The End

The disease invaded, making people of this earth, nation, city, sick. The sick mixed within the subways and the streets and the stores of the city, leaving their sticky hand-prints on everything they touched. The crowds touched bare railings and stuck their fingers into the corners of their eyes to itch them. The invasion spread. Half the people in my office were sneezing and coughing, complaining of 'the flu'. They took pills and followed doctor’s orders but no one seemed to get better; the sickness just spread and more and more called off work. The 'flu' made the hospitals pour over with the pale and yellowing figures that stared blankly. I kept them all at arm’s length and worked. I worked to pay bills, I worked to save money, I worked to pay taxes, I worked with the unconscious expectation that tomorrow would be just like today.

And then it happened. The disease that made those people yellow and shake and crowd the hospitals, it turned, it mutated, and all those people--all those sick, glossy eyed humans that filled the city, the nation, the world--they revolted. The sick hungered and the mass of man, the sick and the healthy, turned one upon the other.

When the sick filled the streets and pulled people from their houses to feast on them, the cities burned. I was attacked and I had to fight back. I did ugly things but I had to get out of the city because we were all so wild. It all came crashing down. Society collapsed so quickly--no police, the National Guard and the Military fought hard to preserve the cities and the country but there were too many. The media and the politicians and the armies and all the money, could do nothing. As it shattered, all my friend and I could do was run. We ran and ran, away from the city, out of the suburbs--into the country, into the woods, to the mountain.

It is dark on the mountain and we are alone up here. We hunted the woods for bear at night with spears and assault rifles but our hands became so cold and our skin pulled tight around our bones. It is so hard to get food up here, so when we are so filled with the pain of hunger, we force ourselves into the valley. We scavenge the wasteland, breaking into houses for canned food. We fight wild dogs and ex-soldiers for stale bread. Days ago, I was in an office, working beside you in a tie, civilized, and now the earth is empty--besides the living dead and the marauders--and we are savages, running and fighting with axes and Ak-47s. My world is brutal now and it will be short. But we must survive. Me, my friend, the girl we stole--we will survive. The only passion I have is that human civilization, beauty, may live on. I hope you find these words detailing our survival. It means we might live on.