The Omega Virus

~Chapter 1~

                                                             

          You’ve read the stories, maybe many of them…stories of dead that rise. Stories…this is not a story.  It’s a retelling of the final fall of human-kind.  It was a plunge into darkness that began thousands of years ago…with the infamous Adam and Eve…and their murderous son Cain.  From the world’s first murderer the virus spread on and on.  At first it traveled imperceptibly slow, at other times it swept through cities like an angry tsunami—leaving the rest of the world reeling from unbelief.  Thus the virus became categorized as a myth, right along with vampires and werewolves and other such folklore.  I assure you this is no folklore.  Even so, our world’s population has always been good at denying and covering up atrocities and tragedies.  The virus manifested in different ways, so much so that it appeared to have innumerable faces.  Finally in these later days of humanity, it shed its duplicity; it finally revealed its one and only true face: grotesque.  The bottom line, the only thing that matters now is the one question that we must answer: Is there a cure?  Some have dared to hint at this fantasy, but most have rejected it.  Why wouldn’t they?  After all, the entire world’s greatest minds have tried and failed to find one.  Nothing worked, worse even; those great minds eventually succumbed to the very virus they fought against.  So most understandably rejected the supposed fantastical cure—for the rumored cure was far too simple, and far too mystical therefore it couldn’t be a true cure.

          Yet Nova claims it works and stands firm by it (even though hardly any believe her), still I cannot help but hope that there is something to these fantastical rumors—after all, Nova is still alive (as far as we know) and what’s more those around her stay alive.  According to words glimpsed here and there throughout this vast country, not a single one of her acquaintances has transformed or transitioned into death.  Even more amazing is that she supposedly seeks them out.  She doesn’t run.  She’s void of fear if the stories are to be believed.  She claims a Higher Being stands with her and thus has nothing to fear.  She—and this is almost blasphemous to the rest of us who have lost someone to the virus, to the dead—she sympathizes with them.  She doesn’t stop with that, she claims we are all infected, and that we are all just walking corpses only we don’t realize it.  Absurd.  I haven’t eaten human flesh anytime in my life—yet—so I assume I am still among the living.   Absurd—then again I used to think that the dead who walk was a thought just as fantastical and absurd—but there they are, lurking, terrifying us, hunting and haunting us who are alive.  They drag us kicking and screaming, forcing us to conform to their death.

          I am rambling.  I’ve done that since this whole apocalypse had begun.  But the reason I am rambling even more now is that I am about to meet this ridiculous character.  It may take a long time, it may be that I will traverse many miles, but I will meet Nova if it’s the last thing I do (no matter how cliché that sounds).  Even though my logic mocks her, I am compelled to meet her—both out of mere curiosity, though even more out of desperation.  I’ll pursue fairy tales if I have too.  I’ll even pursue visions and prophets and genies—whatever it takes—because these Corpses that walk all around us have robbed me of one precious to me and I fully intend to reclaim what was stolen.  Sure, you might think me cold and selfish at times, because after all, hasn’t everyone in the whole world lost someone dearly beloved to the virus?  And you say that none of them have opted to run to a lunatic claiming an impossibly simple (and thus untrue) cure.  So yes, I will freely admit: I am crazy.  I am selfish.  And cold.  And absolutely determined to get what I want.  Even though I may laugh and mock the religiousness and simplicity of Nova’s ‘cure’, I will still pursue it with an unreasonable hope that it is real.  That it exists.  That it will resurrect the dead.  That it will resurrect love.

          Of course, there are obstacles.  Namely, the dead who somehow always smell us out.  They are like the devils that never ever sleep.  They don’t roar.  They moan as if an unbearable pain is upon them.  They grunt.  They hunt.  They are not always fast…unless they are extremely hungry…which is often.  These hellish creatures roam the planet…they have almost entirely conquered it. 

          Even though hell seems to reign supreme, at least I am not alone.  That I couldn’t bear.  Another walks with me.  He is like a dream, he was once quite famous—a star of a hit television show in which his character had all the skills necessary to overcome terrorists and all sorts of evil that was thrown his way.  He inspires me and keeps my soul breathing even though he is vastly different from the character he had played.  His soul is linked to mine—not in that romantic mumbo jumbo—just linked because we both have lost so much and have become inseparable.   He is not indestructible like his once famous character, he doesn’t have nine lives and weapons and tools at his disposal to get him out of any situation imaginable, but still that movie star illusion of his strength sometimes provides me with a much needed illusion of safety…and maybe I am the same for him.  I am his damsel in distress that needs to be protected and saved.  Even so, he does have strength, even if it’s not the Hollywood-style strength.  We take comfort in each other, and he has constantly been by my side from that horrible day I lost the one I love.  It is also noteworthy to express that he doesn’t mock my silly hope that there is a cure, he is the one who first told me of it, though he didn’t hold out as much hope as me.  Regardless, he doesn’t squash or quell it even when countless scientists had failed and then succumbed to the Death.  Perhaps he hopes more than I do, though he doesn’t believe it could be true.  He had actually laughed when telling me of the possibility or rather impossibility, but he couldn’t conceal the hope that poured from his voice, for he had lost two daughters to the Death…though not physically.  It goes to show how faithful he is in the fact that even now one of his daughters is in a cage in the bed of his truck.  I though this creepy at first, but that changed when my son joined his daughter in that precious cage.  We cart them along on this childish journey founded only on hope.

          My tears are almost as extinct as the human race.  I only cry every once in a while—less and less as each day and hour passes—usually only after a narrow escape, when I am forced to once again look Death in its very gruesome face.  Each time he holds me.  He doesn’t ask me to love him, and I don’t ask if he loves me—although before the break of the virus I would have swooned and fainted just at the sight of him.  I would have definitely asked for his autographed and hope he would instantly fall in love with me and so he would then ask me out on a date (presumably after he would revive me from my fainting spell).  Now, love seems to be a luxurious dream—a good one—but foolish, because even if I were to allow myself to love him or him to love me, what would happen if he was taken?  A broken heart is just like begging for Death to devour you.  It weakens you taking away the much needed resolve to push through and live.  It distracts you from survival—and after all, survival takes all precedence.  We have to live another day, and then another and another.  Why?  Because we must.  Why?  I don’t know.

          He is older than me.  Some would say much older, though this doesn’t detract from his charm.  He is the only one who has been a constant for me since the beginning of this plague, this virus.  Actually, if I thought about it even before the plague dedication and faithfulness like his were rare—at least in my life.  Though I try to make my heart as hard as a diamond, there are occasional times when he looks at me, giving that devilish grin at which my ever foolish heart skips a few beats.  Would this have happened if the world had continued on without this end looming before us?  Probably not.  Fate has thrown us together, not by choice but by simple selfish need.