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Sasha,
I hope you get this. I paid a soldier over $10,000 to sneak this letter across the Q-line and mail it. Ha, $10,000. Somewhere in this city, my shitty apartment (with my cat rotting inside, no doubt) cost me $600 a month and I could barely scrape that together, but I’m going to hand a man $10,000 cash to deliver this letter. There’s plenty of money on this side, just lying around, in banks and stores, it just got left there in the panic, and if you’re brave enough to go downstairs, it’s yours for the taking. I went into a mall nearby and looted every cash register I could lay hands on, I almost backed into one of them once, I was so scared I actually pissed myself, but I went. I need you to get this letter. They check outgoing mail, and they’ll never let this one through.
I’ll start at the beginning. I know the TV shows and newspapers in the West are lying their asses off about what really happened here. It started with one man, standing all alone on the Summer Street Bridge. He was just standing there. A woman walked up to him and put her hand on his shoulder. He grabbed her arms and pulled until she came apart like a doll. The cops came out and yelled at him through megaphones for a while, but he just stood there. A trooper approached him, and thinking he wouldn’t be a threat, tried to cuff him. The man reached out and snapped his neck. The other troopers opened fire. The bullets passed through him like smoke. They tried hitting him with batons. They went right through him. They threw things at him. They went right through him. Another trooper tried to retrieve the body of the dead trooper. The dead trooper sat up and tore his head right off his shoulders.
The wall at the Q-line, and Canada built one at their southern border, now the Northeast is it’s own little country. The Stone’s country. We call them the Stone because for the most part, it doesn’t even seem like they’re moving. It’s like the minute hand on a watch. You can see it move, but only if you stare for a really long time. But as soon as you touch them, they move fast. One lady I’m with now says they must get a burst of heat from the living in that contact, enough to fire them for one quick moment. It’s all they need, that moment. You wouldn’t believe how fast one of those things can dismantle a person. Less than 4 seconds. I counted once. Some of the people get up, some don’t. I’ve seen people with their limbs torn completely off slowly come back together and get up. I’ve seen people with no mark at all, except the odd tilt of their necks rot to mush in the streets.
They’re smart, too. Remember I said I almost backed into one? They sneak up behind you and wait for you to back into them. Ooops, sorry mister! Then your head is rolling across the floor. They also know, somehow, if you know the person they’re inside of. There’s 40 people with me, and most of them are like me, alone. The ones with family, have long since been lured downstairs by their children and mothers and wives standing on the sidewalks and looking up, sometimes they cry, sometimes they mouth words. In rain or sun or snow. A lot of them are naked now, or close to it, their clothes either torn off by the initial attack or simply tattered by all the endless hours of standing outside. People can’t stand to see their grandmother standing in a snow storm in a thin summer dress and no shoes and run down to hold them. Bye-bye. They never change once they’re Stone. Never get thinner or fatter, never eat, their hair doesn’t grow.
They do go into buildings, but only the first floor. For some reason they can’t climb. Not up stairs, not up walls, or ladders. We technically could be on the second floor and be safe, but we were scared. We found a 26 story apartment building, and we’re all on the top 5 floors. The apartment I took over isn’t much nicer than the one I left. I miss my cat. He must have starved to death ages ago. We have no water, no electricity. The Army brings us food and water and other supplies in helicopters. Every 3 weeks, they have a lotto drawing, and one person goes in the helicopter with the soldiers. They say that the person is checked out in a government hospital, then released to their family in the West, but for all we know they kick them out of the helicopter as soon as they get over the horizon. I can’t wait until my name comes up in the lotto. And I can’t trust that they won’t kill me when it does.
I saw something scary last week. I have a pair of binoculars, there’s not a whole lot to do, so I watch the Stone. A girl, no more than 7, in a pink rag that might’ve been a dress walked slowly towards a wall. I watched because there’s people in 4 other buildings around us, but she was walking towards an empty one. She walked right at a blank wall, no door or windows. I watched for over 5 hours, (I told you they were slow) watched her walk right through the wall. Like she was a ghost. Like how if you throw a rock, it goes right through them. And if a little girl Stone can walk through a wall, couldn’t they walk through the wall at the Q-line?
That’s why I risked going downstairs, finding all that cash, so I can bribe a soldier on the next helicopter into mailing this letter from the other side of the wall. So I could warn you, so you could find a nice tall building and stock it, and get off the ground. Take Ma, and Daddy and Nana and the kids. Take anyone who might lure you down later. Because if they’re inside someone you love, they’ll come right for you. It’s funny, you were so against me moving here, and you were right. I should have stayed home. I love you big sister. I pray to God you get this letter. I love you all so much.
End
