"They're Everywhere" just doesn't cover it.

I'm in the bathroom up on the top floor, looking out over the Commons through broken windows. Carefully looking. I think their vision is lousy but I can't take any chances. The last chance I took got two people, well, not killed, but worse than killed. I still can't get that high school kid out of my head. He took a bullet for one of them, his mom I think, and by the time they got to him he was back up and joining them. She was my fault too; I was shoving one of them back and he landed on her unconscious body. She got up missing an ear and an eye, and leapt on top of one of the German tourists I was trying to get into the store. The boy and his Mom are like a tag-team out there now. One of her legs got crippled when one victim buried a busted broom handle into her knee, so now he runs them down and she catches up and takes a share like a cadeverous lioness. The goths who used to hang out on the Pavilion are wandering aimlessly, sometimes stopping at a corpse stripped to the bones and dropping down to nuzzle a fragment of flesh from the remains. There are maybe thirty or so unmoving corpses, and maybe twice that still moving.

Yeah, THAT's what's going on.

They aren't slow, and they don't just take a bite. They rip their victims apart, shred flesh with inhuman strength. I never thought I'd write THAT line, but that's what it is; a man in a blood-soaked suit grabbed a woman's shoulder and pulled the skin right down past the elbow. They can tell a deader from one of them; if a victim starts twitching, they back off. Apparently, they aren't into strict cannibalism. . . .

I want to laugh, but I think a few are out in the big room; I shouldn't even be typing on this stolen laptop, but I am hoping someone sees this and knows that we are here, still alive. The barricade out front just could not hold; once they broke the display windows it was over. We couldn't patch all the gaps. Earlier we tried to break out, running out towards an idling bus in a wedge. 24 people went out, 11 came back in. Everything we do fails. Even our plan for what to do when they got in broke down: everyone just ran, including me. It's hard to not flee after a few hours of watching neighbors rending each other apart and slurping down the entrails of screaming victims. They have no emotion except when they eat; then, a sort of feral joy creeps over their faces. They pause and enjoy the moment. And then, you find out why they are so voracious: their stomaches rumble, their flesh flushes and seems to be invigorated, and then they shit out a brownish mess of partially-digested human. And then they are off looking for more.

Three of us are left in the building: Heather made it to the crow's nest and managed to wedge a desk in the stairwell, but I can hear it creaking, even this far away. I hope she remembers to go out the office window and over the roof, and I hope that they haven't figured out how to climb anything other than stairs. In the fire escape stairwell a young man with dreadlocks and a torn white t-shirt (he literally lost his pants getting away from one of them, and chose a bad day to go commando) has wedged the ladders against the doors, but for him there is no way out. I can hear them pounding on the doors and making the whole stairwell ring with howls and crashing blows. I can hear a high, insane giggling rise up over the din; sounds like he is not taking his impending sorta-death very well.

I wonder how I'll take it when they finally find me.

If I sound blithe, it is the only way I can deal with some of this. I can't take it all in; this is not supposed to happen. The initial reports were vague; it sounded like a bizarre sort of rioting. But there seemed to be a news blackout or something, because any reporter sent to one of the scenes stopped reporting pretty quickly. By early afternoon, as the rain from the south came, we began to learn that something was seriously wrong. But then it was too late. The rain came, tawny, fetid, acrid drops falling suddenly and completely in a downpour that lasted less than a minute. But all it took were a few drops, and your boyfriend was gorging on your neck and your lunch buddy was tearing open your hips to get to the juicy stuff. Just like that: I was selling someone a copy of The Fountainhead, looked up to see the necrotic deluge fall, and watched two people turn to the folks next to them and start feasting. I got the doors closed, and in less than a minute they were throwing themselves against the glass. A couple of the customers helped me push display cases and bookshelves against the doors, and less than four minutes after the rainfall we were huddled in the area where the registers used to be wondering what the fuck to do.

When I say that they're everywhere, it's not that they came in droves out of nowhere, it is not just that they are now in the building hunting, knocking down doors, feeding, crapping out the effluent of other humans. They are everywhere because you can hear them, smell them, and out of the corner of your eye see then all around. Even in this small room I jump at any noise or movement. A buzzing fly startles me; a creaking window frame makes me burst briefly into tears. They are always just along the edge of your vision. And I think they are inside us too; I have watched people do things in the past few hours that must come from whatever corruption started this. I watched a woman decapitate her healthy husband when he suggested they commit suicide. . . and then fall on the sword she had killed him with, the one he had fished out of the window of the head shop. I heard a noise in the bathroom and a couple of us burst in to find three guys pinning a female one down and . . . well, doing things they deserved to be eaten for.

I won't talk about what we did to them, or the rest of it.

I can't write anymore; I can hear scratching at the door. Again, top floor bathroom. If you approach from outside, signal and I will drop down on a bundle of wires I've fixed to the big industrial sink in here. I just want to go. Please let me go. . . .