It’s sort of amazing how quickly things can go wrong just because things lined up in just such a way that any influence your part was never going to stop it.

Probably a bad way to start a journal entry but it has to be said since the only thing that I can actually gleam from this week or so was just how quickly things can un-fold and just how little anyone could have affected it.

The week started out mostly fine. I had been elevated from being a basic hand for Margery to being more of an acting arm between the Mayor’s house and people to the rest of the town. My job at that point mostly revolved around delivering things from one group to another that was requested by from the mayor’s place but also from doing more collecting of data and information of the people in town. It was a strange cross between being a weird mailman but also some sort of coordinator. I’m pretty sure my current role in this is temporary just due to how new the situation within the town was but I was determined to at least do a good job with what I had. It wasn’t a hard of a job, though it did have it weird moments where I’d have to do some weird things for the small delivery of such things but the bike I was given made the job somewhat easier. Some others in my position wanted cars, but gas had effectively been rationed out to the farmers only for them to operate the heavier farming equipment. I actually had to deliver some of the gas to them earlier in the week. It’s thankful that it still early summer as means that if we try hard enough now, there should be quite a bit to last us through the winter.

A lot of the messages I had to deliver were mostly between the Sheriff’s and the Mayor’s office as they try to map out the areas and balance that with the want for protection of the farm lands. They were mostly done with the former and so things were now more about the smaller decision of where people would be stationed and possible protocols for those things to happen. Maybe if that had been hashed out a day or so earlier, the following attack would have had less damage.

On Thursday (7th) a monster was finally brave enough to take a bite out of the town. I hadn’t seen the attack directly although I was actually pretty close to it. I had been moving towards the area where it happened at the time due to a message run but I was probably some five minutes late the ordeal. Not too late to the see aftermath and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

About 18 people had died in the attack, 10 of them being part of the sheriff’s forces stationed there for protection and rest being civilians to the attack. The monster that attacked was lying dead in a half destroyed shed, with what looked like a good 4 dozen bullet holes in only its underside. The beast reminded me a lot of a Bullette from D&D but was different enough to be able to say it only reminded you of it. It had a similar look to a skink but had thinker scales on its head, back and front legs. The tail was also pretty stubby but seemed to be sharp enough to be considered a blade at the end. The monster was about as big as a sedan, which made its destruction it left behind a bit more understandable even if it was still such a strange sight. It was honestly a pretty scary sight and the fact that it was at strewn both its own and the blood of the dead among its destruction of the farm shed really helped to instill the feeling that this thing was not a normal creature from our world. Or at least our former world. Got to get used to this being the new normal now.

From what I was able to gather from reports that I had decided to take before returning to the sheriff and mayor’s office, the monster had attacked from the ground and appeared out in the middle of the fields, jumping from the earth to eat its first victim. The farmers there had assumed that there was a small earthquake happening so had thought to move away from the buildings which turned out to be the wrong move since it’s gave the monster easier targets. The first famer the monster got, named Arron, was thankfully killed near instantly as some of the other farmers reported that the monster had gotten it maw down on him from the waist up first, chewing through him quickly before attempting to go for more. The people in the area at the time panicked at this point and called for help from the sheriff’s patrol-men who came in and tried to control the situation. This didn’t turn out too well as the monster wasn’t scared off by the gunfire or the bullets that only managed to glance or ricochet off its top hide.

Reports gathered from people at the scene essentially described a pitched cat-n-mouse chase as the patrolmen tried to get the people away from the monster that was chasing them as well as try to put some damage into it. After some of the bullet stuck into the beast lower belly, and fire was able to be focused when it actually recoiled in pain, was panicked lessened within them men there. It took another 8 or so minutes to bring the monster down, with the patrolmen going from frightening spraying of ammo to concentrated and deliberate fire during such time. From gathered reports of ammunitions loss, the beast had taken 34 .45 rounds, 21 .10 mm, 19 .357 rounds and 12 .243 WIN rounds. Those are the best estimate however since it this is going more off of how many rounds were used rather than an in depth inspection of the body. As I write this, the monster is still in the school kitchen being cleaned and cut up. No one’s talked about it eating it yet but I’m pretty sure that the ‘N.Rs’ are going to be asked to try it to see how safe it is before they decide to sell it out for the rest of the town. At least that’s what I overhead Margery say to another of the mayor’s aids a day ago. Honestly, sort of interested in trying it myself. Mostly because I hadn’t tried alligator before and it looked close enough to what I could get from where I’ve been temporarily locked up in.

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That wasn’t a great start to the day and it didn’t slow down after that as once I had to returned to the neighborhood to give the remaining patrol-men new orders and to establish a new watch going out, a scout from the outer range came back to inform us that he saw movement of something big out around a couple miles out and looked like it might be getting close. I had to make a quick return to the sheriff to tell him such. Not a lot of great options or decision were made that day but thankfully, they didn’t lead to anything more.

The Sheriff decided to gather the people of the neighborhood and condense them into the largest building there, an old factory that was in the process of being refurbished into a small town-center. It was large enough to house a good number of the neighborhood there and was enough of a defensible position that any attack could be fended on from the perimeter set up there. Looking back at it now, it was only a good idea for defense against maybe some monsters and nothing else as while it was defensible, it also had many openings for attack. This meant that it wouldn’t be great for defense against anything more numerous than half a dozen guys trying to get in the place. I don’t think it was bad that the sheriff thought to use it but it’s bad that we didn’t have any better options. Even now, the Sheriff says that it was a bad idea which is then countered by his own men asking which would be a better one at the time. I think he’s trying to think the problem through but at the moment, things look to be moving faster than we’d like and it’d be hard to see us getting the upper hand. With how much needs to be done now, it seems like the idea of protection will have to be a heavy reliance on pure offensive. As it stands, we managed to avoid any confrontation with another monster or what we are now suspecting was a band of something. New information from some scouts said that some of the bands they’d seen before had made some returns, which probably means that they were doubling back or just trying to find a target. Could be both.

Outside of that darker chapter, the week didn’t end on a really bad note. Harris mentioned that a lot of the larger farming equipment is basically all repaired, with only a couple of them basically being rejected outright due to major issues they don’t have the tools or equipment to repair right now. With this, they are essentially going to be moving to other equipment the towns people and mayor believe are going to need fixing which hasn’t been decided yet. He says that talk between the other messengers is mentioning walkie-talkies, other cars, and make-shift, movable barricades. I would have voted for walkie-talkies in a heartbeat. The patrolmen I’ve been talking to recently have always been complaining about the lack of communication between each other of larger distances and areas for coordination purposes. With the walkie-talkie, quicker actions could be taken in neighborhoods which meant a higher chance of getting saved. From what Harris has said though, it looks like mobile barricades are going to be first.

Samantha said her works been pretty good at this stage but the recent event has bumped up the eventual discussion of supply rationing. From what she had been hearing, it was going to happen eventually but they figured that due to the relative few injuries and of those were of less severity, that it wouldn’t need to be enacted soon. Due to the 8 injured in the attack, most of the being heavily so, the small hospital’s head had decided to discuss the supply rationing now rather than wait too much longer. Samantha doesn’t agree with idea of ration just yet and she and I got into a small argument over the poker table due to it. She argued that they could effectively get everyone up and going again without the rationing (at least right now) so that events could be stopped more efficiently. I argued that due to the nature of what we don’t know possibly happening, the rationing would help us be more prepared to shift responsibilities around and adapt to whatever new event happens without fear. We were pretty much put in place by Dorian telling us that all this talk was useless since we weren’t the ones making decision and that better people were. It was a bit cold but an important ‘bucket of water’ to accept since we weren’t actually members of the town and were basically guest. While we could help, we didn’t know enough about the place to take the reins and that it was important to focus on our tasks before looking to take on more responsibilities.