Wasgamuawa Worry

1

"Push through the pain,

Giving up hurts more."

When I was seven years old, my first grade teacher made me memorize that quote.

Back then it was a simple quote. One of the crappy ones you could find on a motivational poster. Back then, it didn't matter to me at all.

But that quote today is what I live my life by. I remember it because it was the day of that fateful memorization test when the Plague started. That was the last day I had at school. Heck, it was the last day of 'normal' life that I ever, and will ever experience.

People call them zombies. Creatures that live off of rotten flesh, eating carrion at the side of the road like vultures. They have vacant, unseeing eyes, and their bodies are rotten from the inside out, just like in the comic books. They're the people that are supposed to be dead from the Plague. The ones who shouldn't have survived, but instead they live on, forever trapped in a rotten body and a screwed up brain.

I guess I should be glad that their brains are messed up enough that they can't form an army together, since the 'zombies' are stupidly hard to kill on their own. The few, organized group attacks from them that I've had the misfortune to be on the receiving end of have never ended well for us humans. There is always at least one who falls to the Plague.

In the comics, zombies bite humans to turn them into another zombie. The same is true for the real world, although I've seen it done with knives and a strange black bug before, too. The black bug is what we(myself and the rest of my survival group) believes is the cause of the Plague. We've named them Infecto-Bugs. I know, I know, laugh all you want.

It's too bad that the Plague started in Sri Lanka, because it didn't take long before my whole country was infected. The zombies had a mass amount of horrible effects on not only humans, but the animals and environment. Everything began to rot, even the trees. Animals lost their homes, went out into the open, and were devoured by the zombies. For some reason, animals don't survive the Infecto-Bugs like we humans do. No matter the size of the bite, the animals always die.

The animals dying and the plants rotting means that humans no longer can settle down. We're constantly on the move, traveling from one place to the next in search of shelter and a meal.

Which is what my group is doing right now.

We started in Wasgamuwa National Park, but we're working our way down south, trying to find another national park. After a lot of trial and error, we've decided that national parks are our safest options.

We as in Zayne Walters, Kasun Madusanka, Ira Yapa, and myself.

We certainly make a mismatched group. Zayne is an American Marine from the U.S. Embassy who saved Ira's life, and earned himself a place in our group. Kasun is a Theravada Buddhist who met us when we took shelter in his family's home. Ira is a Catholic, like me, and we went to school together.

– –

"You sure have a tendency to zone out when we need you, Nitara," Kasun's hand on my shoulder is enough to startle me out of my thoughts.

I jump as I turn to meet his thoughtful dark brown eyes, "Don't come up behind me like that, Kasun!"

Kasun offers me an apologetic smile and holds his hands in the air in surrender, "My bad," He says, "I know better."