This Is Not A Place Of Honor

- In The Beginning... -

I don't quite know how to start this.

The first post of the site feels important, like it needs to mark something. But the site needs to start somewhere, and beginning with my first time sneaking into a zone feels fitting.

When I still lived in Chicago, one of my friends, I'll call them B, was really into zonex. One day when we were in college they offered to take me along, and I agreed, so we started getting our supplies together.

A few weeks later, when it was finally time, we left our dorms and checked into a motel. The room wasn't actually that bad, all things considered. We ate some microwave dinner, and then that night, we headed to Exclusion Zone Destiny.

You know, I've never understood why they gave the zones such creative names, they could've just called them Exclusion Zone Alpha, Bravo, etc. I guess they wanted to distance themselves from the military. If so, I dont blame them.

In any case, since Destiny is one of the smaller zones, it wasn't too hard to get in. We drove about a half mile from the zone and parked the car near a forest, and after a short walk, all it took was hopping the fence and we were home free. We just needed to stay near the outer area, since the closer you got to the center the more patrols and watchtowers there were.

B led me towards a big hill they liked to visit not too far away. You didn't need anything special to get to the top of it, and it was also far away from most patrols, so we weren't going to be spotted up there as long as we didn't go waving lights around.

It was a bit of a climb, but once we got to the top it was worth it. We could see all the way to Ground Zero. It was the weirdest thing, even now I don't know how to really describe it. It was like a mixture of tv static and a blind spot. The longer I looked, the more it strained my eyes, but I kept glancing back to it while we were there.

Later, B showed me a tree where we carved our initials and the date, a little sign we had been there. There were other messages too, so it must be a common spot for other zonexers to hang out at. I took a photo of it, which probably wasn't the best idea, since a trooper could've seen the camera flash, but luckily nothing happened.

After that, we just sat there for a while. It was a surreal experience, but still a nice one. There were barely any lights for miles so the stars were really clear, and since it was dark, you could actually see the watchtowers across the zone from their lights.

A few hours later, the sun started coming up, so we needed to head back while we could stay relatively hidden. Before we left, though, I realized that the sunrise meant it was light enough that I could actually take a photo of the Beyond. Once I got done with that, we actually left. We then promptly slept for the rest of the day when we got back to the motel.

I was really excited to have a photo of the Beyond, but when I checked it again later, that part of the photo never actually developed. Go figure.