The Phoenix Virus

October 21, 2032

The world has changed. Talk about an understatement right? Speaking of talking that’s what I’m doing now, talking into digital voice recorder. I got the used Sony recorder at a trading post along the interstate about an hour ago. An old timer had traded it to me for a bushel of apples. Not sure why I had done that. Maybe I needed to get some things off my chest. Call it therapy.

Things had been going good. Well, for me anyways then all of a sudden the world changed. There was this bug. Not an insect but a virus. Some genius somewhere had tweaked it genetically until it became what they had intended it to be, a weapon of mass distraction. I say distraction because originally it hadn’t been destructive. Not like the bubonic plague anyways.

A scientist or scientists had created this genetically modified virus so their government could use it however they saw fit. Use it for what you might ask? To distract a given population from let’s say from paying attention to whatever else may or may not being going on. For example to end calls for Democracy in a non democratic country, to make an unpopular politician appear inept or even to destabilize a government.

Okay, so the long and short of it is, this genetically modified virus either escaped or was intentionally let out. That happened in 2019. People got sick and tens of thousands died. Drug companies made billions overnight making vaccines for the virus. Anyways, I’m not here to talk about that. What I’m doing is telling this recorder here that eventually people got vaccinated. First it was the old and infirm. Once enough of them were vaccinated your average adult was allowed to get the vaccines.

What I guess I’m trying to say here is that Governments around the world had given vaccines to their adult populations. After that they started vaccinating young adults. Children never got the vaccines because they were thought to be less likely to get the virus but there was something else. Few really talked about this. Not the media or the Government. Supposedly, none of the vaccines developed were safe to use on children. Sounds dumb right? It did to me at the time.

At first the children of the world appeared to be okay. Only a small percentage of them had gotten so sick that they died. Then that virus I’ve been talking about eventually mutated. Then it kept mutating. Didn’t stop mutating. Whether the governments of the world could or could not have stopped it I can’t say. I’m just a regular guy with no real connections to anyone important or any higher ups in my society.

So what happened? My life ended. At least it felt like it had. One day while I was doing my thing, doing my best to survive while taking care of my family, the Grim Reaper had paid me a visit. No that specter of death hadn’t taken my soul. The bastard just punched me really hard in the nuts. How did he do that? He took that sickle of his and swept it through the air over the heads of all the children in the world.

Hang on a sec, need to sip some water.

Okay I’m back. So what I’m trying to say is no one under the age of fourteen had been vaccinated. No big deal right? The virus in all of its iterations hadn’t affected them. Right? Wrong. At some point that changed. At some point the virus had mutated into something no one, at least not myself, could ever have predicted.

Some people called this new strain the Phoenix Strain. Why? I think they were misguided or didn’t read enough. Anyways, this new strain hit everyone hard. It had spread so fast that no one could do anything about it. Even if they had wanted to they couldn’t. See everyone, even the vaccinated had gotten hit by the Phoenix Strain. As for the unvaccinated most of them hadn’t made it.

Why call a lethal virus the Phoenix Strain? Well it’s like this. Many of those who died came back. They rose up from the dead. Well sort of. Now I’m not a doctor nor am I a scientist. Just a regular guy. So to me the victims were dead but not dead. Most people just called them zombies. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not say they wanted to eat my brains or whatever.

Yes it was true. Some of the victims might have turned violent but most were just mindless zombies. Feral, well yeah to some degree. If you left them alone with a beloved pet, well Fluffy just might have gotten eaten. What a mess right? Within a matter of weeks all the worlds’ children turned into zombies. To make matters worse some of the vaccines certain governments had used caused sterility in many of the vaccinated. Some say fifty percent of them can’t reproduce anymore.

So yeah, the world has changed. Life hasn’t been the same sine 2019. Every month or so everyone has to go and get their shot. It’s the law. If you don’t then the Government will get you. Sooner rather than later they will get you, arrest you then forcibly give you a shot. You won’t go to jail for long but you will get fined, heavily.

See, the Phoenix Strain is still kicking around. For reasons I don’t understand the virus is still out there wrecking havoc on society. A lot of things have happened because of it. For one, since it’s still out there, everyone gets a different kind of shot. This keeps those who still can from having babies. Logically speaking, if you have a baby while the virus is still out there then it’ll turn into a zombie. Zombie babies if you don’t know are immediately euthanized.

There are rumors of course of places around the world were certain people, let’s call them the rich and powerful, can go to. Once there in that safe environment they can have babies. Not only can they have children and raise those children they’ll be living in a virus free environment. At least that’s what I’ve heard. Hear a lot of things actually.

Here’s something I know for a fact. Those zombies, the children and yes, some adults, are still around. At least in my Country they are. Society here just couldn’t let go. It couldn’t bring Itself to kill everyone who had turned into zombies. Not even on paper would that have been easy to accomplish. Not at all. A few countries had bankrupted themselves in their attempts to rid themselves of the zombies.

Before I go into what happened in my Country I need to say something. Tell this new recorder of mine something that needs to be said. One of the affects of the Phoenix Virus is that once a victim turns into a zombie they not only loose their minds, forget who they were but they stop aging.

Here’s another interesting fact, the victims aren’t rotting corpses. They’re certainly not the same but they’re not rotting. For whatever reasons their skin has turned a dusky gray, covered in wrinkles and a few small sores. Oh and the whites of their blank eyes have turned a dark yellow and their hair is now a dull rust color. That’s about it really.

Like I said, the zombies in my Country, for the most part, hadn’t been killed off. Some have been but those were mostly the violent ones. The older a zombie was the more prone to violence they were. So those are mostly gone. The remaining zombies have been taken care of. Not every infected victim gets taken care of the same way. Those with means and the right resources can take care of their zombie relative at home or on their property.

Oh right, I’ve totally forgotten one important fact. The zombies aren’t totally harmless. If they bite or scratch you there’s a big chance you’ll get sick. Maybe even die. Just like some common vermin the zombies carry a plethora of diseases. They also eat. Just like with other vermin their waste products also carry diseases.

Many of the zombies in my area have been relocated to reservations. In my Country they used to call these FEMA camps. Now they house zombies. It isn’t a perfect situation. The care the zombies get is highly questionable and let’s face it, they live in squalor. The food they get is subpar at best. It’s a gut wrenching sight, at least for me it is.

The Government does allow family members of the victims to send care packages to their affected relatives. Typically, this is a waste of time. If the workers at the camps don’t keep the items for themselves they don’t do a bang up job of getting the items to the right recipient. It’s hard to blame them really. The camps are overcrowded, poorly funded and understaffed. On the bright family members are allowed to visit the camp but they have to remain outside of the fences.

If you haven’t guessed by now the world is getting older, not younger. Most people are barely getting by in world that gets more complicated by the day. Only a select few live life as it should be, freely and without fear. The global birthrate has dropped by ninety percent. Fifteen years ago that would have been unheard of. I still find it hard to believe myself.

Life is difficult but it can also be what you make it. Unlike a lot of my peers and neighbors I haven’t lost all hope. Sure, I have my bad days. A lot of bad days actually but every now and again I have what I tell myself is a good day. Today is one of those days. Yes, it’s a miserable cold day in October, a Thursday actually. I’m also standing in the rain wearing a raincoat and holding an umbrella.

What am I doing standing outside in the rain? It’s my daughter’s birthday. Kim or Kimmy as I used to call her had been only ten when the virus had hit. Now she’s twenty-three years old. My wife and had driven over two hours to be here. That’s how far the camp was from us. I would’ve moved us closer but that just isn’t possible right now. So here we are.

For an hour now my wife and I have been standing outside of the camp and in sight of Hut-42. This is the hut our daughter had been assigned. She doesn’t always stay there. How could she? Most of those who live here barely have a grasp on reality if that. Most of the former ten year olds tend to look the same: gray skin, yellow eyes and unruly rust colored hair.

So how do I know the young lady shuffling over to the fence is my daughter? I know it’s her because she’s still wearing that heart shaped locket I had given her on her tenth birthday. It was attached to a sturdy stainless steel chain. Can’t say why it hadn’t fallen off yet but I’m glad that it hasn’t.

“Kimmy it’s us. Mom and Dad. We brought you apples,” I said as I slipped a miniature apple through the chain link fence.

The trees on our property produced tiny apples. Why I can’t say. Wasn’t a farmer. Kimmy used to just gobble them up. She still did. I don’t know if Kimmy remembered who we were but the smell of the apples seemed familiar to her. I think that’s the only reason why she had stumbled over to us. Of course we were in tears.

By the time our daughter ate five apples others arrived. That’s okay. We had come prepared. Before my wife and I drove back home we had tossed thirty bushels of apples over the fence.