Journal of Alexander Bryce

Entrie 13

October 12, 2023

81 days into the apocalypse.

I won't say that I'm fine, but I am alive, which is a miracle in itself considering what my friends and I went through during the past few days. How far humanity can degrade in times like this is honestly surprising.

We were captured. But this time not by some cannibal couple or some crime boss. This time, it was a cult. Yup, a cult.

They called themselves 'Thessalonians'. They followed one leader, whom they called 'The father'. This cult was formed of these mental freaks, that were doctorined into the teaching of this Father.

They believed that this Spread is actually rapture, and the god is calling to the dead and reaping his followers. They worshiped the Plagued as if those monsters were some sort of angels. Though they mostly avoided the Plagued out in the streets, they had some of those monsters held in cages in their base, and practically worshipped them each day. And it's not like they're some small group. This cult was huge. Probably near a hundred men and women were part of this cult.

About their base, with their large numbers, these freaks had managed to take over about 3 blocks worth of area. The buildings were renovated to accommodate their needs, with roof top farms and backyard gardens, prison cells, patrolling and guarding routes, and of course their ritual grounds.

Nobody in this cult have a name, or at least they don't anymore. Even their leader's name is unknown. These people, they're no better than Billy, or the Sedgwig couple. They'd intercept passing survivors and capture them. If the survivors joined them, then good, if not the person will be sacrificed to the 'Liberators', as the called the Plagued, in their rituals.

These freaks had their bodies littered with cuts and burn scars. Their heads were shaven and everyone had a necklace with a wooden cross hanging around their necks.

Despite looking like crazy psychos, these people weren't too dim. They had a full social system established. Guards patrolling around, workers working in the farms or attending other chores, etc.

We were caught by them after getting out of Staten Island. We had spent a couple days, managing to salvage some gasoline that would have been enough for us to drive out of the final borough of New York and potentially get us to Atlantic city, since its just a days drive from Staten Island to get there.

We had come across one of them while driving. We didn't knew about them back then, so we stopped the car and hesitantly approached that guy. Despite all that had happened in the past couple months, there was still a bit of humanity lingering in me and I had convinced James and Natalie to help that guy, believing it was just a regular survivor.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Soon we were surrounded by more of these freaks. We gave a fight, James and Natalie had shot down some of them, and I managed to land a shot or two too, but it wasn't enough. At last we had to surrender.

We were taken captive, and put in cell along with some other survivors that were caught before us. The cells were made by collapsing a few walls of a building to make a larger room and then sealing off a side with rebars.

For past few days, we were subjected to the life they forced on us. The cultists would drag survivors to other rooms, where the would be conditioned to follow their ways. If they didn't, even after days of conditioning, they'd be sacrificed in the rituals, where everyone would be present to see the Plagued tearing apart the person. Even we prisoners were forced to watch all that.

I and my friends were also put through this conditioning. We would be taken to some room where they would first read out 'the texts of the father', which is almost like a twisted version of bible, and try to convince us to follow their ways. If it didn't work, they'd go forward to cleanse us, which meant torturing us.