The world as we knew it didn't have to change – society did.
We're not entirely sure when the outbreak began, but we studied it long enough to know it became an epidemic long before we knew it existed. The first word that comes to mind when describing what the outbreak did to us is "apocalypse" or "zombies", but neither one is quite right.
According to our textbooks, it started off as a cold, infecting mainly immunocompromised people first causing flu-like symptoms – coughing, sneezing, fevers, and sweats. It eventually affected the majority of people with only a select few being naturally immune to it. A vaccine was quickly produced and the world assumed the virus had been cured. Thanks in part to the wars against vaccines and the spread of unhealthy habits, it struck again, this time mutating into a stronger virus.
It didn't attack the immune system anymore. Now that it had mapped out the internal workings of the human body, it had bigger plans.
This time, it struck at the brain, implanting itself into the frontal cortex of the brain and affecting the dopamine output in humans, causing symptoms such as depression and muscle tremors. Eventually, it spread across the frontal lobe into the temporal lobe and started to affect people's memories, auditory and speech functions.
Vaccines were made in an attempt to stop the infection from spreading and some people proved to be naturally immune. However, by the time the contagion attacked a person's speech, doctors deemed it a chronic infectious disease and recommended the person be separated from society.
Before a safezone could be created for the Infected, the final stage struck, attacking the cerebellum and brainstem in one direct assault, swiftly taking over the bodies of the infected person and effectively turning them into husks of themselves. The husks of people could not talk or focus their eyes on anything and, due to an unfortunate lab accident, were found to have a taste for flesh. At that point, death would have been a mercy to them. Walls were erected around large population areas by locals and the infected were thrown out to the walls, forced to roam the Earth aimlessly.
Those who were immune or got the required vaccines were allowed to live in the small cities called Herds, safezones put in place by local governments and ruled over by various kinds of government types, ranging from communist to democracies to monarchies. Countries still had a major overpowering government, but it was rare to hear anything from them as their priority was to eliminate the threat of the virus as safely and swiftly as possible.
Those who could not or would not vaccinate or had already been determined as being infected, regardless of the stage they were at, were pushed out of the walls, forced to live in nomadic tribal groups known as Circles. These nomads were branded over their eyes for easy identification and often described in the Herds as feral and wild, and to be killed on site if one should come across a member.
That all happened years ago. This new societal structure seemingly worked out for everyone.
Until it didn't.
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