Day 675

Not everyone changed, not all at once like the movies. First they said it was some new flu strain only found in some reservoirs up North, then they said it was carried by mosquitoes and then in the final few weeks of decent civilisation they said it was airborne.

There was never much of an explanation given as to why it adapted or if it was multiple strains of some new kind of illness. All we knew was that five years ago all broadcasting stopped - just dead halted and left us to deal with what we called River Flu.

It didn't kill you, that would have been too kind. Instead it made you hypersensitive to everything, drove people stark mad within a month. Those of us who don't have it yet (touch wood that it stays that way) are vastly outnumbered. The sick stay in the dark, in the quiet and the warm, all huddled together wherever they can and foraging only at night.

Even the wind sets them off sometimes, whole swarms of them just start running away from it. They tear through anything and anyone in their way until they reach a place of safety. In all honesty we don't blame them, they can't help it but at the same time they hoard all the supplies and rely on their pack to guard them leaving the rest of us for dead.

The latest place we've taken to heading to is the old hospital. At this point we're sick and tired of tiptoeing around at midday in the hopes that their sunglasses aren't strong enough or carrying torches to scare them off. At one point we threw apples at them, laughing as loudly as we could because firstly an apple a day scares the hypos away and secondly the loud noise sent them scurrying off as far from us as they could. It was a pretty good strategy.

Then we got sick too but not like them.  We're losing our senses -  like theirs went haywire, ours are numbing to nothing. Half of our camp is already near comatose with everything turning a sickly shade of grey as it partially shuts down. People are beginning to panic and wonder how they could possibly survive like this, with such a major disadvantage against the hypos.

If they didn't seem supernatural before they certainly were now. At least a couple of people have it figured out or so they think. If they can't feel pain, if they don't tire easily and if they still have mostly functional lungs they've begun to act as our shields. They stumble in like berserkers, sending hypos scattering like bowling pins while we run in behind them to take what we need.

We've formed a new society based on this dichotomy, calling it All-Or-None. With this new strain about everything's been thrown further off-kilter. Uninfected are rare and fast becoming extinct but while we're here we'll write down what we can and avoid the skirmishes between hypos and beserkers. Who knows, maybe we'll outlast them all.