This is How the World Ends

Chapter I: Hit & Run

Clementina's POV.

  The outline of a dozen large buildings hid the sunlight from the town of Old Hanover. The dreariness and overall lack of movement made the town seem all the the more sad. My dear aunt, Tasha, however, loved the town. Her and her husband's, little house sat on the brink of city life and farm life. Old Hanover was the remaining town in this country that exhibited what life was before industrialisation. In better words, it was the remains of what was.
     You see, there was New Hanover—a place in which souls were left to rot by the affects of alcohol and cigars and dubbed 'friends'. Lurking just behind and in the shadows was Old Hanover, most of its buildings left in shambles, and residents clinging onto memories and past life. City folk always had the saying, "All dead souls from New Hanover move to Old Hanover." The saying was, indeed, true. Fresh adults and teen-agers moved to New Hanover for a taste of something new. They left the town, and usually towards Old Hanover, with their pockets empty and stomachs full with the taste of cheap wine. In Old Hanover they sat and they sat, and they wasted and they wasted, time and time again. My aunt and uncle avoided the alleys whenever possible, as they usually contained the decaying (and I don't mean this literally, but, rather, metaphorically) and sad bodies of what was once hope. There they sat, their backs slumped up against a brick wall and mouths full of forlorn food.
     Raising a child in such an environment was hard for both my aunt and uncle. So there came the idea for them to move, despite my aunt's quiet pleas. And while I mentioned it was hard for her to raise her child in such an environment, she felt it hard to leave behind a town that she practically grew up in. From her earliest days as a married woman to the days she spoon-fed her newborn child, she didn't want to let go of the memories. Eventually, she forced herself to believe it was best. And, perhaps, it was.

I had driven with my grandfather and my mother to my aunt's house earlier to-day, in order to help prepare her for the move. The sky was spotted: a hue of dark blue stood as the canvas (the sky), and white splotches of paint was added (the clouds). The clouds just barely stood in front of the sun, so it was fairly sunny outside. Sharp blades of bright green grass pointed upwards, just reaching the bottom of my white stockings. The warm temperatures of this summer broke records, and with that spawned many heat waves. The air conditioning had started to show signs of failure, and the heat in the upper levels of the house was unbearable. One could barely be upstairs without beads of sweat dripping down from their forehead. I had, thankfully, started to get used to the heat upstairs. I simply had to; for, in near time, I would have to be sleeping there, and I desperately needed the sleep.
     It being the middle of July, the illness rates had, similar to the ever-rising temperatures, also started to peak, and with that my mother and I's worry. The symptoms were usual for a summer-borne illness: cough, mild fever, headache, sore throat, congestion. The only thing out of the ordinary was an ills tendency to faint. Although fevers were mild, the heat combined with the dry air made any illness worse than it would usually be. Illnesses are, by nature, a quite terrible thing, and the weather of July did not quite help. There were even cases of an ill waking up in a state of utter violence, thrashing around their rooms and tearing up linens. The CDC said nothing about this unusualness in behaviour, despite the public becoming increasingly aroused with worry.
     In the newspaper of this week, I had read a claim made by a foreign writer to the newspaper. She stated that, "The illness of this season is, too, rampant in foreign nations, but it takes upon an even deadlier course. Hundreds of people are being hospitalised daily with symptoms that include a high fever, feeling fatigue, nausea, severe headache, out-of-the-ordinary behaviour, and, what I am most afraid of claiming to the public, is the eventual rotting of the skin. It is as if the Black Plague has taken a new form. It is much worse than what they are telling you in the news ..."
     Despite this rather alarming statement, very few borders have been closed and very few limitations, if any at all, have been taken place. The world is in full swing. Beach parties among the wealthy and famous are on the rise again this season, and no one plans to stop them. People are worried it is a new variant of the Ebola virus, or that the Black Plague is truly on the rise. But these claims have been so suddenly shut down, just as how suddenly they have emerged in the media. "It is just another summer virus—a virus that only includes rotting of the skin if not identified sooner and taken care of," claimed a doctor from nearby.