The Plagued Chapter 1: I go star gazing

Meet the protagonist- Jude.

It’s been one year since that day.  The Government thought we’d be able to recover by now.  They were wrong.  Very wrong.

I sat splayed out on top of a car, just chilling and looking up at the star splattered sky overhead.  It’s not really something I used to think about a year ago. The sky is just so beautiful.  Each little light represents a possible life somewhere off in the distant galaxy.

I can remember my old science teacher telling me once that it takes thousands of years for the light to reach earth.  Half of those suns might already be dead for all we knew.  Back then, I just nodded and took notes. The sky was the sky.  It didn’t matter where you were.  Most the time, you couldn’t even see the lights overhead, not in the light-polluted cities I’d grown up in.  Now days though, that tapestry is brighter than a projector in a planetarium.  You can see all the little pinpricks up there; even those color waves that they’d always Photoshop into pictures.  You don’t need a computer though to see that though now.  You wouldn’t think that a year without proper fossil fuels or lights could make that much of a difference.

I rolled over now onto my stomach, peering ahead at the small light off in the distance that belonged to one of the many refugee campfires.  They might as well be shining a fricken beacon up into the sky saying ‘food here!’.

See, that’s why I never permanently joined up with a group.  Doing that would only get you killed.  Seriously, I’ve tried it before.  It sounds like a great idea, especially when you’re a sixteen-year-old bloke without a single survival skill- Company, food, prospects of rebuilding society and protection against the Plagued?  Sounds great right?  My friends and I joined up with this one group during the first week after the attack with this idea we’d all stick together and migrate North to an airport so we could get back to our parents and out of America where the main blast zone was.  It wasn’t like we had live news feeds to tell us that the airports had been shut down in an attempt to contain the virus so it wouldn’t spread.  During the Dark Days, there hadn’t been electricity since no one wanted to work.  No, they wanted to be with their families, and rightfully so.

Anyway, so we’re with these dudes, and about three days in, we’re attacked.  We’re in the middle of nowhere mind you, and these Plagued guys just come out of the clear blue to nomnom us.  Needless to say, everyone freaked, including me.  I was just smart enough to high tail it out of there then climb the tallest damn tree I could find.  Call me a coward.  I know that I am.  I never saw my friends after that day.  Part of me hopes they escaped, but I learned a long time ago to face reality.  Well, ok, maybe not a long time ago.  I'm still getting used to it.  Why do you think I'm alone?

The world seems like such a lonely place now.  You can walk around for days without seeing a living soul.  There are other days though, when you see whole groups of nomads just chillin' out together in some abandoned building, their rugged appearances clashing with the eloquence of the structures around them.

It's kind of strange, looking at the buildings now too.  See, the bomb didn't destroy any of them except in the main crash site.  Everything looks as good as ever, except for the utter emptiness.  It's like someone enlarged up a model for a movie set and forgot to put the actors in it.  It's not like the Plagued do anything to the buildings either.  For some reason, they tend to avoid the structures unless there's people inside, in which case, they get very upset with the buildings and start raging war on them.

The Plagued are scary as hell.  You know what zombies are right?  Those risen corpses with fantastic reflexes, a major craving for human flesh, and a chainsaw complex?  Yeah, that’s pretty much what a Plagued is, except, they’re really just normal people who got infected with this virus that shuts down the part of the brain that makes us feel empathy and forces the body to hyper produce this chemical called Ghrelin.  Ghrelin is a weird hormone that lives in our stomach and pancreas and is the cause of hunger. Ah, the all powerful Ghrelin, the bane of dieters everywhere!  No one really knows why the hyper production of this chemical makes Plagued go cannibal, but some smart guy in our group had this theory that it had something to do with primal instincts and this insatiable hunger that basically causes people to go crazy.  Serious Lord of the Flies stuff here.  Now, this wouldn’t have been so devastating to society, if the government hadn’t underestimated the effects of the virus, and if the idiots who sent it hadn’t underestimated just how powerful and fast spreading it was.

During the Dark Days, there was this ten day period where the earth was covered in debris from the impact of the bomb that carried the first round of the virus.  Apparently, the fools who sent it thought it would only cover America.  No one really knows why it was sent, or if they did, they’re dead or rabid now.  The virus hit the White House the hardest initially.  The place was completely wiped by Plagued within four days.  Like I told you before though, no one really knew this since the world was in the largest black out of all modern history.  Without technology and leadership, America soon fell into chaos.  Mass stealing, killing, hoarding, you name it, it happened.  It didn’t take long for this to happen round the globe.

Now there’s just a few million people left in the world.  Well, estimated.  It’s not like we’ve got a census going around right now.  There’s a bunch of nomadic groups and a few small cities that are working to rebuild society, then there’s guys like me.  Wanderers who’re just trying to find their way.

Author's Note

Whatever you see wrong, TELL ME. This is a VERY rough draft. This is my first attempt at writing first person, so any mistakes you notice in the tense, please point out. Danke!