The Gray Cold

Prolouge

        March 21st

        "I’m awake! Shut up"
        I shout at my alarm almost everyday before falling back asleep and almost missing school. But today was different, I hadn’t known what, but it was. I was awake before my alarm even went off, I still had 3 minutes.
        I passed it off as a dream and turned the alarm off so I could perform my morning ritual to get ready for school. 10 minute shower, school uniform, take the dog out then eat before I trekked down the road to the bus stop and go to school. But something was different, something was…wrong. My mom was sleeping like she had been the last few months, a side effect of the illness that infected almost all of the world.
        “Lucky me” I whispered and rolled my eyes. Out of the 93% of the human race that was infect I’d been immune. Nobody knew why either because all the doctors and scientist had fallen ill.
Across the hall, from my ill mother, was my room, the same as it always been, messy and familiar. Beside my room was my younger brother, who had also fallen ill, rather late into the pandemic, who was too weak to go to school was sleeping. Across from him was my youngest brother’s room. He was the first person to fall ill to the disease in my family and was too weak to fight it, and it took his life.
        For some reason death never fazed me. His funeral was sad but I never cried about his death, about my best friend’s death, about my grandmother’s or favourite teacher, all the deaths the disease had taken and before the disease, never broke me. 

        He died in his bed, sick but not in pain. I never believed in heaven or ghosts but I hoped where ever he was, he was happy.
        Down the steps.
        Through the hall.
        Into the kitchen.
        I made my morning cereal and poured a glass of orange juice. I was saving the last of this cereal for something, not sure what it was but I had been saving it. Since my mom was a single parent when she fell ill I had to go shopping and get things done, the government sent ‘sick dollars’ as they called it to families that fell ill and had an immune member that couldn’t work but could care for themselves: me. But the money isn’t much and I had allergy to wheat so I couldn’t buy my cereal and have enough for money for the rest of the week before the next check came, so I saved the last of the cereal.
        “We’ll today’s as good as any, I mean I’m not ill so…”
        Then it hit me.
        “Where’s the dog!” panicked and afraid I shouted his name only to find him dead in his dog bed. The illness got him too.
        With a wave of nausea I buried him in the back yard and made my way to the bus. Today the bus was full, not that different than any other day, the ill who were strong enough to move going to the hospital for medication or food, afraid of suddenly becoming to weak in the middle of the road in their cars. Only the immune were allowed to drive, meaning the busses ran once every hour and there were not that many people to give assistance in stores or businesses. But today it was only healthy people, 10 or 15 of them. You could easily tell an Ill away from the Immune, their skin was a pasty grey and the Immune was a normal flesh colour. The Ill’s eyes were glassy and their lips cracked, faces hollow and they were impossibly skinny. It was shocking to see this many Immune in one spot because they were so rare, 1 in 1000 people were immune to the illness, the Gray Cold as they started calling it from the completion of the Ill’s skin.
        “Something is defiantly off about today” I mumbled under my breath as I boarded the bus and made my way to school.
        With most of the population too weak to drive and the immune too small of a population to cause traffic, the street lights don’t work. So the ride to school is always fast, 5 minutes instead of the old 20 minutes. So I usually stopped off at the park for a few minutes then walked the rest of the way to school.
        School is always empty now. Me the immune teacher from the UK and my two bestfriends who were also immune. André and Opal were in our meeting spot under the west staircase.
        “Honestly I don’t know why we still go to school, its just the three of us and that teacher.”
        “André, shut up” Opal and I were both tired of André always starting the day like this.
        “Yes André, we’ve had enough of this shit seriously, we know that this disease leaves everyone at home and that we are the only ones here but you don’t need to point it out”
        “Thank you, Trevor” Opal always was like this, but I kind of liked it, I guess I’ve always like that.
I’m not sure why but I like Opal, maybe its the graceful way she moved or they way she talked, I’m not sure but I had read once that when you liked someone and couldn’t explain it, it was love. Opal and I haven’t even been friends that long, a year maybe a year and a half, but from the moment we met, I knew it, I felt it.
        Opal and André went into a heated conversation about something the Brit was teaching us and I just didn’t have the heart to pay attention so I turned my attention to the outside world, and I saw it. An Ill, there was nothing special about him, normal illness traits, grey skin, stick figure skinny, hunched over. It wasn’t odd for the Ill to be out but it was odd for them to be this close to the school, he was too far away to see who he was, but just close enough to see the traits of the sickness. I watched him move across the field for a while, then he threw up, nothing interesting just gross, and he fell over and stopped moving.
        “Do…do you think he’s dead?” Opal's voice snapped me back to reality.
        I hadn’t even realized that Opal and André had stopped talking and were watching the man like I had.
        “I-” I began but the bell went off and we started moving up the stairs to class.
        “Why is our class on the third floor? Its not like the other rooms are in use”
        “André. SHUT UP”
        “I’m just sayin-“
        “No one cares, just get to class”
        I managed one last look at the Ill who had fallen and saw he started getting back up. “I guess not” I had mumbled under my breath and continued moving up the stairs.

        “Okay. Students, open your text books to page…”
        I just stopped listening to her. Why did we have to learn about something so useless in our lives, pollinomonals. Ah yes, the third degree of this number is the reason we are all sick! I hated this. I just put my head down and stopped listening, really I did this all the time and nobody cared less, sometimes the Brit just told us to do the work if we wanted and she just put on a movie or something and went to the staff bathroom to cry. I guess today she was trying because she was actually teaching the lesson.
        “Now if you take…sir, excuse me sir, you can’t be up here, you need to go home and rest.”
        Now I picked my head up. In the doorway was an Ill, he was familiar…but I couldn’t see his face, he was looking down just standing there…odd.
        “Sir I’m going to have to ask you to leave” the Brit started towards the door to scold the man and he looked up, instantly I knew who he was and I thanked whatever sick god there was that the Brit hadn’t moved any more than two steps. The Ill was the man from the field and I could tell by his posture and hair, I always payed attention to the details, it was how I’d been able stay ahead of everyone and become the top of my class. His face was covered in blood, probably from when he threw up in the field.
        “Oh my god! Sir are you alright? Let me call you an ambulance just sit down. Sir?”
        She moved towards him to guild him to a chair and I knew what was happening, his grey eyes, the blood, his unresponsive everything. I got up and yelled at the Brit to get away from him but it was to late. The man became alive and bit into her neck. I grabbed onto the fire extinguisher and bashed his head in. And I knew what would happen. I lived and breathed Zombie lore. Any book, film or game you could think of I’ve seen, read, played and owned. The Brit was going to turn but how could I be sure. This was real life, not a game, but zombies don’t exist.
        “Quick, get to the science department, there aren’t any windows and the doors are heavy! André, help me move the Brit” I felt bad about not remembering her name but it doesn’t matter now. There was one more reason I wanted to go to the science department…the chemical locker…the cage where we lock away all the chemicals for the night, we could put the Brit in there and wait, maybe being immune to the initial disease we’d be immune to the Turning.
        “Sa-Sarah…My name…is Sarah”
        “Sarah, everything is going to be fine” I lied…I had to. And she died. Hopefully she didn’t turn.
        And I woke up.