Infection was spreading throughout the world. Not many places were safe anymore, by the time 2020 rolled around. There were very few safe places left, and not many people even really felt safe in them. Kids disappeared almost every day from even the safest of places, and medicines were hard to find. It was easy to die of things like the flu and even a common cold those days.
The infection was that of a Rager. It made people angry, willing to attack everything around, and faster. They died little by little, willing to eat anything they could find or kill. And the infections started slowly. At first it was only a couple of people at a time, and they'd start losing their sense of control. They would start getting angry and wanting to cause harm to loved ones.
No one was ever positive how the outbreak began. Some people believed foul play by the scientists in secluded areas. Others believed it was contaminants in the food, water, and air. People always came up with weird ideas of how such an infection could occur, easily being transferred through the smallest cuts, the biggest bites. Even mosquitoes could transfer it if you weren't careful enough. It made almost everyone scared at the same time it made others more stubborn.
Moving was out of the question for most. Safe areas were small and very blocked in. If you could get out you were lucky, and to get into another was out of the question. After the initial quarantine, if you left a zone, you had to fend for yourself, unless you were sent out for medication or food. Even then, people were cautious, only two leaving at a time usually.
After only a month, people began getting restless in the quarantine zones, nothing to do, same old people to see. And the zones seemed to be getting smaller and smaller every other week for a while. The infections spread quickly at first, slowing down only after the second month. Less people started going crazy and people believed the outbreak could die out. How wrong they were.
Kids started going back to school, living life the same as they could beforehand, less kids being born into a world of suffering and horror. No angels came. No sign from any God. The only reason people had hope was the new generations. Hope that children from those generations could find a cure. The only problem, though, was that the more generations that passed, the less children were born.
The world was going into destruction. Houses and whole towns burned under the ruling of the infected, and the people in safe zones were scared for their lives, with only hope to carry them along every day. Hope that their families weren't torn apart by the infection. There wasn't much that people could do.
As the infection seemed to be dying down and people in Safe zones got into a normal routine of helping and school work, the chaos of being under lock down felt not so tight. The death grip of the horror loosened, and people started feeling slightly less scared.
People on hard medications died out sooner than others. Along with people with alcohol and drug addictions. Sick children died, too, and the dead were buried outside of the zones, with the risk of infection getting into their recently dead bodies.
This wasn't a life that they would have chosen for themselves. Not one of predictability and slyness, one of fear and horror. The only thing they could cling to was hope, and even then, sometimes it slipped. They didn't want the chaos. They didn't want to be stuck in one safe zone within the boundary that a state would be in America. They all called safe zones capitals, and ones that didn't live in the capitals were pretty much doomed.
That's all that life could be in those days. That's all that people had.
