Drifter

Chapter 1

Before the plague swept over humanity, covering civilization like a thick blanket of fear and paranoia, I had never seen light. I had been born blind and despite my fathers many attempts at experimental treatments nothing had ever yielded results so I had remained in the darkness. Trapped by my inability to see the light. I had imagined it countless times, but when I saw it for the first time it was like nothing I could have pictured. I wish I had the words to explain what it was like to see color after a lifetime of having it described to me, or see a smile for the first time. Some things are to epic to be put into words.

It was a strange feeling to know that the same thing that had sterilized and eventually killed a third of earth's population was also my salvation from darkness. And the virus had given me more than my sight; I was stronger and faster than I ever could have hoped to be before. I also had an incredible sense of smell and could heal almost any wound in a matter of hours, but the most important gift the virus had given me was freedom, or at least a much bigger cage. I had gone from being trapped in my father's musty old home to being trapped in a small town in upstate New York that was now being used as a quarantine zone.

Life wasn't perfect in the quarantine by any standard but I had never been more content. I suspected a lot of others here felt the same. The quarantines were full of people who had suffered through many previously incurable disabilities before they had been infected. Though it was highly illegal I suspected that unlike myself, many of the people here had been infected intentionally. Few talked about it, but there was a black market for those with physical ailments to be bitten since the plague would heal almost anything wrong with you as it changed you into a better host for the undead killer you would eventually become. The only physical evidence that a person carried the plague was the way infected people's eyes would take on a yellow reflective pigment. With a fashionable pair of sunglasses, an infected person could live among the regular population indefinitely, collecting a little extra income from black market DNA swapping. Some people in the quarantines told me that they had sought out these infected people and paid them a handsome fee to be bitten. Many people here saw it as a chance at a new life with no more pain or disadvantages. My prerogative was much the same, better to be on this side of the fence with the ability to look out then have no view at all.

And the quarantines weren't so bad, the only thing I found really disturbing about the them was the groups of undead that pressed against the fence trying to get out to the living. They had no interest in those of us already infected; they only wanted to spread the plague to new living hosts. Every few weeks the government would bring the military recruits to the fence and have them use the dead as target practice. Everyone stayed inside on those days.

The quarantines were quite tonight. Yesterday had been the bi-weekly supply drop so everyone was well fed and there was little to fight over. In a few days when the supplies was lower things would be different. I walked slowly through the night making sure to avoid the few working street lights since the cover of darkness was my best defence against the roaming gangs that controlled this side of the fence.

Back when the quarantine was still new there had been members of the police force patrolling to keep the peace, but once the infection started to spread in earnest, the government didn't have the man power to maintain order and private security contractors had been hired to take their place. That had worked for a time but the contractors had proven to be more interested in their own personal interests then in protecting the peace. People had put up with it for a some time but things had gotten worse and worse until the infected finally banded together and drove out Hero Corp, the company that employed the mercenaries.

Since then, several groups had formed in the hopes of grabbing power over the quarantine and its population. At this moment, there were four major groups competing for control.

The biggest and most frightening was The Reborn, a group run by an ex priest named Richard Moss. Some people called his group a cult, others the new church, but to me it was little more than a group of thugs who wanted to justify their violence with religious doctrine. Moss converted people by telling them the infected were gods "chosen" and that the world would be baptised in the blood of the humans as we rose to power. He said the only way to complete gods work was to destroy the last of humanity and bring gods plans to a close. He preached that when the last human was infected the rapture would begin and the second coming would follow soon after.

The second group, was an old biker gang from before the plague. They called themselves the Demons. They were mostly thugs and criminals but I preferred to deal with them over The Reborn, at least the Demons had common sense and could usually be trusted to make good on any agreement you struck with them. They had a lot of power, thanks to having so many branches of the gang on the outside. If you wanted to get something smuggled in or out of the quarantine you went to the Demons. They bragged that they could get anything from anywhere or smuggle anything out. So far it seemed to be true. Almost everyone in the quarantine owed them for something.

Next on the list were the Amazons, a group of woman who didn't want to be associated with any of the other groups and had formed their own gang. So far it seemed to be working out better than a lot of people expected. They had proven to be strong and resourceful. Their numbers consisted of a lot of the brightest, cleverest and toughest women I had ever met. When they first formed I had given some consideration to joining them but after some soul searching I had decided I owed my loyalty to the forth group, the Knights.

A group controlled by an ex police officer named Fredrick Night, The Knights looked to create order from chaos. Fredrick had been one of the officers sent in at the beginning to keep order in the quarantine but after breaking up a looting in the food stores he had been bitten. Now he helped keep the peace with his group of volunteer deputies. Many people thought of him as the sheriff and it was well known that if your neighbour stole your food rations or you got shaken down by another group it was Fredrick Knight you went to for help. We also acted as mediators for disputes between other groups. Anything that involved keeping the peace was our specialty. I had never felt more alive than I did when I was with the Knights. Helping people, being part of something bigger then myself was the most rewarding thing I could imagine.

When I was a girl, my father had brought home a hard drive of old radio plays about super heroes. Each one had overcome amazing odds and gone on to lead incredible, adventurous lives. I had sat on the old blanket on my bed for hours, listening to how each time, the hero would overcome insurmountable odds to save the day at the very last second. Even though the stories were sometimes cheesy, they spoke to me. That was what I wanted, a life of epic adventure. For now though, I would have to concentrate on helping the Knights maintain the quarantine. Even though the virus had helped a lot of us the results of it spreading to the general population would be disastrous.

So I focused on my training. There were no legal guns in the Quarantine so learning to shoot was next to impossible but Fredrick and some of the other deputies had been teaching me some martial arts and kickboxing. I wasn't very big but I was fast and I had a knack for finding the weakest spots like the throat, groan, eyes and instep. I also swung a pretty mean Billy club.

I looked up instinctively as I turned the corner, I was almost back to the building that held my government issued living accommodations. An older apartment complex from the sixties, it housed a lot of the younger women on the top two floors. The bottom floors had been empty for a long time, one used as a command centre for the police it had been abandoned when they left but I had recently convinced The Knight's to set up an outpost for the gang on the ground floor. Not only did it help us expand our territory but it also helped a lot of the girls in the building sleep easier. Even the girls who were members of other gangs hadn't had any objections. As I neared the building I could see the glow of the battery powered lanterns that had to be used after they turned the power grid off after our four hours of electricity a day. They said it was because of a power shortage and that everyone, infected and healthy was subject to mandatory brown-outs, but the Demons had quickly found out that was not true. Fredrick said it was probably to try and restrict our night time movement.

I stepped off the sidewalk and looked both left and right to make sure no cars were coming from either direction. The quarantine didn't have many motor vehicles but the few people who did have access to them used the lack of traffic and authority to drive like maniacs. When I was sure it was safe I started across the road toward my building but I had barely taken two steps into the street when it happened.