Plagues

Chapter 34

“It's been a week!” a protester shouted on the six o'clock news. “A whole week! And the authorities have turned up nothing! These lock-downs are a violation of our rights and freedoms!”

“Thank you,” the field reporter calmly said with a crafted smile. She turned to the camera as throngs of protesters waving signs and banners filled in behind her. “And there you have it. People are getting frustrated as we will soon be entering into the seventh night of lock-downs. Back to the newsroom.”

“Elsewhere tonight,” the newsroom anchor said, “mobs of people are cramming into pharmacies for Asylum. It was just this morning that many pharmacies across the continent received refreshment shipments of Asylum, but doubts are starting to be raised.”

“Within the last few days,” a new field reporter's voice said over shots of crowded pharmacies and pharmacy counters, “many places across Canada and the U.S. have been experiencing government enforced lock-downs in the wake of recent BIOTRANS investigation project Undertaker.”

“What we also discovered was those arrested were in occupancy with maniacs of enhanced ability,” the BIOTRANS spokesman said in the clip from the conference.

The reporter stood on a crowded downtown street, the roads busy with vehicular traffic.

“The CDC, Health Canada, and Rexall have all reported a spike in demand for Asylum since the lock-downs began.”

The screen showed blobs of people piling into pharmacies to get their Asylum shots.

“But there are still critics of the shot's effectiveness, like federal health critic Don Dubbman.”

“There have been several studies published over the last six to eight months saying the Meningitis virus is adapting to and fighting off the vaccine, and the First Response shot,” Dubbman, a thin, old guy, with very fine hair said, being interviewed in an office. “Studies suggest it's effective less than 50% of the time, whereas this time last year it was above 90%. 8 out of 10 vaccinated people bitten are turning, which used to be roughly 3 out of 4 this time last year.”

“Do you think those in power are aware?” the reporter asked.

“Yes.”

“On a more grassroots level,” the reporter continued over shots of some protest demonstrations, “the same doubts are being voiced.”

“As more people are getting vaccinated or injecting themselves with the First Response shot,” Marissa Trembleton, a younger woman with thick glasses, part of some group called Booster Truths, a group evidently skeptical of the pharmaceutical industry, and probably Asylum as well, “the infection rate is not decreasing. It's either plateauing, or, in some cases, steadily increasing.”

“In Oakland, California,” the reporter's voice continued over more protest shots, “protesters blocked the entrance to a Rexall pharmacy, prompting violent reaction from a seemingly desperate public.”

They showed cellphone footage of a group of people all snarled in a wrestling match that quickly turned into flailing bare-knuckle boxing.

“Jackie Timlin, CityNews.”

“With no end in sight to these sudden lock-downs,” the anchor back in the newsroom said, “people everywhere are starting to question just who is behind all this?”

The next field reporter found that most people believed that it had to do with Rexall and Immuni-co. allowing this to get out of hand by not recalling and replacing the faulty drugs. However, a few people touched on a lot of Eastern-Europeans in their neighbourhood that were known to be stashing maniacs. The neighbourhoods here in Toronto that were locked down had a steadily growing, or quite prominent Eastern-European population. This was mainly because they lived where land was cheap. They'd buy up apartment units then have their families fly over. They came to North America from many countries that were satellites to Russia during the Cold War and were today falling back in line with Russian influence and policy. This was mainly because of the weakening influence of the EU due to NATO having been so caught up in aiding the restoring and maintenance of stability in North America during the maniac wars, and, I guess, now too. Also, the members of the UN's Security Council were also busy protecting their own interests elsewhere, the international playing field having been widely reopened when it came to political and military interests, most major powers distracted with North America or eastern Asia.