Spookyness

XoRaX

*Credit to the original author*

My parents were the first to fall violently ill from the sickness we now know as XoRax, I can vividly recall my father lying on his bed while his muscles spasmed and he chocked on his own vomit. I stood as his side, frozen in place and refusing to leave as I held back sobs, his pupils dilating until his entire eye was like an inky blackness. He tried to speak, turning his head toward me but opening his mouth only brought forth another torrent of vomit.

I remember saying something, but that detail is lost on me now. I remember staring into his glazed eyes as his shuddering became less pronounced and he was suddenly very still. I let out a wail and ran into my room, unprepared and unwilling to face the truth. My mother was the first to pass, then my older brother who had just turned 17, and finally my father.

I had not considered that I could have caught the disease myself – if it were in fact contagious – I just thought myself lucky, though tragically lucky at that. I fell asleep in the corner, huddled in the blanket that previously kept my mother warm, her perfume made the putrid aroma somewhat tolerable, perhaps just enough so that I could drift off.

I remember a persistent banging next, a series of muffled inquiries from the opposite side of my locked door. They were shouting for survivors, looking fervently for anyone who was still alive despite the breakout. I rushed to the door and unlocked it to face what I would come to identify as the Day-Crew.

Their faces were obscured by large gas masks fitted with some sort of capsule on either side of their cheeks, their breathing was slow and monitored, their voices made nearly impossible to hear over their mechanical wheezing. They were covered from heat to toe in black regulation hazmat material with orange text reading DAY-CREW on their backs.

They ordered me out into the main hall where I managed to catch sight of fourteen other children around my age being told directions and filed into a line-up. Once the entire group had been examined, we began our trek out into the streets which was a vision of chaos and destruction. We had heard the noises of looting and desperation from our homes, but we hadn’t ventured off into the outside world for weeks for fear of catching the sickness ourselves.

There were even more Day-Crew that were burning the bodies that had fallen to the streets , trying to purge the earth while trying to keep away from the resulting fumes. We were silently ushered into the back of a large truck that took us to the south, away from the cities and suburbs and into the dense growth of the forest.

When the van came to a screeching halt, the doors swung open to reveal more Day-Crew, who ushered us out into a forest clearing. We were interrogated about our exposure to anyone with XoRax, and if we felt any symptoms like nausea or vertigo; though we had all witnessed our family members falling ill, and had tried in vain to treat them, we were all perfectly fine in any physical sense.

The Day-Crew initially told us that they were perplexed about our immunity to the sickness, as anyone who came in contact with it was sure to fall ill just hours later, so it was a shock to see some of us that had been living this nightmare for weeks on end. As they administered more tests and asked more questions however, we were told that the immunity was tied with a hormone cell that the disease was using to compromise the immune system, and since we were all too young to have properly developed it, the disease was unable to make us fall ill.

We were told that the Day-Crew wanted to study us, that we would live under the cover of the forest in quarantine, they would hope to extract a cure from our group that could be used to heal the world and rid it of XoRax Disease.

They tried their best to sound positive in light of the situation, but it was obvious that even they were doubtful of their efforts, and that there was no guarantee for any of their tests to follow through.