This is a short story I had to write for English class. Figured I'd post it here.

The chill of the autumn air could make a man shiver. It was a sort of unnatural cold, the kind that sends a chill down your spine, like watching a really good horror movie. Except that there was nothing good about it. There was nothing wrong with the temperature, though. It felt like any other autumn night. Something was in the air... something... supernatural.

Heh... I'm talking about like it happened yesterday. It's been years since the Invasion, but none of us have forgotten. Oh, people have tried, of course. They've tried to put it all behind them and rebuild their lives, but they've always failed. Their lives are forever changed. Just like mine.

I lost my brother, Thomas. He died like a hero should: fighting to protect everything he loved. He was my only family. Today is the fourth anniversary of his death, of the day five fearless people stood up to the unending onslaught to let the rest of us escape. Thomas was one of those people. Four of those people sacrificed their lives-only one person lived through it. He brought us back something to remember the others by. For me, he brought back a journal Thomas had been keeping.

All of the pages were yellowed, and most were burned and ripped. Only a few pages remained intact. I rewrote them to better remember Thomas. They'll always have a place in my heart, as will Thomas' selflessness.

November 29th, 2143
Vakas City's under quarantine. Been like this for a week. Not sure what they're trying to do, government's got us locked in here. They're probably scared about the murders. Can't blame them, they've got me frightened too. The bodies are being found missing most of the blood, but no scars or lacerations. No gashes or holes. Creepy. You never know who's going to die until it happens. Government probably knows something we don't.

Elliot snuck back into the city today. Left to visit Dad up in Rivera, but they wouldn't let him back in Vakas. He climbed the fence and avoided the police and got back home.

My birthday's tomorrow. Turning twenty-seven. I don't expect anything; all our friends have no way of reaching us due to the government dividing the city up. We got stuck in Parker; most of the others are in Evans. Hopefully Elliot will remember and say something.

December 1st
Something happened yesterday. I had been up for a few hours, Elliot was still sleeping. Can't really describe what happened. Elliot's completely shaken up, can't talk or anything. There were screams, but they weren't human screams. They seemed demonic. Things started appearing in thin air-not sure what they were. They looked like bright blue spheres with lightning streaks striking out from them. Monsters just walked out of them.

Those were what traumatized Elliot. He saw them, screamed, and collapsed. I had to carry him back to the house with help from some other people. I didn't get a good look at the monsters, but I got enough. Most of them resembled a person, maybe a little bigger in size. Their skin was a tan-like color. Black eyes. Hands and feet were clawed. Their jaws protruded, which just made it more terrifying when they screamed. They were fast. Faster than us. Stronger, too. I tried to turn my head before I saw one rip a person in half.

Once we got back to the house, we laid Elliot in his bed. The house sort of became a shelter. I guess the monsters didn't think anyone would hide in a house like ours. There were sixteen people in total, myself and Elliot included. Recognized one of them as Carla, she was our neighbor.

The noise settled after a few hours. I looked outside. The street was littered with bodies, severed limbs... I almost vomited.

Hell of a birthday gift.

December 4th
We've been stuck in the house for almost four days. We can't see the monsters outside, but we know that they're there. One person suggested he run outside and give us enough time to escape Parker into Morgan. He thinks it'll work, but nobody else does. The only thing running out there will accomplish is getting killed for nothing. There's more than one monster out there.

Elliot finally woke up yesterday. Carla explained what had happened the best she could, but no one can really accurately describe what happened.

Michael and I found a few guns I had stored in the basement. Three GP .35s and a Colt .45. Nobody here can really shoot a gun except for me, Elliot, Carla, and Rickard, and Elliot can barely move, much less shoot a gun. The fingers on my right hand have lost feeling from the fear. Rickard says he has more guns at his house, halfway across Parker, near the border into Morgan. If we can get Elliot under control, Rickard thinks he can make it to his house with Elliot and Carla covering him. It might work, if we can distract the monsters. The only problem is what can distract them?

December 7th
Michael laid out a plan. Eric made a Molotov with tar and dish soap and will throw it outside. Hopefully it'll make enough smoke to give Rickard, Carla, and Elliot enough time to run. They'll dip in and out of alleys and make it through Parker to Rickard's house. Says he has rifles and grenades there. Not sure what he's doing with all that weaponry, but we're sure as hell lucky he has it.

Once they're there, they'll improvise another smoke Molotov and return to the house. Elliot has experience with them. They're leaving tomorrow. We can only hope they make it back.

December 8th
Elliot came back-alone. They got to Rickard's house fine. They stocked weapons and left the house after throwing a Molotov. The monsters apparently learned from last time and waited until they left the smoke. Elliot said he heard unholy screams, flesh ripping, and Carla screaming. Not sure what happened to Rickard. He disappeared completely. Elliot returned with a box of frag grenades, a few light assault rifles and SMGs, and a backpack full of flares. Also came back with an intact ham radio. Michael can set it up.

December 13th
Michael set up the radio and has been sending distress signals for days. No return. The Morgan and Evans districts have no signal whatsoever, and Pearce is coming as mostly static. Intercepted a few signals, but they were gibberish. Apparently all of Vakas is as bad as Parker is.

Heard gunshots outside. Took a peak and saw Rickard and a few other people sprinting toward the house firing guns at pursuing monsters. One didn't make it. He turned around at the wrong time and tripped. The closest monster jumped on him and starting ripping into his stomach open. I couldn't watch.

The other four, Rickard among them, made it back inside. He couldn't say what happened. He wasn't sure himself.

Three monsters were visibly left, but more were undoubtedly coming. Elliot suggested we fight them off. The three people that came back with Rickard could hold their own in a gunfight.

Eric thought it was a bad idea, but they couldn't be dissuaded. Their ambitions are certainly noble, but it's a suicide mission.

December 15th
They actually held of the assault. Five people, five humans, stood against a horde of unspeakable horror and survived. Megan got a severe wound in her leg, but Michael disinfected it and wrapped it up. She's doing okay. Rickard and Stephan came back with minor wounds, and Elliot and Brandon were unscathed. No more monsters came after the sixth hour. They were unrelenting, so we think Parker is cleared. The only thing we can do now is gather the remaining survivors in Parker and move on to Morgan, and hopefully liberate it.

Done writing for a while. We have to be on the move, more monsters might move into Parker to finish us off.

December 25th
Christmas. It's supposed to be a happy, joyous occasion, but if I'm feeling anything, it's certainly not joy. Elliot brought me everything needed for a makeshift handgun. He knows I've always been a gun enthusiast. I promised him I'd build it when this is all over.

January 11th, 2144
Made it past Morgan and into Pearce. Morgan was mostly holding its own. We picked up dozens of people good with a gun. It'll certainly help in getting to Evans. The monsters in Morgan showed little resistance, maybe due to what happened back in Parker.

Pearce is a different story. It's like Parker-monsters roaming the streets with civilians hiding in homes and buildings. In some ways, it's worse than Parker. The monsters have set up a perimeter around the district, so the only way in was to fight. The monsters here are a lot more organized. They're also a lot more on edge. They seem different than the ones in Parker and Morgan. They were bigger, faster, stronger. I saw one flip a car in its path.

The feeling came back to my fingers. I took a gun and now I'm part of the fight. I just hope my support didn't come in too light.

January 16th
Rounded up most of the Pearce survivors without stirring up too much trouble. Had a few run-ins with the monsters, but we're now far more organized and powerful than the five were in Parker. I think the monsters know we're here, but aren't putting up a fight. They're either afraid of us, which I hardly think as a possibility, or they're planning something. Maybe a strike against us when they're all together and we're at rest.

January 18th
Fought our way out of Pearce today. They put up almost no fight, and I'm firmly convinced they're holding back to build strength. A few of them ran.

We're in Evans now. It's divided down the middle-the monsters are holding ground near the border to the Lockhart district, the survivors to the ocean. They were relieved to see us, and us, them. We recruited more people to our makeshift army, and we're over a hundred people now. A few people decided to stay in Evans to hold off the monsters. They were convinced the government was sending soldiers by sea to help them.

I tried to persuade them to come. If the government had really cared about Vakas in the first place, why would they have placed us under quarantine? If they really cared about us, wouldn't they have evacuated the city? They couldn't be convinced otherwise. We left them behind and tried to fight through to Lockhart.

January 21st
Evans is ours. More people stayed behind to try to protect their homes from remaining monsters. We moved into Lockhart, which was completely devoid of monsters. The survivors we found told us that they all just left last week. No fight, they all just marched off toward the east. If east is where they were headed, it's where we were headed.

Elliot thinks they're moving back into Parker. That's where they had the most power before we overthrew them.

January 26th
We made our way back to Pearce, near the border to Morgan. Many people joined us on the way. We had to fight through Morgan to make it back to Parker.

Hell of a fight. I found out my previous assumptions were right. They were falling back to build numbers, in turn building strength. A lot of people died. We finished off the remaining Morgan monsters, and I got a good look at one.

Its skin was light brown, its eyes were pure black, and its face looked like that of a demented psychopath, something you'd see in a horror film. Its clawed hands and feet were soaked in blood. It had all the features a human would-eyes, a nose, a mouth, ears, it even had hair. It almost looked human.

January 27th
Camping in Morgan for the night before we begin the assault on Parker. Parker is a small district, which would make it far more difficult to fight. The streets will be flooded with the horrors. The only hope we have of living through this is fight on the bridge that separates Parker from Morgan, and the rest of Vakas.

January 28th
A man came up to me before we moved back into Parker. He was dressed in military official attire-maybe he was a ranking officer. What he said to me confirmed this.

He told me that the monsters were a result of a failed government experiment called the "Nexus Drive." It was a device that erased a person's thoughts and made them concentrate on one thing, and one thing only-orders. It was designed to create the perfect soldier. A soldier that would have no remorse for killing, one that would be efficient in everything it needed to do.

He told me that the Nexus Drive had gone too far in destroying a person's thoughts-it destroyed their mind, their personalities, it destroyed who they were, making them into nothing but mindless killers. It corrupted their bodies in to the walking abominations we've been fighting for two months.

He told me that the government had tested a Christian priest first. I'll never know why, he never told me. He told me that the Drive had created the first of the monsters we'll fight today. The monster went to the town of Rivera, a settlement with a large Christian population, and infected most of the people there. They were, in a way, soldiers of God.

He also told me they had no weakness. They developed intelligence over time, allowing basic communication with each other. They're smart, quick, and extremely powerful.

When he said this, he left. He never gave me a chance to speak. He didn't tell me if military reinforcements were coming. I assumed they weren't.

The assault starts in a few hours. We have hundreds of "soldiers" with us, but they have hundreds of thousands of actual soldiers. The one thing we had to remember is that they are human. Somewhere, deep inside, they've retained their human personalities, their human feelings, their human thoughts. They will break. Just like we will break.

January 28th, 2144 is the last entry in Thomas' journal. He died that day. We held off the soldiers for hours, until they finally stopped. They knew we were winning, so they retreated. But we knew-Thomas knew-that they weren't giving up. We made our way to a hill outside Parker, where the five-Thomas, Rickard, Stephan, Megan, and Brandon-made a final stand to give us time to escape. Only Rickard came back alive.

We left using the time the five gave us. We left the city, to find new life. The date is January 28th, 2148, and even today, the monsters still persist. Vakas is completely destroyed, entirely overrun by the monsters. That's where the Invasion started. That's where the fight for freedom started. The government has the monsters mostly under control, but many still run rampant.

People have tried to forget the horrors of the invasion. They can't. Nobody can. Their lives are forever changed.

Just like mine.

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