The beginning of the end

It appeared to be a normal Sunday morning. The skies were blue and the birds were singing. But something seemed different. The air felt different. Something was about to change and you could feel it. 

Erin was preparing to go out with some friends. As she was about to set foot outside a mysterious package was dropped at her doorstep by a drone. It had no name, no sender, was this package intended for her? 

She stepped outside and looked around the corner. Nothing to see. There was no trace of the drone or anyone who could have brought it to her. A strange, uneasy feeling grew inside her. She was curious, but there was something about the package that was throwing her off. 

She wasn't sure what to do with it so she decided to leave the package on her porch and check it out when she got back from the coffee with her friends. While she was out she couldn't stop thinking about the mysterious package. Curiosity grew inside of her. So she decided to tell her friends. Her friends looked at her with worried faces. Did she have a stalker she didn't tell them about? The conversation only left Erin more unsettled so she decided to leave early to check out the package. 

When she arrived home the package was still on the porch, exactly where she had left it. She opened the box to find nothing else but a little piece of paper in it with the following words: " I must be dead by now. I hope you are luckier than I was."

Erin turned the little piece around but didn't see anything besides this one sentence. She looked better in the box, but there was nothing left. She didn't understand what this meant, but she knew it was bad. 

The next week everything seemed normal. Life went on and Erin didn't hear anything else from the box or its mysterious sender. Suddenly Erin started to feel unwell. She seemed to be coming down with a cold and wasn't able to sleep (or was there more going on?). After a few days of bed rest, Erin noticed strange black spots appearing on her skin. It was as if her skin was dying, eating itself. This was getting out of hand. The doctors didn't know what was happening to Erin but she seemed to be slowly disintegrating. 

Lab tests didn't bring results and science didn't seem to be able to explain Erin's symptoms. Then she remembered the box with the weird letter. She took it to the police who ordered an investigation. The results were shocking. It seems as though the box wasn't sent empty (besides the little note). Somehow there was a Virus hidden inside, and now it was using Erin to multiply itself. Without knowing exactly what Virus it was there was not much left to be done. Only a few days later Erin died, completely consumed by the Virus. 

One day after Erin died her friend Natascha also received a weird, unmarked box at her doorstep delivered by a drone. She knew what had happened with her friend and remembered the day they were at the coffee shop and Erin told them about a mysterious brown package with no sender. Her mind started to race, what should she do now? Was she next? Without touching the box she called the police to ask for assistance. Not long after a cop car arrived. Instead of police in normal attire, two policemen came out in protective suits. Covered from head to toe to protect themselves from this mysterious disease. They had been receiving more and more calls about mysterious packages followed by those who had been receiving them dying in excruciating pain, being eaten alive by their own cells. They didn't know what was the cause of this but the investigation was ongoing. 

Because of the nature of viruses they are hard to track. And without knowing who was sending the boxes it was almost impossible to tell for sure what was going on. The world was being tormented by a new disease and someone was spreading it. But who? And why? The media also got a hang of this story and started to spread their own versions, but no one ever discovered what was happening. The exact start date, and patient zero, weren't even known. But people became aware not to open unmarked mystery boxes delivered by random drones and a new industry saw the day of light to safely retrieve and destroy these packages and the virus they contained.

After a while life returned to normal. As people became more aware to not touch these packages and try to avoid them all together the spreading of the virus appeared to slow down and eventually became rare. So rare it even became a myth, a cautionary tale to scare kids and teach them not to touch unmarked boxes.