The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned us: this one would be big. The virus was already spreading like wildfire through the bird population, with droves dying so quickly that there was little time left to study them in life. They would flutter about in their cages, eyes aflame with pain before writhing at the bottom, hopelessly lost. There were cataclysmic predictions; it would spread to another species, pigs perhaps, and from there, it had the possibility to infect the human DNA. It seemed like the whisper of a rumor; could this virus really spread species to species like that? Questions flew in from all directions as workers, terrified, shared the news with people they shouldn’t have. When the news broke, it was a media firestorm. How many would be affected? They couldn't say. Where it would strike? They didn't know. When it would happen? They weren't sure.
But, as it would, this wasn’t enough information. Frustrated with the very few facts and taunted with haunting images of dead animals, we moved on. As the months crept into years, crippling debt gripped the United States - while a revolving door of politicians swore to cut spending wherever possible. A bursting education bubble landed young men and women with no home to occupy, while homes sat abandoned - no buyers. The idea of some 'superbug outbreak' had been dubbed a 'scare tactic to sell vaccines', and in a last-ditch effort to save what was left of the fractured US economy, the CDC's funding plummeted. All US study of the mysterious “bird flu” fell onto foreign shoulders, and the topic wouldn’t be brought up again. The cautious warning of a deadly epidemic was quickly forgotten among the American people, many of whom were unaware that it had already taken a foothold in the rural United States.
A man from Utah first approached his doctor with strange symptoms that appeared out of nowhere: excessive thirst, confusion, dizziness and a mild fever to name a few. But the doctor summed it up to be nothing more than a small flu, writing a quick prescription for antibiotics before sending him on his way. In a few days time, he would be better - the doctor guaranteed it. Despite the doctor's promise, the symptoms only worsened and the antibiotics seemed to have little effect. With no answers, no money, and a family to raise - the man chose to tough it out. His family watched in agony as their brother, husband and friend seemed to change right before their eyes: almost six weeks after his initial visit, the man would be headed back to see the doctors but this time, he'd be in the emergency room. Eyes glazed over milky white, muscles spasming beneath his skin and a fever that had reached a fatal point - it was clear that his time had already begun ticking down. The nurses circled him, trying to hold back his flailing body while doctors attempted to sedate him but the man refused to give up the fight. He snapped at the doctors and howled like an animal until finally, he fell lip in their arms and laid dead on a gurney. The family, distraught and confused over his loss, demanded an autopsy but there were no answers to be found on his corpse. The simplest explanation seemed to be the easiest to swallow: some sort of undisclosed infection that resulted in meningitis.
And he was only the beginning. Patient Zero had been harboring a virus, picked up from livestock, that would soon spread across the nation.
Cases began to trickle in slowly across the United States, each of them slightly different than the one before. The anomaly seemed unrelated, and now without a federal database of emerging viruses to track the spread; state by state the cases were handled differently. All wrong. It would take three vital months, along with a number of cases throughout Europe and Russia, before the dwindling CDC realized that the cases were connected. An epidemic was on their hands...and quite frankly, it was already too late.
With five of their best deployed to some of the most active places for infection in the United States, the CDC was hard at work...but there was still one problem. No one had lived through the disease. It seemed impossible to study, a ravenous virus that disappeared upon death. They needed living subjects, but the time for that had not come just yet.
To make matters worse, the virus displayed differently from person to person. Just when a case were almost cracked as being the “mystery virus”, it turned out to be a case of severe internal infection or mental disorder. The families of the dead could only provide details to the CDC, symptoms and strange behavior that they had exhibited before they died and on that alone, they sent word to top officials. Word traveled up the ranks and finally, albeit too late, a last-ditch effort had been put into place. Evacuations had finally been sprung on the people, kept in the dark - and the chaos of an unplanned and underprepared crisis unfolded.
As cases ravaged the unsuspecting U.S citizens, the military was deployed to keep the peace within the rising chaos. Furious that martial law had been established, many southern states rose against the very people sworn to protect them. Normal, everyday people were attacking each other in the street while others lost the ability to speak, see or even stand. People became terrified that they, or their families, could be next; many of whom refused to leave their homes per the military's request. And although more military were deployed to the cities daily, they, too, became overwhelmed by the sheer number of victims. Disaster relief was also short lived, supplies running out faster than anticipated while other workers abandoned their work all together in lieu of saving themselves.
It has been weeks since the outbreak started and people, no longer looking to the government or military for help, have begun to re-imagine the possibilities for escape. Some remain hunkered down in their homes, praying for rescue while others have emerged into a new, terrifying world unlike anything they could have imagined. But from the downfall of civilization as they know it, there's hope and they're cropping up all across California. Colonies are what they call themselves; small pockets of survivors that have banded together for their specific cause. Most seek survival in numbers, a few seek power in a world now run by anarchy while others look for a cure to the disease that plagues their country. But they all have one thing in common: they're all waiting for rescue.