I can’t believe that I am actually keeping a diary, but I find what has been happening the last few days even more difficult to believe, so I figured I better start writing it down. If for no other reason than to help it all make sense to myself.

I guess I should start at the last point in time when things felt “Normal” to me:

2-17-05:

                After spending a frantic few days finishing up some projects at the office, and finishing up the final details on some garb for the War down in Estrella, I managed to get a few hours sleep before meeting the caravan down at Elway Stadium. I was over talking to Olivia, while we were waiting for the stragglers to show up, when Olivia received the strangest call thru her Road Apple. Her sister, Cordelia, called to warn Olivia that the CDC has cooked up some story about a breakout of the Hantavirus and that if anybody asks, we should tell them that we’re “Condition Green”.  And, at that point the call is disconnected! But, before Olivia can call Cordelia back, a call rings thru and it’s her! Or is it? After the first call, now she tries to tell Olivia that everything is okay, not to worry!!! So, Olivia asks her a couple questions, and is pretty sure that it isn’t Cordelia!  Well, Malcolm had wandered over by then, and said that it sounded like something he had heard that the Government was using, some kind of Artificial Personality that they can use to imitate people.

                Well, by now Olivia is pretty worried about her sister. But we all had to agree with her, that if someone is using something like that, then it would be better to pretend to go along with it, rather than try to call Cordelia back, and possibly make things worse. So we hit the road then, figuring that Cordelia knows how to get hold of Olivia should she have to.  And a bit later she did just that, she told Olivia that she was being chased by the Government and that she was afraid for her life! Olivia told her where we were headed and to meet us there.

We made it as far as Raton Pass, before the shit hit the fan. Right there on the highway was an honest-to-God roadblock! So the caravan pulled over like good little citizens, and Cordelia was right. They wanted to test us for a “Viral Outbreak”, those of us who had gotten the word back in Denver, managed to bluff our way thru by telling them that we were “Green”. But those who didn’t got pulled to the side and tested. And, some of those………….were escorted away!

Those of us, who made it thru, started to break up at that point. Some headed home, and some of us decided to hit Raton for more supplies. When we got into the town proper, it was really strange. It felt like everybody knew something bad was brewing, and were getting ready, but there was no sense of panic. I don’t know which was eerier.

Anyway, you could see groups forming up, and I “hooked up” with Olivia, Michael, Malcolm and this woman who was riding with him, Justine. I figured if things got as bad as I was thinking, those were the people I wanted to have around. So Malcolm and Michael went to the Gun store to stock up for the group, while Justine, Olivia and I headed for CostCo. It was so weird, I felt like a character in a bad Sci-Fi novel stocking up for Doomsday! We went heavy on the Feminine products, condoms, liquor, and even though none of us smoke…cigarettes. We also got cases of canned food and bottled water. And anything else that we though we could squeeze into various vehicles. By the time we were done…..I had barely enough room in my car to squeeze into the driver seat.

When we finally made it to Estrella Park, since we were so late by now, there was already a good crowd. Almost everyone with similar stories. The Baron Of Angels had his head all bandaged up, he was actually attacked. At a roadblock, he made the mistake of “talking back” to some officials, and got clubbed with a riflebutt.

Even though everyone was all riled up, we managed to get camp set up, pretty much as usual, but boy, is it going to take me a long time to get to sleep.

2-18-05 

                People were trying to act as normal as possible all morning, but it was really strained, you could tell that everyone was trying awfully hard. When we all gathered for Noon Court, an announcement was made that the President would be addressing the Nation in a couple hours and that one of the populace had volunteered their Satellite and TV for viewing.  Since I didn’t have the heart (or attention span) to hang out with the musicians, I just kept to camp; I was there when some people finally made it in from the LA area. They had Cordelia with them and she had been shot!!!!!!! She managed to tell Olivia on the way to the chirurgeon (thank God we actually have a real doctor! And Malcolm’s friend Justine is a trauma nurse) that she was being chased by a CDC vehicle, had been shot and rolled her car. The CDC must have given her up for dead, because she lay there until a passing car almost ran her over.

                When we were sure that Cordelia was going to be okay, we went to see the President’s address.

                Seeing President Ventura on that TV was the scariest thing I had seen yet! He looked….funny, I mean, he didn’t look real. A man standing next to me, said, “I know I’ve read a lot of Tolkien, but doesn’t he look like a Dwarf?”. And there was silence, like everyone took a beat and you could see everyone go “Yeah, he does.” When I finally got past that and started to HEAR what he was saying, he was reminding all members of the police across the country and all military personnel of their oaths and allegiances. And to make it even worse, in the middle of it, the CDC tried to break in and force him off the air, the signal actually broke off a couple times. When he was done, everyone just kinda stood around for awhile, not saying anything before wandering back to their various camps.

                Later that afternoon, Cordelia woke up, and told us the most horrifying story about the government tinkering around with some kind of gene research, and a project called Essex. That in trying to capture the “Perfect” human, they have created just the opposite, things that are no longer human at all! I couldn’t help but think of the President. While we were talking about what all this might mean to us, a call went through the camp, that everyone should go back to the TV setup, when we got there they were showing a live report being broadcast from NYC. There was a helicopter flying over Manhattan showing it all in flames, it looked like something from a Godzilla movie. Then it zoomed in on a person, walking slowly down the middle of a street. It looked like the typical Goth that you would see on the Mall in Boulder, but….dead. Grey skin, lank hair and he/she/it? was throwing (I can’t think of any other way to explain it) fire at people and buildings and cars. Some police showed up and started shooting at the thing, but the bullets just vanished, never got to it. It then turned up towards the helicopter and let loose with something that looked like lightning, and that was the end of the transmission.

                And just when I was thinking that things couldn’t get worse, some aircraft went zipping over head, someone identified them as a couple of bombers escorted by some fighters. They turned to confront a lone fighter and shot it down. It looked like it fell not too far from the park so Michael and Malcolm formed a search party and went off to see what they could find. They came back to camp carrying the pilot that they found and reported that there was another party out searching the crash area as well. By the time they got the pilot to the doctor, he was dead. But when I got a look at him I was shocked. I guess I shouldn’t have been, after all, if the President of the United States can be a Dwarf, then why shouldn’t an Air Force pilot be an Elf? There he was gold skin, pointy ears and all. Michael checked the pockets of his flightsuit and found some ID, he used to be African-American! Michael also found a picture of his wife. We all decided that we should give him a decent burial, so Michael carved a marker and I said a silent prayer for him and sang one of Grandma’s hymns. For some reason, it just seemed to be the right thing to do. I hope his soul can rest, I know I can’t, I’m just laying here, listening to the sounds coming from over the hill where the Horde is camped. I know that they have been informed of what’s going on, but they’re out there partying just like they always do. I think the music and drums are even louder than usual.

2-19-05:

                  We have definitely fallen down the rabbit-hole to Wonderland.

                This morning we gathered around the TV again, to see scenes of LA, NY and other cities, burning. Highways everywhere are jammed as people try to get out. To where? I don’t think even they know where they are going. Michael went out to see if there were any clear roads leading out of this trap we have gotten ourselves into, but came back to report that he saw UN forces manning the roadblocks. The UN!

                From what we can tell, watching the TV, the NSA has taken control of the media, and they seem to be feeding everyone garbage. The newscasters are telling us that “Order has been restored”. Tell LA and NY that! They have also reported that the Speaker of the House has been sworn in as acting President that Ventura is “unfit” and the Vice-President has vanished. But some of the populace who have HAM or CB radios are relaying totally different stories! They are hearing that there are riots on the Mall in DC, and that the mob is killing any minor bureaucrats they can get there hands on, and if they find any actual congressmen or senators, they’re being crucified, right there on the Mall. There have been major earthquakes on the West Coast. One right after some local news outlet smart-ass said “Don’t anyone think about the Big One”. Someone got the idea to gather members of the religious and “magical” communities together to combine their “powers” to stop the quakes. There was some pretty amazing footage of a group of them gathered on a hilltop, surrounded by some kind of silverish “cloud” of energy. And then, the quakes stopped!

                At one point, President Ventura somehow made it back onto the air, but had to go off camera, it sounded like there was a struggle going on behind the camera. When he came back, he had clearly been in a fight. He also looked even more like a Dwarf than he did just yesterday; he has to be less than 5’ tall now! He started his remarks by saying how good it felt to still be able to break a man’s back.  He told us that he was still capable of performing his duties and that the NSA and CDC were now enemies of the state. He made another appeal to the individual members of the military, waved a battle-axe around and stomped off camera.

                That was when I left the area, I didn’t think I wanted to see anymore, so I went back to camp, to see how Olivia and Cordelia were doing.  Cordelia was awake and feeling better, but Olivia was all over her, demanding answers. Cordelia finally broke down and told Olivia what she wanted to know.

                Cordelia was actually working for the CDC, testing for what they call “positives” people who have the Essex gene.  She also told us that the NSA is rounding up the “positives” and sending them to Area 51, all of this taking place as part of an operation called “Manzanar”. The day she called Olivia, (was that really only 2 days ago?!?) she had seen a memo ordering her superiors to speed up the identification and transport of positives. This was apparently all that she could take. So she stole the data module with those orders and other details of the operation and ran. That was when the NSA goons noticed that she and the module were both were missing and started the pursuit. By this time she was in tears and the doctor pretty much chased us out.

                So with the module that Cordelia gave us we went in search of a computer. We found a teenager with a laptop who was willing to try to hack past the security encoding. When he got in…..it pretty much confirmed what Cordelia had told us. We decided that we had better let everybody else know what we had learned.

                Olivia, with that way of hers, forced the royalty into calling an assembly. When everyone was gathered she told them everything that we knew so far. The discussion turned to “what do we do now”, with some people ready to charge off and storm Area 51, while most of the populace agreed that our own day to day survival had to come first. It was about this point when some of us noticed that the Horde has “joined” us, and was spread out around the outside of the gathering. The Khan walked to the center, faced the assembled court and demanded the King face him in a combat to the death.  When the king refused, not only the Khan, but also the entire Horde, drew their weapons. For a moment, all was still, and then there were shots and when I look to my left, there was Olivia, very calmly, shooting at, no, not shooting at, but shooting members of the Horde. All of the sudden I saw something out of the corner of my eye, one of the Horde was moving to the center of the crowd with a sledgehammer in his hands. As he got closer, he approached Justine, and rather than go around her, he used the sledgehammer right to the small of her back. Even from where I stood, I could here the bones breaking. Olivia turned and took him down, and before I knew how I got there, I was sitting in the dirt next to Justine. All I could think was “This can’t be happening. This cannot be”. I just kept saying that over and over and over. I took Justine in my arms so that she would know that someone was with her at the end, and then there was this flash of light and it felt like I had electricity flowing thru me. Then Justine gasped and jerked in my arms, and when I looked down……she was staring at me, kinda like ”What the Hell are you doing?” but she was okay, her back was perfect.

                When the two of us got to our feet, and looked around, the Horde was dead. Others had joined Olivia and the Horde was dead. Justine and I started gathering up the few wounded and taking them to the hospital tent. When we finished up there and went back to camp we discovered that Olivia had “Taken in” the Khan’s “Love Slave” Jennifer, the poor, stupid thing had no where else to go. Michael and Malcolm came back from the Horde camp to report that it was deserted, and that Michael had claimed a Hummer that had been left behind (after he had disarmed a bomb that had been left in it!). He also gave me a knife that they took off one of the bodies….a real Rambo kinda thing.

                While all that was going on, the Royalty had decided that we can not stay here, and that someone has to go find a place that is more suitable. Michael, Olivia, Malcolm, and Justine volunteered to go scout around and before I knew what I was doing, I volunteered, too. So we will leave in the morning to see what we can find.

                I can tell you one thing, after seeing what I saw tonight, I will never again be without my own gun. I’m not sure I could do what Olivia did, and I hope I’ll never have to.