FEAR

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Joseph Shaunessy sat in the park. It was peaceful this early Saturday morning at 4 am. No schoolchildren about today chatting animatedly in groups, fresh off the bus into the busy town and calling in to early opening pie and cake shops. Five day a week workers were enjoying a lie-in. Too early for the market wives and weekend shopping to begin. The June weather was dull and overcast and rain was forecast later. Not too cold though to sit on a park bench with yesterday's newspaper taken from his mac pocket and sat on. He had read all the news, the sports results; knew of the latest wild shootings and drug busts; the court cases for muggings, rapes and knife crimes. The sudden unnecessary murders and vicious offences with relatively low sentences. News seemed more bad than good but that was mostly because he felt so low. More than low! He was desperate.

'What a world!' thought Joe. He couldn't believe people could get up to such mischief and wrong-doing. Then he thought again! If anyone could see inside his head they would find him a guilty man too. He gasped and felt a sharp pain in his chest. What on earth was he going to do! How had everything gone so suddenly wrong for a law-abiding citizen and how was he to escape from the heavy burden now on his shoulders. He had been unwise for sure but how could a small slip lead to this! He lowered his head into his hands and could have cried. Which way to turn – and was there a way out?

It had all seemed so great a few short years ago. Now he was all but finished. He looked back to the days he had watched local and big rugby games in this very park. There had been carefree sports days in the large comprehensive school nearby. The school didn't possess a swimming pool but there was one in the leisure centre near the rugby ground. He remembered the joy of learning to swim and a quiet Granddad slipping him a £5 note when he won his first youthful medal. Then his Dad smiling proudly at him and clapping loudly the first time he won a race one school sports day; his name in the local paper. The shouts and claps in the youth club for winning the local youth half-marathon. Then his successful A levels and the promise of University and another way of life. For although he loved his home town and his family, Joe was ready to conquer the world if necessary. Spread his wings and make a worth-while choice of career and lifestyle. Then it had all gone haywire. Not only for him but a whole generation.

The change came like a bolt out of the blue and hit the entire world. Almost two years on and it was still being called the great pandemic. It had raged mightily through all lands, killing millions of people and still rearing its ugly head when conditions suited it. Even that hadn't been completely worked out; it seemed to cope with both warm and cold weather, although the past two years had been relatively temperate; no burning summer or freezing winter. No sign either of a hopeful breakthrough with a complete vaccine cure. It could be ended quicker with certain drugs it had been ascertained; in fact, several were in circulation now but a one-off injection of a single curing vaccine for all and affordable for all, well it still seemed the stuff of dreams. The underworld had made fortunes worldwide in the quickest and most effective of the most wanted drugs. The whole affair though was still ultimately a mystery because the horrid virus could seemingly overcome all that was thrown at it, no matter what was tried. People had reached a state of despair, the only hope obtained when someone survived the odds.

This vicious, elusive little bug was still the airborne evil it had always been. Joe likened it to a poisonous, invisible chameleon. Some people could survive it more than once. In others it killed rapidly, even the strongest male. Yet at times little old and fragile ladies could survive. People of colour seemed to succumb quicker and that had been investigated. Others survived with a price to pay in their health afterwards. Strong men sometimes died within a few hours despite all doctors could do. Medics died too. Others lived for years tending the sick almost daily. Sometimes a break-through seemed to materialise but only to be thwarted once more. The old suffered the most in both sexes but noticeably older men were the main victims

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