April 16th, The Day It Happened
Work my day job at OHS 845-235pm bc of early release wednesdays, arrive on campus at 3pm after o2 alert email is sent out, work in the S.E.A.L. from 4-6pm watching the storm slowly roll in over the campus, go to Spec. Worldbuilding at 6pm. At 8pm: As the sky opens, I grab all my stuff and bolt- I would go to the library basement thinking it is an earthquake or other natural disaster. I would grab any people I see on my way. from 9pm-3am I would help with chaos control, raid whatever is left in Evans hall offices and rooms for food/h20/blankets/etc., and help set up a panic shelter situation with beds, food, and care for the wounded. From 6am-12pm I would try to meet up with other collections of survivors, get a headcount of my building, and help tend to the wounded while we procure a further game plan.
April 17th-23
I would be helping lead the management of resources, finding more sources of food (like hunting, foraging, etc), and would be trying to create community under the pressure of things. Creating a headcount with a names list would be pertinent to my first few days, as well as helping the others establish an inventory database so we know how much food, water, clothes, etc we have for folks. Sanitation would become very important and I believe a lot of my time would also be going to finding firewood, boiling water for consumption and bathing/sanitation of medical equipment and clothing, and figuring out long term solutions for heat/food/h20.
April 24th-May 4th
The fog hasn’t lifted. It moves like it’s alive—coiling around trees, swallowing paths I walked just yesterday. But life inside it continues, strange and unrelenting. I’ve started putting together a sort of cookbook—not just for taste or comfort, but to keep us alive. There’s so much we don’t know about what’s edible and what can kill us. I’ve begun calling it “Feast from the Fog.”
Yesterday, we found a doe. Her eyes were clouded and she moved like she could see something we couldn’t. The deer here are different—meat richer, darker, almost sweet. I smoked the haunch over some moss and bark, and the result was incredible: the moss infused a minty aroma, while the bark added that bitter bite we’re all craving after too much boiled meatberry mash. Speaking of meatberries, I’ve started fermenting them in hollowed stumps. The tang pairs beautifully with dry-roasted mushroom caps and sun-cooked greens we pull from the wet edge of the forest.
Some of the others brought me the eggs of a bird — small, speckled, and still warm. I traded a promise not to ask where they found them for the chance to taste something new. We baked them in hot stones, yolks runny and bright orange. I crushed some blacksalt from the old science lab’s broken tile floor and sprinkled it over the top. Something to remember is that these recipes aren’t about luxury, they’re about making survival something we can swallow, and maybe even enjoy a little.
With harvesting so much firewood, large swarms of grubs tend to be breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which can cause some camp upset. If it isn’t the taste, the smell, or the general disgust of the idea, they’re quite the noisy snack to prepare. They pop like nuts, POP SNAP and an occasional SQUELCH, but even the squeamish folks go back for seconds. Beggars can’t be choosers. I’ve started drying the rest to grind into flour. There’s potential there. Food that doesn’t just fill the gut, but lights something up inside—a memory, maybe. I think if I got these folks some hot bread, it truly may feel like a home rather than a sweaty survival hut.
May 5th-May 15th
I FINALLY DID IT!!!! After scouring the longhouse, farm trails, and a plethora of woods, I have gathered enough ingredients and elvish scrawl to decipher a pie recipe! What joy! I hope the others are as happy as I am! Genuinely, I have been pouring hours a day into experimenting with whatever table scraps I can find to create something warm, homey, and delicious, but I think this one might finally make some people smile. Some folks around Evans have coined me “the kitchen enby”. Since there’s a thousand names to remember and most of us are not cis, I find it quite an endearing title.
This whole situation is lasting a lot longer than any of us thought it could. Knowing what I know now, I wish I could’ve warned us all that first week to stop eating so damn much and realize that we aren’t going to be saved quickly. In the beginning, regardless of the disagreement over this being volcanic, spiritual, or eldritch, most of us still believed we would be rescued in a matter of a few days. Now that around two weeks has passed, our food supplies have turned completely rugged, and electricity is something people could turn full out gladiator for at any moment, reality is really setting in.
I know there has been some progress with the radios, lots of other folks running about in the forest like me, and a desperate search for any faculty members including Sam, but with that in mind we have also lost a few people to the fog. I don’t mean dead or anything- at least, we don’t know that yet- but we have had some people return with half the mind they went in with, completely stupified by common things, and lost amongst people they’ve known for years.
I’m praying that the scientists or radio workers here will be able to crack the code. Whether that means escaping this cursed campus or calling out for help, I have no damn clue, but I would be happy with any glimpse of hope at this point. That’s why I’ve shoved my head so deep in this cookbook. Now that it’s finished, I don’t know what to do with myself. I hope one of the groups can take me in, or maybe I can find my old friend Nathan. He slept in his car after being kicked out of college, so I’m sure he’s trapped on this campus somewhere. But where? Or with who? That’s the real question.
May 16th-June 1st
I got so damn tired of that campus that I wondered off looking for Nathan, and, luckily, he wasn’t that hard to find. He was helping out with the building restoration and putting up some treehouse platform type things to help navigate the forest. Honestly, he looks the exact same as he did when I met him in my freshman year- scruffy, skinnier than a pencil, mysterious, but not in a threatening way more in the “Please don’t acknowledge I’m in the corner” way. After catching up, he told me that he’s been hearing whispers of people successfully breaking through to Olympia. He updated me on a LOT of drama happening downtown- some sort of inner war between average folks, grannies, and god knows who else. This town has always confused me.
Anyway, Gnat (thats what Nathan goes by now apparently) showed me his cool treehouse pad and told me I could crash there, yet warned that the fog tends to creep between the cracks at night. My memory is already being affected, which is why I have no idea what week it is, I literally don’t even know what day it is, I just know that I am still here, and I am fed, and Gnat is kind so I feel safe. Even if…. Well even if that safety is just a facade, I am happy to sit in that facade here with him. We don’t have as many resources due to the lack of facilities 30 feet in the air, but I’ve managed to use some old coal and bark to write this note while Gnat fixes me a somewhat temporary prickly moss and stick bed. He’s stinky, but we all are. He’s scruffy, but that’s the norm now. It’s weird how people like Gnat fit in better after the world has crumpled a little bit. I wish I felt that way right now.
We haven’t been staying together long, I don’t think, but I am happy that our community is rebuilding a little bit. I was able to use some of his plant knowledge and my own cooking whimsy to whip us up some sappy pine tea with some coal-baked biscuits. The biscuits taste like dirt, but dipping them in the tea makes the sweet sap mix into the hardened cracks of the cookies so that they almost feel moist when I eat them. Maybe some of those deranged grannies could make me some real cookies. How delusional am I? Cookies… in an apocalypse… pfft. I’m gonna hit the hay before the hay hits me (which is a real possibility with these temperamental ass plants). Until next time, V
June 2nd – June 9th
I know that I’m lucky. We’re surviving. We’re eating three meals a day, I’m never hungry, and I’m never cold.
But this whole apocalypse is starting to wear on me. I miss home. I miss people. I miss being off this stupid fucking campus.
Sorry I need to calm down. The fog makes me shorter in temper along with affecting my memory. We could’ve been here 6 weeks or 6 months and I truly don’t think I’d know the difference. It scares me. Having Gnat around makes things better but I’m starting to hear things in the forest at night that make me feel…. Empty…. Unsafe….. abandoned out here.
I’ll chill with the melodrama but I hope that someone else in this colony feels the same way. I am praying that we break through to olympia soon so we can get some fresh air, maybe swim in some safer waters…. But maybe I’m delusional. Maybe this has actually hit the whole world and olympia is all that is left, segregated by the fog for the rest of existence. Although I doubt that. Occam’s razor or what not, this can’t really be as insane as it seems, right?
I need sleep. Or a warm bath and a night snuggled up in cozy pajamas. Or a therapist. Probably all three. I wonder if those student health service hippies got stranded on campus too. I kinda hope they did. I feel like I’m cracking. kinda like the bark that I write this on. It looks whole but with each word I scratch, the breaks grow bigger, the splinters become crevasses, and my sheet becomes shreds. Will anyone ever read this? Will it even be legible? As a history major it sure makes me wonder how this all will be remembered…. How will I be remembered? – V