It started with the blood breeze, faint at first and then cloying, almost overwhelming. It was followed by the rains that weren’t blood but also weren’t any liquid we could identify. Climate change finally gone wild. We deserved it though, didn’t we?
Then came the earth opening up in places and closing in others, like the mouths of baby birds waiting to be fed. And feed them we did, because by then we thought maybe that would end the blood breeze and the rain that didn’t stop. We stared into the void and fed it with people. We rationalized that they wouldn’t be missed, and that we were all probably going to die anyway, so why not give it a shot. Some we threw in, kicking and screaming. Some decided to jump. We had reached that point of backsliding depravity that you only reach, as a civilization, by being beaten again and again. But it’s funny, isn’t it, how fast you get there?
Suddenly, it all stopped. For a whole week. Long enough to give us hope. Before we could break out the champagne, the worst yet arrived. Dragonflies, something thought to be so beautiful before, but now as big as hawks. Hawks that saw us as prey, especially when they could get us alone and outside. If you stayed outside too long, they would feed on you, first one, then the swarm. The buzzing of their giant wings drove us nearly insane. It filled the air, taking up space, drowning out the screams. We learned to stay inside, stopping up any holes in our houses and tending to our wounds and scars. And still, we could hear the buzzing.
For a time, we thought the earth was trying to expel us, but it wasn’t the earth. Instead, the threat came from above. It took us so long to figure this out that we amassed no sort of defense against it. When we finally scrambled to fight back, it appeared it was too late.
Still, we knew now it came from above, but from where? Every country, all around the world, seemed to be suffering the same. No true source to be found, just a “space” where we saw the threats entering, far above where our cameras could be of any help.
The infections started last month, with the waning of the other threats. I’m writing this from a tiny closet in a back room in my house. Cliché’, I know. I’m not hiding from anything, really, just trying to seek quiet. There’s not a true hiding spot anymore. There’s also no true quiet space, the world so filled with laughter, otherworldly and otherwise. There’s only defending your own. There’s not much of a medical response, not a vaccine, just a parade of conspiracies and the idiots who wield them on the TV, 24/7. You thought there was nothing good on before? Try now.
The infections range from a simmering and muttering madness to an outright ongoing twisted bout of hilarity and laughter and movement that brings death. Others just bleed out, still others bite and devour family pets, family members, strangers.
The laughter is the worst. My mother has it. Had it, rather. “Hang the ashes,” she screamed as my father held her down, the howls of laughter followed, then nothing. Something she had heard on tv while she was still coherent. We had heard rumors of the dead returning, so much worse. Stories of fast zombies filled my head, enamored as I was with horror. Even in her state, she knew enough that she didn’t want to come back.
We are still holed up here. We know the runners bite, spreading the infection, so one of us is on guard all the time. The earth is slowing down and speeding up at the same time. There are less of us humans, and less of us are human. Why this happened, who made it happen, doesn’t seem to matter so much now. We just are. We try and make the food last, we tell stories to pass the time, and we wait. What we are waiting for, I can’t say, but it must be better than this.