The Tale Of The Plague

The Shape Of Things To Come

April 10th

17 Days After Quarantine

He'd ran on further before realising, after the nightmares, after what his subconscious had been trying to warn him of, that he'd been wrong and he'd made a huge mistake. Within moments, it seemed like, Charlie then found himself back in the nightmare. The fetid air rose up from somewhere below deeper down in the subway. The lights had been obscured by the gruesome, fleshy growth he'd come to know so well. The tunnel had grown dark, the floor wet and sludgy, everything around him moving gently with the pulsing of the grotesque meat. Voices, screaming like they had done during the night came through from somewhere deeper in the subway, their sharp noise cutting through the vile air like a knife through cloth. The sight of the hive, its hot, moist surface reflecting the light and creating the image of what it could have been like being trapped inside some dreadful creature. But it was real, the nightmares, the visions, everything weren't just some vision or dream, but it was real after all, somehow crossing over into reality. He'd just wound up like an overtightened sailors knot, every muscle in his body stiff and non compliant with terror. His stomach had felt as though he'd had some nightmarish creature coiled into a ball there, something he needed to get out, the sickness of fear going straight through him like a black dye colouring the water. Then the full horror of it came to him again, the full realisation of just what he'd stumbled into, of what nightmare he'd entered and its reality in the real, waking world. Piles of it had grown in the corners, of veins, of muscle and sinew, of things that once lived and now only remained as ghastly, disgusting travesties of the living world. At that point he'd panicked as the memories, the trauma of it rushed back to him like the return of a forgotten sickness. He hadn't even remembered where he'd entered from, which way was out or which would lend him any kind of escape from the nightmare. Arms, legs, faces, pieces he couldn't put names to moved, writhed in the horrid gelatinous flesh where all things became one, where all was consumed, annihilated and disseminated throughout the pus of humanity.

March 17th

1 Week Before Quarantine

You always knew something was up when you heard people talking about whatever it was that was wrong in the world on even the shortest journeys out.

"They're saying we're gonna' be on lockdown by the end of the week."

"Have you seen how many more people have caught it in the city?"

"I can't believe how it's spreading, soon it's gonna' be everywhere."

Charlie Frost had heard it all just on his way into work that morning purely by overhearing other peoples conversations. The talk about it all had been as if each and every person were a bleating siren warning of the dangers of the disease, and as far as he was concerned, he'd had enough of it all. For the weeks leading up to that point he'd heard nothing but the panicked bluster pouring out of peoples mouths about it, he'd pretty much resigned himself to simply having to tell people he wasn't interested in talking or hearing about it.

As far as he knew the disease had started over in the far east somewhere but in all honesty he hadn't cared that much as to exactly where it had come from. Apparently it was the older people that were more susceptible and he was twenty eight years old and hadn't been ill for over what was probably over five years now, so right at that point in time he didn't give a stuff about it all.

The walk to work from his apartment that morning hadn't been any different than usual, people were out buzzing around in a busy hive of activity, the children on their different ways to school, a picture of the modern world.

He'd seen his friend Adam that day at work, a tall dark haired guy he'd known since school who had rolled up into the forecourt to refuel. They'd talked like usual, about having a drink at the end of the week at the local, about their girlfriends, about the kind of bluster most twenty something guys talked about before Adam decided to talk about that thing that everyone was on about.