The Cure, стр. 2
Once the mental effects of what was happening faded and the loss of loved ones had been replaced by the physical pain of not eating for weeks, or even months, these shells of former human beings became something else, something rabid. The mind still partially coherent but with only the purpose of self-survival they became feral. Their bodies looked collapsed and exhausted. They moved around the streets scavenging in packs, occasionally turning on each other. Hunting anything that moved. The physical pain of not eating made them into the worst possible monsters.
Of course, there were the few who had always harbored conspiracy theories of this very scenario and had always feared what others laughed off. They had built bunkers and began stock piling for this very moment for years. Forgiving of those who thought they were mad until the time came that they weren’t. And then, and only then, locked away safely in their homes they lived hidden from the crowds living life day by day with no knowledge of what the future would bring.
Many of the rich and famous had evaded the same fate too, managing to buy their way to a haven. But for how long nobody knew. Stockpiling would have a shelf life too and eventually even those with foresight would be in the same boat, wasting away until they too would consider the unfathomable.
Then there was us, the ‘lucky ones. I was the daughter of a government scientist, tasked with finding an answer to what was happening across the country. Starting as a medical researcher my father had stumbled across a potential cure to several cancers, which could have saved thousands of lives. He was brought into The White House as a consultant, but before funding had even been approved The Cure had completed his work for him. Mercifully, as a result of this we were saved the horrors of what the rest of the population were now having to endure.
The President, his confidants and many of his workforce, along with some of the world’s most renown scientists, ecologists and out and out geniuses and their families had been moved to a secure location when the consequences of The Cure were known. The President remained in control of the country as much as was possible and continued to remain in contact with the outside world through televised communications. They continued to work on different ideas as to what had caused The Cure, but more importantly how we could mass produce an alternative method of food. We were losing that war too.
In 1961 the US Government had built a town on the outskirts of Big Bend National Park, Texas, far away from the next closest town or any through roads. To any passers-by it was simply a ghost town that had long been empty with nothing left behind. With no shops, no water and no people it made a good sleeping place for the night but next day any drifters had no choice but to move on. Unknown to anyone who would pass through that town, fifty feet below them was a government base, built as a disaster recovery site in case alien intelligence existed.
Twenty-four acres of bomb proof secure steel was where we lived. 2,865 of us to be exact. We were a community that had been living under the ground for over ten years. Food was rationed but we lived a healthy life with no fear of what was going on above us. We had enough food and the ability to produce more to live down here indefinitely. We had built homes, relationships and friendships, but we hadn’t seen the sky in years. It was only us down here simply because our parents had been tasked with saving the world. But even the most creative minds in the world were failing to come up with a way to reverse what was happening.
Out of those 2,865 a very small proportion were children. I was 18 years old and one of the eldest of around seventy other kids on the base. My father, Ethan ‘Wanikiy’ was Sioux Native American but left his tribe to follow his calling as a man of medicine and had become a key scientist in the project to help the President wage war against The Cure. My mother had been a nurse and met my father through work. She had devoted her life to helping others but passed away when I was still young from a brain tumor. After that my father became obsessed, working all the hours of the day to find out if he could have prevented it. Our relationship was strained, and I rarely saw him as he was locked away in his laboratory. I knew he loved me, but part of him had disappeared after my mother died, never to return.
The kids on the base had little input or role in the prevention of the world imploding, and we took each day as it came, unaware of the reality of what was happening to people across the states and unaware of what they were becoming. Instead we lived life like nothing was unusual. Like the world wasn’t imploding around us. We didn’t know we had a part to play in this war and carried on life as normal. Love, laughter and happiness were possible in a successful community, because we were unaware of the seriousness of the atrocities happening in the world above us. We continued our lives as best we could, not knowing just how bad things were or choosing not to believe they could be so bad. Our parents hid the