No one really knows what happened, but I can only guess that Avalanche didn’t get what they were looking for, because at around 14:00 hours on April 29th, 2117, a suicide bomber managed to detonate a bomb containing one phial, one single phial of Lysander 3 over the city of London. And that was enough to spell the devastation of all who came into contact with it.
For a few days after that, nothing really seemed to happen. Of course, due to a lack of testing, no one really knew what to expect, so society began moving on in the only way it knew how; sweep the damage under the carpet, and get on with life. A few weeks passed, but eventually, people came to realise that we had not escaped. Some started coughing, others blacked out, everyone was affected differently. The hospitals were full, and the streets seemed empty. Reports of violence and looting doubled as the death toll rose. At first, there was a vain attempt to control the chaos, to treat the sick. But it soon became apparent that no amount of drugs or quarantine was going to contain this chemical, once you showed signs of poisoning, your fate was sealed. That was when things started to get really bad.
A walk down the street became a nightmare, each vision scorched into my memory, only to be recalled in the black of night. In the beginning, when I could still go outside in relative safety, I would walk down the main street of our town. Everywhere, all I could see were people in pain, agony in their eyes, trying to hold on to some sort of normality, struggling through the different stages of this affliction. A fever ravaged their bodies, weakening them, slowing their movements and restricting breathing. Then convulsions and blood-laced vomit gripped the victim, usually simultaneously. Lysander seemed to act like a diuretic to the human system, leeching the cells of their water, the skin drying and cracking, arteries exposed and broken, pouring blood all over the concrete paving. Their deaths were slow and painful; they were fading out, the life bleeding slowly from their veins, existence flickering feebly before their eyes, and finally extinguished after these days of living hell. No one should ever have to witness or experience that kind of horror, but for us, it became an everyday occurrence. Yet somehow, no matter how many times I see a human struck down, the life thumped from their body, lying dead and alone in the street, I never get desensitised to it. I still feel that kind of empty hopelessness as my soul posits a numb disbelieving wish that it could be just a nasty hallucination.
Strange as it may seem, I believe now that those people were the lucky ones. The rest of us hung on for weeks, awaiting our doom, until eventually I began to wish that I could just get it over with, that the end would just come. But, for me anyway, it never did.
Somehow, a few members of the population managed to survive. We did not go unharmed, however, blackouts and vomiting seemed commonplace to us, and it seemed a half life. Everyone exists alone now, we have reverted to our one simple, animal instinct; the need for survival. There is no trust or camaraderie. Anyone you meet could potentially be an enemy. I don’t blame them; they are simply looking out for themselves in this chaotic new world.
There is no government any more, that was forgotten long ago, a relic to history, a belonging of better times. Barely anything remains of the old world, and no one ever visits from the outside. I suppose they don’t expect anyone to be left alive now. Yet somehow, we do manage to go on. Now the dust has settled, old laws and money have no meaning. The new money is food, and the new laws are your own. Not that they count for anything.
Now my days are wrapped in silence. I see no one, unless I’m unlucky. My time is occupied mainly with the attempt to find food, and making sure that I don’t get mugged for it when I do. Recently, I have come to live in a disused mausoleum, a symbol of my stone cold loneliness. This is the fifth or sixth place I have inhabited since the attack; you have to keep moving just to stay safe. Stay in one place for too long and someone will realise you are there. That is when you are really in trouble.
The nights are the worst. This is when I long for the cold and lonely silence of the daylight, as I close my eyes and struggle to ignore the screaming. The echoing, blood chilling screaming of those who have been careless, and left themselves open to attack, or those who are still falling victim to Lysander, writhing in agony as the pain wracks their fragile bodies. I stare into the dark, trying not to visualise their pain, as they bleed slowly to death. But the visions flood back, the distant recall of everything I have witnessed since the beginning, now condensed into a few short hours, and repeated every time I close my eyes.
The world has changed forever. I have seen it day by day, on the streets and in my nightmares. This hideous world surrounds us, an all-consuming reminder of this decent of humanity into chaos, degradation and who knows what else. Our environment has been irreparably damaged, sending survival of the fittest on overdrive. But in the coming years of darkness, even the fittest will struggle to keep their heads above the continuing tidal wave of violence, death and intimidation, which has been forced upon humanity, by humanity.
The day has come, when all people are powerless to stop the ravages of this disease, this faceless destructor. Everyone has been affected regardless of age, race or class; this man-made evil does not discriminate. There is no escape, no place to run, no place to hide and no social or geographical barriers.
I sit and think about it sometimes: my life before Lysander. In the lonely watches of the night when sleep escapes me but my mind is worn out, I look at the sky and imagine just silly little things really, like brushing my hair or frying eggs. It wasn’t perfect, but at least I didn’t have to peek around every corner just to see if it is safe, at least I didn’t have my life in my hands and my heart in my mouth every second of every day.
But that was then, and this is now. I don’t have all those silly little things. I don’t have my family or my friends; they were all killed in the first wave. So all I can do now is dream that one day there will be a new hope, not the hope that I will wake up and find that I’ve made it through the night, but a hope that one day society will pull through, and that the sun will be shining, the kids can go to school, and I can breathe a sigh of relief that all the pain and torment is finally over. Then I hear a creak on the stairs, and I realise, its never going to be the same. When Avalanche detonated that bomb, they turned off society’s life support machine; the old world has gone forever, burned from the earth in a shower of flaming shrapnel. But from the ashes, a new world has arisen, a terrifying dystopia, a cancer on the planet, with little chance of recovery, and even less chance of survival.