Afterthought - Noël Coleman

The initial Outbreak occurred on October 12^th 2013.

For all of its horror, the world thought it was an elaborate Halloween prank.  A bit early, perhaps. That should have been the first clue that we were wrong.

The news stations were filled with sarcasm. Awkward jokes and mishandled facts leading to more viewers’ annoyance than the confusion-filled panic our fictions had expected.

In all predicted scenarios, the panic was the worst of it. People flooding the streets or boarding up in all the wrong places was what raised the numbers of the dead. Office buildings cut off from the outside world, survivors left to waste away without food or weapons. The first deaths of the main characters would invoke the afterthought that maybe a mall would have made a more strategic base.

It was always too late of course. The stories play out the same. The group would organize and take to the streets. There’s always death, sacrifice, and the two survivors. The survivors who make it to the destination and find that final twist in the plot. The real problem is never the outbreak in the end. The survivors find out their real battle is themselves, or the government with super-secret experiments, or worse, the humanity found in an infected friend thought beyond help.

It’s easier; I suppose to blame the horrors on something else. Reality was much worse. The horrors here were something a cheap author might have called man’s confidence and disbelief. Fiction was always looking for a moral, smashing the lessons learned into someone’s face. There was no need for morals here. Reality made lessons an afterthought, and no one had time for those anymore.

The initial Outbreak occurred on October 12^th 2013. It went quickly. No one thought to hide or fight. No one believed the power behind creaking bones and unwavering stares.

The initial Outbreak was the only outbreak; there were no survivors.