The Infected: An H1-2M1 Chronicle

Chapter 1

NOW

Once upon a time I was a good person. At least, I think I was a good person. No, I know I was a good person. I am a good person. I AM a good person. I AM! Even as I sit here covered in someone else's blood, I know I am a good person. If you would have told me five years ago I would be here, I wouldn't have believed you. Actually, I didn't believe the one person that tried to warn me back when it was starting.

The end of the world didn't happen overnight. There was no zombie apocalypse that ended humanity. The saved didn't disappear and leave the rest of us behind. No, it happened in stages. But when the world fell apart, it happened quickly, not over night, but quickly.

First the American Dollar fell. I don't know why. I simply don't remember. It happened years before the true end. Some of the older ones might remember if you can find one; most of them are dead. I was just a kid when the dollar fell. At first it wasn't a big deal. People were poor. People were always poor. No one really knew how bad things were. The government tried their best to cover up the disaster we were in. The media was so obsessed with celebrities that they forgot what true journalism was.

Mom and Pop stores shut down all the time. This was nothing new, but when McDonalds and Wal*Mart closed its doors people noticed. They were the richest companies in America, and they filed for bankruptcy. It was big news, but people still didn't understand what was happening. After that, small businesses began re-emerging. People saw it as a return to better times. It was the end of big business and the start of what made America great. They thought it would turn the economy around. But then, the banks started foreclosures on properties. They called it another housing crisis. The government tried to help. New laws were passed that allowed people to stay in their homes, to rent them from the bank, until they were re-sold. That sounded great, but no one was buying. Eventually, people stopped paying rent and became squatters in their own homes. There was nothing the banks could do. It was bad for business, but a block of empty homes wasn't going to sell.

The banks tried to recover, but no one had money to put into the bank. The people that did started buying gold and silver instead of trusting the banks. Almost the entire country was homeless...and hungry. The government tried to help, but that help never ventured out of the city. What was once known as Urban Jungles became Urban Deserts. A movement began that turned empty lots, parks, even roof tops, into gardens, but it wasn't enough. In rural America the farmers were on their own. From what I could tell, those of us that lived outside of the major cities were better off. We knew how to be self-sufficient. From our perspective we didn't need, nor did we want, big government.

Mom and Pop stores understood what this Depression meant. Money was no longer our number one currency. We exchanged goods for goods. My father was a doctor. After the fall he went back to working for the hospital, but he kept his private-practice open. He treated everyone. Not just those who could afford it. He was a pediatrician, but became a general practitioner when he found out he was the only doctor willing to take an apple pie as payment. We received many different forms of payments; homemade dinners, handmade clothes, shoes, jewelry, lawn service, car repairs. A woman cleaned our house for a week to pay for her son's exam. I didn't even know you could move a fridge to clean behind it before she arrived. When my brother and I were both young he would mostly trade time. My mother passed away when I was still an infant. My brother and I spent a lot of time with various families in the community while my father was away at the hospital.

But that wasn't the end of the world. That we could have recovered from, eventually. We did it before, but...the last time we fell into a Great Depression, we didn't pull the rest of the world with us. When big business fell, a lot of people in third world countries lost their jobs. The big American Companies that had grown rich shipping jobs overseas were gone. the end of the world came with the sickness, Human Mentis—Morbum or H1-2M1. My father called them the infected; I just call them sickos now. Everyone seems to have a different name for them. I think it truly started before the fall of the dollar, but we had resources back then. Resources used to cover it up. If we still had those resources after the fall, then maybe the sickness wouldn't have spread the way it did. Maybe we could have found a cure.