Thoughtless

So this is how it started. 

The end of the world. 

Not the literal end, we’re still around in some way or form. It’s just not like it used to be. Not many of us coherent ones left either, that I know of at least.

We don’t know exactly how many have become ‘Thoughtless’, but I’m sure a good chunk of the world has turned by now. The last news coverage that I can remember had a map of the world; everywhere was yellow, which was moderate contamination. Then the red. Red was the heaviest concentration of EPS, felt like McDonalds sponsored the outbreak looking at that map. There had to be someplace clean. There are places people don’t go. Those Had to be clean. 

And the whole ‘let’s go to Antarctica!’ crowd. Yeah. No thank you. First off, who in their right mind could even live in Antarctica, let alone survive? How are you going to have sustainable food sources? You can melt snow for water, but you can’t live off of spaghettios for the rest of your life. I say this because when you run out of said spaghettios, you’re going to die. Also, if everyone and their brother shows up in Antarctica, odds are someone in the group is infected. I don’t trust it.

“Thoughtless.” I assume the term comes from the blank vacant expressions when they aren’t actively after you. Or the look that comes over a person when they are infected and right about to change. It’s like watching a robot power down and reboot. ‘Thoughtless’ is what the media dubbed them before there was no more media. I personally like to call them EPS. (Ehps said like a word, not acronym) Evil Pieces of Shit. I’m sure there are cooler terms. But it’s short and sweet to the point.

EPS were not your average movie monsters. They didn’t look like they all jumped out of wood chippers. Their clothes weren’t excessively torn and dingy. Sure whatever was ripped when they were attacked and I suppose if they got hung up on anything as they ambled around. Ok. So there was some tearing. But some changed without being attacked. Their clothes were fine.

Walking in the rain seemed to keep the EPS pretty clean as well. Little stringy looking, but clean. Still stunk like a dying animal. But clean nonetheless.

EPS also looked like you or me, they were just a little pastier. Also, someone should really brush their hair. Besides that, unless they were obviously wrecked, you would have to stare at every inch of them to see the differences, their eyes were a sure give away.

Their eyes were like sharks’ eyes. When they were just milling around you could see white on the eyes, like the pupil was so dilated there was no more color to the iris. When they were in attack mode, their eyes turned completely black. The entire eye, all the white gone. Just like a lifeless shark.

EPS weren’t rotting off the bone either. Whatever injuries they got when being turned were there, but nothing like the movies. For something that was essentially dead, they looked quite preserved. I think they smelled like something a dog rolled in, that was a given. You do eventually go nose blind to it though.

I have a morbid humor. I had wanted to stick those little tree air fresheners on them as I came across them. You know, the ones for your car. I know that can’t be done, it’s too dangerous. However, a girl can dream. I collect them every time I see some. Just on the slight chance I might be able to live my fantasy.

When it started, we thought it was just a remote war. A small country no one ever heard of starting a hussfuss about who knows what. Little did we know that hussfuss was a level of insanity you thought only existed in those tacky B movies or video games. This country wasn’t warring on another country, there wasn’t civil unrest.

It was the beginning of the EPS upsurge and that little country was trying to fight them off. It wasn’t in the news except for a brief mention. No one thought twice, it looked like a small skirmish that all of the third-world countries seem to have now and then. If only they would have called for help before it got so crazy. Not sure if it would have made much difference, but maybe we would have had more answers.

Three weeks into the chaos, the proverbial ‘they’ dropped a small yield nuke on the place. Obliterated everything. Knocked the island into Atlantisville.. Just not the plague sweeping the planet.

People fled that island, not knowing they were infected. Or some knew and didn’t tell anyone they were bitten. Somehow, someway, the EPS got off that island. I mean, it was an ISLAND. A big isolated piece of land out in the ocean. EPS can’t swim. They sure as hell can’t drive a boat. It could have been contained if people didn’t flee. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why they fled. It could have been contained though if they had not.

Do we know what happened? No. 

Do we know why? No. 

Do we know how? No. 

Someone might, but not us.

But we do know that this is our new reality.

***

I am tired. It might be from lack of sleep. It has been a rough night. We have spent a few months now trying to simply survive. The grid finally went down after four months. Completely capoot. No utilities. Thankfully, we planned a little ahead, not exactly for the apocalypse, but we had solar panels installed about a year ago, before hell broke loose. And we weren’t on public water to start with.

Our house sat on a few acres of land. Some areas were wooded, and we spent a decent amount of time making sure the fence was adequate for large animals. I used to have a horse. A five rail fence wrapped the entire property. Then our direct “back yard” had an eight foot privacy fence. We had a little garden, our workshop/shed, which was almost the size of a small house itself. 

Our two story red brick farmhouse sat across the street from the Brown’s farm. Their farm was large enough where we couldn’t see their house from ours. We only saw their east field fence line. We by no means had a farm, a few acres at most. At least It was home.

We did not have a cushy gig. There were still dangers. We were just smart and planned ahead. Planned for what? No clue. But we were going to be ready and I guess it paid off.

Thanks to the solar panels, we can watch TV. Granted it’s the same shows, with whatever we had downloaded or what we had on DVD. We also raided those movie boxes that are outside of stores on a couple runs.

And Yes. We are safe about the TV. We do not blare it, if the volume is too low we move closer. We went outside and listened for the TV. If we can’t hear it, EPS can’t hear the TV either. They are out on the street. We checked for sound right next to the windows.

The black out curtains under the very dark thick drapes we use also keep the light from the TV masked. When there are blackout times, we obviously do not turn anything on. I found that we don’t usually watch as much TV as I thought we would, beings we have so much time now. However, it is nice to have the option.

During our last run about a week ago, we picked up as many solar panels we could fit in our box truck. Either no one was left to raid the solar panel place, no one knew where this one was or solar panels weren’t high on the survival things list. Either way, they were going in our shed as replacement parts or in case we got the urge to expand. And I’ll grab more if there’s any left on our next run. Which is today.

We like to try at least once a week to see what we can find. Gives us something to do. However, if we run into a drove of them out there, we skip runs. Let them clear out. We rather be safe than look for gadgets. We can always find gadgets. The people have all cleared out to greener pastures (probably Antarctica), and the EPS? They sure as hell have no use for gadgets.

Why haven’t we left? We are set. Not cushy. But we have our checklist:

• Homefield advantage
• Stocked
• Solar power and good water
• Good Maintenance
• Sustainable Food with our garden and chickens
• Brick house and sturdy fencing. Its pretty fortified.
• Only a few miles from a few major towns we can raid for supplies if we need anything.

Back to the lack of sleep; we had to blackout. No electronics, no lights, no noise and we wait. When we have a blackout it’s because we saw more than a couple EPS in our area. More EPS than we could safely take out. We blackout to not attract them, then we stay vigilant until the mass wanders away. Lack of victims usually makes the area uninteresting to them and they mosey away on their own. 

And No. Before you ask. We do have multiple guns and enough ammunition to take out a small third world country. However it is useless. Or at least unwise. One shot draws 20 of them. I’m making up the number, but it draws a lot of them. They can hear gunshots for miles without all the normal hustle and bustle of human liveliness around anymore to create the white noise.

Tonight was the largest horde of these things we’ve seen in person. I had lost count. Our normal amount of “visitors” came in groups of four to ten. During the last news report aired, where reporter Giorgio Somer was eaten alive in real-time by 40 of those feckers. Channel 3 action news. Not skimpy on the action this time. Romero would have been impressed. I swear at the end the EPS were attacking each other when they ran out of Greek food. Then of course the poor camera man, when one turned and noticed him.

Mr. Somer was trying to tell us where our new friends originated. The EPS were rumored to have started somewhere around Jakarta, spreading into Indonesia. After that, it was like someone threw a watermelon into an industrial size fan. As it spread all over the globe, some of the greater Asian countries put up a valiant battle. Sadly their dense overpopulation and denial of what was going on, really sent things into high gear.

They thought they could combat this. Alone. Keep it hush hush before having to involve any other countries. Rumor has it, the very first EPS is still around, Doctor Jianxue Lao. Former specialist of infectious diseases and employee of the CDC. Yes, the US CDC. Thankfully he didn’t lose his name badge when he turned. Poor guy is probably still in the building he travelled to while he was just a carrier, stuck in some room. Of course this is all rumor. I personally think the original patient zero got blown up.

Speaking of rumors. Some thought just washing your hands would cure you. Rumors spread that it was just a bad case of rabies. We heard it all. There were even a few pharmaceutical companies that tried to cash in on the moment and say they had a cure. Which happened to turn more people than the EPS were having fun with. So they nipped that in the bud and recalled the “vaccines” as fast as they could.

There were a few weeks where it looked like we actually were going to beat this. Sadly the world got cocky. Too many bleeding hearts hiding the infected and trying to “rescue” the quarantined. 

This is when we found out, if you weren’t gruesomely killed, and just came in mild infectious contact with the EPS, there was a small window where the infected looked normal and acted normal. Incubation in a host was anywhere from a few hours to a week. If an EPS killed you and you somehow was intact and could hop back up, it took anywhere from roughly 10 minutes to a few hours. At this point we didn’t know how it was spread. We assumed bites because of our cultural fascination with traditional zombie movies.

There were also some that would be bitten and nothing happened to them. But, they could get others sick, I believe they called it being asymptomatic. Carriers. There weren’t many of those. Quite literally a handful. And ask me how they spread the infection. Please. let’s use our imaginations here, we’re all adults right?

Sadly, the western countries thought they were better than the EPS, it was all media hype to scare us about something. It only infected certain people. Nothing was going on. It was a conspiracy to take our freedom. God would save us. 

Now, we were starting to learn how people contracted this. Thankfully it wasn’t hovering in the air. What was the most common way? You had to be bitten, so we were right there. Also, the body fluids of someone infected getting into a mucus membrane, scratch or what I like to call– plain ol’ stupidity.

Any type of procedure put into place to try to slow the EPS was met with seditious ideals, protests, fanatical righteous, conspiracy fanatics and self appointed sovereign citizens.

The “higher ups” originally wanted everyone to wear hard masks. So if an EPS turned you, you couldn’t turn anyone else because your mouth was covered. It would have ended there. But no. No one wanted to do what would keep the world safe. It inconvenienced them so no, no masks. And here we are.

This was not an Orsen Welles narration of an H.G. Wells novel.

This WAS real, this WAS happening AND we were screwed.

Whatever happened to simple?