Friday, July 31
Dear Journal,
We found another person! His name’s Dan, and he’s the youngest out of all of us so far. He showed up at the gate one morning in a truck filled with servers. From what he’s told us, he just woke up on the twenty-eighth. He had a few websites backed up before the Internet as part of a college research project. Now that there’s nine of us, we’ve ran out of room. Half of us are staying in the house next door.
Dana got us these long range walkie-talkies she pieced together. I think the range is five or ten miles. But, sorry Dana, now we know the satellite phones work. And that’s thanks to this guy named Adrian. Adrian is part of a convoy of several people and some cattle that are staying in Indian School Park for the time being. They’re ponies like us. I guess everyone’s a pony now, except for some crazy secret organization that managed to avoid the transformation.
I have a hell of a story to tell.
A few days after he showed up, Dan told us that, to keep all our stuff running, he needs spare parts. So we started raiding downtown Phoenix’s office towers for technology. There were a surprising amount of stray dogs, but they didn’t bother us much. Marv barked at any of them that got close and they turned around. And that was creepy. They didn’t bark once, but in a series with varied pitch and length. It was like they were talking to each other in another language.
We repeated the process for two days, looting a few buildings and filling up a few rooms with computers and servers. Today we drove north, up Central to Indian School. Jessica, who was at the front of the convoy, slammed on the brakes. Levi responded over the radio first. “What the hell was that for?”
“There are a bunch of RVs in the middle of that park,” Jessica said. “Follow me.” He turned around and pulled into a parking lot behind a tall bank building. We followed him, parked our cars, and met under a covered area. We immediately decided to go over there, and everyone was guessing as to who they were. Maybe they were from another city. Maybe they were still human.
We broke into the tower, which bordered the park, and took the stairwell to the top floor. From there we could see their setup. There was a cluster of a few RVs in a circle and a herd of cattle grazing on whatever grass was left. After a quick vote, Jessica, Levi, and I went in the park to the closest RV and knocked on the door.
An off-white pegasus mare opened the door. She stared at us wide-eyed for a few seconds, and then kicked the door closed with a hoof.
“Nice talking to you,” Levi muttered under his breath. I couldn’t help but laugh at that.
After a few seconds, the door opened again, and behind it were two ponies: the pegasus and an orange unicorn. What followed was the most awkward conversation ever. The ponies, named Joseph and Cloudy Skies, are in a group of six coming from Los Angeles.
Joseph invited us inside while Sky went to get the other people in her group. While she was gone we learned something else: that L.A. burned to the ground. I could tell that the gears in Jessica’s head were spinning the whole time. If something like that happened to Phoenix, we’d be toast.
Sky came back with a doctor, Oliver, and a jackass, Moriah. Almost immediately she asked if we were from L.A. We told her we weren’t, but I don’t think she believed us that much. She, apparently, also got her gender switched too.
Hang on, I need to think. There’s so much information to process from this whole thing. We have a name for what happened, the Event, we know that there are other settlements out there, and we know that there are people who are still human. It’s crazy how much has changed in just one day.
After Oliver and Moriah came in, they started talking about this group they met. Some of the things Joseph was saying about them seemed to jog Levi’s memory, because it reminded him of something Dana had told him about when she first got here. He ran and got her, and she told them her story. Apparently she saw them raiding all the fuel from the nuclear power plant. Yep, same guys, and from what they told us about them they have some crazy technology, namely, something that cuts off magic. I didn’t know why they’d need something like that, magic’s pretty cool, but they told us humans can’t survive around it. They even have a name for it: thaumic radiation.
Then someone else bursts into the RV. His name was Adrian, and once he saw us he gave us a phone. It’s just a satellite phone, but it has the numbers of some other colonies. I could see Jessica’s face light up. There were others! Many more people than just our two groups. He started thinking, and didn’t stop until we got home.
They told us just before we left that they were heading to Chicago to find a place better suited for farming. Moriah thought it was crazy for us to stay here in Phoenix, but I, for one, don’t want to leave the city I was born and raised in. Besides, we can farm here. There’s farmland all around our base.
We said our goodbyes and went back home. During the drive Jessica, Levi, and I told the rest of the colony what happened and what we learned. When we were done, Al asked us, “What happens now?”
We thought for a minute, and Jessica said, “We rebuild.” As soon as we got home, he went into our room. When I asked what he was doing, he said he was planning.
-Scott