My name is Brendan James Watts.

You can call me Bren.

The people who used to call me that are dead now, but it doesn't matter at this point. Call me whatever you want. You could say I'm one of the unluckiest survivors in the world considering I witnessed the end of modern society from DAY ONE. It's even unbelievable to me that I survived this long.

Yeah. Figures. I entirely agreed with them. You see, I was on Ground Zero when everything started; The first dark hour, or whatever the historians call it now.

The remnants of the United States government issued journals to the "Psychologically High-risk Survivors"--the ones that survived the bloody red zones—to write on their experiences. They gave it across the dozens of safe-zones littered around the American landscape, meant to be a coping method against the trauma they experienced.

I was given a journal last week.

I guessed they considered me as one of the high-risk ones.

It was insulting, at least that was what most of my friends believed. By friends, I meant the people I survived with all these years, seen through the worst the plague had to offer, and experienced the most horrid conditions no person should ever go through alone. Yes, they thought the journals were stupid, but it didn't take long before they had begun to write on it.

Deep down, I agreed that they had a point. And due to my stubbornness, I put it aside, meant to be forgotten. Until now.

It seemed strange how the world before was different from the one I lived in now as if it never existed. Back when all I had to worry about was graduating high school and where people were preoccupied about celebrity gossips, social media, and outrage about the newest triggered social justice issue. I am guilty of the latter two.

I could describe everything in detail as if I was still there. I could fast forward or slow down the images in my memory, and pause on things I believed were important, or moments that stood out for me. I could still smell the smoke from the shattered cities, the coppery taste of blood, and the horrible screams...

My memory still served me well. Thus, I am going to write about the following events as if I told a story. It was the only way that I could make sense of what happened and could help me deal with everything.

There's no point in prolonging this.

Let me start from the beginning.