Vaccine Introduction

September 18, 2020, First Entry: The Infection

This is the journal of Stephen Narder, dated September 18, 2020. In case you have somehow survived this madness and happen to come across this journal, please hear me out. If you have just crawled out from under a rock, and do not know of the events of the last six months, let me refresh your memory.

Sometime during the beginning of March, in Central Europe, hospital staff around the country began to report an ever increasing number of people were dying in their sleep in hospital beds, even while in a stable condition. No matter how much care they were being given, they would always end up dead by morning, as if the life had just been sucked out of their body. About a week later, people were starting to be found dead in their own homes, in the same conditions as the victims in the hospitals. They seemed perfectly healthy, yet they just wound up dead. The authorities didn't know what the hell was going on.

After about a month, the cause of death was determined. Something was killing those people. A virus of some kind. I don't really know any specifics about the virus; its name was some strange number, they talked about it on the news for weeks. According to them, it seemed to be immune to many medicines and treatments, and was literally a silent killer. This naturally got a lot of people on edge, so some of the big shots at NeoGen, the largest producers of medicines and pharmaceutical drugs, released a statement that they were developing a cure which would be released to the world, free of charge, within two weeks.
Three months later, there was still no cure. By that time, the World Health Organization had estimated that at least 80% of the world population was infected. The number of deaths globally had been steady over those months, at a rate of four hundred a week. NeoGen did release a simple blood test to determine whether you are infected or not, and had people routinely tested every few days. I had been visited on a few occasions, and tested for the virus. I was declared not infected every visit, thankfully.

I had no doubt that NeoGen could create a cure for the virus; my main concern had been whether they would publicly release it. Maybe they had already created a cure. Maybe they were only going to distribute it to the more important people in the world, like the president, or other government figures. Maybe they didn't want us to know about it. But I quickly dismissed those thoughts. NeoGen would never do that to the world. NeoGen is better than that.

Today, I sit in my living room, surrounded by dusty furniture, alone. I don't do much of anything anymore. My son died in his sleep three weeks ago, at the mercy of the virus. My wife and I were forced to bury him in our backyard. The day after he died, I woke up after hearing a shrill tone coming from the garage. My wife had plunged one of my power drills through her skull, killing herself instantly. She couldn't bear living without our son, so she took her own life, leaving me with her death on my mind as well, every minute of every day.

My whole neighbourhood is virtually deserted. My neighbours, Len and Yvonne, moved away from our suburb nearly two months ago today. I'm not sure what happened to them. I never really knew them. Besides me, they were the only people left in my street. I'm not sure if there's anyone else in the area, I haven't yet gathered the courage to investigate. Tomorrow I may make a quick trip to the nearby store and see if there's any food still there. I pray that there is, I am almost completely out.