text: The Zombie Apocalypse bonded billions of sorrowful ghosts to their former bodies, leaving them trapped until their Zombie bodies that are tethering them to this mortal coil are destroyed. No sound issued forth from the ghost's spectral mouths, but in my mind, I could hear snippets of words & short phrases whispering, pleading for me to free them from their cursed existence. They would gesture with a translucent hand pointing in the direction where their zombified body was. Every day their desperate, anguished mental cries urged me on a seemingly endless quest to destroy every last one of those rotting shamblers, severing the link so their tormented souls can finally move on. I smash Zombie after Zombie until I feel I can no longer lift my arms. Even now my hands still tremble from exhaustion as I update this journal. Every night the ghosts haunt my dreams, but unlike the waking world the spirits speak as clearly & eloquently as they did in life & I am the one who is voiceless, my movements sluggish. So, I stay still & listen to their stories. One by one they tell me their names, where they're from, & the fates that befell them. Teens whose lives were cut short before they could have their first kiss at prom, mothers who never lived long enough to see the birth of their child, fathers rushing home from work who never reached their destinations, never got the chance to find out what happened to their families. In the morning, I find the Zombies in the direction I was told to go. After I put them to rest & the apparitions depart with a heart-felt "Thank You" echoing in my mind I look through the belongings on the former Zombies bodies. I find everything I was told I would find, the names in their wallets matches the names I was given in the dream, the items, the mementos; all of it is there. The dreams are real, the life stories I'm hearing are real. As the months wear on, between this grim task & despite the one-sided conversations from my nightly visitors; the lack of companionship, live human companionship just weighs heavily upon me. I haven't spotted a single person except the dead in all this time. I find myself craving for someone living to talk to. Even someone whose quirks used to annoy me in the past would only bring a smile to my face right now. I need that. Even the animals avoid me, they instinctively know they are just a walking meal for whoever finds them, human or Zombie. I'm glad that animals & insects are immune to turning, or it would have been over for me right quick. The only thing keeping me sane is this journal & the comforting thought that every Zombie I put an end to means another soul finally knows peace. Hello again, it's been...I don't know how long since my last entry. I've been avoid writing this, I just didn't want to think about what happened. I got careless. I came to rely on the mental warnings so much I stopped doing visual sweeps of the area as a backup. Assuming anyone reads this, Yeah, I know what you are thinking, that was very stupid. It was. And I haven’t stopped kicking myself over that. It never occurred to me that a specter from a newly created Zombie might not have figured out how to do the mental communication thing in time to save my life, but he figured it out right afterwards, the warning came too late to make a difference. The big guy chomped down on my arm hard. After I destroyed it, I kept hearing "I'm sorry" inside my mind before the spirit departed. The thought of spending eternity as a disembodied phantom silently lamenting my fate while watching my former body wander around endlessly, searching for its next meal, just terrifies me. I will try to free as many trapped souls as possible in the time I have remaining to me before this infected bite turns me. I just hope there is someone out there still alive who will do the same for me.