I write now to keep myself awake. It is late at night yet I fear to sleep in case the terrors of this day come knocking. Today has been… well its been hell. We expected it to be bad, but this bad? No one could have guessed how quickly the plague would spread through us. Our organizations, so delicately placed shattered like glass before the pure horror of it. Our only hope has been to hide – fighting only leads to the growth of their horde.

I should start at the beginning. This morning things were looking good – it looked like the infection may not be spreading across ANU yet, no one had died and we began to think they wouldn’t. How horribly wrong we were. The first deaths were not noticed at first, but soon the sightings began coming in. In the first hour there were 3 deaths, in the next another 10. It grew rapidly, no one could have predicted it.

We discovered that the original carriers of the plague were… odd. They appeared less decayed than others and managed to use this to get close before devouring their victims. The first of these original zombies was soon identified as a man dressed as a pirate and once the word had spread all across campus, survivors became busy trying to find and avoid him.

It was when we were all focused on this figure that the second zombie took control. The first major loss of the day happened early on. A large force of well armed men and women, a combination of some members of the groups which called themselves the Dogs of War and the BandGes. This heroic group had been aiding lone survivors all day, by helping escort them to safe areas. It was while doing this that they fell. I saw it with my own eyes….

A bunch of human survivors was in danger of ambush from some cunning zombies. Luckily for them the Dogs of War and BandGes group spotted and engaged these zombies. This was when thing started to go wrong for them… During the chaos of the battle a lone human joined them – he slid in unnoticed and when the battle slowed down he struck. A zombie in disguise… within seconds he had disabled and infected some of the best warriors our resistance had. There was only one survivor, he ran away and I have not seen him since.

The news of this devastaing defeat soon spread through the survivors and our morale began to fall. Soon our numbers began to fall too. As the sun reached its peak in the sky the zombies had begun to swarm everywhere outside. It was no longer safe to venture away from our fortifications. Humans were falling every minute and groups of zombies – once our comrades in arms, began hunting in groups.

The few times I ventured outside I would not have to go far before seeing battles, humans running everywhere, zombies shot to the ground by barrages of ammunition. The ground was littered with blood and shells. It was like another world entirely. How could everything have changed so quickly… and how would we survivors last if this was to keep up?

They are everywhere!

The battles that occurred were so numerous it would be impossible for me to recount them all. Every person has their tale – the story of the friends they’ve lost or the friends they’ve saved. Some tales seem ridiculous, others more reasonable and some more even more disturbing. By afternoon word was going around that a single zombie had ripped apart the majority of the Teen Girl Squad. And by night word was going around that zombie killings were occurring at the colleges on campus, where some survivors still choose to stay. Ursula, Bruce and B&G have all seen zombie hordes descending upon them.

The main killing zones were the copland and union courtyards, these high traffic areas saw blood time and time again – only now are we survivors learning just how wary we really need to be to survive. Different people have taken the losses in different ways. Some have taken the path of despair and cry that the world is doomed, that there are just too many and that fighting is futile.

Others appear to want to go down blazing now and seem actively to be laughing in the face of danger with attempts to go “zombie killing”, a truely fruitless exercise and the likely result of maddening minds. The more optimistic, or naive, of the group hold to the belief that survival may be possible. Personally? I don’t believe its possible. But I’m not going to throw my life away, I’ll fight as hard as I have to for every minute I can get. We have suffered huge losses and we are divided into splintered and weakened groups – but  there are still more of us than them, there is still hope yet, and we would be fools to give it up.

Many others have taken to writing like me. Perhaps it helps ease the pain. Maybe its just a way to occupy the time, the long hours of waiting in fear. But in any case, the stories of the living in our pursuit of life spread from person to person like wildfire. Leaders are growing confident and groups are working on their plans. I have heard that an ex-army general, or something like that, is even among us. Perhaps there is some hope for us yet.

I will write again tomorrow, if I am not dead by then.

Good luck…..

Welcome to the official survivor’s report. Written by a handful of anonymous individuals this story is one of survival. We are writing so that if anyone survives, maybe one day they will read this and we will not have died in vain. We hope that you will hear our stories, that you will know our names and that we will never be forgotten. For what else is there to hope for in a world gone mad?

No one knows what caused the plague. That doesn’t mean millions didn’t offer reasons why though. All kinds of theories came up, from infection to spiritual wroth to ancient curses. We cannot tell you what caused this plague – only that it began on the 5th of August in the year 2009 anno domine. This black day will forever go down in the history of the world – well in the little of it that is left.

To put it simply, the dead now walk the earth as if they were the living. There is no cure, there is no solution, there is no chance of survival. There is only the inevitability of death to keep us warm in the dead of the night. Our only comfort is that we are not YET dead – and like the vermin our race are we cling to life on the fringes of death.

But enough of the melodramatics. Here in the ruins of what was once the proud university ANU we survive the best we can. As a whole we are still a large community and the dead have yet to fully infiltrate the campus. Groups of us have split off in the hope of surviving. Many have stockpiled food, water and ammunitions and have taken hold of locations at which to make their final stands. Amongst us are still great leaders, thinkers and fighters. None of these will be enough to save us, but they might give us a longer survival.

If you are reading this then someone, someday survived. Or you are one of the few men and women left with us here today in these dark times. Its almost ironic that despite the death of millions of humans our phones and computers and generators still whirr on. Slowly they will fail, but for now they continue to live their own lives, oblivious to the death of their users. Zombies are of no concern to machines.

I will leave you with a poem by the once famous Sara Teasdale, the serenity it embodies makes our destruction seem just that little more bearable….

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.