0800 Hours [slash]

0800 Hours: Recording #001

Click.

A dry cough slices the silence; the sound of someone clearing their throat.

“0800 hours. It's been four days since I stopped going to school. Seven since the last teacher stopped showing up though, so I reckon there's not much point any more. My dad was raging – he thinks that teachers have a duty to their students or something. I did point out that their contracts probably didn't include an apocalypse clause, but here we are.”

There's a slurping sound, followed by a smack as lips slap together.

“I'm impressed the school lasted this long to be honest, what with everyone being evacuated left, right and centre. Or, y'know, dying. Apparently, the most common cause of death from the Infection is haemorrhagic shock. Basically, the heart stops pumping properly and oxygen deprivation causes you to blank out and, uh... yeah. Well, I guess they're kind of lucky, in a morbid sort of way. My mam went from necrosis, and that's much grosser. Essentially there were these great big swathes of Infected tissue all over her body that went gangrenous due to blood loss, and we had to burn her corpse before she started decomposing and — ”

The voice is cut off by a tired creak; a door swinging open, hinges battered and abused and barely clinging to the wood. The candid words segue into a panicked splutter.

“Ack! Dad, is that you?”

“Cameron...? What are you doing?”

“Oh! I'm, uh, documenting a time line of the Infection, I guess. I found some of mam's old recording gear upstairs when I was clearing out the attic and I just...”

The subsequent silence is both deafening and engulfing.

“...Put it away.”

“Ok dad.”

Click.