Down the Road

Chapter 2

~~~~~~~~Chapter 2~~~~~~~~

The epidemic started 6 months ago.

They weren't sure what had caused it at first. It was first contracted by a group of U.S. Marines. They were identified as coming home from South Africa when one of them contracted the disease.

First, his eyes got red, and his heartbeat quickened. He started to lose the ability to communicate, and started shaking uncontrollably. He gained a fever of 107 and vomited several times, and by then the virus had already attacked the cells in his brain and shut down some of his functions. It only took several hours.

He then bit the other soldiers, and the captain, who saw what was happening to the soldiers and his crew, locked them down in the engine room, setting sail for America and hoping to set fire to the boat, sacrificing his own life to prevent the disease from spreading.

If only he would have stayed a few hundred meters out of shore. By the time he set fire to the ship, he was already bitten and several meters outside of Boston Harbor. A neighboring ship, communicating with the captain and heard of the danger, sailed out to get them. But the walkers managed to hop ashore their boat, and by the time they sailed back on land, one member was infected and the soldiers were shot.

The news weren't even sure what to call it. Because they weren't zombies. They weren't even dead. The virus, which researches have concluded as an extremely mutated form of Ebola, travels immediately to the brain, and begins to target certain parts of the brain. And soon you're left with only two functions; eat and breathe. The heart still functions, even if they're not very bright, or very fast. The virus, after two months inside it's host, begins to attack the rest of the body. It causes the blood vessels in the eyes to pop, filling them with blood until they're almost black. The bones weaken, and the organ systems slowly begin to deteriorate.

The movies before the real apocalypse depicted it as a fast movement were only several people were left alive in the world. Actually, it's a pretty slow moving epidemic. The government took out a lot of the initial infected, and most people are smart enough to know who is bitten and who's not. They say that about 500,000 people are infected over the whole United States, and it's pretty rare to encounter a walker. The "zombeism" as they call it, also affects Africa, Mexico, Brazil and Egypt. Many neighboring countries have done their best to contain the disease in the affected areas.

It had only reached our small Pennsylvanian town of Cairo 2 months ago. Like the rest of the country, we still go to school, even though we are surrounded by military force and police. Most people still live in their houses and go to work, but now almost everyone has concealed carry, and probably only half of them are legal. In our town 2 people out of the 20,000 in the country have committed suicide because of fear of the disease. One being my brother Jacob's girlfriend, Emily.

I had such a normal life. My mom was a biologist and my dad was a technician. My 20 year old brother Jacob was halfway into his police academy, and my 19 year old brother Trevor had just came home during his break, a year into becoming a dentist.

I always wanted to be a judge. I loved listening to people's problems. My mom always said I was good at judging people. Maybe that's what has kept me alive so far. But now this whole nation and my future have been ripped, torn and twisted into a horrible mural, and no one is sure how it might end up.

But I know one thing that I will always have, is my family. So know matter what twists and turns my future will take, I know I will always have my family and friends.