It’s been almost a year and a half since the lockdown was implemented. The scourge has taken over the entire world. Darkness and silence engulfs the streets and the skies, there are no souls, no cars, no airplanes, all there is left are walking, running corpses. Cities are overrun by them, there’s little space for the living. There’s no government anymore, the law is now the law of the jungle, you fight to survive, if you can’t, you die.
It started about two years back with an outbreak of a virus in the most populated country in the world. It was a highly infectious virus, but wasn’t really that lethal. Aged individuals of over 50 were the ones at maximum risk. The death rate spiked up in a few weeks. The young mostly survived and recovered. However, it spread through the entire world, in a couple of weeks. The numbers of the infected kept rising and with it the death rates also started spiking up above normal in countries all over the world. About four months later the virus was finally detected in our country too. The positive cases were just two in the beginning. Slowly day by day we all felt true horror of the virus when entire states were infected. We were still relatively safer than other countries, a very long lockdown was implemented as soon as a decent number of cases were reported. It lasted for 4 full months. The entire world had now started to recover from the damages. But this was just the first phase, little did we know of the things that were yet to come.
In a small town in Bihar, a little boy was found feeding on a lady’s body, in self-defence the locals had to put the boy down so no one else got hurt. The boy’s body was sent to Delhi for research, the locals said they had never seen anything like this before and so did the scientists and doctors that looked at the boy’s corpse. He was described to be similar to a rabid dog.
After a few days of research, inside the boy was found a variation of the same virus that took the world by storm. The older virus was also found in the boy. The scientists were baffled at the sight of this. While running a background test on the boy, it was discovered that the boy’s name was Kuwar Singh, a survivor of the virus who had recovered and had been declared safe and healthy.
More cases of cannibalistic citizens came under the radar. The news vent viral and videos started popping up on Youtube. Some ridiculed this and didn’t believe it saying it’s merely a prank. But this was the truth, it was actually happening. The government put a lockdown once again and the collected data was sent to the neighbouring countries for further research for a cure. It was found that similar cases had been reported in all other countries. This was immediately declared as a worldwide crisis, almost every single country put lockdown onto itself. Transport was stopped immediately. The army was deployed into the cities, soldiers were heavily armed. The police had little to no role here now. The situation was much worse than before, the army was not needed to implement the lockdown but to protect the civilians from the walking dead.
Gunshots were heard every now and then, screams of those hideous creatures echoed in the night. Electricity stations were manned at first for entire weeks, but soon due to the dangers of both the day and the night and the scarcity of fuel it was decided that electricity well be there only for 4 hours daily. The soldiers slowly lessened in strength, more and more civilians were turning into mindless monsters by the day. Despite the fear, people had to come out on regular intervals for supplies, and during this time they get infected or are eaten to death, the latter seems much better in my opinion, I wouldn’t want myself to be walking around town eating brains out, I am either dead or alive, nothing in between.
More and more of the higher authorities were attacked day by day, this was the situation of all the countries, how do I know? A few of the brave news reporters risked their lives and stayed at their channels’ office and telecasted whatever news they had about the current situation. Or maybe they were just stuck there and had nothing else to do but tell the whole world what the fuck was happening all around. Soon a time came when soldiers, police officers, and every other individual just gave up on it and did everything they could to save only themselves, they gave no fucks about others’ lives being at stake, risking their own lives was on option they weren’t brave enough to take.
Presently there is no government anymore, the leaders aren’t dead or infected but they are too scared to even continue rescue campaigns and shit, they have their own lives to care about, and I don’t blame them it’s only human nature to care oneself. The law keepers are now nothing but rats and scavengers that are too scared to come out. The civilians are no different, we are all just scared little rats in front of this virus’ wrath. Our town feels like a ghost town now, with only zombies walking on the streets, but we are here, hiding in buildings, houses, any place that we find.
News channels rarely come live these days, but word is that there’s research centres all over the world that are working to find the cure. I don’t know if that’s true, but if this is false and is only being telecasted for the sake of giving hope to people, it really wasn’t doing that good of a job. Back then I had no hope, and I knew that my death wouldn’t make any difference.
In the first few days of the apocalyptic lockdown, instructions were being broadcasted regarding how to save oneself from being infected. With these instructions also came a little bit of basic knowledge about the cause of this disease or whatever it is. The scientists anticipated that the virus was actually a biological weapon, genetically engineered and stuff like that and that the virus somehow mutated and evolved into this highly sophisticated virus that could control an organism’s minds to some extent. However this theory was then dropped because the same mutation couldn’t have occurred all around the world at the same time, it was then realized that this was actually the second stage of the virus’ life cycle. The mode of transmission was the same, body fluids, but in addition to that, it was said that these mindless individuals bite. So a bite is a very definite cause of infection, releasing the virus into the bloodstream in a rather direct fashion. The virus worked slowly but drastic changes were seen in the individuals, and one of the symptoms were regular seizures. The virus took different amounts of time to take over with each individual but on an average 2 days were enough for the person to turn if bitten, it could however take more or less. The instructions were to stay away from the infected at any cost, and for this very unique situation we were given the permission to kill anyone that has been bitten because there is no known cure and there is no other choice but to give the infected a merciful death or else let them turn and then kill infect the others around them as well. We were told to wear full face masks that were specially made in mass that were distributed by the army. These masks were made of a special kind enforced plastic with filters inside of it. The virus wasn’t airborne so we were told that these masks are only necessary if there is an encounter with the infected, and we were told to take special care to not lose them. The final and most important those instructions were to keep a weapon by our side, always.
Everything was pretty merry and joyful before all of this started. I had given my final exams and I was about to go to college, but I guess education is of lesser importance now. I might sound harsh and insensitive because I probably am right now. I have seen to many die, too many turn in my presence. I had no choice, I had to do it, I had to kill my own mother when she was bitten. We spent whatever time we had together and made the most out of that time talked about everything that we never even mentioned, exchanged stories that we never knew and recalled all the good times together. Then the time came when her eyes were bloodshot, saliva drooling out her mouth, she made me promise I’d not let anything happen to me and that I’ll live on with hope, and that I’d relieve her myself. I feel guilty for not fear death because of that very promise, but this I can’t control mother, a world without you is a world not worth living in. She came at me with all her force, trying to bite my ears off, I knew it wasn’t her, and I that I had to do it. I swung my axe at her and her head rolled on the floor, her blood was all over the floor now. I didn’t want to open my eyes, I wanted to scream but couldn’t, those monsters would have heard me. A few seconds later I put on my mask and sat there looking at mother’s severed head. I wept, my tears fell onto the inside of the mask, I recalled all the memories I had with her again, I apologized for all the bad that I had ever done, I felt bad for every single time I didn’t treat her right, I wanted nothing else but more time with her. It was midnight and I had nowhere else to go, I was there in that apartment with my dead mother. I wanted to kill myself right there, but the promise I made stopped me. I had a brother and a father too, I decided then and there that I’ll find them and I’ll keep surviving for the sake of the promise I made to my mother, and for the sake of my family.
Blank Pages 