The Delivery System

The virus itself had been a work of pure genius, no-one disputed that.

93% of the world’s population dead within four short weeks. Just a very rough estimate, of course. For some years afterwards, however, the few remaining marketing executives occasionally discussed the remarkable delivery system. Some said the final mortality wouldn’t have been more than about 75% without it.

Of course, they weren’t marketing executives any more. They were farmers now. Pretty much everyone was. Anyone who wasn’t a soldier.

“Jacob, come on! There’s vehicles coming.”

Miranda clutched her weapon and waited. Kaye and Eliza looked on. Miranda was their leader, and Jacob was their man. Their man. They were lucky to have a man. Not many men had made it. He was a bit hard to manage – he always took risks.

“Hang on,” he said, “I think I saw something.”

Remarkable. There was no telling where the virus had come from. It had been intentional, calculated, designed. The irony. An immensely popular new medical technology, meant for the eradication of cancer, had been networked across the globe. It made sense to do so: the success of the tech in one hospital could then be immediately shared with upwards of 5000 other hospitals in 250 countries. Tens of thousands of patients could benefit every day. Delay was death.

Then the nameless hacker had struck. A computer virus, quietly inserted at some mid-sized medical institute in Thailand, started to do its work. Interfaced with the medtech, it did what no computer virus had ever aspired to do before -it grew a little cell.

Then two.

Then every one of the machines everywhere on the planet obediently followed suit.

“Hurry!” The sounds were still distant, but coming closer. Miranda barked at him again, “Jacob, I swear, I’ll donner you if you don’t come now.”

An empty threat. Jacob had walked over to an old corpse near the gutter and was looking at it. “Coming, munny worry!” he replied. They were all fully laden from their salvage run into the city. They had needed to go all the way into the town hall area to find anything on this trip. It was time to go.

“He’s like a goddamn puppy,” Eliza muttered. The others silently agreed.

And the tech hadn’t just manufactured the virus. The 3-D printers at the disposal of the medtech didn’t just print state-of-the-art tailor-made cells, they could do more mundane printing, too, like metals and fake gemstones. Having printed the virus, they also printed the delivery system.

“Oooh, look, aren’t they beautiful? The printer made them last night, hundreds of them. I’m sure no-one would notice if we took just one each?”

“Ooh, mira, ¿no son hermosos? La imprenta los hizo anoche, cientos de ellos. Estoy seguro de que nadie lo sabría si tomáramos solo uno para cada uno. "

"أوه ، انظر ، أليست جميلة؟ قامت الطابعة بصنعها الليلة الماضية ، المئات منهم. أنا متأكد من أن لا أحد سيعرف ما إذا كنا قد أخذنا واحدة فقط لكل منهما. "

"Ooh, bak, çok güzeller değil mi? Yazıcı onları dün gece yaptı, yüzlerce tane. Her biri için sadece bir tane alsak kimsenin bilemeyeceğinden eminim. "

“Ooh, nhìn kìa, chúng có đẹp không? Máy in đã tạo ra chúng vào đêm qua, hàng trăm cái. Tôi chắc rằng sẽ không ai biết nếu chúng tôi chỉ lấy một chiếc cho mỗi người. "

“哦，你看，是不是很漂亮？ 打印机昨晚制作了它们，数百个。 我敢肯定没有人会知道我们是否每人只带一个。 ”

The incubation period was two days. Contagious from the third day. Airborne. No symptoms until the fifth day. Death came by the seventh. Unlike Covid-29, this virus didn’t start in Italy and then spread to other countries. It started everywhere on the planet at the same time.

Everyone with even a remote connection to a hospital died within the first two weeks. There was no-one with the medical knowledge left to help the rest.

Governments, well, what was left of them, ordered everyone to flee to rural areas in small groups of no more than twelve, to hide and to wait.

It was good advice. The virus died, taking another billion or so first.

They say that if you don’t know someone who went in the red death, then you must have gone then too.

“Jacob, for god’s sake, let’s go!”

Jacob stared at the thing. It was pretty. For such a pretty thing to have caused such destruction... He started to bend down to pick it up, then, instinctively, straightened instead, and scanned his surrounds. Raids into Durban were necessary, but dangerous. Seeing nothing, he keened his ears. Crows could be heard, always crows. In the far distance, some machine, perhaps a car. Miranda was right. Danger, but not yet. They had time to get their pickings back to safety. Jo-burg was unclaimed: neither the American zealots nor the forces of Greater China had made it this far. The lawlessness meant that everyone was an enemy.

He bent down to retrieve it. The corpse was old now, shrivelled, with no odor. Animals had been at it for some time. Parts were missing. The gold and ruby heart-shaped locket sat on a chain, which hung uselessly from her neck. Probably a her: the nurse’s uniform was still recognisable.

Just before touching it, he paused. An automatic pause. An old sense of fear. Smiling grimly, he shook his head. “Of course it can’t kill me now, not anymore.” Reassuring himself, he took it in his hand.

He walked back to where the women waited, looking unimpressed. Then he held it up, dangling it on its chain, dainty before his dark, muscled arm.

All three gasped as one.

“Holy shit!” Eliza offered, “a delivery device.”

They stared. Miranda brought herself back to reality first. “OK, it’ll be worth a million bucks one day, if the world ever comes right again. Just now, it’s worth less than a can of beans. We’ve got two hours of light left. Straight to Mpolo, let’s go.”

Unbeknownst to the little group, their quiet little crow-infested city was about to become the latest flash point between the world’s two remaining governments. Having had large navies continually deployed at sea when the red death came had meant that the US and China still had power now, when all else was gone. China clung to its pre-death expansion ambitions; it was the same faux-communist, would-be empire it had been before the apocalypse. The US, on the other hand, had changed. The red death had been judgement day, a theocracy had taken over. The bible-clutchers now clutched the power and the guns.

Each side assumed it was their destiny to lead the world out of chaos.

There was no love lost.

“Wait!” Miranda held up a fist. They all stood and listened. The street was vacant, but for a few cats. The sound was louder now. No, two sounds. More than one vehicle. More than one direction. Shit.

Miranda motioned to Kaye, who put her load down and sprang into the stairwell of the tallest building nearby. A few minutes later she was back. Her face was stricken.

“One group coming from the port, hundreds of them. Another coming from JoBurg on the highway. Different group, different colours. Jeeps, tanks, runners. We’re in the middle.”

The war had come.

Miranda didn’t blink.

“Run.”

The Chinese, knowing that the Americans had landed at the port, had sent detachments to take up strategic positions in the foothills. There was no warning. Miranda, running at the lead, went down first. The others tried to take cover, in vain.

Private Zhang Li was sent down to make sure the enemy was dead. When he reached Miranda, he saw that these were not Americans, but just local scavengers. He radioed the information back to his sergeant. It was good news, it gave them more time to get settled in. Their packs were just full of old food, their weapons were rubbish, nothing worth taking. As he turned to go back to his platoon’s position, a glint of gold caught his eye.

Li looked back toward the neck of dead Jacob, and his mouth opened in surprise. For a moment, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to touch it. The old fear. Slowly, he bent over and nudged the locket, and then, carefully, so as to avoid getting Jacob’s blood on his hands, he took the chain from around his neck.

Li hid the locket in his belt pouch. These things were starting to be collected back at home. Maybe by the time he returned from this country there would be some money to be made. As he walked back to the foothill camp, Li tried to remember what they were being called...then he smiled grimly, “Yōuxiù de fēnxiāo xìtǒng” he muttered to himself, yes that was it- the excellent delivery system.