A Promise Is A Promise

It’s harder out here than I’d like to admit, especially without you here to give me all the reasons I need to keep going.  There is an awful horror in how little I have to say, and yet there’s a head swelling with questions and ideas that I can’t get out of me.  I used to be able to just sit, clear my mind, and let you slowly take it all apart, take it all away.  Now I’m left with nothing but a bucket of sorrow that keeps getting heavier and heavier to carry with each day that goes on. Yet I cannot let go, I carry on, and I swallow whatever lumps I must to get me through the day.  When staying alive is all you have and it takes everything you’ve got, there isn’t time to “deal”.  You push, you break, you bandage, and you keep going.  After all, there really isn’t anything else that matters.  I haven’t seen another living person for over 6 months now, and as far as I know, I might be the last one who carries anything left of the old world.  But it’s a vein sentiment, it’s nothing but a side effect of trying to keep something so much more important alive.  What I still have left of you, and the promise I made to fight until the end.

Parks, And What They Meant To Me

There’s a lost reason behind what brings us back to these old places.  A thirst that’s out of reach, lost in time with nothing left behind but the aftertaste of regrets that came with it.  I suppose we drag ourselves back here in a futile attempt for relief from their wake, anything to try and scratch the itch it leaves behind.  I don’t consider myself much different, other than the fact that I should know better, but even that doesn’t free me from the same old compulsion we suffer from.  We all have our reasons, our hopes for what might still be left behind to help bring you back to that time you are trying to find.  More over bearing than the scraps left behind is the decay of what used to be beautiful.  The unmistakable sense of loss that cannot be swallowed, not in the face of such a terrible change.  No matter how it makes you feel, the truth is the world doesn’t care, it goes on with our without your consent.  Our biggest disillusion was thinking we could ever stop the change, that we could keep things the way they are “just because it feels right”.  Eventually the excuses tire, and when it comes time to choose the next path, you’d better be ready to move, or to be left behind to join the ghosts that couldn’t take it either.  It has always come down to choice.  Sometimes there are many, sometimes there aren’t any.  But they are ours to make, and they are ours to pay for.

Questions and Answers

The winter always brings stillness with it. 

The world frozen and sleeping, even the most awful of things have to seek shelter from its clutch.  Out here in the drifts time slows down, and this rush becomes a drug that only comes around once a year.  You’d have to be insane to go out in storms like these, and since insanity makes such good shelter, I hurry through the worst of it while it still gives cover.  The mistake most men make is not to see the most obvious of things, countless times audacity has crept up behind the worst of villains, they were just too caught up in the shimmer of impossible things to notice before it was too late.

I suppose this is what separates us, though we could argue on and on about who’s right and who’s wrong, at the end of the day I’m still standing.  They’re dead, gone, and clutching the worthless virtues they died for.  Being alive is being right.  It’s as simple as that.  “The Meaning of life” is a deceptive phrase, life isn't here to lecture us about meaning, life is asking you a question and the answers are simple.  You can get it right, or wrong.  Life will still go on.  But the answer becomes what you make of it, and if it falls on the wrong side, you won’t be around to argue anyways.

It's for us.

People used to call this the end of the world, but it’s nothing but the end of us.  The world will always go on, we’re just too quick to forget that.  I can remember the look in people’s eyes when they realized this, long and hard they fought to convince themselves otherwise.  I had to watch a lot of men struggle with holding onto what they now know couldn’t be true, that whatever this is, it’s meant for us, and it won’t end ‘till we’re all gone.  It’s these profound horrifying consequences that were our undoing, because there just isn’t any escaping it, only acceptance.  The ranks that were left (if any) feel quickly, and ‘every man for himself’ meant something again.  As terrible as this is, it pales in comparison to what we did to each other in its wake.  There’s nothing to be done about it though, all you can do is be sharp enough to see this life for what it is and stay ahead of anything that’s trying to take it away.  In the end I know that it will win, that I’ll either make my choice or not be given one, there’s no denying that.  But this hasn’t won yet and we’re still, for one reason or another, keeping up the fight in hopes of something that we might be able to lean on, something that can bring some rest from all this.  At the end of the day, I have to be real with myself, there’s no doubt in my mind that I will keep that up until my end, but the world, it can go on without me….

Hold on - Date Unknown

There’s something about your smile that I will never forget, but that curse is one I chose to bear.  I would rather be tormented knowing that light in my life is gone than never have touched it at all.  Even in these darkest of days when I have every reason to just give up and let it pour into me, it still carries me through.  These memories that we hold are all we have left anymore, so it is important you keep the right ones close.  This is why we fight for them even to the death, because they only live inside of us.  I’m not ready to let your smile die yet, I’m not even sure I ever will be.  Regardless it has taken me this far and I have no intention on giving up a good thing.  A curse it may be, carrying you around inside of me like this.  But it’s a curse that has kept me alive, and even in my worst battles I can remember your softness guiding my blows so they were true.  When we were together, the world stopped and anything we wanted was at our finger tips, because all we wanted was each other.  I still reach out for you in the night, and each time I’m crossed again by the loss and knowing the dream I was in is the closest I’ll ever be to you again.  As long as I am here though, I’ll keep on dreaming and that last place you're still alive will be with me, safe…  For now that’s good enough for me.

Simon is hurt

They've been closing in on us for a few days now and we’ve been moving as fast as we can, but Simon’s leg is broken and each day he’s getting worse.  We don’t have a whole lot of time to rest, the next stretch is fields and flat ground for a few miles so we need to take advantage of that while we can.  It’s becoming apparent that Simon’s condition is not improving and the prospects of recovery aren’t promising. Already I can see him showing the signs of infection and sepsis, without medicine he’s done.  It won’t be long until we have to address this reality and decide what to do.  These things are never easy, and Simon has been with us for a while now.  We will miss his hand in our struggle, but we will not let him be the end of us.  It’s never easy to have these conversations, the kind we never used to have.  None the less we’re forced to see things for what they are, that is if you want to stay alive.  There’s always a question of whether we tell him or not, if there’s any merit in giving him a choice in how it goes down. Sometimes it’s best to do the right thing, to end it for him swiftly when he least expects it.  There’s been plenty of time when we’ve given people the choice to be left behind alive and hope for the best.  But leaving people like that to become just another corpse…. Well, it’s never sat well with me.  Not just because it adds one more body to the problem, one more dead to walk and chase us through these woods, but because it’s an awful thing to do to a person.  To leave them to find the answer to the question we’re all terrified to figure out…  What it’s like to become one of them…

We’re going to have to start climbing when we reach the hillside and it won’t take us long to get to the cliffs where we can rest.  Once we get there and everyone can see how bad it’s getting, that’s when we’ll do it.

Simon is dead

Simon is dead.

After all the worrying I had done about having to take care of him myself, he saved me the trouble...  Last night he snuck away from us long enough to make his way to the cliffs and he jumped.  I always knew Simon was smart, we both knew a fall like that wouldn’t leave anything to bring back, and he knew the burden he’d become on us.  Like a real man took his death into his own hands, rather than cower in fear of when one of us would turn and do what needed to be done.  It is indeed a shame that we’ve come to this, but some comfort can still be found in moments like these.  When men do what is right.  It’s is the hardest thing to find these days, there is no reward for morality, and the only justice left is what you make your own.

The Price - Date Unknown

It’s the pure things we’ve lost. 

Bravery, valor, honesty, good will. 

They don’t mean what they used to, if anything at all.  Like most other things in the wake of this, they've been sucked into the void, lost to futility and nothingness.  The hardest part of all of this is dealing with just how little I can do in the face of this awful landscape,  how even the best in me isn’t bright enough to keep us out of the dark.  That despite my efforts to hold onto the best memories of how things used to be, they’re dead and gone when I am.  They’re part of us, and as this awful thing takes its course, it will not separate us when our time finally runs out.  I suppose at the same time there is some comfort in knowing that.  Along with all we’ve built and are so afraid to lose, so will the worst in us be destroyed.  The savage, the cruel, the greedy.  Maybe that’s the price we're paying for bearing such awful children, for letting the very worst of us run rampant for generations.  This is the cost denying our own darkness, and our inability to stop it.  Now the brave charge to die in pointless deaths, valor goes unseen, honesty gets you killed, and good will drains the very life we try to hold onto.  There’s nothing to be found in anything less than the selflessness of survival, and perhaps that is the only pure thing we have left anymore...

Growing Old

Growing old has nothing to do with growing up. 

I’ve heard the most pure ancient wisdom spill from the lips of children, and I’ve seen the most foolish of old men and their foolish flock let the whole world burn around them expecting to be saved from the very flames they set.  It’s not divine intervention, and it sure isn’t blind luck, the grand mystery is that there is no mystery.  The truth behind it all has always been right in front of us. 

We’re just been too terrified to let ourselves see it. 

Except those like you and I of course, the few that have always seen something wrong with the way the world is and have known nothing more than to try and stand up to this nameless grand injustice.  Our numbers have never been many, and even fewer still have the courage to fight for what’s right anymore.  I’ve lost so many brothers and sisters to this that I stopped counting a long time ago, but it’s never has been a game of numbers though, our continuing existence is the purest of proofs to this truth.  We’ve never been afraid to hide in the darkest of shadows and bide our time, alone in wait for our chance to strike.  The others have always been afraid of this, that’s why they franticly point their lights into the dark trying to root us out, but they’re always too terrified to look in the most awful of places and that’s where we’ve always been waiting for them.

The blows of truth have always been the most devastating against our enemy, and those trying to deny it are always shaking in terror at the mere thought of having to endure even one.  It’s in this power where our numbers become meaningless, because we need only one of us to make it through, and we still have plenty more than that ready to die trying. 

All of our purest forms have become so fragile though and this makes it so easy for us to let them fall apart and get lost along the way through our lives.  After losing the fight for so long now, I can’t really blame the ones that stand against us.  There’s something that feels so impossible about keeping up this fight in the face of such awful odds.  But for myself, and those like me, there is no choice in the matter.  We cannot cage this beast, this bloodlust for injustice and the fight for those everyone else seems to throws to the wolves.  Never has the need been greater than now, things are as bad as they’ve ever been and despite the fact that they will no doubt get worse, we’ll never give up, we’ll never stop fighting, there is nothing that can change this. 

Even our defeats, they cannot stop this rhythm once it has begun.  When you stand up for something greater than yourself it finds a way of living in all of us, and even though they can put us down one at a time, they’ve never been able to stop those who will take our place when we’re gone and fight for what’s right.  This is our plight, to march into a certain death with a purpose so many spend their whole lives looking for but are too terrified to take hold of.

Those who stand against us, they’re caught up in the luster of false promises and easy answers.  After all, it takes courage to walk into the dark and so few carry that kind of courage with them.  This is why we’ve always told the story of the hero.  To hold those virtues at a comfortable distance just out of the reach of responsibility, and to hope that when the time comes, one will come along to save us all.  That’s never been the way things have worked though, and if there is only one thing that all of this has taught me, it is that our salvation lies within, and the only way out of this is to dig deep and find what we can in ourselves.…

Charles - Date Unknown

He died cold and alone.
Though these days few are that lucky.
Most spend those last moments clutched in the horror, the pain, and are left cursed to walk until someone like me comes along to end their nightmare.

Out here though, he found the kind of peace we all wish we could have in those last minutes.
He had the courage to end his war once and for all.
Though I admire the end he has chosen for himself, it's not one I care to call my own.  Still, for a split second I envy his resolve, and just as quick my mind is flooded with the reasons I can't end up like him.
There's no doubting my end is just around the corner, and I'm starting to see things the same way he must have before he took his way out.

He didn't leave very much behind for me, but I take what I can and thank him for that much.
He reminds me how we really don't get to mourn the dead like we used to.  Now we pick at their bones for what little they have left to keep us alive another day, to prolong this horrible nightmare.
Too often I've turned my back on the screams of those who couldn't be saved so I could save myself, and for so long I've told myself that this is the way the world is.With so much loss around us, you can't think about it for too long without the sickening feeling that pours into your stomach, and that's one thing we do not have time for out here.  I suppose if there's one lesson to learn from his choice, it's that there is always another way out.

There's isn't a thing living or dead for miles.
His body's undisturbed and hasn't been gnawed on by something awful yet.
He chose this spot well.
He knew exactly what he was doing.

I'm compelled to take a moment to say goodbye to another brother in arms, to try and remember why we used to honor the dead, so maybe we could draw strength from their passing.  After so many have died in the most futile vanity, it becomes senseless and sooner or later, just reflex.  With so little behind me, and nothing on the horizon, maybe a reminder of our humanity is exactly what I need.  It's this reminder I thank him for the most, because it's more valuable than any weapons or food he could have left behind for me.

Then again.

The more people I come across just like him, they only carve deeper into the void leave nothing to fill the profound sense of lost that soon follows. Nothing but  a reminder that sooner or later I'm going to be lying right where he is.  Cold...and alone

Alison's missing

I Waited for her all night long.
Every moment in the darkness was dragged out like a lifetime.
Each time the wind came through and rustled the leaves, my heart jumped hoping it was her footsteps moving with it just like I had taught her.  She never came out of the dark though, and once the sun finally came up, I had to try and find her myself.
As insane as it seemed, I had no choice but to try.
After all, there have been countless times before where blind luck has been kind and brought us together despite the odds, but I can't help but wonder if that luck has run out on me.
There's nothing quite like the frantic panicked search for the ones you love.
Despite the critical need for rational thought in moments like these, the mind is over-run with a sickening unsettling need to run in circles and lose yourself....
Things never used to be on the line quite like they are now, there is no room for error, and the wrong step could be your death sentence.  The reaper has us all in his arms, now I'm stuck wondering if her time had come, if he had finally taken the last thing I had, and left me alone in the world.

The Night

More often than I’d like to admit, I find myself on nights like these with my face buried in my hands, crying and saying over and over again how much I miss you. 

How bad it hurts to be out here alone. 

And how I’m not sure how long I can go down this road knowing what I know. 

I try to remind myself again and again why I must, I try to tell myself crazy things like you’re somewhere out there watching over me, waiting for me to finally find what I’m looking for.  But that only breaks my heart more to think you can see me like this when I am so weak, so lost.  For so long this fight made sense, there was purpose to be found in the way ahead, but as each day drags on, that light gets darker and darker, until finally, I’ve lost my way completely.  The fear has always been in the not knowing, the stranger on the other side of the door, never before have I been so terrified of wha’s waiting for us in the dark, as if all the wonder and reason has been lost forever and all that’s left to be found are the things we’ve been trying so hard to hide.  The things we try so hard to forget about and let time take them away with its passing.  I’ve always been foolish to think these things can ever be buried, the truth has a life of its own, and you can be sure one way or another it will dig itself up.  I can’t help but wonder if somewhere in there, is an awful truth that I never thought possible.

That perhaps, my end will be just as worthless as the rest. 

That this whole time I’ve been so scared to find the truth that I buried behind me long ago, that nothing I did made a difference, and I’ve been running from myself this entire time.  I wonder how different I would feel if you were still here at my side.  I remember how invincible I was, knowing I had you to come home to, and I don’t doubt for a second it saved my life more than once or twice.  Even after you left, I carried it with me into the darkest of days and still managed to find my way out.  Countless times I’ve tried to do what you thought was right, and keep what little of that we had alive and well.  Each day that goes by though, it seems to get heavier and instead of lifting me up to fight another day, it leaves me exhausted and crying my eyes out just like tonight, asking myself just how much longer can we let this go on?  Like all other things, I feel only so much of this is up to me, and sooner or later, the choice I need to make is going to be clear as crystal.

Why Now?

Why now?

An old classic of a question, and a stupid one at that, yet we cannot seem to stop ourselves from asking it can we?  I never thought you’d come back, that’s the gods honest truth.   

I buried you a long time ago and thought I ran away more than fast enough to get away in time, but I guess there’s some things that are just meant to be. 

Just like this awful dance between you and me. 

The rhythm of it is too subtle to really notice, so it always seems like some of these steps just come out of nowhere, but I know it’s just the world bringing me back to you one way or another.  Maybe this is just its way of telling me I’d better keep up, because we all know what being left behind means, after all, isn’t that what I’ve been though through this whole time?  Chasing that name on the tip of my tongue that faint memory of your touch, and all the nights I’ve laid awake wondering if you were out there somewhere dong the same…  Even the strongest of men have to come face to face with their moments of weakness, no doubt, this has been one of them, but the need to press on is all I have left, it’s what gets us through this, and what carries these broken hearts into tomorrow.

Run

We ran into the night, our footsteps back-lit by the cities burning behind us.
It wouldn't be until we stopped and caught our breath that we'd start to wonder about the ones that did't make it out.  Trying to wait as long as we could, we knew nowhere is safe right now, and it seems like the only way to stay alive is to stay moving, every time we stop even for a second it doesn't take a moment for everything to fall apart.  We haven't even gotten started yet, but already I can see some of the others start to fade as this chase goes on, and I can't help but think about the time coming around the corner when we'll have to make more of those touch choices.  the longer this goes on though, the less difficult they become, in the face of almost certain death, they only get clearer like crystal.  We'll keep this up tonight for as long as we can, but sooner or later we'll have to rest, and I don't want to think about what what will happen next.

I can't help but feel like we've wasted too much time commemorating the past that's slipped through our fingers, but at the same time, I can't blame them.  The burden of what we've lost weighs heavy on me also, and I suppose that's why I try so hard not to think about it.  These days have become far too short though, and never before have we had to be so careful of what we carry with us, and I'm sure that this is one of those things best left behind so that we might have a chance of carrying on. After all... I can't tell you how many times I've pried those sentiments from the cold clutched hands of the dead.

Unlike the way things used to be, there is no one to learn the lessons the dead leave behind for us, so indeed these are the most vein of sacrifices.  All I can really ask for is that I don't end up being found by someone who's doing the same to be, that this thing I'm trying to keep alive will make it somewhere I can be sure it will be safe even after I'm gone.  I know that's asking a lot, but after all we've been through, I don't deserve anything less.  In the end it probably won't be up to me, we can only stay on the run like this for so long until it catches up  to us, I've seen it time and time again, but that never seems to stop us from running does it?  Maybe that's why there's still people out there trying so hard to hold it together... But again...  We all know where that ends up.  The road ahead has never been so dark as it is now, and its never been easy thing to get anyone to march into that, but one thing I know is that if we don't try, we don't stand a chance....