Lost in the Echo (Major Revisions in progress!)

The Begining Stages

Like any sickness, no one saw it coming. It hit hard and it hit everywhere. The first symptoms were flu like, so many didn't think much of it. Then it progressed. It became more severe and mutilating. Whoever got to that stage died within weeks, sometimes days. But the worst stage of all was the last one. This one turned the person into a mindless, rotting meat sack that became enraged easily and killed whatever got in its way. These psychotic nitwits were the products of biological chemical testing gone wrong.

The government had set up a military trial to test a biological weapon they had been working on. Human tests were what they had just arrived at. All over tests seems successful, for whatever they were trying to accomplish. Humans trials were next. A group of volunteers were taken to a military base in Hawaii and given a serum, then as they went on with their days in the base, they were also forced to inhale a vapor form in the air unknowingly. Those poor unsuspecting bastards...

It's been four years since the first infection. Now? Well, now is worse than now has ever been before. To explain how things are, I have to tell you about the past. This world has become a total jigoku no ana. Hell hole. Most of the population was wiped out with the infection. Others were killed in the looting and murder and chaos that came after the fall of the government. With no order or law everything fell into anarchy and people began to fall to crime. Rape, murder, robbery, theft, vandalism, every crime you can think of was on the rise. And there was no one to stop them, so it continued for months. Until more died from infection or were killed.

Gangs, as we call them now, rose up and became centers of some sort of order and safety. They became the safe havens for survivors. If you weren't in a gang you were on your own, and if you were on your own you were an open target. Gangs had rules members had to follow, guidelines for how to deal with certain things. Although many had very few rules, there were still rules against killing other members.

One of these gangs were a tight nit group of woman, the Sirens. The Sirens killed whoever whenever they wanted. They consisted of only woman, "the ones that would restore the world", with only one man. Their leader's slave. There are many stories of how the Sirens came to be and what the deal was with that poor lack, but there are many stories with most gangs.

I had become a member of a group accidentally. My gang doesn't really have a name. We're more of scavengers and hopefuls. I was thrown in because of an old friend, she's dead now, but we were inseparable before the infection. Best friends for our whole lives, all 16 years of them. She died on my 18th birthday. That was five months ago now, but so much has happened since then. Like the Siren invasion, mass genocide, and another infection. But, like I said, to explain how things are now, I have to tell you about the past. So to start that story I have to go back about a year ago, when I was pulled into my group. Only three years after the first case of infection.

_____________ 1 Year Earlier _____________

"Hey, you alive?" A voice called from somewhere above me. I slowly strained to open my eyes. The rumble of the building on top of me made it hard to see anything. "Ah, you are. Good." I rubbed my eyes a little and tried opening them again. This time my vision was still blurry, but better than before. I could make out a slim female figure standing in front of me. "Sylwia, get up. You can't nap all day." The voice said again. It finally registered in my head. It was Autumn.

"Autumn, I wasn't napping. I got hit in the head." I replied feeling the back of my head where a large rock had hit me. 'Good, only dried blood.' I thought to myself relieved. Any open woods out here would increase risk of infection.

"I know sleepyhead." She joked again then held out her hand to help. Grabbing it I got up and pushed the rubble off of myself.

"Earthquakes are getting stronger." I commented looking around at the crumbled, once two-story building around us.

"Mhmm," Autumn nodded then handed me my bow and the backpack of supplies we gathered the day before. "Ready to go? We only have three more days worth of food. And that's if we don't run into thieves again." Her tone was still somewhat cheerful for having said bad news. A few nights ago we were raided while we were sleeping. They took almost all our food before I woke up and shot an arrow through one of their skulls. That scared them pretty good.

"We'll scavenge for food then we need to find a new place to sleep. A high-rise or a taller building. That earthquake had to of shook up the ocean." I took the bow and put the backpack on and started to pick my way out of the mess of building.

We walked for hours through the plant taken city. Within the short time period the forest had taken over the city and nature took back the land that was its own before. It made it a beautiful place, but very dangerous. Nowadays it wasn't smart to be out in the open. Not just the other people, but the wandering meat sacks and wild, evolving animals. Going slow through the old city, we walked along the tree line. All was swell until shots rang out and gunfire rained down from decaying office buildings.