Pathogenic Pandemic

Chapter One

The year is 2025. What used to be known as oceans, seas, and rivers are now green, black, and full of a deadly flesh-eating bacterial sludge. Any and all creeks, streams, and other small bodies of water have long since become dry land. What were once beautiful trees, prairies and grasslands are now black, brown, and dead remnants of what they once were.

There have been no blue sunny skies in over a year, and the sun has become trapped behind the endless hovering clouds of gray. At night, the same can be said of the moon and the stars; there have been no visible signs of either in over one year's time; just complete and utter darkness.

As of today, the world's current human population is unknown, but one thing is for certain, whatever is left of the Earth's wildlife is near extinction; animals that didn't become a source of food for humans were preyed upon by what was and is seemingly wiping out us all.

From a survivor's perspective, of the people that are still among the living, we don't know how many others exist and we have long since learned to appreciate not knowing. However, every so often someone risks their life to come outside for personal reason, and others unwilling to take the same risk hope to receive their dose of faith that other survivors remain.

According to those still around to tell the tale, this all began in the year of 2020, when a mysterious pathogenic virus swept across the globe, in what became known as the biggest global pandemic in history. It was rumored to have taken its first human victim in the middle east as early as 2018, but by the time it was noticeable to the rest of the world, it was late 2019/early 2020.

As an endless amount of questions from people all over the world began to place pressure on those in power, the initial response was that the virus was just a slightly stronger strand of the influenza virus. This temporarily calmed the majority of those with questions, until they noticed the death toll rising in alarming numbers, and that there were no definite symptoms, unlike the flu.

In order to control the narrative, a small group of world leaders gathered and formulated a plan to try controlling the citizens view of the pandemic. However, only one world leader would follow through with the plan of delivering the deceitfully misleading misinformation; The President of the United States.

On the agreed upon day by the leaders of the world, in several countries, billions of people on several continents watched as they were told that there was nothing to be alarmed about. Other leaders remained in their corners of the world, silently shaking their heads as the arrogant U.S. President stood aside the director of the C.D.C, Dr. Franklin Utah.

The news media and viewers commented on social media how Dr. Utah visibly cringed while reinforcing statements made by the President. This was very alarming behavior considering so many people were on edge about the many unknowns concerning the virus, and ultimately, the people were unsure of how to protect themselves from it. Some media outlets appeared to ignore science, dismiss fact-checking, and instead chose to carry on the agendas of their favorite politicians by downplaying the severity of the virus.

As a member of the Scientific community, Dr. Utah knew better than to ignore the science, but with his job security seemingly on the line, he assured the public that the entire thing would just fade away without a cure being necessary; mirroring what the President had previously stated. This would be the last public address for Utah, as he said all that was required of him to say, and the faith of the public had appeared to be restored in the eyes of the President's administration.

Apparently, Utah had fulfilled his contractual obligations in a non-disclosure agreement given to him by the President's attorney, so after giving his final public statement, Utah disappeared from the limelight. In retrospect, it was probably for the best that he remained silent considering the events that followed.

Meanwhile, many citizens of the world scrambled and nearly drained their finances in order to prepare themselves for what may come next. It had been rumored on social media pages that there would be a mandated lock-down coming soon, and people would be legally obligated to remain indoors to quarantine. At the same time, martial law was to be implemented, so it was best for people to gather as many available home essentials while they had the opportunity.

It was said that if martial law was in order that it would be accompanied by a curfew, meaning that many citizens would either be out of work or risk damaging cuts to their employment hours, so it was best for them to make immediate preparations. While some people followed the opinions of their own conspiracy theorists and misinformed political spokespeople, some others did not believe that the pandemic was a political ploy, and for the sake of their families, they did not hesitate to give it their best efforts to stockpile necessities at any cost.

As employers and workers associated with public service establishments such as restaurants, bars, and amusement parks were uncertain of how they would maintain, many stores and markets were flooded with more people than they could handle. These places found themselves unable to keep their shelves stocked, and with measures being put into place to limit employees as well as patrons, the outcome was chaotic.

Many of the establishments began needing assistance from the police to maintain crowd control. The demand for necessities overwhelmingly outweighed the supply, so a lot of angry, panicky, and upset customers were not very pleased with being told that would be unable to get their essential items. The results of the public outrage were fights, massive protests, brawls. shootings. and murders. The fedeal government told state officials that they had a limited time to get things under control or the National guard would be deployed.

Members of local law enforcement around the country assured the media and its viewers that these acts of violence were only random occurrences, but soon there was no denying it was an increasingly serious problem. These events began taking place inside of the establishments as well as their parking lots over the simplest of items.

For those at home watching on tv and their phones, the random occurrences of violence proved to be temporary visual entertainment, until they were out in public and began experiencing these acts firsthand. Some onlookers watched in fear as the lack of taking earlier necessary precautions caused them to scavenge for scarce necessities while stores were price gouging. Withthe virus continuing to spread, people were struggling to gather resources toprotect themselves, going out in large numbers unprepared, and the result wasmany of them contracting the virus and dropping like flies.

As necessities became scarcer, violence increased along with the worldwide panic, and many of those who had sought to be informed and make preparations started losing patience when consistently encouraged by lawmakers to stay calm.

It appeared that these people in power were not aware of how on-edge the citizens were. There are few things more aggravating and infuriating to people living in the middle of chaos than hearing words like "calm", "peace", and "everything is under control". Especially when those words are coming from wealthy individuals lacking the financial woes and job security issues as the common folk, and those same people claiming that "everything is under control" were sitting in huge homes surrounded by bodyguards, while average citizens were living paycheck to paycheck in the middle of an epidemic.

This was only the beginning, and the citizens living during that time period believed that they were experiencing the worst of things, but they had no idea of what was to come.