Light of Innocence

Prologue

          It wasn't a great and terrible beast that swept through fast and fierce, leveling whole cities and populations with a giant weapon. Not at first. In fact, that outcome would have been better, easier for the mass to live with. A giant wave crashing into the lives of billions of innocents, silencing the horrifying screams of fear and loss. Considered blissful, compared to the hand that was dealt.

          At first, the virus was a mere rumor, trickling slowly through the cracks of the news and the dark web articles. Only the crazed fanatics with bomb shelters in their backyards believed them. The rest all wrote them off as exaggerations or conspiracies. After all, the human race was powerful, resilient, and practical. Surviving World Wars, landing on the moon, and stretching the engineered-hand-of-god into unimaginable scientific advances. As far as the public was concerned yes some may die, but then rising. Thrive even, at most it would all end up in a couple chapters in a thick history textbook. Perhaps, the young generation would later swing back in their rocking chairs, and wave their hand gallantly through the air, saying this is when the whole world changed.
            But then the rumors changed to headlines, flipping through the channels to avoid them was now impossible. They were all the same, bold lettered, flashing warnings, and a growing death toll. The government assured, they had been diligent and prepared for this, even if they had cut costs and budgets of the CDC, years prior. They were going to contain the spread even outmanned and ill-equipped. The human race would prevail.
            They reassured the fears again, when the first cases hit their soil. Still miles away, and out of the time zone. But families thought that it might be safe to buy a couple extra bottles of hand sanitizer and preventative air masks. Luck favors the prepared after all. As the suspensions for professional games, concerts and amusement parks proceeded it began losing billions of dollars to the economy. The first itches of concern began to surface with the public. Stating all these enactments were precautionary and were not canceled. However, instead of reinstating the entertainment, they eliminated flights from the country and closed borders and schools.
              When the shelves in grocery stores began to gap, and empty, the president showed his face with a mint green mask on tv, he waved his hands with latex gloves, assuring the panic stricken faces to share supplies with the needy and most susceptible. The most susceptible being the very old and very young. Neither of which could protect themselves alone. They watched his well-rehearsed speeches and the death toll rise to the thousands.
               The public began rushing to the stores, filling their carts with canned food, toilet paper, and first aid. They then purchased alcohol, making their own antiseptic and sanitizers. Selling out gun stores, afraid of the fall of government and all law. Families stayed in their homes, no longer was their laughing children in green parks or loud honking commuters going to work. Stronger locks became installed, deeper screws embedded into reinforced wood doors. Windows boarded up, shutting out the crazed public.
              Trouble became unmistakable, when complex avenues were empty, shelves were bare, whole cities evacuated in months. The silky touge of the government had lied to the panicked viewers. The president fell ill. A new masked face lit up the flickering tv screens. The president was neither very old nor very young, he was not supposed to be susceptible. But more alarming he was better protected, than the average populace. The attitude dived, and then flipped completely. The panic that had heated bloodstreams, boiling minds with hysteria and fear bubbled to its brim. People no longer wanted to waste their time paying for items or waiting in line for them.
            Nursing homes became abandoned as attendants fled their dying patients. Hospitals that once overflowed, turned to breeding grounds for the virus. They were petri dishes for the disease and certain death to anyone associated. The brave doctors and nurses began to flee back into their barricaded homes, the sick's cries ignored and then falling silent. Families that had celebrated weddings weeks ago, split and retreated to seclusion, alienating the happy couple until they decided a side. One of the last to abandon their obligations were the officers and militia, mandating the peace like a swelling damn about to burst. As the last uniform fell back, hell broke loose and the raiders, pillagers, and the wild swelled over the settlement. The lucky had left the cities early, the unfortunate were scattered with the wave of fear and desperation. If the virus hadn't killed them then the crazed rabble surely did.
             No, it wasn't a great flash of a wave, it was a slow trickling stream, staining minds with concern, then anxiety, leading to fear, and then complete mayhem over the state of the situation. This great gregarious human race that once had built steel giants and engineered vaccines to save the billions, fell to the greatest enemy they had ever witnessed, themselves.
              The same soothing preachers, screaming not to panic in the streets, were robbing stocked pantries of families in the night. The same officer who valiantly broke up mobs of looters that were his kin and peers, shot at desperate frightened children who stole handfuls of canned goods from markets. The same mothers who had clutched their sons' and daughters' chubby little hands, began to shut their eyes and ears to sobbing starved orphans on neighborhood corners. The smooth-talking world leaders left their audiences in a dark and terrified world that they had claimed was safe and healing. They boarded their sleek jets and lived off their disgustingly stocked basements. Radios silenced and tv screens fell to static. Humans had saved themselves but defeated everyone in the process. Those that had made it through were no longer living, they existed.
               No government, no communication, no aid. The picked over ragged survivors looked at day to day presence as a valuable extension of survival. The populace had been slashed to mere fractions of what they once were. Small pockets of communities grew in cautious stability. The fear of past days an ominous cloud of trauma. Society has flipped it's needs, for the crucial and essential instead of the wished and comfortable.