Chapter One
A lot of the survivors try to point out the good that came of this. Things like how real world peace has descended in the wake of the global military cooperation that stamping these things out completely entailed. Like that no one is starving in Africa anymore (of course, as far as anyone knows, no one lives in Africa anymore). Most all of the civil wars and ethnic cleansings have stopped too (of course, that was a simple matter of one side letting the other side get decimated before cleaning house, natch).
Some of us, though, lost just about everything and everyone that mattered to us. Take me for instance...
I was at work when it all started. I was working a pretty screwed up schedule at the time, 2 evenings, 2 overnights, and a day shift. I was on the second of my overnights, Thursday into Friday morning. I was totally exhausted because that was the 3rd Friday of the month, and that meant I'd had a staff meeting at 2pm the day before, which played hod with my sleep. Somehow I managed to get in my car, drive home, stumble into bed, and sleep the sleep of the dead without noticing the beginning of the end.
I woke up around 2pm, and did what I usually do, I logged onto WoW. Or tried to. The servers had already failed, and been abandoned by the techs who kept them running no doubt. Despondent, I went out and got some breakfast, and asked my brother what was going on. He'd been playing video games all day, and not seen any of the emergency broadcasts. Given that none of the rest of my family managed to call us, I have to assume that they all got wiped out in the first surges of activity. I hope it was quick at least, although what I've seen tells me it was likely slow and terrifying.
I told him I wanted to watch TV, and he shut the game off and that's when I found out the cable was dead. All static and test patterns. Grumbling, I tossed him the remote, and hit the showers. When I came back out, he was playing again, of course. Hadn't worked in months, wasn't likely to ever again. Wouldn't. I asked him if there'd been any mail, as I was expecting a package from the drugstore online. He said he hadn't checked, so I asked him where his keys were, but as usual, he all of a sudden grew a helpful streak, and leapt up from the couch to go check it. Saved my life.
They hit him almost as soon as he stepped out the door. Our neighbors across the hall, a matronly Irish mom and her 2 daughters, about 6 and 8, just leapt on him, clawing and biting. They looked insane, with dried blood caked on their mouths, and blank, staring eyes. He fought them off long enough to get back inside, and we locked the door, as they started pounding on it. I grabbed the phone and he went to the sink to wash his injuries. I hit 911 and waited. A canned voice message indicated that the lines were busy.
I stared at the phone like it had just told me it enjoyed incestuous pedophilia, and re-dialled. Same result. I tried a few more times, while my bro was cleaning up and bandaging his scratches and bites. We were on our own. He was looking pale, so I sent him to bed with a couple shots of Maker's Mark in him to dull the pain. I kept trying the phone, but after a while, I didn't even get a dial tone anymore.
So, while I was getting down the medium-sized sword from the set of 3 faux Japanese samurai swords on top of my entertainment center, I turned on the stereo and tuned through the AM and FM dials. Mostly static, but I finally pulled in NPR, and learned for the first time what was going on. Some sort of plague was spreading like crazy through the populace, symptoms included homicidal behavior, clumsiness, and cannibalism. Citizens were warned to avoid all contact with infected persons, and to quarantine anyone bitten by a plague victim.
My knuckles went white on that sword's handle. I turned and looked at the door to my brother's room. Almost as if on cue, a muffled thump and a groan came from the other side. I went to the door quietly, and listened. Nothing. I tapped on the door lightly, "Bro?" The door shuddered under an impact, and I jumped back. "C'mon man! Say something!" The door shook again. It was just a flimsy interior door, unlike the sheet-metal-coated one that the neighbors across the hall had given up on a while ago. A crack appeared with the next impact.
I have to say, I was never closer to having a heart attack from sheer anxiety and terror as I was just then. Nothing at all but a will to live and reflexes was in control of what happened next. The door burst in half down the middle and my brother stumbled through it, his hands full of chunks of wood that mocked the term 'splinters', and he charged me. Of its own volition, my right arm swept out, and the decorative sword that had been gathering dust in peace on my entertainment center for two years cleanly sheared his head off. And I screamed. The pounding on my door resumed in earnest. I screamed again, a primal sound, feral and furious. I dropped the sword I was holding, and went back to the entertainment center. I took down the big sword. My car was out front.
Working fast, I put on another pair of pants, and a belt, and slid the now- sheathed long and medium swords into the belt. I put on my leather jacket, and a pair of gloves, and strapped on my heavy work boots. I packed all the non-perishable food I could fit into my duffel bag, along with some spare clothes and medicines. Then I went to the window looking out the front, and peeked out from both sides of the shade. Two school-age children were wandering around out there, blood caked on their lips and hands. I raised the shade, and quietly lifted the window. They hadn't noticed me yet, so I risked a better look. Down at the far end of the lot, two more were ambling around, one I recognized from high school, a fairly nice guy, he used to be.
Unsheathing the larger sword, I dropped the pack out the window, and quickly hopped out after it. The closest two immediately headed at me, and I never hesitated. I lined up a swing and sliced completely through the one on the right at the neck, and chopped the left one's left arm off at the shoulder. She staggered on toward me, her right arm and left stump raised. I punched out with my left fist, catching her in the chest and almost spinning her completely around. My booted right foot sent her sprawling in the dust, and I scooped up the bag, tossed it to the car door, and followed it there. Working by touch, eyeing the rapidly approaching pair from the far side as the one I'd amputated an arm from struggled to rise, I unlocked the door, pulled it open, and then had to fight for some room. The decapitated one didn't so much as twitch.
I tossed the keys onto the seat, and put my hand back on the sword, and made my first mistake. As the two approached, I impaled my old high school buddy through the heart, or at least in the middle of the upper chest. Other than the sword catching on his spine and holding him at sword's length, my thrust had little to no discernable effect. The smaller, my high school buddy's wife, grabbed my left arm and tried to sink her teeth into it, but the leather saved me. I shoved on the sword and he stumbled back, giving me enough time to put a boot in her midsection and send her sprawling. I brought the sword up overhead, and slashed down at my charging high school chum, and split his skull to the jawline. Pain in my left leg jarred me, and I saw that the one-armed girl had crawled over and was worrying my leg like a dog with a meaty soup bone. Once again, my clothing saved me. Pulling the shorter sword out, I plunged it down, through her shoulder and chest, pinning her to the ground, and pulled away.
A glance behind me showed that wifey was getting back up, I turned to her, and hacked her head off as she got partway up. I turned back to the one-armed girl, and did her the same. With the coast clear for the moment, I wiped both blades off on my victims' clothes, mindful of the possibility of blood-borne pathogens, and sheathed them. I tossed the bag into the passenger seat, hopped in, and locked the door. For a moment I panicked, no keys. Then I dug them out from under my arse and started the car. And sat there for a moment. I had no idea where to go. I had half a tank of gas, which would take me about 200 miles at highway speeds, maybe 150 if I had to crawl.
Movement caught my eye, several people shuffling my way, alerted by the engine. Time to clear datum, I'd figure out my next move after the immediate threat was handled. I decided to head for a car dealership, get me a new SUV to plow through obstacles with. Made more sense than staying put at any rate.
