I never thought It would be like this. In all the movies, all the shows, and all the books It’s always been something more sinister, more… Deliberate. Some biological weapon released into the water supply or some top secret virus developed by some giant evil corporation for mysterious purposes, but not this. Never this. I don’t know how much longer I have. Let’s find out shall we? I’ll start here and see how far we get.

My friends and I always joked about It happening. We even had crazy, half-serious half-joke plans about what we’d do when It finally came to pass. Find the nearest Wal-Mart; hole up in the hunting goods section with Twinkies and those Little Debbie Powdered Donuts. We would have marksmanship contests to see who could get the most head-shots or tests of bravery and strength to see who could get the most kills with a baseball bat. Hell, I even remember laughing with everyone about us hoarding Twinkies when that Woody Harrelson movie came out. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones to have that idea. There are no original ideas even when they’re about the end of the fucking world. Go figure.

We weren’t crazy though, oh no. We weren’t the bunker-building weapon-stockpiling nut-jobs that people think make up 99.99% of the Midwest’s population. We knew that It would never happen in our average, 9-5, Superman-incompatible world. We satisfied our Apocalypse Urge with all night gaming bouts of Left 4 Dead.

I remember when the first batch of cases was reported. I think it’s kind of funny how we, a people almost obsessed with It, tripped over each other trying to find logical explanations of how it could’ve happened. Bad LSD, PCP or MDMA; Hell, we ran out of abbreviations but we still kept trying to think of some other explanation. Anything but the horrible, damning truth.

But even then I think we knew. I think the truth about our situation, or rather what we thought was the truth at that time, sank in much before the final and most skeptical medical experts took the airwaves to confirm our worst fears; our darkest dreams. The governments were ready though. Seems like my generation wasn’t the only one making plans about what they would do while watching a crossbow-wielding redneck make his way through the end of the world. Entire cities across several nations were quarantined, international travel was pretty much non-existent, militaries scrambled almost instantaneously to guard borders and keep people in or out.

They pretty much had it in the bag. We joked about how we would never get a chance to hole-up and test our marksmanship. The thing is they, us – pretty much everyone knew about how It spread with the traditional methods. Don’t get bit, don’t get scratched; basically just stay the fuck away from Them. After the first week or so when everything had seemed to have gotten old, thank a 24 hour news cycle to saturate even this story, and Stewart and Colbert had made their jokes everything was almost back to normal. Travel was still restricted but people started leaving their homes again, to meet with people again.

The world took a sigh of relief. The Cosmos sucker-punched it right in the nuts.

A second batch of cases popped up in isolation from the first batch. We prayed and hoped that it was a mistake, that the agencies had just gotten it wrong. However like before, we knew the truth deep down. This was happening.

That didn’t stop us from trying to think of an acceptable explanation though. I found a sort of morbid comfort in the fact that even in a time like this people found enough hatred to argue over bi-partisan politics. The political pundits of the party not in power were on the front lines of accusing the current government of mishandling the situation. That the quarantine methods instituted by the government were ineffective. That infected blood must’ve gotten out somehow and made it out into the world due to lack of appropriate government handling of the situation.

Shit hit the fan. In fact it hit it so hard that it snapped the fan-blades and broke through the ceiling. I didn’t even bother going to Wal-Mart since I could see the column of smoke rising from it from miles away. Like I said earlier there are no original ideas; not even when it comes to the end of the fucking world.

In what I know to be my final moments I feel brave enough to say that I was a coward. I didn’t even bother getting in touch with my family or friends. I was only worried about me. In the beginning I did some very intense moral equivocating and came to the conclusion that I was actually doing them a favor by not meeting with them. After all, the cases were spontaneous and seemed to be random. Anyone of us could become one of them at the drop of a hat and that would just be too painful to deal with. The truth was even more painful for me, I was/am/will be a coward. It’s why I’m writing this thing instead of doing the honorable thing and ending it.

I did try and make things right though. I’m proud of that if nothing else. I made my way home, successfully avoiding everyone else on the road. I wasn’t sure if I would’ve been happy or sad to find my parents home. I guess it would have depended on the…Condition of my –

I feel it kicking in now. Words are getting harder to come by and events are getting harder to keep in correct-time order. But I must do this. I won’t fail in this

- parents.

I was spared working through any complicated emotions because their house was empty. It looked like it had been ransacked but that didn’t mean that my parents hadn’t left beforehand. I like to think they had managed to make it down to New Orleans. They had a weakness for jazz but had never managed to get down there before It. Yeah, I’m sure that’s where they went.

This was about a month after the second batch of casies so a week before today I’m pretty sure. There were still regular government messages being sent over television and radio through the emergency broadcast system. That’s another thing that was different from the fictional universes where this stuff usually happens. Even though it was bad, the govement was still present. Maybe because it had only been a month but the large populated cities like New York still had a stron g government presence.

What I’m going to write about now happened yesterday or the day before I think. It’s gtting more and more difficutl now.

I found there old shower radio and turned it on. Miraculously it or its batteries had not been stoeln. I was listening to the classical music in between the emergency broadcasts that would detail what the next action of the government would be when all of a sudden the music stopped.

I looked at my watch, the main advantage of buying digital not analog is that they’ll aparently keep runningin an apocalypse, but it was not time for a scheduled broadcast.

A very unimpressive voice came on the air. For as importan a message as it deliverd I’m pissed that it wasn;t a voice wth a rich deep timbre,instead of the nazal high pitched voice. I almost felt cheated.

After maintaining radio silence for a minute the man, it was fdefinitely a man, began to explain what had actually caused It. Earlier today scientists that had been wwkring on it, or what was left of them, had finally figured it out. I’m gonna write it as close to what I remember him saying:

“It wasn’t a bio-weapon or some secret deadly virus that got loose but in fact was the world itself. It was a mutation of a cordyceps fungus. This fungus s been known to infect insects and affect their central nervous system, altering their behavior befor leading to their death. It has been tested over and over again and there has been some seveer change in the cordycep genome. It is this mutation that has lead to the..The things-monsters roaming around outside. It was a mutation that was transmitted to our crops. And in a country where giant agricutlural and seed companies own approcimately 90% of the genetic variety in crops and which also exported a large amount of its food and seed it was the perfect storm. We’re all infected. It’s just a matter of time before it gets us all. There is no cure, besides not eating…Anything. The diseasesd seeds are used for growing crops that are used in everythin. Maybe it was our hubrs that brought us down. Maybe it was God’s wrath. Maybe the planet just got tired of this angry, violent, squabling ape running the show. All I know is that our time is up. The disease has gotten from the seeds to our ground to our water. Find your loved ones. Hold them. Our time here is over. This message will be on repeat till…Until it’s not.”

This is it. This is h