The Host

The begining

Doctors were ever so close. Closer than ever to curing the impossible. After cancer. After AIDS. After Ebola, there was a disease so much worse. If infected, you wouldn't know until it was too late. It was spread in water and it started in poorer countries with low sanitation. Once drinking infected water a parasite would begin to grow inside of the hosts body. Starting off small and undetectable, then rapidly larger and deadly in the space of days. At first it would eat the stomach acid, meaning the food wouldn't be digested correctly, causing the person pain. Then it would eat the walls of the stomach and all of the organs inside of you and then once it couldn't eat anymore it would explode inside of it's host causing an eruption of the person remaining. By the time the host imploded they would normally be already dead, but some lived, and felt the pain and everything going on inside them. 

Doctors knew they had to cure this and fast, but it was spreading and killing thousands along the way. People where scared to drink, to bathe, to swim, to do anything. It was likely that if you didn't die from the disease you would die from dehydration. 

There wasn't many humans still alive by the time the cure was created. But, for everyone still alive the cure was given to them. The cure seemed to work. People could drink the water and not be infected. However, the disease adapted and became immune to the cure and became something different. 

The process was still the same. You wouldn't know if you had the disease until it was too late. Only this time, the parasite didn't eat the hosts organs. It would still eat the hydrochloric acid in the stomach and digestion would continue to be painful. But the parasite made the host crave for flesh and blood, meaning the parasite itself would only have to eat food the host has eaten. 

Despite knowing digestion was painful, the host would eat flesh anyway as the cravings were so strong. Eventually, the pain would go away but the cravings remained. So the host would find a person or animal and eat all the flesh and muscle and it's organs until there was nothing left. The host would often make itself vomit due to the amount of 'food' consumed. Once vomiting, they would continue to eat. Some would eat themselves to death. Other's would literally eat themselves. Most wouldn't kill themselves as they knew when to stop, or when in search for another meal, they would give themselves enough time to not die from eating. 

Personally, I think the parasite takes over the hosts body and uses it as it's own, so the host has no control what so ever. From what I have seen, this is the only logical explanation I can think off the explains what happens. The hosts don't sleep, talk, or interact with anyone unless they want to eat them. Some can run, scream, jump, climb and act like a normal human. But others can barely cruel or even move. When face to face with one, you have to make quick judgement on what 'kind' of host they are. If you are wrong in your judgment you could die. 

It has been over twelve years since the parasite took over, but the parasite itself has died and the water is fine. However over time it evolved more, and now, if a host doesn't kill you, one bite and its saliva can infect your blood and you become a host to a new parasite. This parasite is no different from the old, the only different is the transmission and how you obtain the disease. 

For the few humans still alive, it is a battle. A battle simply on who lives and who dies. Some humans want to fight others, possibly out of fear, and others want to join together, believing a larger group is safer than a small.

I am not a alone on my travels. I am joined by a man. Who hopes, with all his heart, to find a cure.