind.

  Okay…done writing for now. Thoughts are going off the rails, and that’s the last thing I need.

  October 25th

  1:11 p.m.

  Something is burning. God only knows what it could be; the whole world for all I know. I smelled it this morning, and I’ve continued to smell it ever since. It’s a very acrid scent, not like a campfire or wood burning in a fireplace or even someone burning leaves. I have no idea what it is, but it’s lingered in the air all day.

  I’m still working on preparations for my Woodcrest departure. I still have several small caches of food yet to retrieve. I know that it’s taking me a while. It’s just that I want to make sure I’m ready for anything and that I have as many supplies with me as possible. Then, if I find somewhere good to stay and there aren’t any supplies there, I’m good to go for at least a couple weeks. That means more fishing, and that’s where I’ve been spending most of my time today.

  There was a very light layer of ice ringing the lake edge this morning. It doesn’t bode well for the future. I bet you anything these lakes ice over pretty thick during the winter. That means no fish, and no fish means a huge hit to my supplies, which are mostly gone anyway.

  The way my supply situation sits right now, I only have about…

  October 26th

  10:15 a.m.

  Luthe
r came to my camp. But it wasn’t a friendly meet-and-greet or to thank me for my assistance in untying him back at the maintenance shed. Instead, he took me hostage. I guess I should be thankful that’s all that happened to me.

  He got the jump on me when I was writing. At least this time he didn’t hit me since my head wound is still healing from the last time we met.

  I was mid-sentence of my journal entry when I heard something behind me. I turned to find Luther there, a gun trained on me. He told me to put the book down and then he tied me up. As soon as I was bound and gagged, he began loading up a pack with a bunch of my supplies that included my gun and ammo, my lantern, spare batteries, flashlights, and some winter clothing.

  He talked while he worked. I don’t know why he talked. I tend to wonder if he’s as lonely out here as I am. But the things he was saying weren’t normal. It was almost as if he was talking to himself more than me, just speaking his thoughts aloud. They were the sick ramblings of a demented individual. He was talking about hurting Ben and how much he’d enjoyed it. He was talking about how he’d like to kill Jesse and the things he’d like to do to Madeline. He was talking about the things he’d done to other people, people I didn’t know. And then he started talking about how sometimes he’d come to my camp while I wasn’t around. He said he came here after I helped him escape from the maintenance shed. I wasn’t here of course, but my dog was. “The dog looked like a small polar bear tied to the tree,” he said. But from hanging around my camp, he’d seen Miles before and knew he was nothing to fear. So he untied Miles and took him. He took him around to the other side of the lake where he killed him.