Survival

For a long time, all Ann could remember were white, ovular masks. They were like the kind you see workers that are sanding wear. That, and seemingly constant changes of light. Like much of her stay at the impromptu hospital set up at Memorial High school, time seemed to be set to fast-forward. One thing that surprised her was that there was no pain. Just an almost steady numbness in her whole body, like the feeling you get while touching an exposed electrical wire. This was the strangest thing to Ann; before she caught H5, stories naturally drifted to her. These told of intense agony as the victim would bleed out, and finally drown in their own juices, their brain boiled like potatoes.
A doctor in one of those white mouth and nose masks came to talk to her when she had finally regained most of her strength. His eyes were bloodshot, and his hands were shaky. What would you expect from someone who had stayed up for nearly three days? Ann knew how he felt; before catching the Bird Flu, she had been a nurse in a hospital much like this.
“The fact that you survived this is –“ started the doctor, as he stood in front of Ann. She wore ill-fitting clothes; baggy sweat pants and an oversized black shirt which read “Bite Me”, and had a picture of a vampire bat under it.
“A miracle,” finished Ann for him, chiming in when he seemed at a loss for words. Taking off his mask (something Ann found almost suicidal), he smiled a tired, you have-absolutely-no-idea smile, the doctor shook his head.
“I have no more room for miracles in my mind after what I’ve seen. The chances of you surviving the flu are . . . very slim, to say the least. This virus kills at a 98% mortality rate. It appears the Grim Reaper has spared you,” said the Doctor, putting back on his mask. “You may leave now.”
Without another word, the exhausted doctor walked away from her cot, to someone not so lucky. Ann seemed to be frozen in her seat. She watched as her doctor placed a finger on the neck of a man, who appeared not to be too much older than Ann herself. He shook his head, and like he was held at gunpoint, lifted the blanket over the top of the man’s head. Not soon after, a loaded trolley came by and picked up his corpse, adding him to their growing pile. Ann knew these now expired men, woman and children would be loaded into trucks, then taken to designated fields and open areas. There they would be thrown into a mass grave, which was beginning to be filled up to the brim.
As expected, there was much on the twenty-five year old nurses mind.
The first of which was trying to pinpoint how she had contracted this plague. But it was like trying to find a needle in a field-full of haystacks. It could have been that maybe she touched her eye with a virus-infested finger. Or maybe she got a minute bit of someone’s bodily fluids inside of her. After all, these masks they had to wear weren’t 100% affective. No, thinking of that would drive her crazy.
Her immediate second through was why me? She had a greater chance of being struck by lightning than surviving. She certainly hadn’t lived a perfect life. If there was a god (something Ann had her doubts about, much like the doctor), what was so special about her?
Ann left the building at just short of a sprint. Even after she stepped out onto the sidewalk, into a warm and bright day, the feeling of death still clung to her, making her flesh craw.
“All those people,” said Ann just under her breath, a conformation she was still a member of this world.
From her calculations, five hundred million people must have met their maker. And this was only the Second Wave. The first had only killed a couple dozen thousand. It was well-known now in the medical community that this would come in four or even five waves. The human race wasn’t out of the tunnel just yet.
Just as Ann stepped on the trash littered sidewalk, a pleasant summer breeze ruffled her long hair. ‘Everything is going to be alright,’ she thought. She also thought that perhaps she’d go and see if her apartment was still unoccupied. Whatever God had planned for her, Ann was sure it would be important for her and everyone’s future.