Exile - by Ryan v.

Journal of [Charles D. Robinowitz] - Recovered from sector formerly known as [St. Mark's Place]

Journal Entry - 19 October 2023 (8:00 AM EST)

The construction outside woke up the entire apartment today. At least I think I its construction. Almost sounds like a controlled demolition or something. I had barely gotten any sleep after our chief economist’s going-away party… damn hangovers. Then again, when is Manhattan ever quiet? Still, I suppose that without the noise, I would’ve forgotten all about the presentation that morning at 9. Maybe showing up a bit later will finally show that incompetent, so-called “boss” who is really running the show in foreign marketing.

The first few minutes after awaking were a blur – rushing to chomp on some lukewarm toast with cold coffee, fumbling my work clothes, and sprinting to and fro the bathroom failing to remember if I had even brushed my teeth. By now, I had just over 30 minutes to traverse Morningside Heights to the Financial District in rush-hour traffic and make this deadline before it would cost my job… perfect way to start a Monday if you ask me. When I got outside, though, something was off. The cars on the street were without drivers. Men and women were almost nowhere to be found. This isn't possible... after all, how could New York City ever be a ghost town?

(9:00 AM EST)

I begin to traverse the streets all along the local city blocks – the waterfront, the Columbia University campus grounds, 7^th Avenue, but nothing. Now that I think of it, I don’t even remember seeing anyone at the front desk either. Then, I heard the sounds. They were low at first, almost like iPod headphones that are at full volume in someone’s pocket that forgot to turn their gadget off. Finally, by chance, I found the source of the noise – coming from the south was what looked like a mob of people, not so much individuals or marathon runners than it was just a moving wall of men and women alike. The distance masked their faces, but their sounds were pure horror – the screams of family members and friends and scholars, all gripped with the same affliction of shock and awe. Almost immediately, I remembered another sort of tragedy like this… this was not good. Soon, the wave turned into clusters, then packs, then finally separate people sprinting away from Manhattan. One woman was on her phone at the time, talking of bombs that went off in the river. If only I could’ve done something, but before I knew it, she was gone.

(9:30 AM EST)

I believe it was sometime near 9:20 by now, and I was still lost in this torrent of never-ending bodies. Was this the result of a hard night of partying with a friend, or is this actuality? By the time I reached the end of this mob in what seemed like an eternity, I finally saw the images that answered my question – civilians standing with digital cameras, others sprinting, all slowly moving towards the north of the island, all running from the onslaught of fires and smoke and explosions throughout the city, smoke pluming all throughout the island and, perhaps, even Brooklyn and Queens suffered the same fate. In what was in actuality a half hour, but for me a blink of the eye, I saw the source of these fires.

Tanks, massacre, silhouettes of saurians chanting in languages I could not understand or imagine, advancing from the smoke of former buildings. Their semblance, though... they were nothing conjured by any mortal hand or birth. Their faces, like skulls, were all seeing and cold... doll eyed, indifferent demons that would slay any good. But for what cause, i do not know... all the more terrifying. I had once read on many an internet site of biblical monsters, things that were human and demonic... things called the nephalim, I believe. One would call me crazy, but when face to face with one, hiding like mice from hawks, life becomes an everlasting midnight... cold, never to embrace the first twinkling of a morning sky. This, this is the face of malice - no, only one word can describe what I saw in the eyes of this devilish construct, in the eyes of the child who screamed for his parents, in the tears shed from my own eyes...

Evil.

My heart was stricken with fear, as I found myself in a living hell

(10:00 AM EST)

Before I knew it, jets and helicopters were swarming upon the city, as I watched blocks I once knew as my neighborhood fell like sandcastles, but with blossoming flames dancing at their bases and tops. From behind the avenues and boulevards, men in tan suits with rifles came out, small in numbers at first, then seemingly multiplying in numbers. Running up the island, it was hard to make them out, but once the other tanks and men saw them, the unexpected happened – firing against one another.Our troops!, I thought, these men were on our side. What a relief to see we might survive. Following the endless swarm of people, we eventually made it to our final stop – a military vessel at the river which carves out Manhattan from the rest of New York. At last, salvation from this living nightmare! It was 10:37 by the time I reached this boat, and I could not have been happier then. No longer were the woes of a 9 to 5 work week or my struggle with the AA (oh how that was an ordeal) or even the fate of my home an issue. All I was concerned with was that I was near freedom and escape! Oh, how sweet the feeling is!

(11:00 AM EST)

That last entry’s hopes were crushed just a few minutes ago. The invaders blew up our only way off this damned island. Are we just stranded here? – condemned to live out the rest of our lives, however long we even have left, in fear of not seeing our loved ones again – friends, brothers, sisters, past loves, parents, relatives, all faces and people that I may not see again by the end of today. One of the refuges with me heard on the radio of the attack.

Reports said that the Chinese did this, that they are going to nuke us … how woefully unaware they are. These monsters have no affiliation... And yet, yet we report this as if a piece of political strife, as if we are to gain from this horror? I couldn’t listen to this – this is too much for me. I hear the sounds of booms and thunder across these metallic canyons – no matter how strong they are, unless we escape, this may be my final entry.

Oh, the regrets I still have in my life. What use is a life when you treat yourself as any cadaver or dead man? All of the feuds I've had, the fights with loved ones, spiteful rivalries, the things I never did say at the right time... and yet time goes on. And I live and reside and endure only in hindsight. I remember one phrase I learned in Latin in my youth... carpe diem. Seize the day. How I've tried so hard to live up to this, and yet... here I am, facing the sins I never sought atonement for, on perhaps my final day. So many regrets...

Some troopers are guiding us into a bunker beneath the city, but I doubt we’ll be okay there. It’s only a matter of time before this entire seaboard burns if New York is any indication… I pray to God that I'm wrong

25 October 2023 – (11:45 AM EST)

This old subway station has become a refuge of sorts. This invasion, this war, we’re all caught in the crossfire, just something in the way. I woke up today after spending six days in this god-forsaken hole in the ground when the other survivors and I got a radio signal. We’ve been crammed down here as fighting has taken over the streets. I still hear the sounds and speech of these... these things. Their taunting in their foreign tongues, the screams of humans muffled by the sounds of the still-active transit lines. I envy those unmanned metro cars, really. How they can simply... ignore this tragedy. Unaffected by the outside world. Simply existing. Like everything was as it were before.

Miraculously, it seems as though most of the city structure is intact – there could be more survivors. And yet... more of those demons could be too. But what of the world that I left a week before… what of the way my life once was. Seven days of the rest of my life have dwindled away in fear, huddled with complete strangers that embrace us like brothers because we all thought this was our final moments on this Earth. And yet, in these dirty tunnels, life does not undergo days... no sunshine to wake us up and put between the endless nights... endless nightmares.

Will I ever be able to return? I suppose that we have to take that chance eventually... carpe diem.