2050: The Beginning of the End

Prologue: Lilian

Life is a repeating pattern. That is the simplest explanation. We, as human beings, enjoy this pattern. It gives us some semblance of normality. We have our routines, we like our routines, and we stick to them.

For the first nine years of my life, this was the case for me. I woke up, spent a few moments taking in the beauty of the holographic projections on my ceiling, and hopped out of bed. I tamed my golden-brown hair, threw on an outfit, and went downstairs. My brother went to school, while I stayed home and taught myself online. I was an intelligent nine-year-old; the schoolwork I learned was that which an eighth-grader might do. It was difficult, but I did my best and excelled in the serenity of my bedroom. My parents always left for work at the same time: nine-oh-four AM. They were precise, always down to the minute, with all their daily activities.

Every day, like clockwork, I would ask them what they were going to do that day. Their work was secretive, their office was filled with other members of the same nameless organization. Mom used to say that, if she told me what they spent their time working on, she'd have to kill me.

I believed her. Molly Messer never told a lie.

Our family's routine seemed to be a never-changing one. I reveled in the predictable day-to-day activities, wondering if there were people out there who thrived on change. It was a strange thought for me, that someone could enjoy the spontaneous life. I guess you'd say I was a control freak: I liked things to be constant and orderly. That was the Messer way; we liked our routines and normalcy as much as the next middle-class American.

Everything changed when the war broke out.

I remember it all started with Russia. They got in some heated dispute with China. China had this nuclear plant that they had been boasting about for years. Someone made a threat, someone else made a promise, and Chinese bigwigs made decisions. The next thing we knew, China was bombing Russia and Russia was on track to be devastated. Before any of us knew what had happened, countries were taking sides, and four European countries were wiped off the map completely.

After that it became a free-for-all in Europe and Asia.

I remember being nearly ten, my brother was just seven at the time. I asked Mom why people were so cruel, why they couldn't just leave well enough alone. I remember the day well, because it was the first time I had witnessed my mother at a loss for words.

"I don't know, Lili," she said after a lengthy pause, "I just don't know."

This struck me as strange. Molly Messer could explain away anything. When I was four, and I realized that I did not feel physical pain, Mom had an answer. It was genetics, I had a rare medical condition that prevented me from feeling pain like everybody else. When my brother, Jason, began having weird episodes, during which he was practically unresponsive, Mom had an explanation. Seizures, she said. His medication would straighten them right out.

Why then, nine-year-old me asked, couldn't she explain World War III?

World War III turned my world upside down.

When I was ten, Mom found out that she and Dad were being given a new assignment. Their secretive little organization began taking up more of their time for less money. Our family went from happily middle-class to just making ends meet.

Over the next year, the war found its way to America. I was eleven when New York City was bombed. The news broadcasters said that the radiation extended for miles around, and I was extremely glad that we lived in the far-off town Of Mathers Hill, Indiana. That same year, several more European countries were transformed into wastelands by powerful nuclear blasts. I remember Jason having significantly more of his episodes around that time, and my parents contemplating taking him to a specialist. They would have, if it hadn't been for the Inhumanes.

They started appearing in our state in January of this year, 2050. They had traveled from New York, Los Angeles, and other cities that had been exposed to the radiation of nuclear bombs. They were once human, but somehow they had died and been transformed into undead mutants. The pictures on the news made me queasy, and I always looked away. They were running rampant in Europe, the news broadcasters said, and they were growing in numbers in our country. They killed average humans, transforming normal people into creepy, undead zombies. It was like one of Jason's comic books, one that just happened to be coming true.