They couldn't put the fires out, after it was all over. Every town burned. Every house. Mounds upon mounds of the dead were turned into ashes. The plague had only lasted a few weeks but there was enough damage to last centuries. Stories would be passed on about how one evening in 1911 the dead had risen from their coffins and forced us all into the underworld. And they had. The survivors of the plague told that story to other that the sickness had not affected. They said that they watched the dead take revenge, and nearly kill nearly 500 million people. It was an impossible epidemic. So impossible, in fact, that it was brushed off as especially bad influenza break.
The survivors began to grow tired of continually explaining their story, so they adopted the influenza theory. When others asked about the outbreak, they would simply say "It was quite a bad year for allergies." They had called it 'The Mexican Flu' but it was later dubbed 'The Spanish Flu' which was softer on the tongue. It was easier that way. They didn't have to tell them the impossible. But they would never let that become the truth. They would never forget the truth. They would never forget the fires that ravaged the world. Or the grey bodies attacking everything in sight. Mountains of corpses being burned in every state and every country. How the four horsemen of the apocalypse ran loose on the western plains. They wouldn't forget how hell's own John Marston single-handedly saved the world. The survivors refused to forget the truth, no matter how much it was bent and shaped to the public's liking. Even while they lay in the ground, they know what really happened.
We are taught that the Spanish flu was the worst epidemic in human history, but the reality is far more gruesome. And nobody today can tell you this. But know this one fact: In the year two-thousand one-hundred and eleven, after this golden age has ended and our two hundred years has passed, the dead will once again know the truth.