Abjure

Death and sickness are rampant in this new world... 

The plague that massacred the earth started in the spring and summer of 2071.  People called it the Vex pandemic. 

The pandemic was cruel.
Spread only by touch. This virus caused instant sterility. 

For some people, it meant death.  If you were younger than  16 or older than 35 when you contracted it. You died. Children were put in sanctuary cities to keep them from death and hidden from people. Old people were wiped out. Mainly 16-35-year-old people were all that still lived on after the first wave in summer 2072.

If you were of the safer age of a 16-35-year-old who contracted the Vex virus, you had 30 days before a positive test could be made by hair follicle would develop or instantly with a blood test.  Tests weren't widely available and most only could get the hair follicle test. It was madness. 
Those aged 16-35 lived who contracted it could not produce children became a lifelong carrier, who would eventually die automatically by age 36.
 Mass infertility was the biggest fear people had currently.
I forgot what a child looked like. They were all sent to the sanctuary cities.

Fall 2075

Living in Spokane, Washington, was a nightmare I had to escape. Lawlessness was the rule. My name is Stella Porter. I'm a healthy 32-year-old American woman trying to flee to Canada with only a few belongings.  My only hope was Canada, whose borders were watertight, and were offering people who had babies shelter and food. I wanted to have a child and the benefit of shelter and food was tempting.   

Governments scrambled to make sense of it, change and adapt. The way they kept control was to force mandatory documentation, blood tests, and health papers for all people: Scrutiny and harsh laws to keep their country thriving and safe.  That meant surgically putting a screen with a chip into everyone's wrist with health and country information on their wrists.  I got a chipped screen last week. It didn't hurt as bad as some people said, to get tagged.

 During this period of instability, the grocery store shelves were empty and people's houses were no longer safe because the cops didn't patrol anymore. The United States was in disarray. I gave up my American citizenship to walk to Canada. I had all my good jewelry, stylish Givenchy coat, best suit from Chanel, and even matching shoes. That's all I own in this world. Abandoning my house and car was easier than you'd think. Since the looting, I hadn't felt safe once having a belonging.

I rode open-air transport to the border to stand in a line many miles long.

So, now I stand in front of the long line to go over to Alberta with documents of good health. Fear and adrenaline of not getting in swarmed my mind. I looked to see the end of the line about a mile away.   I looked back at my face in my hand mirror. I looked pretty. Scared, but pretty. All they cared about was my health status, though. I had no sickness and I could still have children at 32. The safest people were a healthy married couple. They had free housing as long as they started a family right away. The population of the earth had dropped drastically. Single people worked their asses off. You were a custodian, cook, morgue duty as a body incinerator, etc... Technically, I'd be anything to have law and order, but morgue duty frightened me. Still, food was free to all who lived in the breeding centers. A lot of illegal shit was going down around us with contaminated people trying to cross the border with false documentation or just be smuggled in. There was inviolable security in this. Nowhere was friendly but your home. I no longer had a home and long since had been without family. Everyone was dying in my neighborhood and I got a call about my job as a seamstress (to the rich), to not come to work. My boss, Mr. Salton, said he would meet me in the province of Alberta, Canada and we would go on his yacht to Australia.  It seemed far-fetched, but he was rich.

All alone, I stood as a single woman in line, so very unsure of my future. Early on, I had signed in my name as an applicant to live in a processing center somewhere in Alberta, Canada. The guards watched me join the miles-long line of desperate people, which was a vast majority of single people.