I guess this is my first post on here. If anyone’s listening, hello. Hope you’re safe.
Spent all day driving, trying to get to my girlfriend in NYC. She’s holed up with a bunch of other students from her school. She’s been trapped there since all this went down. I’m going to go be with her.
My parents aren’t answering when I try to call them. I can only hope they’ve gotten to a shelter or a bunker. Somewhere safe. There are a lot of safe places underground, but who knows what tricks these things have up their sleeves?
Apparently they came from Mars, packed into cylinders that they launched at our planet. They disguised themselves somehow, slipped into our orbit as the meteor shower was happening this week, and then dropped down from there. Penny and her professor know more about this stuff than I do, but I think I get it. They want something from us. Or maybe they just want to hurt us.
I tried to ask my friend Emily about what she knows - she’s got a lot of contacts at the Douglass military base, which has expressed interest in her weapons innovations before - but ever since the cylinders showed up, she’s been offline and unavailable. Emily Ballard, if you’re somehow reading this, please text me. I want to make sure you’re okay.
I never thought this would happen, even though I guess we all knew it might be possible. Not in my lifetime.
The traffic here (everywhere?) is awful. We move maybe three miles every hour. Some people have given up. Abandoned their cars or driven off the road. I keep hearing fights break out, but I haven’t heard gunfire or anything serious like that yet.
I live in fear that I will hear one of those three-legged tanks. Back in Douglass I listened to a recording someone took from the top of a building, right up near them. Someone who’s dead now. They make the most awful noise, like a foghorn trying to make words. People are calling it the “Wahgah” or “Mahgah” horn. Not that it matters. They don’t seem like the kind to try and talk. Whatever it means, it’s not meant for us.
I’m still inching along, but it looks like traffic might be clearing up ahead. There are mutterings that the army is opening up alternate routes and creating emergency paths. It’s hard to get a steady flow of news, the internet is so slow. Probably from all the signals. I have one bar most of the time and barely anything will load. Hell, I’m not sure this will even post, but I have to try.
Penny, I am going to get to you. No matter what I have to deal with, I am going to join you in New York. And then maybe we can find some way to continue from there. I don’t know if we’ll ever be safe again, or we might find a way to get rid of these things by tomorrow. But I won’t be able to sleep until we’re together again.