Trader's Choice

        2012, the year the world dies. Predicted by many but never taken seriously, the end finally came. Not for everyone, though, some unknown force protected parts of the population. Disease spread like wildfire, wiping out almost half the world's citizens in a single day. Nobody knew what started it, and nobody cared. All that mattered was finding a way to stay alive. No masks, no sanitizers, no amount of isolation could stop it spreading. As things began to get worse, a change in the way the disease worked was discovered by one of the last remaining scientists in Britain.

        Everybody was becoming infected, but one particular group weren't dying. Not a single case in girls aged eleven to twenty had been fatal. None of them were disappearing, the only thing which seemed to plague them was memory loss. First they started to lose their memories, forget who their family and friends were, not that that was important any more. In his last days, the scientist witnessed something extraordinary. The lost their language. The young women seemed to revert to a sort of animalistic state, merely grunting as a form of communication.

        Packs began to create themselves, the strongest of them taking leadership and protecting the others. They acted as wolves, hunting together and devising some sort of hierarchy which deigned who got the best meals. Wild animals were their prey, instead of the kinds of food which stocked supermarket shelves. The animals, apparently, were immune to the illness, so there were plenty around for the girls to feast upon.

        During this time, the general population dwindled further, leaving only a select group of apparent 'survivors' and the girls. Men were scarce, the young even more so, and panic began to arise. How would they continue to live? What if the disease mutated and came back twice as bad? What if they became as wild as the young women of the world? So many questions which nobody had any answers to. Nature seemed to bring them all together, drawing the so-called 'sane' into one place. Few tradesmen were left amongst them, but it was enough. There were enough of them to survive for a little while longer and pass on their knowledge.

        That's how things continued for five years, the girls roaming wild like animals and the survivors building themselves an empire. With less arguing and no troubles with money, great advances were being made amongst the survivors. Cannibalism was the next step for the young women, they began to fight amongst themselves, and the bodies left over were only too good to refuse.

        Soon enough, however, things began to change again. The men knew that if they wanted life to continue, they would have to force it themselves. Very few women had survived unchanged by the disease, and not a single one of them was able to bear any young. After months of trials, a decision was made. They needed children to carry on their race, and the only way that could be done would be by capturing some of the wild and forcing them to mate.

        Necessity and desire were soon interlocked, so tightly bound together that the men got greedy. That was when the trading began, and, truly, the world as we know it ended.

***

        "Number eight-four-oh-six!" A man barked from the front of a cramped room, he wore a cool blue suit, the colour bringing out his beady eyes. Manicured hands clutched a metal clipboard ferociously, knuckles showing white through his soft skin. Victor Mortensen was his name, but most everyone he associated himself with simply knew him as 'Trader.' Names were an unnecessary thing in their society, especially when there were only two or three others who did the same as Victor did. Identity wasn't an issue when there were barely a thousand citizens still living. Barely a thousand without them, of course. There wasn't even an ounce of mercy in his gaze as he looked over the population of scruffy girls with numbers pinned to their chests. He didn't care. He couldn't care. Nobody could.

        They looked as though they belonged in a time long passed, clad only in dirtied clothes which barely concealed any dignity. Perhaps, Victor thought, it was for authenticity. History books showed people who appeared the same as his charges, men and women who lived under similar conditions, held the same purpose. Judge, the man who ruled over their society, probably found it entertaining to jog the memories of the civilians. But then, it could just be a warning. Not one of the girls had ever seen a hairbrush, not really, and likely they never would. The disease had made them new people, so none of their past memories even mattered any more. Most of them were either missing teeth, or had managed to somehow sharpen them into barbaric points. They wouldn't bite though, that had been beaten out of them.