The Decline

The Decline

Before The Decline I remember going to the doctor every month for shots and new pills to fight the ever changing diseases in our world. The Decline started in the fall of 2486. Before it happened life was relatively good. As good as it could be when the sun was blocked out most of the day by smog and dark clouds. You were lucky if you caught a glimpse of the sun once or twice a day. The world was riddled with disease and doctors and scientists couldn't come up with cures fast enough. Old diseases were adapting to the drugs previously used to treat them and new diseases were springing up by the hundreds every year. But we got by. As humans, we were too stubborn to try and change our ways to clean up the world. Any advocates for renewable energy and a cleaner earth had long since given up.

I was only 10 when it finally happened. The Decline. Some say it was a long time coming, unavoidable. Others blame the governments of the world for not being able to stop it. The Decline was the strongest disease humans had ever come across in our entire existence. It was a contagious disease, spreading through the air. You were at risk simply by being within 10 feet of an infected person. Masks don't stop it, and no known drug cures it.

The disease attacks you from the inside out. It is often a slow and terrible death. You rot away and instead of being able to die in conscious misery you slowly began to lose your mind. The infected don't try to hurt others, they slowly just cease to exist. Their humanity pulled from them until they are nothing but a body lying on the side of the road. People with and without the disease go crazy. Those with the disease go crazy for the obvious reason, and those without the disease, they lose their minds because they are more scared then they had ever been.

In the movies people band together to stay alive. But this is different. This isn't a movie, this is real life. This is my life. People kill anyone who they suspect of having the disease. Unless you are the picture of health you are killed by the very people who just weeks earlier you called your neighbors.

My parents used to tell me about how it was before. Before the smoke and smog and the dirt and the eerie quiet that has settled over this world. They said the sky used to be blue, that the grass used to be bright green instead of the dull yellow it is now. Mom said that there were animals that would walk right through your yard. I didn't know that word; yard. Apparently people used to sit under a blue sky on a patch of bright green grass that they owned and animals would walk around them and everything was good. But I don't believe that. Those are childhood stories, as real as the fairy tales I loved so much as a kid. Real life is the fuel for nightmares now, not fairy tales. Old abandoned homes and dark dank skies make up our world.

I live in an abandoned and condemned apartment building with my ragtag family. It isn't the best place for my younger siblings, but it's the best we are going to get. I think of them now, sleeping upstairs. They haven't had dinner yet, and if I fail tonight on this trip they will go without breakfast. A wave of resolve washes over me. I won't let them go hungry again.

The stairs creak as I make my way down to the ground floor. It is quiet. Today I am going out to look for supplies. Dad is sick. Not with the disease, thank God, but still sick enough not to be able to work. We can't afford to go to the doctor, especially without an income to rely on. So I have become the designated breadwinner in our little rag tag family. 'Hopefully tomorrow he'll get better.' I think to myself, 'He has to."I just have to hold on a little longer.

I reach the empty doorway and a slight breeze pushes my bangs out of my eyes. It almost feels like mom's frail hands brushing my hair out of my face, making sure I can see everything. I sigh silently, suddenly overcome with sadness. Before the tears fall I compose myself. Now is not the time.

I watch the street lights flicker and tense as I hear voices in the street. The solid clomp of polished boots on the pavement resonate in my ears. The sound of the "soldier's" footsteps slowly fade back into the city noise until their laughter is nothing but a distant echo.

I release a breath I did not know I was holding and continue to walk down the stairs.

I pull my hood over my head, and close my leather jacket over my sweatshirt. My jeans are faded, worn, and old with rips all over. I am wearing my scavenging belt, that holds the sheath for my knife. My new boots, an early birthday present, are laced up tight. I put on my gloves, the ones with the fingers cut out, and pull my canvas bag tight to my body.

I step out the back door and the cool night air brushes against my face. Then I stop. I crouch down and listen. The wind brings not only the chill of the night but the sounds from the city to me. The sound of taxi horns and children crying are what hit me first. But they are distant and do not worry me. Then very nearby I hear the ping of a trash can being hit and a nearly silent curse in the night. I turn my back to the harmless city noise and slowly unsheathe my knife.