Plague Rats
Dec 20, 2013 18:04:48 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Dec 20, 2013 18:04:48 GMT -5
They were calling it The Great Last Plague. Laura Tobin, known rather ‘affectionately’ by her housemates as ‘Compassion’, thought about this name a lot. Compassion rather liked the name of that – it was ominous and promising. As long as there were humans in the world, there would be disease. So if it were the last plague, didn’t that mean that humanity would be wiped out? The Doctor always told her that this was a negative way of viewing the term – it more than likely was just a clever name thought of by people who wanted to give the survivors hope. And after this tragedy, humanity would be better-suited in the future.
Compassion wondered sometimes if the Doctor’s schizophrenia were somehow contagious. Humans? Humanity? She thought of them so casually as though she herself weren’t human or part of humanity. It was the influence of her housemates. Ever since she had moved into the big blue house on the hill – the one that seemed… almost bigger on the inside, as odd as it sounded, she’d found herself changing despite the distance she kept between herself and the others. Fitz, the oddly erudite gardener, and the Doctor, the schizophrenic who would come to her and warn her of the glass men with the strange hearts in the sky.
Still, as much as she found her personality changing to fit in with the motley crew of the blue house, Compassion had always had a streak of independence. Despite the grim warnings to stay indoors, Compassion was running through the park, her long red hair tied into a pony-tail to keep it from her face. It was safer outside now that they had more people to clean up the bodies. Before, when the government hadn’t had enough people to take care of and dispose the bodies, there had been a few. No one knew how the disease spread, but even without that disease, corpses in the streets tended to other health problems. Also panic, Compassion noted.
Even the ones that weren’t quite dead seemed so. Their skin was pale and blue, a muddy purple in the veins and at the bottoms of the feet. They should be dead, and some studies showed that brain activity had, for the most part, halted in the later stages of the disease despite the heart continuing to go. Some called them zombies, but Compassion preferred to think of it as irony’s way of displaying humanity’s mindlessness.
She came to a stop over the bridge, watching the empty park. Even though the government was issuing fatalist warnings, it wasn’t as though humanity were in any danger of coming to an end – there had only been a few isolated cases in the Americas and Asia, and none reported in Africa or Australia. It seemed to be the most prominent in Eastern Europe, with the West in a panic to stop it from coming. The disease didn’t seem to be airborne or even direct contact – the water seemed to be normal. Instead, it was almost as if it were something inside the person causing them to mutate.
Compassion wondered sometimes if the Doctor’s schizophrenia were somehow contagious. Humans? Humanity? She thought of them so casually as though she herself weren’t human or part of humanity. It was the influence of her housemates. Ever since she had moved into the big blue house on the hill – the one that seemed… almost bigger on the inside, as odd as it sounded, she’d found herself changing despite the distance she kept between herself and the others. Fitz, the oddly erudite gardener, and the Doctor, the schizophrenic who would come to her and warn her of the glass men with the strange hearts in the sky.
Still, as much as she found her personality changing to fit in with the motley crew of the blue house, Compassion had always had a streak of independence. Despite the grim warnings to stay indoors, Compassion was running through the park, her long red hair tied into a pony-tail to keep it from her face. It was safer outside now that they had more people to clean up the bodies. Before, when the government hadn’t had enough people to take care of and dispose the bodies, there had been a few. No one knew how the disease spread, but even without that disease, corpses in the streets tended to other health problems. Also panic, Compassion noted.
Even the ones that weren’t quite dead seemed so. Their skin was pale and blue, a muddy purple in the veins and at the bottoms of the feet. They should be dead, and some studies showed that brain activity had, for the most part, halted in the later stages of the disease despite the heart continuing to go. Some called them zombies, but Compassion preferred to think of it as irony’s way of displaying humanity’s mindlessness.
She came to a stop over the bridge, watching the empty park. Even though the government was issuing fatalist warnings, it wasn’t as though humanity were in any danger of coming to an end – there had only been a few isolated cases in the Americas and Asia, and none reported in Africa or Australia. It seemed to be the most prominent in Eastern Europe, with the West in a panic to stop it from coming. The disease didn’t seem to be airborne or even direct contact – the water seemed to be normal. Instead, it was almost as if it were something inside the person causing them to mutate.
[ ooc| @8ball ]