1 To Whoever Finds This

As the blood trickles down my dirty face, making the carpet underneath me soggier, I picked up a pencil from the chair beside me, and a notebook I kept in my backpack.

I bounced the eraser off of my forehead, staining it with blood that may have belonged to any last living person on this desolate Earth.

As I stare into the notebook, I can only think... what's the best way to write this down? What would make it so people could see that I'm not a monster and that I'm still human?

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My name is Leon Weiss. If you're reading this, it means that the human race somehow survived and was able to pick this note back up and read the contents.

In case you didn't know, there has been a zombie apocalypse. Everybody used to think it was an entertaining form of media or a silly little gimmicky monster from tv shows, but that's wrong. It's so, so much worse than that.

All portrayals were never accurate, or too inconsistent to be accurate. Zombies are infected humans, those who have been bitten.

And I have been bit.

The virus takes about eighteen hours to settle into my veins, and I'm at the eleventh, just writing down everything I possibly can before I turn into a flesh-eating monster.

These aren't any kinds of monsters. They evolve as time went on. At first, they ran, they were scary, and they took down everybody they could. Then, they walked, and walked, and walked as their bones turned brittle. As the virus changed the people in the world it infected, it changed everything as well. It's far too complicated to explain, and not worth the time, but they don't just walk. They climb, they run, they think... it's terrifying.

The virus started around seven years ago when I was just 11 years old. I was a bright kid, watched the world change around me... and even vowed to keep my morals above all else. But this world? It ruins you if you survive the monsters.

Even if you keep your body, you will lose your humanity.

I'm not sure if everybody I know is dead, or if they're halfway there just like me... so if my friends found this, I'm sorry, but I lost to this world.

I wanted to have a family one day, to beat this apocalypse... but I couldn't do it. I've killed people, and for a long while, I was unable to clarify the difference between a human and a zombie. I thought I was already one; I thought I was already a monster like them.

Things have happened to me that you wouldn't believe... but I believe it best that I write down as much as possible before I turn into one of those godforsaken monsters. I want to remember my life and cherish it one last time. I have a pencil full of lead, a mind full of memories, and an empty notebook, waiting for my story.

There is still hope for the human race, so long as there are good people, this world will come back, just like the dead do.