The following writings were found in a battered, blood-specked notebook, found half-buried under a collapsed woolshed roof in rural Wellington. The handwriting starts neat enough, then gets shakier as the dates roll on. Ink smudged by rain and worse. The name on the cover says Andy Hayes. We don’t know if the writer made it. This is all we have.

12 September 2025 – Day Zero

They’re calling it The Hot.

It didn’t crawl in slow like the movies. No patient zero on the news for weeks, no fancy name from the labs. Just whispers at first, then screams.

Mid-August the Pacific Islands started going quiet. Whole villages burning up from the inside—people clawing at their own chests, veins lighting up red under the skin like someone poured molten wire into their blood. They said it was a new flu. Then a bad flu. Then they stopped saying anything.

By early September the hotspots jumped. A marae in the Bay of Plenty. A harvester in Canterbury who shredded his own arms screaming about wheat on fire. Dashcams on SH1 showing drivers veering off, convulsing, red lines racing up their necks before they went still… then got back up.

We laughed it off down here. “Another bird flu scare.” “Tourists brought it.” Talkback radio full of the usual nutters. But the hospitals started filling with “burn cases”—no rash, no cough, just people thrashing in restraints, begging for ice while their temperature spiked past 43°C and their veins glowed crimson. Autopsies showed organs cooked from the inside out. Nothing on the swabs. Nothing anyone could name.

Then came the night of the 12th.

Spring evening, rata blooming red, lambs still calling in the paddocks. Power grids flickered and died as substation crews turned mid-shift, hot veins already crawling up their arms. Cell towers went dark under a flood of calls that never connected. Auckland motorways became slaughterhouses—drivers mid-commute suddenly clawing at the wheel, biting the person in the passenger seat, rising again before the wrecks even stopped burning.

Out here on the gravel roads it hit just as fast. The postie delivered one last bundle of mail, then hammered on doors foaming at the mouth. Neighbour’s sheep flock dropped in the paddock, convulsed, and stood back up smouldering. By dawn on the 13th, ninety percent of everything we knew was gone.

The Hot spreads through bites, scratches, maybe even the air when it’s thick enough—faint acrid haze that settles like smoke from a bushfire that never quite goes out. You feel it start as fire in the guts, then the red veins light up under your skin, spreading like cracks in hot glass. Minutes to an hour later you’re dead. Then you rise. Not rotting like the old stories. These ones blister and char, jerky from the heat still cooking their muscles, drawn to noise, movement, body heat. They don’t get slower. Some of the newer ones even seem to… coordinate.

Civilisation lasted one night.

Radio crackled its last warnings before the voices went feral: “Stay indoors. Avoid bites. The Hot follows the fluids. Destroy the head.”

Helicopters flew for a day or two, dropping more ordnance than rescue. Then silence.

Now it’s just us, the spring grass still green and mocking, the kōwhai still blooming over fresh kills, and the constant smell of seared meat on the wind.

The roads are quiet for now. Gravel tracks winding through the hills, far enough from the cities to miss the first crush, close enough to scavenge what’s left. But the risers are multiplying. Packs are forming. And every hot flush, every headache, every red thread under the skin makes you wonder if today’s the day you ignite.

The world ended in fire.

We’re living in the ashes. text goes here

15 September 2025 – Somewhere in the hills north-west of Wellington

My name is Andy Hayes. If you’re reading this, I’m probably dead. Or someone else is carrying the notebook now. That’s fine. Just know it started with me.

Before all this I was nobody special. Mid-thirties, Wellington CBD, had some faceless office job pushing paper and sitting in endless meetings. I never talk about the exact work anymore – doesn’t matter. What matters is that after the lockdowns I stopped trusting easy answers.

Watched the country lock itself down tighter than a drum and told myself quietly, “Next time something big happens, I’m not getting caught flat-footed.”

So I prepped. Nothing mad, nothing illegal, just a bug-out bag always in the boot of the old Corolla. Water filter, rations, basic med kit, multi-tool, compound bow I taught myself to shoot in the Rimutakas on weekends, a decent machete, army surplus vest. Even bought this stupid wide-brim hat in Texas on a work trip years back. The lads at the office took the piss – called me “Tex” for a while. I let them. Felt harmless at the time.

They don’t call me Tex anymore.

The night it all went to hell I was stuck in the Terrace Tunnel, peak-hour crawl, trying to get home after a late shift. Lights died. Phones died. Then the screaming started. People convulsing behind steering wheels, red veins lighting up under their skin like someone poured hot metal into their blood. “He’s got the Hot!” someone yelled. Next thing, the bitten were rising, gnashing, tearing into anyone still breathing.

My car got pinned in the pile-up. Couldn’t open the doors properly. I popped the boot in the dark, grabbed the bag, changed into boots and practical gear right there against the tunnel wall while the world tore itself apart around me. Two risers came at me – former commuters, eyes milky, skin already blistering. Machete for the first, bow-shot through the eye for the second. I still remember the wet sound when I yanked the arrow back out.

Slipped out an emergency exit stairwell and just started walking. North-west, sticking to ridges and back streets, avoiding the motorways that had turned into kill-zones. Left the car, left the city, left everything that used to be normal.

The crew I’m with now started calling me “Bug Out” a couple of days later. Half piss-take, half compliment. “Here comes Bug Out with another bloody plan.” I don’t mind. Better than the alternative. Means they see I was ready when it counted, even if I still wake up checking my arms for red veins every morning.

I’m writing this because it keeps me sane. Spent years pushing paper around; having something structured to do with my hands and my head stops me from losing the plot completely. If I stop writing it feels like the last normal part of me dies too.

So here it is. My name, my story, how I got out. If you’re reading this later, know that on the 15th of September 2025 I was still breathing, still moving, still trying to keep the three of us alive.

The Hot is everywhere now. Spring keeps blooming like nothing happened. Kōwhai still bright yellow against the hills. Makes it worse somehow.

Stay sharp. Check your veins. Destroy the head.

– Andy “Bug Out” Hayes

16 September 2025 – Same ridgeline camp, still north-west of Wellington

I should write about the others before I forget the details. In case this notebook outlives me.

Her name is Claire Morrison. She lets the rest of us call her “Admin” when we’re taking the piss, which is most days now. She hates it and tolerates it at the same time – classic Claire.

Before The Hot she worked “admin” in Wellington. That’s all she ever says, delivered flat like a briefing note. But I’ve seen her handle that Glock like it was part of her hand (and where does an “Admin” person get a Glock in NZ anyway?), controlled pace, no panic, even when the risers were right on top of her.

We finally got some stuff out of her, she wasn’t shuffling spreadsheets. She was Dignitary Protection – one of the ones who rode shotgun (literally) with ministers and VIPs. Suits, earpieces, the whole quiet professional thing. Explains why she still tries to keep her navy blazer relatively clean even though it’s torn to hell and duct-taped in three places.

The night everything ignited she was on duty. Late escort job in the city. When the grid died and the first hot veins started lighting up inside cars, her principal got bitten in the scramble. Claire didn’t hesitate. One clean headshot. Then she fought her way out – Glock barking in tight, professional groups while the rest of her detail went down around her. She ditched the heels for a pair of scavenged sneakers, grabbed that yellow cap off a wrecked ute so she wouldn’t be so obvious from a distance, and started moving on foot. Same direction I was heading – north-west, trying to get clear of the city before the packs really formed.

We met two days later at an abandoned service station just past the outer suburbs. I was crouched behind a fuel pump, arrow nocked, watching the forecourt. She came round the corner low and quiet, pistol up, suit jacket still buttoned like she was heading into a meeting. Our eyes met over the sights. Neither of us fired.

She looked at my pack, the bow, the hat, and said, “You look like you’ve actually got a plan.”

I told her I was heading for open country. She nodded once, holstered the Glock, and fell in beside me without another word. That was it. No big discussion, no trust exercises. Just two people who’d both clawed their way out of the same meat grinder deciding the other one was useful.

She still checks her veins every morning same as I do. Still talks in that clipped, protocol voice when things get tense: “Clear the room first. Two-man stack. Watch your sectors.” Drives Cairnsy mental, but it works. She’s saved my skin twice already with that pistol.

If anyone ever reads this and wonders who kept us alive those first days out of Wellington, it was the woman in the torn suit who used to protect important people and now protects us instead.

She says she’s just “Admin.” I think she’s a lot more than that.

– Andy “Bug Out” Hayes

17 September 2025 – Still camped on the ridgeline, wind picking up from the south

Third one. Might as well get it all down while my hand’s still steady.

His name is Bruno Wilson, but none of us call him that anymore. We call him Cairnsy. He earned it the first time we watched him swing that blood-stained cricket bat like he was trying to hit the boundary at the Basin Reserve. “That’s a six, Cairnsy!” I yelled without thinking. He just grunted, wiped the mess off the willow, and kept walking. The name stuck. He pretends to hate it. He doesn’t.

Bruno’s late fifties, built like someone who’s spent thirty years crawling under utes and swinging spanners in a rural garage. Yellow high-vis hoodie that’s more blood and grease than fabric now, steel-capped boots, permanent scowl. Mechanic by trade – fixed tractors, farm utes, motorbikes for the stations out this way. Lived on a small block somewhere in the Canterbury hills before everything went to hell. Shotgun was legal for pest control; the cricket bat was just something he kept in the ute “for rats and dickheads.”

The night The Hot hit he was working late in his workshop. Power died, radio went quiet, then two customers who’d dropped in for an oil change started convulsing right there on the concrete – red veins racing up their necks. Bruno put them down with the shotgun, then more came. When the shells ran low he switched to the bat. Said he spent half the night swinging for six in the loading dock while his garage burned behind him. Lost the ute, lost the workshop, lost the old dog he’d had for twelve years. He doesn’t talk about the dog.

We found him three days after I linked up with Claire. We were clearing a looted dairy on the edge of the gravel road when we heard the wet thuds and low swearing from the back alley. Cairnsy, shotgun dry, cornered by five risers, laying into them with that bat like it owed him money. Each swing was deliberate, ugly, effective. One riser got too close – he butt-stroked it with the shotgun stock then finished it with a backhand that would’ve cleared the ropes at Eden Park.

He looked up, saw us, and just grunted, “You lot gonna stand there gawking or lend a bloody hand?”

We dropped the rest. When it was quiet he wiped his hands on the hoodie, looked at my bow and Claire’s pistol, and said, “Got a plan?” I told him we were heading further out, looking for somewhere defensible with water and stores. He shrugged those big shoulders and said, “Better than dying alone. Name’s Bruno, you lot want to stick together?” That was the whole interview.

He knows these hills better than either of us ever will. Which farms still have diesel in the tanks, which woolsheds have good sightlines, where the clean water tanks are. He doesn’t waste words and he doesn’t waste shells. When things get bad he just says “Harden up” and gets stuck in.

The three of us make an odd little crew. Bug Out with his plans and his hat, Admin with her protocols and her Glock, and Cairnsy with his bat and his “get on with it” attitude.

I don’t know how long we’ll last. But right now, writing this by firelight while they both sleep, I’m glad they’re here.

If you’re reading this later… tell whoever finds it that on the 17th of September we were still breathing.

Now we just need to find a new home.

– Andy “Bug Out” Hayes

18 September 2025 – First night inside the new house, rural Wellington hills

We did it.

I’m sitting at a proper table for the first time in days, writing by the light of a single candle we found in a kitchen drawer. The sliding doors are barricaded with whatever furniture we could drag across them. Outside, the horde is still crashing around in the trees like drunk rugby fans looking for the after-party, but they can’t get in. Not tonight.

This place is on the corner of a quiet country road – nothing flash, just a small weatherboard house with a decent section, a couple of sheds, and enough open ground that we can see anything coming. It’s not perfect, but it’s ours. First real roof over our heads since The Hot started.

The day started tense. We approached slow and careful, using the big shipping container out front as cover. I took the first one down with the bow – clean headshot, no noise. Then Cairnsy’s shotgun opened up (loud as hell, but effective), and Admin added her pistol to the chorus. We dropped three right away before the risers even knew we were there.

After that it got messy.

Failed shots woke more of them. A horde started forming down the back paddock, crashing through fences and smashing anything in the way. Claire got jumped at one point – one of the bastards came straight through a window and into her face. She didn’t panic. Used some fancy shove technique (I think she called it a “tactical displacement”) and sent the thing flying clean off the section like it was a rugby ball. Bloody impressive. Even Cairnsy gave her a grunt of approval.

We scavenged what we could – food, fuel, hardware, and a rusty old grappling hook that might come in handy one day. The noise brought more and more risers, but we kept moving, kept shooting, kept falling back when we had to. Cairnsy’s bat came out a couple of times when things got too close. He still hits them for six.

In the end we made it inside. All three of us. And we weren’t alone.

There’s a woman in here with us now. Found her hiding in the trees near the back door, half in shock, eyes wide like she’d been watching the whole thing. She didn’t say much – just kept staring at the barricades while we dragged furniture across the doors. I don’t even know her name yet. She’s alive though, and that’s four of us now instead of three. We’ll get her story when she’s ready. For now she’s just sitting in the corner wrapped in a blanket we found in a cupboard, shaking a bit but breathing.

We’re calling this place home. At least for now.

Cairnsy and the new woman spent the evening putting up a basic fence around a patch of garden out front once the dead wandered off. Not much, but it’s a start. The new woman just helped on autopilot, maybe this is something she knows.

Claire and I are already talking about tomorrow’s run – we need more food before the stores in this house run dry.

I’m exhausted, but I feel… anchored. Writing this helps. Makes it feel like there’s still some order left in the world.

The Hot is still out there. The red veins. The smell of charred meat on the wind. But tonight we have walls, and four people instead of three, and a candle that’s still burning.

Small wins.

We’ll take them.

– Andy “Bug Out” Hayes