Miami 2017

Prologue: The Flames Were Everywhere

June 1st, 2282

Saja Bashir had seen enough bodies for one lifetime, thank you very much. In fact, if you asked her, she would tell you she had seen enough bodies for several lifetimes, maybe even a hundred lifetimes! And that was more death than anyone should ever have to see, in her opinion.

Of course, no one ever did ask Saja her opinion, but that was just fine with her; the sixty-four year old was a lone scavenger, venturing into the community formerly known as Flanders, New Jersey only to stock up on seeds and other supplies she couldn't find or grow for herself. (Books of any kind were a particular guilty pleasure.) At the moment, she was making her way back to the lean-to she had constructed in a sheltered ditch just a mile or two outside of town, hidden from sight of the main road. When she had arrived in the area three years before, the people of Flanders had offered her a place to stay, but owing to the frequency for those who were afflicted with the septilence to pass through on their death march to York, she had declined.

Some days, Saja felt like the Angel of Death himself was looming over her weary shoulders as he hungered for one soul among the millions that had been collected in the past couple centuries. However, though she never thought of fleeing from him, she still wanted to die on her own terms, which meant she would stay as far away from infected travelers as she could.

The septimus pestilence, or more-commonly called 'septilence,' was named so due to its symptom period. Beginning with a mild cough and fever-like symptoms, the seven-day/seven-night virus gradually worsened in the span of a week, progressing to the point where those afflicted would vomit up blood and the lining of their stomachs, and culminating ninety-three percent of the time in a very painful death.

Based on the state of the survivors, many considered the dead to be the luckier ones.

These past few months had been the worse for breakouts as far as the news from travelers passing through the town was indicating. The population of the Eastern Seaboard, once 112 million strong, had dwindled to not even a tenth of its former size, and with reports of a resurgence of the disease, that number was sure to drop even lower.

Saja had been careful to only walk into town during the evening, when the sick were weaker and less likely to accost and infect her on the street. Already, she imagined little flecks of the virus, little malignant particles, floating in the tainted air, mobbing newcomers and gradually wearing down the inhabitants. That was why she wore a cloth over her nose and mouth, as well as her shayla.

It had been very warm the evening she had found three ragged and timeworn books in the rubble of a demolished house. Sweat had glistened on her forehead while she searched, the setting sun still heating her clothes to sweltering temperatures, when she had come across the sudden sight of three dusty covers. They were in need of some mending, and the thought filled her heart with joy at the challenge; Saja truly loved books. She believed that through the past, the future could be predicted, and that someday, looking to the first settlers would help in rebuilding society to what it had once been.

However, the books she had found were not quite so exceptional; two were poetry collections and one was a paperback romance novel, but Saja had no way of knowing that; though she spoke fluent English and had done so since childhood, she couldn't actually read the language. As well her parents had taught her the Arabic scriptures of their Holy Book by mouth, not by words on the page, and it was memorization that allowed her to recite certain passages perfectly, rather than comprehension.

But to Saja, a lonely woman getting on in her years and luckier than most to have lived for so long, books were her everything, and she opened one of the poetry collections to pretend she was reading it in the fading daylight as her feet directed her journey home.