The Cure, стр. 1

THE CURE

BY JEREMY P. HORGAN

This is work of fiction. Names, characters, places and

incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination

or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

reproduced or used in any manner without written

permission of the copyright owner except for the use of

quotations in a book review.

cover Art by The Funky Books Co.

Dedicated to The Survivors, The Warriors and The Angels

Chapter One

‘I can remember my father telling me bedtime stories when I was a young girl. Stories about a time where people lived their lives carefree and happy. Life wasn't perfect, but people made the best of it. He would tell me of times when he and my mother would meet friends for social events, lavish dinners and cocktail parties. Then times he would tell me of when he and my mother would take long walks on the beach, stopping for ice-cream, just sitting peacefully and taking in the atmosphere. Not talking, but just feeling the rays of sunshine on their faces. The life he spoke of sounded blissful. Watching movies at the cinema with popcorn or meeting his colleagues for a drink, which turned into four or five. Sometimes simply just walking down the road and acknowledging people he passed. Then one day, everything changed.

They called it The Cure, but truthfully no-one knew what is was or why it happened. We embraced it and claimed it as a gift from God. How wrong we were. How vain of us to believe we had earned the right to treat the world as we had and be rewarded in His name. It didn't take us long to realize our mistake, but it took long enough for the damage to have already been done.

On the eve of 2021 life changed as we knew it. People who were ill or suffering from disease simply got better, from everything. Cancer, heart disease, kidney failure, even the common cold. It all just disappeared in an instance. The leading medical geniuses in the world were baffled. It was a miracle. No doubt about it.

The first few months people were skeptical and continued to worry that the disease and illness would return. But when it didn’t, they rejoiced. Everyone who had been ill was cured and anyone who may have gotten ill in the future didn’t.

After those few months people returned to their lives with their loved ones unaware of the consequences of The Cure. There is a Spanish phrase which was about to be more relevant than we knew, ‘quitar con una mano lo que se da con la otra’, which means to give with one hand and take with the other.

We were so caught up with the gift that we were blind to what was going on in the rest of the world and the effect The Cure was having on them. Other countries were going through the same situation, praying to their different deities and thanking them for the gift that had been bestowed upon them. But unlike us they were already feeling the consequence of what was happening.

Third world countries were most affected. Imagine a world of no HIV or Malaria. Imagine five million people a year in Africa dying of hunger, not actually dying. An already huge continent of over a billion people without food, increasing in population every day, but still without food. But we still didn’t see it coming.

Starvation is a deficiency in calorie intake below the level needed to maintain life. It is a form of malnutrition and in humans prolonged starvation can cause organ damage and eventually death. But in a world where organ damage is no longer an issue starvation turns human beings into something altogether different. Food is Life.

Two years after The Cure our natural resources became depleted and the army was deployed to enforce martial law to eradicate increasing crime. People stockpiled but it was too late. The increase in population and the fact people had become greedy due to no longer worrying about health risks had wiped out food sources across the whole of the United States. Shops were looted, farms destroyed, and animals hunted and killed. After five years even cannibalism became a whisper on the street, but the government were powerless by this stage and refused to acknowledge it. As money became obsolete and as food became more valuable than gold, the soldiers the existing government had deployed to the cities either left their posts and returned to their families or had banded together for their own survival. Life in the cities became survival of the strongest.

People were still dying, but not to the same extent as natural death attrition. The damage had already been done. Murder was prevalent and people disappeared never to be heard of again. We were wiping out the population through crime but with no energy source to replenish it.

Almost everyone had left their jobs and shops and stores were abandoned. Hospitals no longer existed. The Cure had put most doctors out of work, not to mention thousands of other medical support staff. A few stayed open to cater for accidents, but in time they closed too. Simply put, lives became cheap and the more people that died the better it became for everyone else. The apocalypse was coming.

Those left alive in the suburbs stayed inside other than to loot neighboring houses for food supplies. There was still a running water supply and electricity manned by technology put in place as a precaution for a major event. But when you yourself are considered food putting on a TV or lights was a sure-fire way to draw attention.

In the cities people still stayed in groups living off rodents, birds or whatever