Chapter Text
Carter O’Daniel:
↳Audio Logs:
↳Solitary Log 1:
↳Written Translation
God, this thing better be on, ‘cuz there’s no way I’m saying all this shit again. Apparently, talking about my trauma is gonna help me “cope with the crushing weight of being a part of a rebellion against a government that took you from your home and locked you up”.
I don’t believe any of that, but Cate says it might help me stop having those stupid dreams all the time, so I figured I might as well give it a shot.
Anyways, Cate says I’m supposed to start wherever I think everything started to go wrong, so I guess I’ll start with my 13th birthday.
God, I hate my birthday. Not because I don’t have anyone to spend it with, or because it’s on Christmas and I only get one set of presents. I hate my birthday because it’s the day the world ended.
It really did start like any other day- wake up, eat breakfast, go to school. But when my mom pulled into the school parking lot, there were men in uniforms directing my classmates back onto those bright yellow school buses.
“Mom, what’s going on?”
One of the men pulled away from the rest of the group and began to walk towards our car.
“Mom?”
She didn’t even glance at me through the rear-view mirror as I spoke. A knock on the window, the click of a lock, and I was being pulled out of the car by the man in the strange uniform.
“Mommy, please!” There was nothing to hold onto- I was still halfway inside the car and she had already started to drive away, he was going to get me and take me away and why wasn’t she stopping him and why am I the only one screaming?
The man gripped my arms so tightly my eyes squeezed shut against my will, and when I was able to open them again, my mom and her baby-blue prius were gone.I wasn’t screaming anymore, just gasping for air in a futile attempt to take in enough air to stay conscious.
I was pushed onto one of the buses, where we were stacked 3 to a seat. I was shoved in between a small girl I had never seen before, on the window side, and my science lab partner, Derrick Johnson.
I wouldn’t say Derrick and I were friends, but we had known each other since 3rd grade, and had always seemed pretty cool when we did talk.
I watched Derrick die that day.
[silence]
I saw a lot of kids die that day, and in far worse ways, but Derrick’s death still hits me the hardest.
We had just arrived at our final destination, a place those of us who survived would grow to know as Thurmond, and learn to ignore the bitter taste the word left in our mouths.
They were loading us off the bus by row, and as Derrick tried to step down onto the ground, he tripped and fell onto the boy in front of him.
I don’t remember a lot of what happened next- Cate says my brain is blocking it out on purpose, that it's some kind of trauma response.
But I know that the boy in front of Derrick turned around, and I remember the look in his eyes. I remember the heavy smell of smoke, I remember feeling a small hand grab onto mine- I think it must have been the little girl who sat next to me on the bus, with her too-big Batman pajamas.
I remember Derrick's screams- I know they were his because he had screamed the same way when he fell off of the monkey bars in 5th grade and broke his wrist.
I remember flames after that- I think I must have turned to shield the little girl from the fire, because I remember feeling a soft warmth on my back. I remember seeing Derrick on the ground, with burns all over his body.
Derrick wasn’t screaming anymore, because he wasn’t breathing.
I-
[silence]
We were pushed in the direction of a building up ahead, one of 3 I could see. I made it halfway to the door before I realized there were no burns on my body, even though I was sure I had felt flames on my back.
A man in a lab coat put me in some kind of machine that made a lot of weird noises, and then a soldier put me in chains and put spray paint on my back.
I rubbed my hands raw trying to get the excess off of my hands the next day, and nearly threw up when I realized I had no way of knowing how much of it was paint and how much was blood, because they were both red.
[end of recording]