======Contagion======
[CW: Gore]

Its jaws close around his shoulder. Rot-bearing teeth sink inches into raw, sunburnt skin. It is over so quickly. The gift given, it yields, drops his arm with uncanny gentleness. He, unconscious, does not stir as his own blood pools under his legs and his sister begs wordlessly for him to open his eyes. She, the lucky one, is safe from infection, yet alone.

----

The population of the world gets smaller with every day. Not that you could tell from the trees or the sky: there is no news broadcast to predict this; there is no bulletin board on which those who remain might post their unhinged predictions. There is only, as time goes on, a slowly building sense of surety, and of realisation. 

The world does not consist of small, comprehensible units of persons. It also does not consist of one large, human family. 

Today, the world is made up of a handful of stragglers, 'survivors': remnants of a long-gone world or seeds of the future?

Slowly, but like every secret, the information newly gathered about the Contagion becomes public at the Bastion. The Contagion that affected Lottie, a mutated strain -- the strain that puppeted the body whilst the mind was still unturned. The science of the old world could only go so far while its practitioners were running from disaster -- blind faith in the ideas of dead men leads you to the same fate. Thanks to the effort and research of a few Bastion members, at last, reality has made itself distinct from scripture and humanity can know the whole truth.

It is a strange feeling, to have been pulling the threads, weaving the blanket of all the world's knowledge with your own fingers. But it is the only way to survive the winter. 

As for zombies, the forests are rampant, the cities are rampant, the rolling hills and craggy mountains are rampant; they become part of the ecosystem, another predator, another node in a network of decay that comes for every creature. The world feels newly claustrophobic. Or perhaps this is what life becomes when a king abdicates its throne. You will never escape this world for as long as you live.

There is nowhere to run to, there is only the future.

The Contagion has come home at last.

{[]}{{tag>writeupeternity gm_tara complete}}