Merrick Journal entries for Pre- Outbreak

I can remember it all like it was yesterday; the sweat on my neck, the adrenaline pulsing thru my veins and the sounds of the car door being ripped off and Mike being pulled out screaming, gurgling, by his throat. I can’t describe to you in actual words the feelings, noises, and sights I had during and after that experience. So I won’t try.
The day the outbreak hit Reno was a day where my world was flipped upside down, thrown in a margarita mixer and shaken around with vodka. I swear I am still drunk to this day, the hallucinations haven’t stopped and I still feel weak and shaky from it.
What is a 17 year old supposed to think on a day like that? He doesn’t think to stockade a movie theater for survival. He doesn’t raid the nearest grocery store or gun shop. He immediately thinks he’s dreaming or drunk.
My name is Todd Merrick Harkin, current age is 18, and I am one of several survivors in the City of Reno, Nevada. We have reason to believe we are not alone out there in this Global “Pandemic”. We have our own wild theories and accusations on how and why this all happened but one thing that is set in stone for us and is burned into our heads is that it is real. And we will persevere. I am going to write my story incase one day it can help survivors figure out what happened or maybe give a well deserved clue to the destruction of this preternatural…. Human Genocide.

(In this I will quote as correctly as I can what the other survivors say and what I can remember. Please if you find this, and I am no longer among the living, make sure it gets into the right hands, our story needs to be told and it might help one day.) Note I do jump dates but theses are the ones I remember the most vividly and that will have the most benefit.



Pre-Outbreak; Janurary 18, 2007.
Simple thoughts back then, during my junior year in High school it was all sports, work, homework, friends, babes, and parties. Haha I won’t pretend like I am good looking or the all-star quarterback for my schools football team. Naw I was the B average student who was 2nd string anything on the teams. I had my core group of friends but I had miraculously managed to get people to like me enough that I could hop from group to group and never once meet a dark glance. My home life was simple and neat, my mom had a new job every year or so, and my dad was well established as a 7 year police officer for the state. I had a little brother whom I never got along with. I had my beater car and the clothes on my back. Just your everyday guy.
Well up to this point I don’t remember much, there are gray memories and names attached to bright and brilliant ones. I had my share of girlfriends, party stories, and throw downs. I was called every name in the book and had every conceivable rumor spread about me. Sleeping with so and so’s girl, getting my girlfriend pregnant, keying a teacher’s car, yada, yada, yada. I didn’t sleep around but I plead the fifth on the teacher’s car.
So it was a normal Tuesday, if I remember correctly I had Ap. English that day and I only remember this because the cute girl that sat across the room from me complimented my hair cut that day.
The rest of the day is a blur to me except the T.V. at the end of the night it was a news report on some Avian Bird flu out break in the Philippines. They showed bodies being thrown into body bags and crazed Filipinos being cornered and handcuffed. I shrugged it off, I was 17 and invincible (typical thought in teens huh?)
I wrote that night a simple title. No words beyond the first line.
What if.


Pre-Outbreak; Janurary 27, 2007.
Looking back on it now it was a simple predicament, nothing on the scale of millions of cannibalistic undead beings running around covered in blood. A friend of mine was having a party but my ex girlfriend was going to be there and I didn’t want to go on the assumption that she will try something. I mean I knew she still wanted to be with me but I just couldn’t handle her drama and constantly picking fights with me. And still I went; still I drank ‘til the dark turned light. And still I slept with her again.
Its kind of funny looking on the habits and ordeals of the days teens. We were sleeping around, getting off our asses drunk and ruining our reputations and lives in high school. But we get a fresh start afterwards right? Geeze its odd thinking, but I want to go back and kick my own ass for even remotely thinking I was invincible.
The rumors spread thick as smoke, choking me to the point of screaming for air. So I took on the rumor at the butt of the cigarette. Samantha was her name; she was the queen bee of the popular crowd. And I don’t know why but she had it out for me in that year. I approached her head on in a crowd of her friends and blew up on her, bringing up things from her past that I had heard from friends, things I knew would hurt her. Her tear strained face and hiccupping cries were not the “snuffing” of the rumor that I was hoping for. Sadly because of me she changed schools and lost her friends because some of them didn’t know the stories I threw at Sam.
I remember vividly the fact that I was disgusted with myself and I lost some good friends that year because they saw this as a warning sign of me breaking down.
Hmm their loss now.
Headlines For Janurary 27, 2007 AVIAN BIRD FLU HITS THE STATES.


Pre-Outbreak Feburary 17, 2007
A Saturday at work. My job was simple, supervisor at a movie theater what else could a teenager want? A job with decent pay, free movies, and hundreds of girls and friends coming in and out every day to keep me entertained. I poked my head in on one of those book to movie adaptations one with a lion and some prince Casper or something. It didn’t peek my interest. What did was the fact that the theater was empty and I was getting off soon. So I called my girlfriend of the time and had her come and “blind critic” the movie with me. Ha good times, good times.
Got home worn out and relaxed only to be confronted with more headlines on the war in Iraq the upcoming election and random reporting of several outbreaks of an unknown strain of rabies in Africa. The avian flu had been reportedly quarantined by this time. But what did I care? I had just gotten paid and laid.


Pre-Outbreak: march 10 2007.
The glow of my computer kept me up that night and all over the internet was leaked viral videos of this new “rabies” virus in some run down beater town in the midwest. The videos I watched showed a man possessing some serious symptoms of the new Super Virus; that has been running around and scaring people into white dust masks; and he starts foaming at the mouth and growling then just flat lines. The feed cuts off with the T.O.D. then comes back on as a doctor was talking to a news anchor. Saying the man in the other room was infected with the Super flu for some time and could have been patient zero for all they new. That’s when screams come from behind the operating door and blood spills out underneath it. The anchor jumps ship and runs out screaming. Several minutes later several men in military outfits storm the room and open fire. The camera guy gets an over the shoulder shot of the tourist huddled over the torn apart remains of the nurse before the firing squad obliterates the tourist.



Pre-Outbreak July 21 2007.
(this is the first recorded date of the actual spreading of the Campion, or walking plague that I could find.)
The day went without a hitch, just normal classes and a normal day. There has been reports all over the news and the internet of the viral video I saw saying that this virus has reached the point of killing its host. This virus has allegedly spread over the States and has been spread over several other continents via airplanes and infected victims. At school we were taught what to do upon seeing an infected being. Run away and call the cops. Wasn’t that the answer to everything?( ..Rape, strangers, mugging… call the cops. “State your emergency.” Uh hi, I was just chased down by a mob of FLIPPIN ZOMBIES!” yea like the cops are going to do so much good for us. )
But they vamped up the free flu shots and even started making them mandatory for school attendance. They even released a thing on free Campion vaccinations and preventions for household pets. But sadly some nut jobs were buying up this stuff and selling it two fold under “Human” vaccinations and preventions. There we hundred of people buying it up and pumping it into there systems just to feel safe. Too bad it ripped apart there immune systems and made them that much more susceptible to the virus.
Six months ….and it spread…and it mutated…..less than a year.

-Its hardly thinkable that a virus could be around the world in less than a year, what happens if the thing morphs again and finds away to bypass immune systems, I don’t know what id do. Maybe take my car and some supplies and ago hide in the hills for awhile lol.- (email sent to friend Jace Keilan).

Headlines for July 21, 2007.
Campion Panic reaches Global Markets.
Campion worse than other combined Pandemics?