I came to the camp roughly 3 months ago; See I was camping at the time of the apocalypse with my best friend, Geoff, My mum and dad, and my younger sister, Alice. We saw the explosions. We were in Copper Falls State Park in Wisconsin. And honestly, I don’t know how we survived. It must have been the densely wooded trees that stopped the radiation or something. We decided to stay put, we had planned a long camping trip, a good month or so, and we could get supplies from the area around us. There were plenty of trees, and a river close by, full of fish which we found was the only uncontaminated food we could get. We stayed at the camp most the time, and talked about what could have happened. Geoff was freaking out, and worried sick about his parents. I tried to calm him down by telling him that his parents are probably alright, that was probably the wrong thing to say because he went off and yelled at me about, did I see the size of the explosion? And it’s easy for me to say, I know that my parents are fine, and to finish off his statement, he punched me square in the face. Anyway I’m getting off topic, I think by about the 2 and a half months mark, we decided that we had to find civilisation, and other people. So we packed up out camp, which was surprisingly easier than it was when we left. Because, we had eaten most of the food we brought, and all we had were tents, and the makeshift tools. We knew there were ranger camps all through the woods, and decided to find one using the map we had. We headed to the closest one, a day’s journey directly south. When we got there we found it locked. So my father smashed the lock open, with a rock he found nearby. Inside, it was filled with provisions, and we were all very tired, so we set up camp there. Unfortunately, there were only 3 beds and I drew the short straw. And I had to sleep on the floor. It was that night that I had my first “encounter” with one of the creatures I mentioned earlier. It must have been about 3am and I sat bolt upright, and heard the noise, a low guttural howling, that sounded like something that’s a cross of a sheep and cow, dying very painfully. It sent chills down my spine; needless to say, I didn’t get back to sleep. In the morning, I decided to keep this to myself, as I was probably imagining it, and I didn’t want to worry the others. I regret that now. So we checked the map and found that the next ranger station was only 1 ½ days walk. We set off passing tree after tree and rock after rock. It was a hard trek and soon night began to fall. We went to make camp and I had just lit the fire when I heard it again, the guttural howl. Everyone else heard it too and gathered whatever tools they could find to use as weapons, and moved closer to the fire. Then it came again, louder this time, it was accompanied by, which despite better judgement I will call a bark. And then we saw them, dog like creatures about a metre tall, they had red eyes, clawed paw-like hands and spines running down their back. But by far the most horrifying thing was the fact that they had no fur or ears, just skin covering their whole body and slits for noses. They stood sort of hunched over like a hunchback with no hump. They circled us, watching with their deep red eyes and then they suddenly attacked us, without warning. One leaped at me and Geoff, who had found a place by my side, using the hammer I had found, I swung it, I hit it the creature just under the chin, with enough force to kill any normal dog. However the beast simply recoiled and leapt again this time straight at Geoff, I yelled to him “Into the fire!” and he must have heard me because he grabbed the beast around the neck, and under the stomach and tried to flip it into the fire, but I could tell it was too heavy, so I dashed over to help him, as I did it swung around and snapped at Geoff’s ear, biting the top off it clean off, Geoff yelled but just tightened his grip, I got over there and we flipped it into the fire, where it suddenly combusted and leapt away, still on fire, yelping. I turned to find the other one, but found it too had vanished. I saw my mother collapse, sobbing, and went over to her saying, “It’s alright mum, they, whatever they were have gone now.” She turned to me and replied with tear-filled eyes “No, it’s not that, it’s your father.” And she pointed to a lump on the ground a few metres away. I went over and found my father, who earlier that day I had been chatting too casually, laying on the ground, his arm had been torn off and it looked as if there were two puncture wounds in his neck. I knew at once he was dead. I collapsed on my knees and felt the tears welling in my eyes, and then I fell sobbing onto his chest. My father was dead.
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