Abbie; post-virus, pre-tribe.
What happened to Chris.
DISCLAIMER: The Virus belongs to Cloud9
parents were some of the first people to die from the Virus, and so, my brother Chris and I were some of the first people to be relocated. We'd moved around a lot as children but it seemed strange without mum and dad, so we left the car behind and took the train. The car was full of memories and still smelt like dad's morning coffees. The train however was full of new possibilities and as much as it hurt me to leave my old life behind I had to go, rather than stay in that house with our parents room still the way it had been when they were admitted into hospital 8 days before.
Within the first half hour of the trip Chris was sick. He'd always had travel sickness and passed it off as this. I suppose I believed him because I wanted it to be true. Once he stopped reading his magazine and looked out the window instead his illness seemed to subside and everything returned to normal.
After three days the sores began to appear; horrible red blotchy things. Chris had jokingly told me he had the plague before calmly reassuring me that it was probably just a rash or an allergic reaction. None-the-less, I made him promise to see a doctor about it. He came back with a grim expression on his face and refused to speak to me for the rest of the week. I knew though, he was growing frail.
Two days later he was admitted to hospital. At first he had refused, denying any problem, saying he was fine. It wasn't until I'd begun to cry that he relented. While in the hospital he'd become so removed, though I spent almost all my time there we'd never speak, just sit in silence, breathing in the chemically clean air and listening to snippets of conversation from the nurses and the families of other people who were unwell and in the new ward that the hospital had set up specifically for those with the virus. All the nurses wore face masks; in fact it was advised that all persons over 20 were to wear face masks. You could hear all the sympathetic conversation and murmurings about who was going to die next.
On the day that it came to be my brother's turn to be the one that they spoke about he began to talk again.
"Abs?" I looked up sharply. His green eyes were swollen and red; I wondered how long he had been crying silently without my knowing. "Abs, I'm sorry." I shook my head at him.
"You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing, Chris."
"Just listen, Abbie." He watched me for a moment, as though making sure I wouldn't talk, before he began. "I took you away, out here, and now I'm leaving you with no way back. They've cut all transport." His eyes began to tear up and I looked away, embarrassed to watch my normally strong older brother cry. "I promised Mum and Dad that I'd take care of you, and I'm not." A sharp knock at the door interrupted him. A nurse, who probably would have had a kind face had it not been for the gas mask covering her mouth and nose, informed me that visiting hours were over and I'd have to come back in the morning.
In the morning Chris was gone.
REVEIW? Tell me what you think and if I should keep going.