My scarred alpha

I remember the day the world stopped with the news. The flights that never left the ground, the trains that would never run again. Mothers that never got to hold their children once more or would be grandparents never getting to see the next generation. Friends never to meet up for that so long promised cup of coffee or that one last beer.

I remember the day the schools closed. The children to be trapped indoors. They were incubators, vessels and carriers. Few of them would suffer from it but it would cling to them like any other parasite. The sports clubs and activity centers would follow in the coming days. The shops, the bars and the restaurants would be within the week.

I remember the world went quiet for a day or two. Everyone in isolation. Dealers could no longer deal, shooters without anyone to shoot. Streetwalkers could no longer walk the streets. Workers could no longer work. Then the people began to sing out their windows. Joining in the only way they could, in their courage and hope.

I remember the screaming started two weeks later. The howling of pain and the dying, the wails of the left behind. They would come in the night, like nothing we had every seen before and take the fallen. All kitted out in black, their faces never to be seen from behind their masks and layers of protective clothing. They would be no funerals, no last goodbye. No celebration of the lives that had once brought joy and love into the world around us.

I remember when the virus left. The doors began to open again. People began to return to the streets, but they were so few of us left. One in one thousand to be exact. it was not enough to keep the world we knew running. Within six months communications fell through. Our beloved internet, the phones, the television. All electronics were gone within the year.

Soon more began to fall, a violent fitful, painful death. There were rumors that it was a change in our genetic makeup. That was all anyone had to go on, rumors. There was no one to turn to. Anyone who was left of the elders fell this time. We could not depend or trust anyone but ourselves.

I held her close every night. She would ask me questions of the past. Of how things were before. She was beginning to forget. Forgetting the hugs her grandparents treasured the most. Forgetting that she had ever attended a school or the education she received. Forgetting the laughter of her friends as they played in the fields.

The virus had left us with nothing. Well it had only been me and her to begin with. Her father had never cared much. Even after the virus I had expected him to at least check to see if she was still alive but he never came. It was easier to tell her that he had not made it. But I knew the truth. He had survived, but this was his free ticket out of responsibility. I had gone to check on him myself so that I could give her answers. I had found him in a park playing football with his friends without any worries in the world on him. After the second wave I did not bother to check on him any more. If he had not made it as least I would not be lying anymore.

After we were released from the isolation of the virus we had moved back in with my father. It seemed best that we stayed together. My mother, two brothers and sister were lost during when the virus attacker’s. We kept the house full of them afterwards. Their pictures, their favorite things and clothes surrounded us so as we would never forget. After the electricity went my father had raided an elder relatives farm for a few chickens and a goat. He then planted a garden with some vegetables in the tiny backyard and with those we became self sufficient. He made me follow him and thought me everything he could before he left us as if he knew that his end was near. The house had a wood burning stove which I had never been so grateful for. It meant we could stay warm and cook what little food we had.

I missed my father, he left us in the second wave. A few months after we lost the electricity, his fever started, he was extremely irritable and demanded complete obedience. The pain started after that, he roared and growled in an almost animalistic way for days but he lost the battle with his own body in the end. The men came that night as they always did, with out even being told. I heard them whispering, “Another one. His body too old to handle the gene.” I can remember slumping to the floor as they took him away. I almost gave up there and then until I felt her little arms wrap around my neck and the whisper of an I love you in my ear. I didn’t know how we would survive but I knew right then we would find a way.

I wake up every morning, throwing on what clothes I had left or what I had looted from the empty neighbouring homes. No one was prepared for what the end of the second wave would leave us with. A number of those that survived came out with the same symptom. Women found their body had changed completely. Men seemed to grow thicker with muscle by the day. I had never been skinny, actually I was very overweight. The weight started to fall off me yet I had still maintained my large chest and hips but the narrow waist between was new to me. None of my clothes would fit, the larger sizes ballooned around like a tent while smaller sizes were too tight in areas but I made do with what I had. My little princess was another problem. After all she was only eight when it all started. She was still growing and with no more shops to go to I had to find her clothes somewhere. I would have to go out every now and again and get all new bigger size clothes for her. It was not safe to venture into the center of the town. Groups had banded together looting the shops and warehouses, then going to any means necessary to protect their hall.

There was no one left in our area anymore. After the virus there were no more than fifty houses out of an estate of three hundred and eighty two still inhabited. After the second wave there was only ten dotted around but by then many had not made it through from malnourishment, hygiene related illness or the violence that erupted from the will to live. It was the former that took most of the children left behind. They were too many for the few adults that survived to look after them all. More went wild with the independance.

It was quiet the night they came, a bit after the second wave. I heard the clapping of horses hooves on the road. There was so many of them. My father towards the end had built a compartment in the floor boards of the spare room. I took her carefully so as not to wake her, wrapped her in a thick blanket and lay her into it, then climbed in myself. I slowly slid the floorboards back into place in time to hear the screaming coming from down the road. I heard them enter the house. They weren’t quiet about it. They opened doors of cupboards and wardrobes. checked behind every piece of furniture. I felt the dust fall from the floorboards onto my face as they walked no more then six inches above me. They left again before the sun rose. The did not break anything, they didn’t steal anything but they searched. They searched for us. Luck was on my side that night as she slept through the night and smiled at me when I told her that we had slept in the hideout to practice.

To this day I still don’t know what they wanted with us or what happened to those they took. I had run into a few since that night. There was a mother and son about a mile south. Mary and Scott. Like us they had found a way to survive on minimal means. An older teenage boy, Alex, about three and a half miles east that had moved into a small farm. We only sought each other out for help in desperation otherwise we kept to our selves. Survival was key but distrust and fear reigned supreme.