The world was gray – all parts of it. From the vast ranges where the trees once stood to the tall remnants of the city skyscrapers, earth stood still, a lifeless, gray barren.
Two years was all it took for the virus to spread, killing nearly everyone and destroying nearly everything in its path.
It was December 25th, 2020, and the water of the ocean formerly known as the Atlantic flapped gently, innocently. When people were alive, despite the bitter cold, the day was supposed to be a day of happiness and joy. It was called Christmas. Instead, the newly destroyed and devastated world stood a reminder of the price humans had paid.
Not all was lost, however. A few people, immune to the radiation, still survived. No one was quite sure how it happened, why so few people were singled out to survive when everyone else perished.
One of these people came into view. She was dressed in a dark, metallic brown coat and ivory sweatpants. The girl was nineteen year old Cara Thompson.
“Water.” She said. Her voice was cracked and dry. She was feeling devastated, looking at the ruins of New York City, a place she was hoping to finally call home. She didn’t think a single disease would be able to wipe out a city as big as this. Apparently, she was wrong.
In two years, Cara had had over one hundred homes all across the US – none for more than a month, ever since her town, the town where the virus originated, was destroyed. As she went, each town, too, got destroyed.
Cara didn’t know where to go. She’d crossed one end of the United States to the other. Were there other people left? She hoped there was. She hoped that she could find a way that she would survive.
Cara was kneeling down at the bank of the river. She carried a tiny leather knapsack. She opened it to reveal a bottle of water, a dusty old novel that had been called Tarzan of the Apes (Which was Cara’s favorite), and a bag of chips that she still had from her New York Home.
She took the bottle and filled it with water, drinking thirstily. It looked pretty clean, but there was still the chance that it was contaminated. Cara shrugged. If it was, oh well. She would have died anyway, even if she hadn’t drunk the water.
As soon as she drank a fair amount of the icy water, Cara pulled out her book. It must have been so nice, so long ago when the novel was written, when the world was not in danger of extinction. She enjoyed Tarzan’s story, because he was an outcast, someone who had been cut off from human contact. Until he met Jane. But Cara wasn’t sure that she’d ever meet a Jane.
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