When nothing's left.

This is NOT my main novel, just a short story I'm doing for practice alongside it :) It's about a kind of post apocalyptic world kinda thing, about Lucky and Joe who are in London, avoiding a disease.

October 2020.

On one of the most suburban ends of London, by no means comparable to the buzz of the centre, was a hill, at the peak of which boasted a tall-standing church steeple that made the hill seem even larger than it was. Scattered in maze-lines around this hill were row after row of tree lined avenues fringed with Victorian semi-detached houses, most of which were empty at this time of the morning, as the occupants were nearly all in a long queue outside the local chemist. The queue snaked down the long main road, past the fish and chip shop which was now boarded up with a black circle on the door to signify infection, past the shops that once sold cheese and wine to the middle class occupants of the area, and past the old school, where the queue petered out.

Muswell hill had been infested my non-infectees, for no apparent reason except there had not been a particularly large infection boom in that area, possibly due to the 2017 anti-pandemic act which had targeted inner-city boroughs due to their dense population, which allowed any kind of pathogen to spread like the plague. Aside from this, practically the whole of the world’s population (that is, the population that was still alive) had migrated to the northern hemisphere. There was a particular rush towards the northernmost parts of Europe, especially Greenland where the conditions were so harsh and the population was so lightly populated that the country was full to bursting within a few weeks after a radio broadcast, which had lightly suggested that the coldest areas of the world may be ideal places in which to avoid the disease. Of course there was such a worldwide panic that practically all of humanity took that radio broadcast as a direct order to emigrate, because no other solution had been offered. The president of the world health organisation had committed suicide a month earlier and all of the world’s presidents had since been running around like headless chickens, as if they were close to the edge as well. Hundreds of thousands of people had rushed to Greenland, misunderstanding the harsh conditions they were entering. Vast amounts of people simply died from the cold after only a few days. Every flight had a luggage limit of less than 2 kilos per family, and hardly anyone was able to bring enough warm clothes with them, so they simply perished because they were sleeping in the snow without any shelter, probably wishing they were infected rather than freezing to death.

Of course in the end it was the disease that was the real downfall of Greenland. Somebody was infected and brought it over on the plane, god knows how because of the rigorous testing anyone had to undergo before so much as crossing a land border between cities. Armed officials began to guard the airports and docks in swathes, brandishing guns at anyone who so much as tried to pass a toe outside of the country. It was only a matter of weeks before everybody was dead, either at the hand of an armed official’s gun or the disease. The infection rates were a record high that year, due to the amount of people that were so packed into the country.

However things were more organised now. Most people were on their way to Iceland, according to a pirate radio station that had managed to survive the past year’s massacre. Large ships containing thousands of passengers arrived each day, but the overspill was redirected to Sweden, so that no country would ever become so overpopulated again. The UK was sparsely populated nowadays, with officials regulating where everybody went. However Lucky had lived up to her name and ducked behind some armed guards, making her getaway down to London instead of being packed upwards to Iceland. Many people had chosen to remain in the UK, but her father’s will had begged for Lucky to be sent away where her safety was guaranteed. Except she had avoided this by catching a lift with a load of rogues in a truck, down to London.

“You’re not infectious. Please tell me you aren’t infectious.” She stood a few metres away from the scruffy-looking group, as to not risk infection. One got up to talk but she whipped a rifle out of her pocket.

“Stay there,” she trembled violently, pointing the gun at his head “I’m going to check you aren’t infectious. If you move I’ll blow your brains out.”

Still holding the pistol in one hand, she pulled out a cytonano 1815, and pressed a button, sending out a beam of virus-detecting electrons over the skin of each person. Lucky had previously stolen it from the guard that she ran away from, because she knew she wouldn’t survive on her own. Only 3,500 cytonanos were made, only being intended for guards responsible for migration, and those in great power. The guard had given her a decently hard crack at the back of the neck when he saw her dart off, causing her to topple down and scrape her chin on the hard, grey gravel. Nonetheless, Lucky was an aspiring athlete and bolted off ten times faster than the guard could ever run.

“Jesus Christ, where did you get that?” asked a man with beautiful green eyes and long dreadlocks held in a large bun.

The machine gave each of the people a green flash, meaning that they were clear. Lucky laughed. She hadn’t been this grateful for anything since her baby sister being sent to Sweden, where she would remain safe.

“I nicked it from a guard.”

And they were on their way.

                            ------

November 2020.

The large metal gate stood a good metre above Joe, and he himself was about half a foot over lucky. The iron bars were menacing, as were the boarded up windows, but the lack of a black circle was extremely relieving to both him and Lucky.

“Why do they have gates like a jail? Is it to keep the kids in or other people out?”

“To keep people out. When I was at school, some old man came in one day and started offering all the year 7s weird sweets, so we had some installed so that paedophiles couldn’t get in.” Lucky began to walk towards the gate. “Hey, Joe, there’s a gap here, look! We can get in!”

“Stop, stop! Hey, stop!” He shouted through the bars of the gate but would go no further.

“You’re an old woman.” Cackled Lucky. She spun in a circle whilst shining the beams of the cytonano around her, whilst it cheerfully beeped green. “See? No infection, we can go in.”

Joe didn’t want to believe it. Lucky was still an irresponsible child in his eyes, and therefore didn’t trust her judgement. After all, infectees were known to hide in abandoned public buildings and wait for a cure because the paranoia of the disease made them so afraid of death.

“But there aren’t any infectees in here! This place is totally dead, trust me, the cytonano detects infection for a mile radius.”

Joe tentatively took a step forward, looking pained. “You never know, they could be hiding.”

“Really?” Lucky whipped out her gun again and ran in a circle, firing shots in the air. “Wake up, butter-skins! Get out of here!”

Joe bolted through the hole in the fence. “Stop f*****g wasting ammo!” He yanked the pistol from her when she continued to laugh, and shook his head in exasperation. “I can’t believe you, being so reckless and bounding around like a monkey.” They walked calmly now, observing the school. It was quite a big campus, with separate buildings for certain subjects, and a large library. “Oh yeah, and butter-skins? Really? Where did you come up with that name?”

Lucky scratched her short blonde curls. “At school, when plasmorto had just started infecting people. Some girl called the infectees butter-skins because of the way butter just sort of rubs away, like their skin.”

Lucky was right, in a sense. Plasmorto was a nano-virus that had accidentally been released from an unknown area in 2019. It broke down the epidermal layer of skin by eating away at the cell membrane and then dissolving the cytoplasm of cells. Anything that touched them would push through their skin the way that a knife does through soft butter. Paranoia would ensue after the initial infection and eventually the cell membranes would break down inside internal organs, causing the infectee to die.

Author's Note

Please tell me where you think this could go, or what I could do to improve.