Chemical) Army units use. The state of the art suits are a far cry from the simple shovel and plastic bags that the Department of Transportation workers were issued to clean up road-kill before the madness though. Something doesn't seem right to me and it's clear that my mother is as in the dark about this as the rest of the general population.
I try to talk to my mother about the parasites and their eggs, if they're still inside us, and she just completely shies away from the subject or changes it completely, ignoring me every time I ask about it. If I really press her on the subject she placates me by telling me she will talk to me later about it when Lucy is asleep.
Some places around the world suffered much less than the rest of us. Places like Hong Kong, Singapore and a lot of the Arabian Peninsula, having a smaller amount of natural wildlife, wasn't hit by the madness very hard. They did get hit by the vast numbers of people desperate to escape it though. In Hong Kong there were so many people fleeing from mainland China that every open space, alley or piece of concrete had become crowded with refugees. Some places in the world have, and are continuing to suffer, much more than us. New Zealand has seen is population cut in half. Much of New Zealand's people lived in isolated wilderness, existing pretty much as their ancestors had for thousands of years before them. Those people that lived in the remote parts of the world are gone now. Nobody can say with any confidence how many people have died so far. I've heard some estimates ranging from a couple hundred thousand (a ridiculously low number) to hundreds of millions and even more. Only time will tell what the death toll was from this global menace.
My mother got a day off today, finally. I know she must want to just kick back and catch up on her sleep. Instead, seeing how our refrigerator is low she decided to go shopping now that the stores are opening their doors again. Lucy wouldn't be left behind this time, even for something as mundane as grocery shopping. I must admit that I also wanted to go, just to get out of the house.
When we got to Publix, I was kind of taken back with the crowds of people. Everybody had the same idea, causing a run on practically everything in the store. The stocks were low on meat, milk, butter, eggs and everything in between. The employees were actually in the process of placing "Out of Stock" signs on huge empty areas of the meat section. When asked when they would get new stock to replace the things like hamburger and pork chops the answer was a sad one. The farms were ruined around the world. I hadn't realized the implications of that before. Everything used to be cheap and plentiful, at least here in the U.S. Now that the pigs, chickens, cows and everything else had been virtually wiped out it will take at least six months for things like chicken and eggs to bounce back and it might be years for beef and pork to be available in any quantity again. There was actually very little left in the warehouses and supply pipelines. Once that was gone, they would be gone for quite awhile. Fish, rice, beans, soy milk, flour, those things would still be around but the prices were surely going to climb. No more hotdogs and hamburgers for anyone for a long time. No more milk or butter. We'll have to deal with practically becoming vegetarians for the next few years. It's not really a bad thing, it'll be a much healthier diet for us all, but I know it's going to be a hard transition for a lot of people.
McDonalds, Wendy's and all those fast food franchises are going to go bankrupt. Burger King will have to change their name to Falafel King or something to stay in business, because they sure weren't going to be selling any burgers. This is on top of an economy that still hasn't bounced back from the "Great Recession". Restaurants around the world will close and all those people are going to become unemployed again, so soon after having finally gotten some kind of employment.
The madness may have passed but things were going to go straight to hell in hand basket.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
I have no idea where to start this journal entry. Everybody is trying to cope with what has just happened. The world has been turned upside down and people are trying to resume their normal lives, except our normal lives are almost a thing of the past. I'm not just talking about the terrifying acts of animal insanity or the extreme food shortage either.
I guess I'll start with telling whoever is reading this in the future, whether it's you Mrs. Johnson or my future self. That is if I live through this. Maybe this will go unread by anyone and collect a thick coating of dust or maybe a complete stranger will find this and add it to an historic collection of what it was like to live through these troubled times. For the first time in my life I am scared, I'm actually horrified at what the future is going to have in store for all of us.
The "Madness", for the most part has finished its "near extinction event" (the media's new catch phrase for the parasites uncontrolled destruction of over half the world’s mammal species). The attacks are fewer and farther between now but they still happen.
On the television there is a new video of a vicious wolverine attack. In a small town up in Canada, north of Ontario (I forget the name of the little town), school had started up again, as it has here. The town hadn't, miraculously, suffered from the wave of insane creatures much at all. They were lax in their wariness and they paid for it. A group of parents were escorting and waiting with their children, (elementary school kids the same age as my sister Lucy), for the bus to pick them up and take them to school. It looked to me as if the parents thought that any animals wouldn't attack them solely based on the fact that there were adults present. Everything was going as it should have yesterday morning and the bus arrived on time. The children boarded, the parents stood back and waved. As the bus driver was talking to one of the mothers, he was holding the folding bus door open about half way. Before continuing upon his route a nasty, huge wolverine bounded out of a cement drainage pipe from the ditch next to the bus stop. It was obvious nobody was expecting anything like this at all, and none of them even knew what was happening until the parasite maddened animal ran up the bus steps and immediately went for the driver’s throat.
The video is from the camera inside the bus and panic and pandemonium ensued. The driver’s throat had been quickly ripped out and arterial blood was spurting in great gushes onto the mass of screaming children behind him. There was a mad rush for the emergency door at the back of the bus as the crazed thing finished off the driver who was dying fast. Both the kids inside and the parents outside went to the back of the bus and started hurriedly getting the children off the bus as quickly as possible.
One girl had somehow gotten her backpack tangled on one of the seats and fell down hard in the aisle. The little girl was screaming and crying as she yanked as hard as she could on the strap from her backpack that had gotten wedged between the upper and lower seat cushions. Just as she freed her backpack from the seat and it looked like she would be able to run to safety, the blood-lust driven beast went after her. The driver could do nothing but clasp his hands over his ripped open jugular in a futile effort to save his own life.
It was that same backpack that probably saved the girls life, when the wolverine jumped heavily on her and knocked her back to the floor. The parasite infected wolverine slashed its wickedly sharp claws and bit the backpack furiously, scattering pieces of it all around.
One of the braver parents, rushed up to the animal, past the weakly struggling driver, and actually pulled the beast from the little girls back. Snapping and wriggling forcefully, the hairy fiend turned, in a flash, to attack the poor, brave woman.
The young girl managed to escape but the brave woman, in her mid-thirties, quickly fell in the driver’s blood. The animal showed no mercy. The maddened animal went for her face and throat and quickly delivered fatal wounds.
The remaining parents and children abandoned the helpless victims, fleeing the area as the wolverine sliced the woman's flesh to ribbons.
A neighbor heard the commotion and using a revolver, shot the wolverine repeatedly. The driver died, there on the bus while the woman died in the hospital shortly thereafter. At least the girl survived, without a scratch but min
us a backpack.
So yeah, we still face the threat of attacks, even though most of the infected animals have finally died of thirst, starvation or bullets.
The first day back to my school was an odd and extremely uncomfortable experience. A mixture of fear and uncertainty hung in the air. Almost twenty percent of the students were absent and all of the normal joking and teenage energy was gone. The normal endless talking and bravado had been drained out of the students, replaced by a depressed silence. The sound of itching and scratching and relentless fidgeting was at times greater than the muted voices of the teachers' instructions. Every student, every teacher, except for a small handful of us, had signs of a rash. Most of the students and staff had headaches and some were showing signs of psychological trauma such as facial tics.
I, and everybody else, knew in our hearts upon seeing this that it had to be because of the parasite. It was easy enough to think it was the normal onset of a cold or allergies when you're at home with your family, but when you went into a public place like a school and saw that it wasn't just you and your family that had the signs, that it was literally