Suddenly finding ourselves incarcerated is a change. In a way, we were always in a prison of sorts, fighting the never-ending battle of survival against a common enemy. In our new world, the enemy of our enemy was supposed to be our friend. Unfortunately, these new “friends” weren’t very friendly.

The African-American “gentleman”, and I use the term very loosely, that had approached us two days ago had been the only one to address us thus far. His speeches had been short and sweet. We were being kept in the warehouse as a means to guarantee our safety. Looking in his eyes as he told us this just didn’t sit well with me. There was something that he wasn’t telling us but at the time we really had no idea what it could have been.

In fact, we have to be really careful with everything that we do. We haven’t been properly searched. They let us keep our weapons but they don’t know that we have this laptop and a way of communicating with anyone that might be alive in the world. I don’t know if they are monitoring any communication traffic though I doubt this would count as traffic at all. Hopefully, we’re completely off their radar.

At least we’ve been able to take stock of who we’ve lost. Luckily Ben, Julie, Lily and Liam all made it along with Jane. Polly is a wreck because Eduardo was one of the people left to deal with the stairs leading up to the second level. Lt. Lafferty is still with us but all of her officers from Brooklyn were killed. The remaining survivors are a disjointed group made up of people who had worked on the ship before the outbreak, those that had found their way to the ship after it, and some that had been picked up in Waskaganish.

Ben was actually really worried about Polly. There was a good chance that all of the stress could make her go into labour and this was not the place that anyone wanted her to have her baby. In fact our current world is not the place where anyone should be having a baby but that can’t be helped.

Around noon today our host came in and pointed out 4 people to come with him: Julie, Lt. Lafferty, Kenny (an older Asian man), and myself. We followed him outside into the bright sunshine where we expected to be immediately shot on sight.

Instead, we got our first glimpse of the contraption that they must be toting around in their vehicles. Its design was simple enough; just a big turbine like you would see in an air plane engine. I’m sure I’m oversimplifying it, especially after what they told us what it was for.

Warren Clarke used be Special Ops. Once all of the proverbial sh*t started hitting the fan, he had been entrusted with a special weapon that had been developed by the government to use in times of war. From the way that he was talking, the powers that had once been thought that this weapon could easily be applied against the Undead.

He explained that the information that he was about to tell us was classified but then laughed. Classified before the government of the United States of America disintegrated. I could see his point, why keep secrets when there were no interests to protect anymore?

Clarke also explained the way in which the machine worked. There was a high frequency generator mounted behind the turbine assembly. When the machine was switched on, it generated a high frequency that was then propelled outward in waves by the turbine. Not even Clarke fully understood the mechanism by which the weapon worked, just that it did. He told us that the high frequency pulse effectively turned the brains of anything in its path to jelly. It was important to note that anything in the forward directional path of the turbine was going to be susceptible to the pulse. It explained why the Undead had fallen and why we had lost some of our friends.

Clarke explained that he had been travelling around the country with his men using the machine to kill as many of the Undead as they could. Unfortunately, they usually ended up amassing some collateral damage in the process.

He gave us no indication as to how long we were to be kept here. Just lead us back to the warehouse with the unspoken expectation that we would share the information that we had learned. It was a little frightening not knowing what was going to happen to us. In the end, we were protected to an extent but I certainly didn’t want to be in front of that machine. We can only hope that everything will work out. Maybe this could mean the end of the Undead? Perhaps it was just wishful thinking but it doesn’t hurt to have some hope sometimes.

The Next Day