by GJ Zukow
everyone, then we knew. Although everyone was aware of the enormity of what this meant, it went unsaid. Nobody wants to speak of this, out of fear of what might happen, as if talking of it will make it real. Everyone is afraid that the parasite will do to us what it did to the animals.
My little sister is scratching her legs raw, only by covering her legs with calamine lotion does she cease the infernal scratching. My mother complains of having a headache and I catch her sneaking a quick itch when she thinks I'm not looking. They both have it. I don't feel any different, besides being scared and depressed, and I don't know what I'll do if I lose them.
I watched the news tonight, before I wrote this. There was a brief acknowledgement of the new symptoms showing themselves world-wide, they were downplayed and kept low key. When even the sensationalist media refuses to speak of the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room I know it's bad. Everyone is secretly hoping, praying, that this is a temporary last gasp of the contagion before it dies off. After all, most of the larger mammals have proven immune. There is a good chance that this will pass and we can struggle with what is left of the world.
I finally got some of my questions answered about the parasite from my mother. Getting that information from her was like pulling out her teeth with a pair of rusty pliers.
The closest anyone has found to a cure is not only temporary, it carries with it a forty percent lethality rate. The host has to be basically poisoned to such an extent that even with close supervision there is still the chance that the cure will be too much for the patient's system to handle. Even when the cure is successful the patient is reinfected that same day, as the airborne eggs are literally everywhere. The patient would have to be kept inside a tightly sealed and filtered environment until the eggs are biologically rendered inert. Only once the last of the eggs are no longer viable, that is once all of the contaminated animal corpses, droppings and etc. are disposed of will there be no more of the minute eggs in the air. It's not only that though. This may prove to be an impossible task. Humans are now carriers of the parasite and they are growing colonies inside us and reproducing. The infinitesimal eggs are being spread by us, through our feces, mucus and other bodily fluids. The whole population of the planet would have to be cured at the same time, and only once the other sources of the plague have been eliminated.
The headaches and itching are symptoms of the infection, just as I figured they were. Even though my mom tried her best to reassure me that there will be a cure soon, I am afraid. Even if they find the cure tomorrow how long will it take to mass produce enough drugs for the entire world?
If the disease stabilizes we will survive this. If the disease follows the path in us, as it has in the maddened animals, then we only have about two weeks until we face our own "extinction event".
Friday, September 21, 2012
Nobody knows what's happening. The stress and sheer horror of the "Rat Death" and the "Rat Flu", followed quickly by the "Madness" had people near the breaking point to begin with. Now with the animal insanity over, humanity is facing a severe food shortage. Add to this the collapse of the fragile economy that had just started to grow again after the years long, world-wide recession. Top all of this off with a virulent unknown disease infecting everyone and shake well. It's a recipe for disaster.
Unemployment has just jumped to a staggering forty percent. This is going to be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930's. Stock markets around the world went into a downward spiral once the reality of the global extinction event started to hit home. Every fast food chain has closed its doors. Every restaurant has shut down. There's no butter or milk to even make bread. There's no eggs. Whatever is left, rice, flour, beans and fish are in extremely short supply. Grocery stores are practically empty, many are only open once or twice a week, what they do have stocked is being sold at hugely inflated prices. People are hoarding whatever they can get their hands on causing even further shortages and even higher prices.
A lot of the dogs, although they are immune to the parasitic infection, were decimated by the fear that they would go insane like the rest of the animals. Now, those people that managed to hang onto their pets are reporting that their dogs are being stolen. Undoubtedly they are being eaten.
So many people thought they were so much better than the animals. They treated the animals with absolutely no respect. Now the animals are gone and we can't survive without them.
Exasperating this is the new trend of illegally hunting any of the animals that survived for their meat. The deer and bears cannot simply swim out into the waters to escape men with rifles. The parasite dealt a crushing blow to the animal kingdom, and we are knowingly, going to give it the final death blow. It's sad to say that people are also trapping and eating blackbirds and robins and any other thing they can catch. How did that song go, "Three and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie."? We are going back to the dark ages.
It is a simple fact of nature that when the preys’ numbers drop, so do the predators. The world has seen the rise of seven billion humans on the planet and decided it didn't like it. If the numbers of the animals we fed on dropped by ninety percent so will ours, by starvation.
Murder, suicide and the crime rate as a whole is on the rise.
People are rioting over food and just like every riot, the looting quickly spreads.
On the news today there was a video of a homeless man with a placard stating that the world was coming to an end. This isn't new or surprising in itself, in every city there is always that one guy, standing on his soapbox trying to warn the rest of humanity to change its evil ways. What is surprising, even for New Yorkers, was the reaction. A small crowd quickly gathered around him, heckling and then spitting on the poor, unwashed, unshaven old man in dirty clothes. Then the crowd set upon the obviously mentally unstable man. First one of the crowd delivered a sucker punch, then another person attacked him. When the confused old man tried to fight back the whole crowd literally set about beating him to death. Even after he had been knocked down and was bleeding and unconscious, the men and women of the crowd kicked and stomped him over and over.
The thin veneer of civilization is wearing away. I don't know how much of this is due to the natural stress and limits of the human mind and how much is due to the insidious influence of the parasite.
Speaking of (writing of?) the influence of the parasite, there are new symptoms to report.
Both my mother and my sisters' rash and itching have changed into small red spots all over their bodies. Thankfully, for Lucy, the intense scratching has died down but the red spots are a cause for alarm. The spots showed up yesterday and they seem to have doubled in size overnight. The spots show up black on the gums, the tongue, the whites of the eye and even under the finger nails. Many of the girls at school have resorted to wearing heavy make-up in an attempt to cover the spots.
My mother told me the reason for the spots is the result of the growing infection of the parasites within the host’s body. The parasite is establishing itself along the central nervous system right down to the nerve endings in the skin and muscles, which explains the uncontrollable itching. The red spots are inflamed cells and burst capillaries caused from the single celled organism displacing the body’s normal cells.
Lucy has fallen into a dark, depressed and frustrated mood that is hard to handle or cope with. My mom also tells me she feels aggravated and frustrated to no end too, but this may just be due to what is happening and not because of the parasite. I told her I don't feel anything but scared and depressed, almost the opposite of what she's feeling and my mom just stared at me like I called her the "c" word.
School is becoming a dangerous place. People are short tempered and openly hostile towards each other. At every break between classes there was a fight. The fights weren't really any more violent or brutal than any other fight, but the fact that there were so many is disturbing. Everyone seemed to look at me with open disdain simply because I wasn't suffering as they were. The three other kids I know t
hat are also immune told me they weren't going to come to school anymore until this epidemic was over. I don't blame them. I wish I could stay home too, but my mother forbids it. If things get any worse though I'll just skip school and hang out somewhere.
My mother, Gods bless her, tried to reassure me as best as she could telling me no matter what happens, we will get through this. If we have to eat those little lizards that scamper around the yard (like the ones old Mrs. Hoffner's cats used to love to chase, catch and sometimes snack on, bless all their souls), then she would find a recipe to make the most delicious lizards I ever ate. I smiled when she said that and it felt like I hadn't smiled for a long time.
Gods let me smile again.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Over the weekend those small blotches and spots that appeared all over my mother and little sister have blossomed into large scarlet colored patches. It's not just my family, it's everybody around the world. In some people the scarlet bruises grow faster, in some slower. Only the people like me, the naturally immune, show no sign of this progression of the parasitic infection. One Saturday morning the redness covered about ten percent of their bodies. On