Armageddapocalypse

The end came at our own hands. It was not the will of angry gods. It was no act of revenge from a damaged and bleeding planet. In the end there was no rapture, no salvation. There was only death and destruction, pain and misery, loss and grief. It sucked.

In reality, it played out more like a gritty reboot of 'Revenge of the Nerds.' Jacob Hollander, a true to life mad scientist, was the one responsible. Just a kid who got a few too many wedgies and just not enough hugs from daddy brought about the apocalypse. Maybe if some of the assholes who bullied the guy paid a bit more attention to those after-school specials the rest of us wouldn't have had to suffer for it. I'm sure if enraged parent groups whose names were always some nifty acronym, were still a thing they would've blamed TV and video-games.

Like so many bullied children, he was an academic genius. With that superior intellect he went on to study in the field of Biochemistry. Sad to say nobody bothered to sit him down and give him a talking. Maybe have a shrink give him a once over? All the swirlies and 'sticks-and-stones' bullshit really screwed him up, and he thought we should all pay for it. On December 21, 2012, yeah I guess he had a flair for the dramatic, he decided to let loose his little pet project.

Many people out there dreamed of the world he’d made, secretly preparing for it in their own little ways. Those people were idiots and they realized it very quickly as they were torn apart and eaten alive. The dead walked; real live zombies, forgive the expression. I never thought it was possible, I mean sure, I've played a few Resident Evil games -the movies really sucked- but even I knew that being stuck in a situation surrounded by meat hungry skull-suckers would be a pain in the ass. Still, those were the easy days, relatively speaking of course.

Civilization and governments crapped out pretty easily and life became a no-holds-barred kind of shit storm. Electricity still held out in some places, we had a stock of canned foods, military rations and some of the eggheads cooked up some nasty nutrition paste. Back then people held their own against those hordes by banding together with their well-loved but mostly unnecessary guns. I’d thank god for the second amendment, but he’s probably a zombie too by now. The virus was spread through bites and only bites. Of course many died, some more violently, before that became common knowledge. Corpses in any state of disrepair would rise again to spread the disease, but it didn't prematurely rot flesh.

There were talks of cures and things of that nature. Not that at that point in time there was very much in the way of research facilities to throw some sort of cure together and not to mention, we were a little short on people educated in the field of -oh I don't know, fucking walking corpses. So yeah, we were pretty boned. But there was still Hollander. That crazy son of a bitch was holed up in his evil lair, which, unfortunately was not inside of a hollowed out volcano, kicked back and laughing while good people died.

Occasionally, when the sort of thing were still possible, he would broadcast messages for all survivors to see with an almost cartoon madness. In his mind it was his soapbox to preach, some self-righteous speech about how we had all brought it on ourselves. Eventually the braniacs among what was left of society, still alive in some run down shanty town, picked up his signal signature and used it to pinpoint his location. The plan was to raid his 'lair' and force him to science up a cure. That didn't quite pan out as we had hoped.

Some jerk off got a bit too trigger happy. Hollander was dead and so were we. We never learned of that fabled cure, we never learned anything that could save us, if such a thing even existed in the first place. But we held on, some of us anyway, those who could outlast the dead. Their bodies were twisted and gnarled, rotten flesh and brittle bones. Soon they were not a threat, they could not overpower or overrun.

It seemed that things were looking up, that all we had to do was outlast. Well it would've been just fine and dandy had it actually happened that way. It turns out evolution is not just for fuzzy little creatures in some Japanese cartoon. Darwinism makes better survivors sure, but it also makes better predators. The virus changed as its carriers died out, wasted away, or became incapable of seeking prey. What came next was something we never expected. Whether Hollander had planned it that way or not, we would never know.

When the entire world becomes a dump for rotting flesh, filth and waste, the stuff tends to stew into some fouler broth. Essentially it was the Black Death Version 2.0. Maybe it was Super Salmonella, or more plainly a real son of a bitch case of the flu, take your pick. Everything was tainted; the air was thick with toxic fumes emitted from the still twitching corpses of the dead. What little food still remained had long since expired or in all likelihood had become contaminated by the new strain.

To best survive in that noxious atmosphere we began to seal ourselves into prophylactic bio-suits. That actually makes it sound cooler than it is, most people are running around in garbage bags and swimming pool goggles, sucking air from their great grandfather's oxygen tanks. I was lucky to find some state-of-the-art suit myself in an old abandoned bunker a couple years back, but I still look like a giant condom. I haven't taken it off since then; I haven't seen my own face in so long. I can only keep moving, driven by some unknown force that I wouldn't exactly call 'willpower.'

There are no more children, no elderly, and no families. Those with weaker immune systems died long ago. As for the animals, domesticated and wild alike, well they just got tired of being Scooby-Snax for just about anything with teeth. The infected wildlife did not seem to exhibit the same symptoms, but that was not necessarily good news. As it happened the animals served to spread the virus without being effected themselves. They continued their lives, thriving without the threat of humans and served to make the wilderness just as inhospitable as the cities.  

From time to time I will encounter the relics of the past; some frail zombies still shambling about, mostly crawling. It's rare to see more than a few of them walking together and even then they're not really a threat if you keep your distance. While it's unlikely to be overrun by them, they still serve as carriers to a concentrated form of Satan's cold. Once I saw one just up and explode in a burst of thick black fluid on an unsuspecting traveler. The poor son of a bitch went down instantly. I think the longer one of the germ buckets goes on, the funkier their juices get until they just go boom. I've taken to calling them 'smart bombs.' Oh irony, you're my only friend. 

When everything really went to hell, food became even sparser and what can be consumed is even more so, save for the sterile flavorless junk. Drinking water is even rarer and I almost always pair them with liquors with absurd alcohol values, which are more antiseptic than beverage. Call me paranoid, but surely it accounts for my charismatic personality.

The divorce rates among couples years ago had always baffled me and the apocalypse has not improved them. Many partnerships, whether long established or born of necessity tend to end violent these days. This however, is how I survive. Most of these exchanges have no winners with both parties finding themselves critically wounded, leaving their supplies for any passerby who might happen across them after having followed the bickering persons for days. The combined supplies of two are hardly enough for one so it’s not what you might call a jackpot.

It only sounds like an awful thing to do, but I'm no scoundrel. Hell, I've never even killed anyone, not anyone technically 'living' anyway. It isn't as if I've ever intervened, I didn't pull the trigger, and they were going to do it regardless. Still I don't see the point in coupling at this day and age. As for perpetuation of the species, well, to even try to bring a life into this world is just a dick move. Besides, gender is neutralized beneath the bodysuits and if the apocalypse isn't enough to kill your sex drive, the likelihood of exposed flesh being eaten away by homicidal germs might be.

There have always been murmurs of a sanctuary, somewhere safe, somewhere clean. Naturally, being a pessimist, the optimists are all dead, I don't really believe in such a thing. If I happen to be following the coordinates I found scrawled into some ratty old notebook it's just because I've got nothing better to do. It's not some delusion that I'll somehow, magically, find a perfect salvation to set me free from the nightmare that is now a way of life.