It's started in the year 1947 and was deemed a public health emergency on January second of 2016. There were reports all over the world that a new disease broke out. No one was really sure what the affects of the virus would do. They only know it affected pregnant woman. Over the years as generations died, the Z-virus, as it's known today, would claim the lives of almost everyone in our world.
It started when pregnant mothers were visited in the night by misquotes. There were few symptoms including headache, rash, fever, joint pain and red eyes. After the baby was born, there was no way of detecting the virus in the baby because over time, everyone had been affected with the disease and had small heads with learning disabilities and possible hearing and vision problems. As the child grew, he or she would fit right in with the disobediant, rebellious group in elementary school. Over time though, the child would have what became known as "nightly shifts".
Nightly shifts were just the beginning for this adolescent. In the night before bed, the child would complain of growing pains. Parents would give the ailed child medication and send them to bed. That was the parents first mistake. Around one in the morning, the child would sit straight up in bed, squirm and scream. Not just any childish scream either. It was a scream that shook the floors, rattled the windows. The scream seemed to enter you and make you freeze. It was the scream or howl really, of a night crawler.
Night crawlers were the new Boogy Man in the modern 3000's. Children around the world would get into bed and plead with their parents to check under the bed for one before they went to sleep. Night crawlers, the children affected by the virus, would take on a new form over night. Their skin became scales, their eyes turned into yellow slits. They hunched over in bed and whaled as they grew claws from their fingers and toes. They began to bend at the knees, hunching over in agony as a tail began to grow out of their spine. After the tail grew, there was no more screaming. The child's, if you can call it that after this point, arms and legs would slowly retract until they were nubs with clawed hands and feet. Slowly their faces elongated and they grew teeth so sharp they could bite through flesh and bone at once. Night crawlers were said to resemble a died out species known as alligators.
If the child's parents were wise, they would have locked the child's door before bed. Night crawlers couldn't use door knobs and because it was the 3000s's, doors had become a lot stronger. Parents huddled in the closets all night, pray their "little monster" weren't crafty Shifters and they weren't overly hungry that night.
The crafty ones were the most deadly. They still knew how to do basic tasks, such as opening doors. Some could even talk with small words. In the morning, the child would morph back their original self and have no memory of the night before.
Most children were sent away to facilities for Night Shifters, others were shot the next morning if they were deemed "too unpredictable". In the compounds, the children would continue their education by day and were stranded down in their beds at nights for everyone's protection. At least, that's what the governments told us.
Few children were ever allowed to leave the compounds they were sent to live in after the virus had taken affect in them. The ones that did often returned, realizing they didn't know how to live a normal life. Others ran away. They felt they didn't need to be there and that their condition wasn't as serious as everyone else's. When one did run, the whole country was alerted and everything went into lock down.
This virus didn't affect every pregnant woman and through the nine months of pregnancy, the expecting parents prayed their child would be different. Over time, people began to develop genetic resistances to the virus. Generations would go by without the Z-virus, as it was known. Scientist worked tirelessly to find a cause and treatment for the virus. The only problem was, the virus was carried by mosquitoes and the scientist couldn't kill off all the mosquitoes.
