Belinda Mckeown

Joe's Night of Terror

He found himself thinking about the safest place to relocate his scant, precious possessions, always on the move reminiscing about his old life before the mutated Covid-19 virus pandemic struck, coupled with the rapid increase in global warming ending life as it once was. Joe Baker was a popular Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, until the day everything changed. He had moved to California to take up the academic post from New York City with its oppressively hot summers and bitterly cold winters, where it would sometimes snow, and loved the warm, carefree lifestyle of San Francisco with its sunny beaches and friendly cafes, restaurants, and nightclubs that offered such promising opportunities for socialising. Oh, how he had relished his new life here! The collapse of the central stock exchange had led to an end of world trade, and despite the central banks all over the world flooding their economies with money, it led to a rise in inflation. And now money was worthless, as governments around the world struggled to feed their populations, world trade ceased to exist. It really had become “every man for himself” as governments completely collapsed. The first institutions to go were public services, and so a gang mentality quickly formed, displacing the mass populous, with the elderly neglected and even cast aside, as drugs becoming the currency of the day.