The Hunger

Every hundred million years or so, life starts over. A profound silence fell over Earth’s once thriving cities, broken only by the echo of the dying in this most recent mass extinction. Forty million years too early. It came not by climate change, as had been typical since life began, but in the form of an unknown virus which spread faster, more violently, than it could hope to be controlled.

A little girl, no older than ten, wandered the streets of what was formerly the most populated city in the United States’ Pacific Northwest. The ocean breeze brought with it the scent of rot and death, but the girl no longer noticed. She waded through the bodies on the shore on bloodied feet as though they were nothing but sand, human or animal mattering little to her starving mind. Hunger gnawed at her like a rabid dog, a constant reminder of the horror that had befallen the world.

The girl had had a name once, before. Hers, like seven billion others, had been erased from history, society destroyed in a matter of months.

Names no longer matter when there is no one left to speak them.

It began with the animals. It was a global rabies pandemic, they said. Newspapers, TV, social media of all kinds warned to keep pets inside and to steer clear of wildlife and strays. There was mass panic, and people began killing their dogs and cats. Some radicals killed any animal they saw, and any human who tried to stop them. Now, one might call those early deaths a mercy.

Schools were closed, then everywhere. Her parents had tried their best to shield her, but she saw their fear, heard gunshots and barking at all hours. One day her older brother and father left to get food. Only her brother returned.

They stopped pretending after that. “It wasn’t just the animals,” her brother had said through tears. “I– I don’t think they were alive.”

The virus passed through bodily fluids, and it drove people mad. They no longer called it rabies. This was something new, something worse. Infected showed symptoms within minutes of exposure, biting anyone nearby and in turn spreading the disease quicker than anyone could react. They showed no sign of feeling pain, and could only be stopped by severe head trauma. Her brother started calling them zombies, a true nightmare coming to life before their eyes.

Stopping her walk on the pier, the girl stared up at the ferris wheel that once lit up the night. She had come here with her family just days before the end of the world. They’d all eaten a seafood boil and shared laughs, oblivious to the sickness at their doorstep. The memory was strong, yet distant, a whole other lifetime having passed since then.

She was so hungry.

In the distance, there was smoke. She turned toward it, watching it rise up into the air. It could mean nothing, it could mean food. She clutched her tattered teddy bear. Survivors were dangerous, as dangerous as the infected, but she had learned many things in her time out here. More importantly, her senses had become accustomed to the absolute darkness of a moonless night. Darkness and silence had become her only friends, and so she went.

The first infected she ever saw, or zombie, as her brother said, was her mother. Symptoms sprang up out of nowhere, and she chased them right out of their home. News had stopped coming days ago, the same time the power went out, but with it they might have known about the bugs.

You see, bloodsucking insects outnumber humans astronomically, no matter where you are. Fleas, ticks, mosquitos, they carry the disease and bite the infected, then bite another human or animal, and then another, on and on. By the time anyone might have figured this out, it was far too late to stop. Humanity never stood a chance, nor any species on which the insects fed.

She and her brother were alone then, in the land of the dead. No more shelter, nothing to their names but a stuffed bear and the clothes on their back. They hadn’t even had time to grab a weapon before tumbling out their front door, slamming the door and locking their mother inside. Her wails echoed after them as they ran, hiding anywhere they could from all the other infected that had been drawn to the noise.

This was the girl’s first time outside in weeks. Her block was covered in trash. Broken glass littered the streets, doors hung open, cars had crashed and been abandoned. Then there was the smell. There had been hints of it indoors, but out here she wanted to throw up as her brother hauled her along behind him. The infected wandered in packs, snarling ghouls covered in wounds and chasing every sound. She saw now why they had stopped wearing shoes and communicated only with notes. Any noise and these creatures would have burst through her windows, just as they were now at her mother’s call.

Even then she was starved. Her mother and brother hadn’t been able to get out for food much since her father died.

They ran like that, for a while. Hiding where they could, eating what they were able to find. Many times, it was impossible to tell who was infected and who was a survivor. By appearance or by danger. Those who were still human often carried weapons, so that was one thing, but they were just as liable to attack the children out of distrust as the infected were to eat them. That was how her brother died.

The girl blended into the shadows as she neared the source of the smoke. She stopped when she heard a laugh. It was a foreign sound, ringing through the night with the force of a gunshot. Her head tilted, considering. There would definitely be food here. She decided to continue on, observing the camp that had been built. Three people sitting around a fire in a construction site, a chainlink fence sealing them off.

That laugh would draw the infected.

Without her brother, without her parents, the girl had learned many important lessons in the apocalypse. First, and most importantly, was that the virus didn’t always overcome its host. A very small number of humans retained their intelligence, their ability to reason and problem-solve. Second, that they were just as hungry as the infected.

Third, that it was sometimes best to allow heavy lifting to be done by the others.

Infected started trickling in from the alleys and streets, charging toward the fence as the girl watched from atop a pile of crates. Guns went off, bodies dropped, and there again was the laughter of someone who challenged death to the end, perhaps even welcomed it.

The fence came down, and the girl jumped down from her crates. She held her bear’s paw as she walked through the carnage, ignored by the infected. They had no reason to attack her. The last man still laughed as he was brought down by the horde, and she stared at him with dead eyes as she moved ever closer.

The girl had known laughter, once.

Now there was only hunger.