the scavengers

chapter one

     Years ago there was a pandemic, a virus of sorts; we had no idea what it did at the time. We thought it would only last around a few months like the ones before. We also thought that the government had things under control with what little they told us, they only said not to panic; like that helped any but you don’t have to be a genius to know how wrong we and they were. That was a long, long time ago and before everything became much much worse…

I was still a kid when all this happened, I was halfway through my sophomore year of school and I had my head down as some other kids threw crumpled up paper balls at me and laughed when they hit me. I was being abused at home and my mom and sister couldn’t do anything about it because if they tried to intervene it would only be worse for all of us, mainly me. I was an oops baby, not planned and well both my parents were in their either 40s or 50s, I was the youngest of four children.

“Mr. Beaker has been staring at me for an unnecessarily long time.” I thought as I peeked through my arms and caught him once again staring right at me. He was about 20 or so years older than me, he was overweight and short. He also had a habit of trying things on younger students, I had been moved up a grade or two when I was younger while my brother was held back twice so he was only a grade or two above me, he was several years older than I and was also an oops baby but our father loved him to bits and did anything he asked with no questions, my brother was not a spoiled brat and was actually kind to me but never had the confidence to tell him our father to stop after he saw what happened to our mother and sisters. Our oldest sister, Janet passed away in a car crash that also took the life of our moms sister. She; our aunt was always rude and dismissive even when my oldest sister had her first kid or when my brother made the football team or when he was made captain. She hated me the most, I had always been the quiet one and left everybody alone and it only got worse when Janet passed away. I felt bad for her daughter and her husband but soon after he married his secretary that he had been having an affair with, they eventually divorced after she found out he had been cheating on her and he died.