A SOBOR'ing expereince

[ATEXANnHISGUN]

I never kept a journal before so I don't know where to begin, I am not a writer or a poet, I am not even much good at telling a joke truth be told.
But I want to record my existence. I don't know if civilization will return and I doubt we few survivors could even find our humanity again if we tried (and we are not trying).



To busy just trying to stay alive I suppose.



I am getting ahead of my self.



In the event this is ever found and my penmanship is still legible and by some miracle from on high you don't know what happened here in chenarus let me tell you.

It was war man! I mean WAR! America had of course inserted her self into every conflict that had occurred any where on this globe for decades, so it was no sunrise to my unit when we were up for deployment.
The theater: chenarus. It was supposed to be a peace keeping mission, That is what the brass had lead us to believe. It wasn't long before it was clear that we were in a full scale war & war is hell.
Horrors and atrocities were commited by both sides that no god would ever forgive. Maybe we should have expected it, maybe we should have known that as a species we were failing even refusing to evovle into something more, something closer to human...either way god, mother nature, science whatever had had enough.

guys on the front lines were coming back to base camp telling stories of enemies being shot and then standing back up, that soldiers and battle buddies who were not even wounded just died in their fox holes and came back to life
crazed and violent.

for the first hour we laughed. shell shock, ptsd, guys just trying to get that section 8 so they could go home we thought.

Three hours later and no one was laughing.

It started at the medical tents, I was leaving after having some stitches removed from where a piece of shrapnel had made it's home in my arm some weeks earlier. A scream erupted from behind me, not the kind that a soldier in pain
lets out, no...just no. rather it was the high pitch scream of fear and pain the kind that 1980's silver screen, scream queens would unleash from shower stalls before the scene would go black.
I spun on my heels in time to see 5 soldiers erupt from the tent charging straight for me. Covered in blood and bellowing in a sound that could only be described as inhuman.
I upholstered my glock 17 standard military issue 9mm and barked out 5 rounds in rapid succession. Each of the soldiers took one to the chest, center mass just like I was taught, just like the good little soldier I was. I did my part but
they didn't do theirs. They were supposed to die, that is how this works, I go bang bang and you take a dirt nap. I guess they weren't sleepy because they came right on coming.

I ran.

Like a school girl from a spider.

I ran.

Panic had erupted in our base, small arms fire echoed out as panicked soldiers fought for their lives. ten minutes later and the steady thump of light machine gun fire drowned out every other sound. The m249 gunners were sending sheets
of hot lead chest high through out the camp cutting every one and everything indiscriminately in half. that's why they call them saw's I heard my range instructor's voice from basic in my head, an echo from a time I wish I could go back to.

I grabbed my patrol pack, my m16a2 with the acog scope, my m4a1 cco sd was already tethered to the pack and I bolted for the wall. Initially I just wanted to get out of the killbox that was the center of camp. I had hoped to run into
others from my squad & regroup, assess and deal with the threat. At that point I really thought if I could get with the rest of echo company no matter what we faced, no matter the odds my boys and i could handle it.

I never saw a one of them again. even through the hail of bullets that swarmed around me like an angry nest of yellow jackets, I made it to the wall. Mp's were firing on anything that moved, when my eyes locked
with one of the lt's by the exit gate I knew I was a dead man, but instead he hesitated, I called out to him "LT! LT! It's me Texan" (a nick name from boot camp) he waved me over with a frenzied hand motion.
"son get out of here! the world has gone to shit and we haven't got a pot to piss in, Command has written us off for dead. Commandant Hobbes has ordered a broken arrow strike on our position..." he didn't get to finish I was high steeping it
out of there, making trails,leaving skid marks, full on stink defense shitting my pants and humping it out of there.

IF you don't know, broken arrow is the call for every allied aircraft in the area to drop its entire load on a particular target, doesn't matter if it is munitions, building supplies, mail, ammo crates, food, whatever it is your hauling
that can fall is to be dropped on the area. Usually this is done as a last resort, your position is about to be over run and no other hope remains, usually it is very close with in a 100 meters and usually it is to buy you time for a retreat

there was nothing usual about to day, and this time the target wasn't a 100 meter out we were the target.

And then there I was alone in the dark, my radio calls were going through but no one was responding. a single soldier in a hostile land, a hostile world where if you want some one dead you have to kill them twice.

It wasn't long before we realized that civilization here in chenarus had collapsed, initially people banded together scavenged for food and supplies but it seemed that no matter where went the dead weren't far behind. the cities and towns
in the early days were totally out of the question.What with massive hordes of the dead wandering through the buildings and streets. they never get tired, never sleep and only stop when you put enough lead into the body that it is no longer structurally sound. that or they loose track of you which is thankfully easy to do in the woods.


Stress does funny things to people and what with the hard times, the dead rising up to hunt humans and scarcity of food? well it was more then some could bare.
we had a lot of suicides in the beginning, it didn't take long for humanity to completely disappear from those in the small band I had joined. Saw a woman (Claire) get shot by a man for the can of beans she had just found. saw a few other guys
get gunned down when they went to make a trade of goods with another pocket of people who had banded together like we had. No one trusts any one else out side of their group and life in a group is almost as lethal as running into raiders
or snipers from another group. I have seen men I served with recognize me and raise their weapon to fire on me.

The old ways are gone, the old loyalties are dead it is now eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.

SO last night when I was in the town of stary sobor and all seemed quite. I decided that I could find a fairly safe place to bed down. sure the zombies were milling about but spec op training coupled with having lived this long meant I was prepared and able to avoid most of them. besides a well palced round from the silenced cco sd would mean one less zed to worry about. I gathered some supplies from the store and found a large rusted out red building
by some military tents, How many times have I wished that I had remembered to grab my bag with the nvg's, I made a mental note I would wake early and check out the tents maybe I would get lucky.

I climbed to the second story of the building just as an all to common thunderstorm came rolling in, I found a dry spot in one of the corners and set up some bear traps at the top of the ladder and the stair case down the back side that I hadnt seen previously.
Yeah I said bear traps LOL I would have preferred claymores or some c4 hell even a grenade with some fishing line would have worked but what I had was bear traps. I had found them in the garage of some hunters house.
They would do fine as a security system for the night.

I pulled out this journal and laughed to my self I had found it in a store weeks back, it had a cat's face with a bow on it...hello kitty, how many times had I joked to other about writing in their hello kitty journals and now here I am.

Irony at least still exists in the world.

I slipped it back into my pack rechecked the traps and was quickly lulled to sleep by the pitter patter of rain on the tin roof.

I awoke the next morning!

when you go to sleep you never know if you will wake up so i was surprised.
I wiped the crust from my eyes and chose to drink the water I had boiled up the night before instead of drinking the coke. Zombies are apex predators, they know their environments well, the sound a coke can opening is not a common sound
and if they hear it they will investigate it. turns out I made the right call, I went dead silent when I heard voices out side the barn. I quietly and painfully slow collected my things and stowed my gear Cursing my situation I belly crawled to where i had heard the voices. I peered out one of the walls where the tin siding had fallen away and spied 4 no 5 men maybe as many as 6 in the tents pulling gear out and going through the assorted items.

"shit I am so fucked" I climbed down the ladder completely forgetting the stairs on the back side of the building that would have given me a quicker and covered retreat. I low crawled to the bushes not 15 feet from the men in the tents,
One at least had on a gillie suit, others were in military camo and a few in civies. Fuck I whispered again my only chance was to low crawl past them and try to put the hill behind the tents between them and me and then run for the tree line. an easy 400 meter jog.

I nearly leapt out of my skin when i heard a voice say "where are you? why are you fucked" I realized I had instinctively keyed up my throat mic and sent out a broad cast that some one else close by had picked up.

" dude were friendly we can help"
"I go by ace got a guy here with me we call tractor were rendezvousing with cleric here in a bit where are you" They have a cleric? I thought to myself well if they still have a cleric they may still have some humanity left...

' I go by Texan I whispered, I am by the military tents in stary I got 6 tangos heavily armed not 20 feet from me they haven't seen me yet I need help" I hoped the desperation hadn't bled through in my voice.

"stay there we will take them out when I tell you start firing, texan shoot to kill on my mark" came the reply

"copy" I managed to squeek out as one of the men came with in 6 feet of me but got distarcted when a group of zombies spotted them. The 6 men killed the zombies with out a single friendly fire incident or death by zombie....."shit these guys are good" i thought to my self as I ran my sweaty palm intho grass and dirt to make sure my trigger finger wouldnt slip.

"Now!" ace barked through the head set. my training kicked in, the world slowed down but i was moving and the speed of light I came to a kneeling position and put two into the head of a guy at the entrance of a tent.

I had expected to hear gun fire form the new guys or return fire from the tangos instead I heard banjo music...."yup I have finally fallen right the fuck off my rocker" I strafed left two bushes over about 30 feet away from my original
firing positing and did my best "I am a bush" impression. Two tangos ran right past my original firing position and kept moving, I glanced quickly and saw no one else so I pursued, " one down, two on foot in civies and a guy in gillie"
I woofed through my mic.

"roger" came the replay

As I turned the corner of the red barn I saw the two men in a dead sprint lined up my shots and fired a volley of 6 stanag sd at the two men before they ducked behind a house and out of view, "shit I missed them" no response.

I ran to the house in time to see one of them hook a u turn and head back towards the red barn. I waited the gillie did not follow him....I am being baited...but at this point i am in go mode and this guy is going to die.

The civilian ran up to the red barn and I unleashed a single round.....he dropped! ..wait... no he fell the wrong way! he threw himself to the ground I realized. I put two more into him and watched as blood lurched out in a gyser from where his spine
used to be.

I wait and wait some more. finally Ace comes over the radio where are you? i give up my position...

Ace: I don't see you, I see the building but not you

Texan: I'm coming out cover me, going to hit the body, move into the red barn and exfil to the north

ACE: copy

Texan: where the fuck where you guys when the shooting started

Tractor: we had one on the other side of the hill I killed him but I was hurt bad had to have a blood transfusion or I wasn't going to make it

Texan: copy

I went for the body but in my haste I ignored the zombie threat, zombies swarmed me as a burst of rounds hit all around me I went prone killed the zombies and was coming to my feet when I didn't hear it, I didn't see it and I couldn't do either of those things.

everything was black, I felt my body hit the earth it was damp,sticky and smelled of gun powder and iron.....it was blood... my blood and the guy dressed as a green chewbacca had shot me with a large caliber rifle.

I don't know how, I don't know why, maybe I did die.

Maybe this is the hell I was sentenced to for all my misdeeds for all those broken hearts and promises, for the sins I knew I had committed or maybe this was all some kind of dream....

I woke up on the coast, by the ocean the tide crashing against the shore and birds singing over head. spied a city off to my left..."OK It was a dream" I thought to myself. I must of blacked out drunk last night, dear god i am going to get raped if
i don't get back to camp before they notice I am awol.

as I made my way towards the city i laughed aloud; what a night mare! the boys are going to get a kick out of this one...

but then I see him a lone figure walking...no plodding towards me, arms limp head cocked to the side at an unatural angel.
I continue forward "this isn't real....it was a dream.....this isn't real!' "NYRAHHHGHH" that scream! that inhuman scream and hes running at me...I don't have a gun ?!?!? a shitty flash light and a band aid....WTF!

..I run...I run...I run.

This is Dayz! This is war! This is hell! and no one is laughing.