THE HAND
The air was thick with the acrid scent of burning tires and plastics. The low hung clouds of noxious fumes crawled across broken streets and into the hollow windows of abandoned houses. The cavities and gaping orifices of this dead town silently screaming in a frozen rictus... the empty skulls of what life was. That was before. Before the virus, before the pandemic, before the vaccine, before the political rupture, before the chaos of the riots, before martial law was declared and even before the first of the effects were realized. Then, there was the Noche de Muertas. It was now almost 5 full years since 95% of the world's population had simply not woken that brisk November morning. Those scattered few that had found themselves ran from initial shock to panic to disbelief to hysteria. Some went straight to madness, others went slowly. Those that didn't find death from starvation, malnutrition, simple, mundane medical issues or exposure to the environment, actively sought it out after the first few months. Now, after four and a half years... the only people left were either significantly mad, in severely acute and complex yet functional ways, or they were stubborn. Being able to determine which was which wasn't always easy.
