Back then, though, all we knew was that the cows were dying and we were safe.
It all changed when Beth got stung by nettles when we were out. It was the four of us as always, a spur-of-the-moment decision as always and all we wanted to do was kill time and maybe pick blackcurrants on the way back. The weather was perfect for a walk in the woods, bright sunny and not at all how we expected the end of the world to begin.
Sure we'd all heard from the local news station that livestock were dying from something called bovine yersinia pestis but the news had jokingly called it the Moo-bonic Plague. They claimed it was such an odd strain that there was no way it could possibly infect a human and that even if it somehow did we had the cure for the human strain, adapting it wouldn't be difficult.
Of course now we know that's a load of bullshit, they had no clue what they were dealing with and they still haven't found a cure. We're just being left to it at this point and expected to either die or miraculously be immune so that they can claim this was their plan all along.
When Beth got stung we grabbed dock leaves and thought no more of it. We were young and didn't know much beyond that in terms of medical aid. She didn't even notice her lymph nodes developing into buboes, she just thought it was the flu.then her family got sick too, then her neighbours and it spread from there.
When we found out we were glad that we hadn't seen her in weeks, assumed we'd managed to avoid it altogether until Meg stopped coming to school too. Slowly but surely our class dropped like flies on a hot windowsill, dragging their families down with them.
This isn't like the old plague, the one we learned about in history class. It's adapted since then and all the news is saying is that scientists are working on a vaccine - the one they claimed they'd never need to make and was basically made already.
Out of the four of us I'm the last one left alive and I know I won't last much longer. Everything hurts and everywhere you go just smells like rotting meat. There are too many bodies and not enough living people to bury them.
I'm going to lie down in the garden now, with the rest of my family.
It all changed when Beth got stung by nettles when we were out. It was the four of us as always, a spur-of-the-moment decision as always and all we wanted to do was kill time and maybe pick blackcurrants on the way back. The weather was perfect for a walk in the woods, bright sunny and not at all how we expected the end of the world to begin.
Sure we'd all heard from the local news station that livestock were dying from something called bovine yersinia pestis but the news had jokingly called it the Moo-bonic Plague. They claimed it was such an odd strain that there was no way it could possibly infect a human and that even if it somehow did we had the cure for the human strain, adapting it wouldn't be difficult.
Of course now we know that's a load of bullshit, they had no clue what they were dealing with and they still haven't found a cure. We're just being left to it at this point and expected to either die or miraculously be immune so that they can claim this was their plan all along.
When Beth got stung we grabbed dock leaves and thought no more of it. We were young and didn't know much beyond that in terms of medical aid. She didn't even notice her lymph nodes developing into buboes, she just thought it was the flu.then her family got sick too, then her neighbours and it spread from there.
When we found out we were glad that we hadn't seen her in weeks, assumed we'd managed to avoid it altogether until Meg stopped coming to school too. Slowly but surely our class dropped like flies on a hot windowsill, dragging their families down with them.
This isn't like the old plague, the one we learned about in history class. It's adapted since then and all the news is saying is that scientists are working on a vaccine - the one they claimed they'd never need to make and was basically made already.
Out of the four of us I'm the last one left alive and I know I won't last much longer. Everything hurts and everywhere you go just smells like rotting meat. There are too many bodies and not enough living people to bury them.
I'm going to lie down in the garden now, with the rest of my family.
No comments:
Post a Comment