Have you ever seen a zombie kitten. It's both adorable and terrifying at the same time. Now imagine waking up with it cuddled up on your chest. This is how the zombie apocalypse started for me. her demeanor hasn't changed on bit and I'm glad for that but as I write this I realize how useless this will be because I just realized she scratched me in my sleep. Day 1 will be my only 1 which means i have this damn Z wacker for nothing. Great. -Amber the Future Zombie p.s I wonder if my demeanor will stay unchanged like the kittens did. p.s.s I have a farm and a zombie cow and goat are lose somewhere in the streets of rural Alabama

It had fast become apparent that I'd chosen the wrong profession---Caretaker of the Allegheny County Cemetery. Earn a respectable living my ass.

My mother pressured me, "It's the family business. It means so much to the community. And besides, there's never a dull day." I was too busy reading X-Files fanfiction to really do too well in high school. So college was out. Any other decade and I'd be in the mills, but the city has turned from steel to rust and I'm too afraid of crossing the midwest to move. Family business it is.

The day she retired, I picked up my mother's weeding tools, shovel and khaki jacket intent on proving her wrong. Maybe if I fucked it up enough she'd get off my ass and let me apply to Mellon bank, do call center shit like everybody else.

I parked my car on Butler street and made a mental note that at least Lawerenceville was a prime spot for happy hour after work. Keys in the metal chain on the gate, a little moping hobble down the path and I'm knee deep in 200 plus years of skeletons. It would be creepy if I hadn't spent so much time here for "Take your spawn to work".

So I'm digging on the hillside, pulling dandelion out of soil that probably used to be Harold Knipple's dick. Wait, his name was actually--?

And at that point a loud crash, like the Port Authority collided with the T, but coming straight from the sky and shit, was it always this dark? A big heavy wind curls up my arms and burrows right where my brain keeps fight and flight. Creaking, snapping---and I shit you not a skeletal hand, wedding right attached shoot up an inch from my face, writhing in bottled up anguish. I do a little sigh that at least maybe Harry knew true love when it hits me that HOLY FUCKING SHIT and I grab my hand me down shovel and am booking it. I'm running like a college student who woke up drunk in the Hill District, hands, feet, severed skulls in all levels of decomposition are bursting from the graves all around me. I level my shovel like Roberto Clemente and knock the cranium of one Baxter Patterson the entire way to PNC Park.

They're coming up nearly whole now and there's no way I can take them all. Some have risen completely and are taking lurching, staggering steps at me. I haven't felt this hunted since the last time I went to Mario's in a skirt. My boots are flying down blacktop now and I'm nearly there back to Butler street. A hand with some of the meat still attached has wormed it way in to my sock. Another grasps at my sleeve and rips apart a huge chunk of the fabric. Closer, closer, closer---and those fuckers can send my 3 hours pay in the mail because shit I'm in Lawrenceville and if there was a place where the zombie Apocalypse wouldn't cause the batting of an eye it's here.

"GUYS, GUYS, help! Also, run! But also help! Holy shit. Holy fucking shit." I don't have time to close the gate but I'm barreling down towards bars with twinkle lights and artisan ice cream. I can hear the slapping of funeral loafers behind me and I know there's at least one corpse on my trail.

"Hey bro" says some dude in flannel, swaggering on over to me "No means no motherfucker, not cool." And before I have a second to process that this is fucking happening, the zombie takes his first bite of hipster's tattooed forearm.

The next time I get wifi I'm submitting my resume to Mellon Bank.

Dear whoever finds this diary,

I am writing this as a way to let the future people know what happened to us.

We all joked about this day coming. This day has been in a countless number of movies, TV shows, and video games. Some even said they hoped that this day would come. Well guess what? It did.

It started as random attacks in different cities across the United States. A mysterious illness would strike a person which would cause them to become violent and attack another person. Anyone who came into contact with the infected person's fluid (blood, spit, etc.) would also become infected. At first, people weren't too concerned with the attacks. They thought that everything would be okay. But then the hospitals quickly became overrun and cities became quarantined in just a matter of days. I live in the rural mountains far from any city, so we've been pretty safe so far. But yesterday my cousins went out to hunt for food, and they came running back saying there were infected in the woods. We've gathered up all the food and weapons we could find, secured every door and every window, and are hiding out in the house.

No one is coming to save us.

If you’re reading this, you might consider yourself somewhat fortunate. Of the 3000 houses in the immediate suburb, you have broken into my house, you’ve found a bunker full of food and water. That’s not the fortunate part. The fortunate part is that you’re reading my diary, and it might just save your life.

I have limited time. I can’t include everything, so here are the essentials.

They call them ‘Night Lights’.

The sky erupts in colour, spurred on with the lightning and thunder. The light bursts through cloud cover as if clawing through it. Like it has a life of its own. It’s a terrible, unnatural beauty.

The lights are commonly believed to be caused by seismic activity. The truth seekers have many theories. Tests have been conducted sporadically for over a century, normally during earthquakes (hence the connection). The idea is that coverage for the earthquake will wash out the few raving spectators. To aid the government, sceptics have even been planted in the scientific community to dispute victims claiming they’ve seen the phenomenon. They provide the reasonable doubt necessary for the governments to do their job.

Yes, you read correctly.

Though these lights can appear during earthquakes, the earthquakes do not cause them. The government does. The Night Lights we’re seeing tonight act as a warning system. Technology co-created by the government induces these lights. They have extraterrestrial origins, but much more than that, I don’t know. That’s above my security clearance. What I do know is that they have a vested interest in this experiment, and they’ll be watching closely.

The colour of the lights signal clearance agents. Tonight is Status BLUE. Day Zero. Call to action. 24 hours to be underground. There are deep tunnels with train systems that run on magnetic fields. I can be in Europe from New York in under an hour and that’s base of operations for the foreseeable future.

Status YELLOW, you should stay inside and away from open areas. Z Force will begin eradicating the infected. YELLOW acts as a pheromone lure. They will centralise within extermination fields – large blocks of land outside of major cities.

Status GREEN is all clear. The termination quota has been met. When you see that, you’ve made it.

Pray to whatever you believe in you don’t see Status RED. Trust me on this. If you see RED Night Lights, bright flaming crimson - kill yourself.

At the time of writing, you will need to survive at least 12 months before Status GREEN. Those are the present estimates. 12 months to remove more than half of the world’s population via controlled infection.

Stranger, whoever you are, know that at the very highest level, this was planned. This was a highly strategic, systematic cull. There’s nothing more you can do but look to the sky. I wish you the best of luck.