27
Prologue
They say the outbreak started small, affecting only a handful of people in an insignificant town in North Carolina, or Arizona, or British Columbia, or Mexico. It all depends on who you ask. No one can seem to agree on the place, but the story's the same. Sometimes I think they just apply whatever place name they can remember from the Old World to the story, to make them feel like they know something.
However it started, what matters is, it spread- all over the country, the continent, the planet. Planes were our demise, I say. So many people from all of the world in such a small place, then spreading out so quickly. It made it easy for the virus to soften the ground. Especially when the Illness can go unseen, asymptomatic for a week.
Even when the crazy set in, no one saw it coming. They didn't know what to look for.
The earliest symptoms are easy to miss: confusion, paranoia, fatigue. Hallucinations. It's easy to convince yourself that there's nothing wrong, at least nothing serious- easy to say there's nothing wrong with your loved ones. Maybe they're just tired, maybe they've gone through a breakup and aren't ready to talk about it, maybe they've been watching too much late night television. The list of excuses is endless.
What comes next is inexcusable. Fevers higher than Old World scientists thought the human brain could handle; bleeding from the mouth and ears, followed quickly by bruises covering every inch of your body and blood seeping from your pores; most of all, there's pain. The ones that don't die will never be the same. In twenty-seven days, everything they knew will cease to be true, everything they were cease to exist. Twenty-seven days of torture, and then the world flips on its axis.
Some call it the end. Others, the beginning.
However it started, what matters is, it spread- all over the country, the continent, the planet. Planes were our demise, I say. So many people from all of the world in such a small place, then spreading out so quickly. It made it easy for the virus to soften the ground. Especially when the Illness can go unseen, asymptomatic for a week.
Even when the crazy set in, no one saw it coming. They didn't know what to look for.
The earliest symptoms are easy to miss: confusion, paranoia, fatigue. Hallucinations. It's easy to convince yourself that there's nothing wrong, at least nothing serious- easy to say there's nothing wrong with your loved ones. Maybe they're just tired, maybe they've gone through a breakup and aren't ready to talk about it, maybe they've been watching too much late night television. The list of excuses is endless.
What comes next is inexcusable. Fevers higher than Old World scientists thought the human brain could handle; bleeding from the mouth and ears, followed quickly by bruises covering every inch of your body and blood seeping from your pores; most of all, there's pain. The ones that don't die will never be the same. In twenty-seven days, everything they knew will cease to be true, everything they were cease to exist. Twenty-seven days of torture, and then the world flips on its axis.
Some call it the end. Others, the beginning.