All The Broken Lights

Chapter VII

"Okay well I'm American, I live, well I lived in the remains of Miami, it was the only place left that wasn't completely destroyed. After the war, it broke off from mainland, making us an island. No one got infected because the virus isn't able to travel across water, but still in total only a few hundred survived, my great great great grandparents being two of the lucky ones."

I chock on the air around me coughing, I had a feeling he wasn't from the UK, I guessed he wasn't, but America seems so far away. The City always tell us any of the survivors that had not been infected came here. So, either we've been lied to, or no one else knows. But there is life. He's living proof that there is life. I glance at him, unsure if what he had just said was a joke or not.

"Wait, you're really from America, your real?" I say, slowly leaning backwards, trying to slightly distance myself from him, in case he's infected. "We're always told," I continue, "that we are the only survivors, well human survivors, that the UK is the only place that survived after the war, that only the infected exist apart from us, but if you're real, that's, that's not true, because, well" I gesture towards him. There's something about him that makes me sure he's not infected. I've never seen what someone looks like when they have any three of the diseases, but I know the City don't classify them as humans anymore, but this boy in front of me, seems as human as you get.

"Yeah, I guess they're wrong, we knew about you though, we have for a while. I found blueprints one day explaining the exact plan of how we're going to bomb your country to create a big enough threat and a fear, that would shock you enough into allowing us to take over. They trained us up for war ever since we could walk and prepared us for each and every situation. We were also used as disposable lab rats, but that backfired majorly on them." He smiles at his private joke, making no effort to explain.

"How did you survive the toxicity, how did you survive the, the..."

"How did we survive the toxicity?" he says, cutting me off.

"Yeah," I nod.

"We had a Bubble."

"Had?" I ask.

"Yeah, had, it broke, about 40 years ago, I think. But by that time, we developed a cure, so it was all okay. Like I said we survived the Tripes because we became an island and somehow got lucky, but then about 4 months ago a, a Halo, managed to enter the island, and as you can imagine, it didn't end well."

"Yeah, I can imagine. Halos are worse than both Kooks and Ravers joined together." I reply

"Yep, especially when they have weapons," my eyes widen as I begin to imagine the horrors of a Halo with a weapon. During the biological war, three man-made viruses were released, the Tripes. Most people became Kooks, their brains slowly shutting down, making them slowly deteriorate.

 Kooks are only dangerous when the human inside knows what's going to happen to them, when they can feel their body shutting down and becoming numb, that's when they lose all their humanity and become rabid. 

Ravers are the second worse, they hallucinate, their eyes always bloodshot, their pupils blood red. Their brain creates fake realities that they live in, and if they think you have to die, they won't hesitate to kill you. They have voices in their heads, voices that control them. My mum saw one once, and she described it as if someone was controlling it, making it do unthinkable things.

 But the Halo's are worse than both of the other two combined. They look normal, they act normal, until they don't. The third viruses affect people's brains in such a way that it heightens all their senses and makes them much more susceptible to pain. Noises and sounds are amplified meaning if you whisper to loudly, they will tear you apart. It completely destroyed the limbic system, creating monsters that show no emotions. If you breathe too loudly, you'll probably end up dead.

 Halos are also cannibals, unlike the other two who will eat human meat if necessary, it's all Halos eat. The virus was created to destroy mankind, and allow humans to slowly destroy each other, and I guess it worked. 

"Yeah, they really are, only one managed to get through though, but someone it managed to kill literally all of our society, 1189 of us." He sighs and his head shakes slightly, as if trying to get rid of a resurfacing memory.

"Wow, there were a lot of you," I say, my brain trying to process all the information that had just been thrown at me. "Wait. How do you know what Halos, and Kooks and Ravers are, I didn't mention them, and the City created the names about 150 years ago to distinguish the three groups. You couldn't have named them the same thing, that, that would be impossible. How did you know." Doubt slowly begins to course through my body. This is all a trick, he's from the City, they want to see where out loyalties lie, everyone in my village is a good as dead. Shit. A small smile plays on his lips, every sensible muscle in my body urges me to run, but I stay frozen. If he's really from America, he must be infected. There are no human left on the planet who haven't got one of the viruses, we are the lucky ones, because we survived, that's what the City always says. This boy doesn't act like a Halo at all, so he must be from the City. And if that's true, he's one of them, and I'm already dead.