Burrow
By Casey Douglass
International Space
Station Log Entry #82256 : 27-12-17:
This is Commander
Mills, one year into what should have been a six month stint on the
I.S.S. I am writing this so that there is some record of what has
happened, in case there is no-one left to tell the tale. I will be
ejecting the log cluster before the station’s orbit degrades enough
to drag it down with us. Hopefully the cluster will stay in orbit
indefinitely for future generations to find, if there are any that
is. With this in mind, I will give a brief recap of events.
A nuclear power station
in Asia went into meltdown eight months ago. As it was later
discovered, this power station was particularly near a fault in the
Earth’s crust. Once the radiation levels spiked sufficiently to
penetrate this area, Burrowing Syndrome began to manifest in the
human population nearby. This then gradually spread until it was
global, a pandemic that brought about the downfall of humanity.
Someone afflicted with
Burrowing Syndrome would, without a moment’s hesitation, drop to
their knees and begin to claw at the ground. It didn’t matter what
type of ground or surface, when it struck someone, they fell to their
knees and began to dig. People in cities and towns fared the worst,
scraping at the ground until finger nails broke, fingers cracked and
flesh began to be grated away by the friction. Early victims were
restrained for their own good, but as the outbreak hit critical mass,
there was nothing that could be done. The souls who were lucky enough
to find themselves on soil or soft ground would dig and dig until
they burrowed out of site, reacting violently if anyone tried to drag
them from their hole. It took only a few weeks for the world below to
fall silent, leaving us adrift and staring open-mouthed at the blue
planet in our view ports.
We watched on from up
here waiting for fresh news, monitoring ourselves for the syndrome in
case someone got it into their head to puncture the station in some
misguided frenzy to get out. I am happy to report that all crew
seemed to be unaffected by the condition, which was about the only
good thing we held onto as we rationed ourselves and floated around
in a state of zombie-like starvation. Marlow died just over a month
ago, his body seeming to shut down due to malnutrition. I thought we
were all going to slowly follow suit, until the quiet planet below
started to broadcast again.
We were orbiting above
the Himalayas when the weak signal reached us. It was fuzzy and
racked with interference, but we were able to clean things up. It was
them, the people who had burrowed. We weren’t sure whether to
believe them or not but they were people, which was enough for us at
the time. They explained that they had been drawn to an inner zone of
the planet, some oasis of advanced technology, the
biome from which humanity literally sprouted. They sent us
co-ordinates and invited us to join them. They chose a landing spot
that the station would pass over, the ground there soft and easy to
push through. Yes, apparently when we are nearer the surface, we will
be afflicted with B.S too. Ha! B.S! It sounds it doesn’t it. They
told us to keep our spacesuits on as it would stop us suffocating in
the ground, a fate that apparently claimed 95% of all those who did
burrow into softer stuff. We tried to ask questions, such as what had
caused all of this, but beyond confirmation that the nuclear meltdown
triggered it, they would say little else. Apparently they were using
the mountain range below as a giant antenna, and we would be leaving
it’s range in mere minutes. It sounds incredibly fanciful but what
else could we do but take the chance.
Here
we are, out of options. The station is decaying as much as the crew.
We took the decision to degrade its orbit, using the one capsule we
have to try to achieve the landing area our ‘friends’ below have
chosen. I’ve never been more scared in my life, but I’d rather
die doing something than waste away floating in a tin can so close to
home. The I.S.S just shuddered so I am guessing we are beginning to hit
the atmosphere. I need to get this finished and ejected. If you read
this, whoever you are, I hope history will show what happened to us,
and if it all ends now, in this way, who’d have seen that coming!
Commander
Mills. Crew Number #15-653
THE END
