Diary - Day 1,
Today, London was lost to a most unusual adversary. I know not how, when, or why this creature has chosen our brave city for its horrible misdeeds, nor if we are truly alone in this disaster. Perhaps the great empire of New York has been lost as well; we've no way of knowing now. The beast with the tentacles began taking people - innocent people - off of the streets and down into the sewers, for what purpose I do not know. It moves like a blind man without a cane, knocking over any impudent building or structure in its path. Half of the city has been destroyed. I do believe I am repeating myself, but the true horror has not quite sunk its teeth into me. John Thomas abandoned me to save his own skin. I saw my neighbor's mother taken down into the deep, possibly to be devoured. Nowhere is safe.
Margaret
Diary - Day 2
It appears that our beastly guest does have a plan for us after all. The stolen citizens were found on the surface today, clothes gone, covered in a viscous, unearthly substance. They could not recognize their loved ones. They wandered the streets in a daze, staring out through dead eyes, until the chiming in of the noon hour on Big Ben. They began to scream in an unfathomable agony before falling down dead. The substance on their skin began spreading out around their bodies onto the street and onto buildings, and then the monster reached out his deadly embrace for more victims.
I've not left the house since yesterday. I believe Mother is going mad with her fear, forcing the servant girls to board up the windows and shove cloth into any exposed crack. For hours yesterday she cling to my side and whimpered, until I finally had to wrench myself free.
I don't know how long our walls will stop this monster, but with my father long dead and mother beyond reason, it is my duty to protect my home.
Margaret
Diary - Day 3
This morning my mother and I sat in the parlour in our dressing gowns and made toast in the fireplace. I felt like a child again, and never have my mother and I been so intimate together. Whenever she began to despair over our fate - for more victims came up to the surface and spread that horrible slime to cover nearly half of the city - I made a joke, or called up some long-forgotten memory from my childhood to make her smile again.
We had not been so happy in one another's company in years. She gaily declared, "If we survive, Margaret, we shall eat an entire cake all to ourselves."
I teasingly replied, "Will you buy me a typewriter too?"
The laughter vanished from my mother's eyes to be replaced by her usual cold askance gaze. "Oh, darling, why would you want one of those ghastly machines?" she laughed. At least I tried.
This afternoon I asked Elsie to trade me one of her maid's frocks for any number of my dresses. To not wear stockings, hoop-skirts, or a horrid corset was the first real light to shine on this situation. I then bade the girl take me out to my father's old cottage in the back of the house where he kept his firearms from the war. He had taught me to use his sidearm when he fell ill and mother's lessons were crushing me under their lace-covered thumb.
The slime had spread and grown to reach our back garden, nearly reaching the arms house. Not knowing how quickly it would spread, Elsie and I made quick work of gathering what few rifles and bullets we could carry back to the house. However, on our way back up, one of the tentacles rose out of the pond and dragged Elsie down, kicking and screaming all the way. Never have I felt such a profound sadness than for the poor girl of whom I had always been fond.
By morning, she will be one of the drones. I must eradicate her from my thoughts if I am to remain sane.
Margaret
Diary - Day 4
The secretions of the monster have begun to consume the back of the house. The bellies of the dead have swollen and burst to hatch more. Some of the female victims were still alive, and birthed the hatchlings like human children. Have not seen my mother for hours. I fear I may die if I stay here. I intend to wrap my diaries and stories in oilskin, and hope that they survive for humanity to find another day.
If you are reading this, I wish you the grace of God.
All my love,
Margaret Moss
Closing her diary with a snap, Margaret wiped her eyes and knelt to her secret place under the bed, pulling out her papers and a sheet of oilskin to wrap them in. She didn't know if the protective wrapping would withstand the alien mucus, but she was determined to try. First the oilskin, then her sheets, all stowed away on a high shelf to escape the strange substance that had begun consuming her city. She gathered up her father's pistol, a pouch full of bullets, and a cloth sack for what little food she could carry, and left her home for what she imagined to be the last time.
The otherworldly mucus had spread throughout most of the city streets by now, but there were still a few side-streets that remained unclaimed, and fear of being consumed drove Margaret through them. Even there, she saw a few victims abandoned to maggots among the rubbish bins. Too much horror had passed under her eyes in the past four days for her to shed a tear for them, though she dearly wished to.
Were the tentacles waving in a more threatening and less willow-in-the-wind-type manner, Margaret probably would have continued walking out into the countryside and never once noticed the blue box standing in the middle of Trafalgar Square, splashed liberally with the clear, thick, slime. It was something she had never seen before, large and yet small at the same time, with the words "Police Public Call Box" printed on top. Though many people did have telephones, she had never seen one in a box before. Where was its power source?
It was some sort of ethereal blessing that kept her curious in the face of such great fear, for Margaret picked her way through the muck and inspected the box more closely. It was wood, definitely, but such a vivid shade of blue, and with such unusual symbols on the door, opposite the sign that read "Police Telephone FREE for use of PUBLIC. Advice & Assistance Obtainable Immediately. Officers & Cars Respond to All Calls. PULL TO OPEN."
Cautiously, she grasped the cool handle and pulled. It was locked most stubbornly, and she let out a sigh before trying to peer through the window, but they too were blocked up. So much for something new.
Intending to lean glumly against the door for a few minutes before moving on, Margaret was not expecting the door to push open and drop her to the floor with a shriek. She expected to hit her head on the opposite wall, dying a most embarrassing death, but instead was deposited onto a clean glass floor. "What...?"