APOCALYPSE 2025 - CIVIL WAR II

To Seed of Change

The next morning, Maddy was home alone with Stella. Jessica had gone out early to buy some food supplies. The streets were not safe and criminality was at a unprecedented high. People were hungry and alone. Maddy was one of the lucky, as she still had a family to call her own. 

COVID had decimated the country on a macro level. But on a micro level, the devastation had been human and financial. Shortly after the virus mutated in the fall in 2020, entire families had been eliminated. The survivors were angry and bitter at the administration who, at the time, was claiming that the situation was under control and that everybody had been tested. The immediate results had been deaths, by hundreds, every hour. 

Worried by the whereabouts of Jessica, Maddy jumped in the shower while Stella lay down on the floor under the coffee table to color, who also served as a dinner table. 

The water for the shower was not longer hot, lukewarm at the best. It didn't take look for Maddy to be done. She quickly dry up and dressed up with an old pair of jeans and a grey t-shirt. She slid her feet into white Nike sneakers and went to see what Stella had draw. 

"Hey Stella, what is this?" she asked after seeing that the phone book sheet that was used to colored on was filled with people and animals. She could make up a lion, a dog and a cat. She recognized herself, because of the white sneakers. Her aunt and her late husband. 

"It a picture of before. You said you missed it last night", she added looking up at Maddy. 

Maddy's heart skipped a beat. 

"You are right, I do miss it. I wish you could have seen it Stella-Star", she answered. "I could have bring you to Central Park Zoo, to see Gus, the Polar Bear. He was a big teddy bear."

"What happened to him?", asked Stella. 

"He died, Stella-Star. All the animals died. There was nobody to feed them." Maddy still remembered how she felt that there was really no turning back, after the animals had died. Nobody cared. 

Stella took Maddy's face into her hands and looked at her, straight into her eyes. 

"Maddy, what can we do, to make things like you remember?"

Maddy opened her mouth, not knowing what to answer. 

All day, Maddy couldn't stop thinking about her conversation with Stella. 

That night, she lied down on her mat, on the floor between the front door and the bed in which Jessica and Stella slept. 

She closed her eyes and remembered how life was before. When it all started, she was only twelve. Her biggest problem then was what to wear to go to school. Now, her biggest problem was worrying if they would have enough food to last until the next shipment from the Governor. It was staying alive, when the sound of a riot was coming from the streets. 

Would it be crazy, to think that she, a nobody from EoS, could make a difference?