The Diseased Heart

Chapter 34

A Passage From The Book, Hidden Sanity

As the nights begin to grow longer, and the air grows colder at winter's approach, Crawlers are becoming more abundant. When Crawlers have more time to travel at night, they meet other Crawlers more frequently.

Because of this, unfortunately, many more nests have sprung up around the city and even in the woods, making it thousands of times harder for us to gather supplies. Each and every winter, though, this same thing happens. But as the years pass by, fewer Crawlers remain.

Even so, I have hated winter for fifteen years now, after all, winter is what killed the first sane Crawler that long ago. Yes, I had lost my leg that long ago as well, and was now both lucky to be alive, and forced to live with a makeshift prosthetic, but the death of one who could save humanity is a million times worse than my misfortune.

Each winter it's the same. I get sluggish with my work, and become an emotionless zombie on the surface. Everyone knows why, but it doesn't stop Chloe or Jason - now in their twenties - from trying to help me. They likely hardly remember her, and if they do, they don't grieve her death the way I or Harris do.

Each winter, when the hundreds of new nests spring up across the country, I wonder what would happen if she was still around. She would be able to assist Harris in defending our base from the Crawlers that come near, and she would be able to assist me with my cure research.

These nests are a problem, because there are many Crawlers around yes, but also because packs - or swarms as some say - of Crawlers are impossible to deal with without proper equipment. Even ferals will defend each other as if they were sane. While you're taking one down, three more attack you from behind.

There aren't enough sane Crawlers to ever know what a pack of them would be capable of, but we can assume that they are an even more formidable force. If Sane Crawlers all came together to defeat a foe, they would not stand a chance.

A pack of Crawlers functions almost like a pack of wolves. There's a leader or 'Alpha', the rest follow their lead. some have different skills, and the Crawlers arrange their pack to best fit these skills, with stronger fighters around the outside, and faster Crawlers ready to sprint ahead and attack at a moments notice, almost like it's in their instincts to know which skills are best suited for each task, like how certain Crawlers will only go after a certain type of animal if they are part of a nest.

Stronger ones have been seen to take down moose or bears, while faster ones or even infected children will go after birds or deer. It is uncommon to see a Crawlet - the name for an infected child under the age of twelve - be part of a nest. The Crawlets are usually killed for being weak by larger Crawlers, and rarely are able to survive, they are not unheard of, though.

As I am writing this, I am sitting on the bank of a familiar lake. The others are gathering supplies in the nearby woods and buildings, including that cabin where we were attacked all those years ago.

As strange as it is, I have to believe the first Crawler, known as the Crawler King, has some...how do I say, supernatural abilities. We have observed that he can breathe fire, which could be explained scientifically. Perhaps he has a second set of lungs filled with a flammable gas, and exhaling through that set can ignite the gas with perhaps something in his mouth or throat.

His other abilities though, are not to be explained. One that we have seen, seems to be the ability to make temperatures drop drastically. The evidence I have for this? This very lake. It froze that winter when both Raven and Riley died here, but it seems to have frozen all the way through, theres nothing beneath the frozen surface but more ice. Not only should this be impossible, but it has never thawed.

Fifteen years. Fifteen summers, and the lake has never returned to water. This is, In my eyes, proof that the King has some sorts of supernatural powers. Of course, I cannot bring this up to anyone else, they'll think I've gone mad!

Now that I think about it, perhaps I have.