Land of the free, home of the brave. What a fairytale that turned out to be. When it comes down to it, when things really get ugly and the veneer of civilized life is stripped away, people are panicky dumb animals. Long lost are the characteristics that set us apart from the other animals; when the shit really hits the fan, most people end up wearing it.
That's how the gangs came to power after the disaster ravaged the country and those who survived it were wandering around as helpless easy prey. How does a middle-aged dentist with a paunch and a pack of credit cards protect his family when there's no one to take his money? Credit cards seem like such a laughable concept now, as if a promise to pay later would be worth anything more than the breath wasted saying it. As for that dentist and the thousands out there like him, a camp where the inhabitants would be guarded from scavengers and kept fed, must have seemed like the perfect answer at first. Perhaps it was - until it became clear that leaving one camp for another could no longer be an option. A bad week of food or botched security could scare off a quarter of the inhabitants of any particular camp, as if the grass was going to be any greener on the other side of hell. Lose too many warm bodies and a camp would be in danger of collapsing and threatening the people who hadn't abandoned when the wind blew south. So people were 'persuaded' not to leave, first with words then with guns. Fear is a powerful motivator and soon most people forgot that they wanted to leave at all. The world outside their group was a dangerous place after all, with no friendly sentry guarding them whilst they slept, or a tent with breakfast in the morning. Those are the important things after all, nebulous concepts like 'freedom' and 'choice' take a distant second to warm food in the belly. There was hardly a fuss at all when the gangs begun marking their members after a few late-night member poaching incidents went awry. Like cattle, the people lined up to get their mark in exchange for the illusion of safety in a unsafe world.
They say history is written by the victors, but there are no more winners in this world. Or maybe there are, but they're safely beyond the borders of this continent and away from the infection. That's such an insignificant word for something so catastrophic. Once there was over half a billion people living on this continent. They shared a land, but not always language, culture or understanding of one another. They considered themselves differentiated by colour, nationality, wealth, or any other number of indicators that meant nothing to the parasite that claimed almost a hundred million of them in the first year of outbreak. The panic that ensued dwarfed any that had come before - this was no war that could be solved with a treaty, no enemy that could be bought off or quietly assassinated. Governments across the world spent billions funding scientific inquiries, tests, anything that might be a weapon against the plague that was killing their people. It was discovered that the parasite was
That's how the gangs came to power after the disaster ravaged the country and those who survived it were wandering around as helpless easy prey. How does a middle-aged dentist with a paunch and a pack of credit cards protect his family when there's no one to take his money? Credit cards seem like such a laughable concept now, as if a promise to pay later would be worth anything more than the breath wasted saying it. As for that dentist and the thousands out there like him, a camp where the inhabitants would be guarded from scavengers and kept fed, must have seemed like the perfect answer at first. Perhaps it was - until it became clear that leaving one camp for another could no longer be an option. A bad week of food or botched security could scare off a quarter of the inhabitants of any particular camp, as if the grass was going to be any greener on the other side of hell. Lose too many warm bodies and a camp would be in danger of collapsing and threatening the people who hadn't abandoned when the wind blew south. So people were 'persuaded' not to leave, first with words then with guns. Fear is a powerful motivator and soon most people forgot that they wanted to leave at all. The world outside their group was a dangerous place after all, with no friendly sentry guarding them whilst they slept, or a tent with breakfast in the morning. Those are the important things after all, nebulous concepts like 'freedom' and 'choice' take a distant second to warm food in the belly. There was hardly a fuss at all when the gangs begun marking their members after a few late-night member poaching incidents went awry. Like cattle, the people lined up to get their mark in exchange for the illusion of safety in a unsafe world.
They say history is written by the victors, but there are no more winners in this world. Or maybe there are, but they're safely beyond the borders of this continent and away from the infection. That's such an insignificant word for something so catastrophic. Once there was over half a billion people living on this continent. They shared a land, but not always language, culture or understanding of one another. They considered themselves differentiated by colour, nationality, wealth, or any other number of indicators that meant nothing to the parasite that claimed almost a hundred million of them in the first year of outbreak. The panic that ensued dwarfed any that had come before - this was no war that could be solved with a treaty, no enemy that could be bought off or quietly assassinated. Governments across the world spent billions funding scientific inquiries, tests, anything that might be a weapon against the plague that was killing their people. It was discovered that the parasite was
