Plague Overrun

My Name Is Alen Salvador

My name is Alen Salvador, and I'm unlucky enough to be a citizen under High Command. I work labor jobs like most people in the cities, mainly shoveling rock or coal. High Command has so much coal and not enough electric generators, so just about everything runs on coal, oil, or gasoline.

The main problem is the coal mine in town borders right on a quarantine zone, and if you get too close they'll say you've become contaminated. They don't check at all, they shoot you instantly and dispose of your body.

That's life under High Command, though. Shit's never gonna get better, only worse. Today is same as any other. Some guy gets shot at the gate, some workers get beat up for not working hard enough, and some including me get the butt of a gun to the face for no reason other than the task force being bored.

I've seen shit down here though, people go insane, some men and women getting raped by other workers or the guards, and people being randomly executed. The best way to survive is to be in the middle ground, to not be the center of attention or in the corner.

It's harsh, and few say it's living, unless a guard is in hearing range. They'll find any reason, even the most random of bullshit excuse to kill you or at least beat you up. I don't think it's because they're cruel, but rather because they used to be in my shoes, and now given that power they hated for so long, they've let it get to their heads. Bully someone then give them an opportunity to bully and they'll take it happily.

Every day I worry about the gates to the quarantine zone. I always hear shouts from their, shortly followed by gunshots. Some things I hear from their are... horrific... inhuman. All I know is it's because of the Plague.

I don't know the symptoms of the Plague, they don't tell us so they can more easily tell if we're lying about how we feel, but even then they still usually kill you, just finding the slightest sign of it to kill you.

At this point it's a surprise we even still have a population. You don't see any kids around, they get indoctrinated, from birth until they're a young adult they are manipulated and taught what is right and wrong by corrupt individuals.

The tattoo each one of us, putting our name, our district number, and our citizen number on our right hands. They never do it on the left, because that's the one they will cut off if you disobey them. If you don't have a left hand, then your time in this world quickly expires as you don't even get the respect of being put six feet under.

They use corpses as fuel often times, and if the body isn't completely used up then they patch up any broken walls that can't be easily patched up with chunks of charred human flesh. I remember once seeing a man crying next to a wall which had a single corpse covering a small hole in it.

The tenth helicopter flew overhead this day. I've counted, there's always eleven of them each day. Five go into the quarantine zone, five come out, and one just crosses the flight path.

A friend of mine is dead. Fifty third time I decided to talk to someone before their head was blown off the next day. The guards always like using the shotguns, trying to see which of them can get the largest blood splat on the concrete wall of a nearby building.

When lunch came, they called us by our names in alphabetical order to get our lunch. Those at the end always get left with scraps. Thankfully S is in the safe zone when it comes to getting served. They feed us sludge, and sometimes I wonder if this is from the Plague infected. I don't know if whatever the Plague does to someone can be this drastic, or if the virus can be purged when cooked, but they would have had to go out of their way to make something like this unless it's as simple as grabbing a random corpse on the ground.

Another guy made a run for it after lunch, being shot the moment he rounded the corner. The guard who killed the guy asked another to get a camera, and when he does he takes a picture of the corpse with the right hand in the shot, then another with himself leaning over the corpse.

I remember a time when one guard was found fucking a worker they killed. I half expected them to be shot immediately, but instead some of the other guards joined in while their slightly more decent friends scolded them.

When work ends I go home, entering my small apartment room inside the square mile large apartment complex. I have a cat, basically the only roaming pet you can have. Dogs are... too aggressive for the guards' liking.

The few times when a guard sits next to me without glaring me down or pointing a gun at me is to pet my cat with me. Sometimes I wonder if that's the only reason I'm still alive. Maybe they want the cat but don't want to have to take care of it, so they have me do so instead.

When they come and pet my cat with me, they always seem so human. It's like as if the very characteristics that make up the guards dissolves when they touch the cat. It's the only interesting thing to touch around here, and for the guards it beats groping a dead woman.

For how much they mess with corpses, they never seem to mess with each other. Maybe it's the fear of children, of being executed for raising the population count in an unplanned event. For every new dead body, a new matured child takes their place shoveling coal.

When morning comes, the sirens blare as usual. We get up, spending the only thirty minutes we have to ourselves before the next siren blares and we're off to work.

Another man is shot trying to run away. A woman is pinned against a wall and raped. A friend is executed. The first helicopter flies over head.