Aftermath, No. 3

July 13, 2041

The higher-ups are certain they'll find a use for the bulldozers now that the bodies are buried more or less respectfully. I can't see a use for bulldozers at the moment; it's not as though we need to make space for anyone. The population of earth is down to one billion; there hasn't been so few people for close to a hundred years.

The population peaked perhaps a decade ago, then it started falling; ten billion humans, none of whom could get along, suddenly found that they had something in common: sickness. The more we got sick, the more we vaccinated and irradiated, and the more we got sick. The worse we tried to cure disease, the worse the disease became. Evidently, playing God has consequences.

Five billion people died in the first year alone. The plague was two-headed then: a virus, and a bacterial infection; one was cardiac, the other was in the skin. When the plague was separate, we were able to fight it, but just as ever: the harder we fought, the worse it got. People have been dying ever since. We've set up quarantines and decontamination procedures, and that's helped, but people die anyway. 

I'm a janitor, if janitor is the right word. I don't think janitors typically use flamethrowers. I don’t think they wear quarantine suits and gas masks. I don’t think they’re supposed to spend every moment hoping that they don’t round the corner to see a puffed up corpse venting spores and muck. 

I’ve seen what the plague does. It isn’t pretty.