Don’t rightly know why I’m writing this. Maybe I’m hoping someone will find it when this shit is all over.

Maybe I just wanted the chance to set the record straight.

Maybe I’m just trying to keep from going insane.

Where to start…who I am would be good, I guess. The name’s Michael. You know, like the Archangel. The name means "Who is like God". Never quite figured out for sure whether it was a statement or a question. Not that it matters much in my case. I’m hardly one of the Big Man Above’s favorite sons, a fact pretty well evidenced by the shiny ID card in my wallet. It’s funny…all the heavy duty Jesus crispy freaks used to jump and shout about how Old Testament the end of the world would be. It may have been Old Testament, but it was definitely New World Order. The mark of the Beast ain’t a bright burning tattoo on the forehead of the afflicted. Hell no, my brother. In today’s world it’s just another magnetic strip on the back of a fucking credit card. Want food? Show the card. Want to travel to another Zone? Show the card. Want to keep your ass from getting raped, skinned, impaled, sodomized, or any of a thousand other less-than-pleasant things? Show the fucking card.

Of course, even that doesn’t always work, as Jaime could tell you…if she was still breathing, that is. I swear I still hear her screams in my deepest nightmares, then I wake up and realize she might be the luckier of the two of us. I tell you, it ain’t easy watching your girl being raped by a pair of zombies while another pair hold you back with the strength only Hell could muster,…and I’m not talking drug addicts or space cadets. I mean up-from-the-grave-limbs-rotting-off-feed-us-more-brains-fucking-zombies. You don’t know the meaning of the phrase "makes my skin crawl" until you’ve been touched by one of the walking dead. No amount of scrubbing on the planet can get rid of that feeling.

For the sake of anyone who finds this in the far flung future, and may not know what the hell I’m talking about, maybe I better start at the beginning.

It all started a little over four years ago. December 31^st, 1999 – the whole world was gearing up for the party of the century (except for a few countries that used those other fucked up calendars, like China). Nevermind the fact that crime was at an all time high, the President was a low life, the economy was in the shitter, and the country was basically about to go tits up into another civil war. A few years prior, the people of the good ole US of A reacted kind of badly to the incompetence of their government, and were fairly vocal/violent about it in various hot spots around the country. The government responded with what it called "police actions" against the perps. Sure, and I’m a fucking Eskimo. Their "police actions" were nothing more than wholesale slaughter of anyone that spoke against them. Made you sick to see this country sink so low. I mean, I’m all for law and order, but Jesus.

Then, a guy by the name of Damon Blackcloud jumped into the public eye, saying things that made a lot of sense to a lot of folks, me included. He was Indian by birth (no shit?) and had a talent for getting the public behind him. The guy was basically a home spun terrorist, but his cause seemed so right at the time. The guy was a shining friend to mankind, fighting the evil empire that the federal government had become, sticking up for those that couldn’t defend themselves. Who the fuck would have guessed he was the Anti-Christ? In retrospect, probably anyone who hadn’t slept through Sunday school. We all know the wonders of hindsight, yadda yadda yadda.

Anyway, back to New Year’s Eve, 1999. The big bright ball dropped down the pole in Times Square, and the country forgot it’s screwed up nature for one brief moment. That’s when all hell broke loose, literally. Exactly at midnight, (Eastern Standard time, of course. I love New York, and all that other bullshit), big holes in time and space opened up all across the world. Techys could give a better description of what they were, and would probably use cool words like ‘interspatial’ and ‘transdimensional’ , but let’s face it. They were fucking holes. If anyone still had any question of whether there was a God or a Devil, they got their answer in that one bloody minute. I can’t even describe the things that came from the opening in New York that night. They were living nightmares…Beasts, we call them now. Lucifer’s first fucked up attempts at making life. Big, black, ugly as sin, and constantly hungry. These things came through the holes first, and had a feast waiting for them. Looking back, I know it’s probably not possible, but I’d still swear I saw blood fly up about twenty feet into the sky. I won’t bore you with the details. Once you’ve seen a shredded intestine hanging from the jaws of a Beast, you’ve pretty much seen them all.

As the hole widened, more things came through. Demons, devils, call them what you want, there were scores of them, holding the leashes of the Beasts. These weren’t the cuddly little red cherubs with the tiny pitch forks, we’re talking eight foot tall fucking goliaths with weaponry from across the timeline; everything from swords and axes to ray guns right out of Star Trek. They trimmed the crowd back like a hedge. People were slipping in what was left of other people, trying to get away. When there was enough room, and Satan’s hordes filled most of Times Square, Hell’s elite stepped through the hole; Fallen Angels – Hell’s warlords come to bring the world to heel.

I’ve never been what you call a religious man, but this was more than enough to totally fuck up my whole view on life in general. What came next made me question if I had actually gotten out of bed that morning, or was this all some kind of rum induced nightmare. Another hole opened up, in the sky this time, and a bright white light came out of it. Then, an army came charging out of the light. Ya see, the Big Man apparently didn’t like his former exec. letting loose all of Hell’s minions on the Earth, so He sent in his own boys to start a little ruckus. I guess ruckus isn’t exactly the best word for it since it ended up leveling most of Manhattan.

What did I do next, you ask? What the hell do you think I did? I turned, grabbed Jaime, and we hauled our white asses as far away from there as possible. As far as I was concerned, I was gonna keep going until I hit water, then I was gonna be one swimming mother fucker. Might as well’ve not bothered. After picking up on a few news reports, we found out the same thing was going on all over. For better or worse, the final war had started, and we all had front row seats.

Gotta sign off now. I can hear a squad of the Risen shuffling up ahead. Gotta move. I’ll pick up again tomorrow.

Entry #2 , May 24^th , Fourth year of Armageddon

What the hell day is it? Thursday…no, Friday. Yeah, Friday. Fridays bring back memories. Cruising the coast with Jaime, getting loaded with my buds.

Sorry, different time and place. Where did I leave off…

The God Squad had swooped in from the sky, and the world erupted into a total fucking balls-out kind of chaos. What news we could get said that the carnage was pretty much world wide. Europe and the US were where the fighting was most intense. More religious diversity, I guess. South/Central America were becoming pretty solidly held by the Bossman Above, while most of Africa went the other direction. Too many people still sitting out in the sticks, babbling prayers to rocks. They got sucked up by Old Scratch and didn’t even know it. The Mediterranean area was a hot zone for almost a year. Oh, and don’t kid yourself. I don’t give a big hairy fuck what the history books have to say about it, Rome folded like a wet fucking noodle not too long after the whole thing started. Apparently, Satan wanted to make a statement. Poetic justice, if you ask me, but I’ve never had much use for Catholics. It only took about a day or so before Lucifer’s puppets were pissing on the Vatican floor. By that time, our part of the US, and a good part of the world, was already divided up into Zones, each held by a different Fallen Angel. The news we got to see was nothing more than bullshit propaganda wedged in between the kiddie porn and snuff flicks (and we thought it was bad when they showed Dennis Franz’s fat bare ass on NYPD Blue!). I still remember the broadcast they showed when they burned down the Vatican gates. Like I could forget something that grotesque. The camera shone on the smiling face of our CIC himself. Turns out the President of the Great and Holy USA was in league with the bastards from the beginning. No wonder he was such a prick. At least I didn’t vote for him. Anyway, he gave some bullshit speech about the coming of the new dawn, or some other crap like that, then the camera panned over to the Pope. Two big demon-types held the old guy up off the floor from both sides. Each one had one arm and one leg, keeping him splayed out for the world to see. A succubus was riding him for all she was worth, and an incubus was beneath him giving him a severe roto-rooter job.

Now let me explain to those who may not have seen one of these things in action. A succubus is a personification of female sexual energy. Basically, she’s living breathing demonized sex with one seriously great set of tits. An incubus is the same thing, only male, and with a dick the size of a fucking redwood. Needless to say, the old man was not enjoying the experience. Truth be known, from the look on his face when the camera zoomed in, I’m pretty sure that the Big Man had already called him home to spare him what was coming. Anyway, alive or dead, the fucking went on for a while, then the two big guys tore the body in half. The last image burned into my mind was of that demon bitch rubbing herself with the old man’s intestines while the big guys cranked their knobs. Just one more of a thousand things that I wish I could forget.

Once playtime was over, the screen shifted back to our fucked up CIC again. He was standing next to his new bestest buddy, you guessed it, Damon Blackcloud. The guy wore evil like a custom tailored suit. Again, I ain’t the most religious SOB on the planet, but there was no other word for the guy. He was pure evil in an Edgar suit (Men In Black reference – old movie, forget it). I don’t remember the exact speech he gave, but the essence was that former President Potato Head (so I don’t remember his name, sue me) was being appointed to the position of Anti-Pope (I know, real fucking original). In the background, you could see a chain of girls dressed in tatters, not one of them over sixteen; presents for his coronation. There had been rumors that the President was a bit of a pedophile. This pretty much cinched it. Then came a good long Presidential fuck flick, live from Rome. The bad part was, you couldn’t turn off any of the damn TV’s anymore. The Devil wanted all of his conquests to be numbed to the violence and the perversion. That way, we’d all just shuffle along like good little cattle. I’d have gone outside, but it would have been more of the same. The streets were full of more kinds of perversion than you could have fit into a back room in a video store. Made Sodom and Gomorrah look like Disneyland.

Needless to say, me and Jaime stayed in a lot. The borders were cut off before we could get out. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway. We were both marked from the start. A couple of days after the whole thing started, we both got "pre-approved" credit cards in the mail. There’s only one rule behind the Black Curtain; keep your ID card with you at all times. Other than that, absolutely fucking anything goes.

This is the world. Welcome to it.

I’m moving out again tomorrow, so I doubt I’ll have a chance to finish out the week in this journal. I’ll pick up again on Sunday.

<End of Week 1>