Covid 33

”Just give me the locket!”

I fought with my sister over the last thing that connected us to home; the heart-shaped locket our mother wore every day until her dying breath. “Shh here! You’re going to get us killed!!” My little sister exclaimed as we heard something in the distance crash to the ground. Before she could hand me the locket I was already moving. “Come on Stella!!” I grabbed the locket from her hand and shoved it in my book bag and grabbed her by her arm looking right in her eyes daring her to make another sound or hold us up.

We’d been staying in an abandoned apartment building for about a month now. We’d boarded up every entrance except one; a small hole under an ad about the very reason we were in this situation. The vaccine.

Flash 6 months back. I was a typical 17 year old senior getting ready to go away for college. Then my mom got sick my last month of school. I got a job at the White Castle by our home and worked a full time schedule while studying for testing because my mom was doing bad. She had gotten the the flu of the year, covid 33 which attacked her lungs, heart, and eventually every organ in her body. They came out with a vaccine; but it wasn’t free like they said it was. My mom used to say everything comes with a cost. This vaccine cost me everyone I know.

4 months back...

We were eating breakfast one morning and heard on the news the controversy over the vaccine. Not only were they saying it would prevent and cure covid 33 BUT they were also saying that it would prevent all viruses after that because it had nanocytes that target foreign bodies in your body. They are supposed to rejuvenate the body as well as protect it.

My mom passed away only 3 years ago because she got the vaccine but it was too late. Her body couldn’t handle the vaccine, but because of it her cells stayed alive and continued to renew themselves. Before the coroner or church staff could arrive she was standing in the middle of her room screaming. The only words I could make out were that this is very wrong and she can’t. Before she ran past me into the hallway, grabbed our neighbor and bit right into her neck.

I know what you’re thinking, “zombie apocalypse”, but this is way more extreme than that. These people are not decaying and they all look young even the old ones! It’s more like a Twilight horror story than Dawn of the Dead. And the only way not to contract the nanocytes or the virus is to stay away from all things connected to it. The vaccine literally made millions of people undead. Don’t let someone with them happen to wander into a morgue! But this isn’t about them this is about me and Stella.

Me and Stella are all we have now. Our father passed away in Iraq and they never found his body. Our mom, who knows where she is or if she is even capable of not eating us at this point. She told us to kill her, she begged us, but we couldn’t do it. We ran and have been running ever since. The abandoned complex is the longest we have had a place of shelter since the pandemic became a all out sci-if original series. The government sent the military to kill and probably take some of the affected. A lot of people just disappeared. We have only run into 2 people who were not affected and they ended up dying also at the hands of a affected cashier at the Shop n’ Save while we were getting canned goods.

Back to the present.

We made it back to the complex. “Stella, calm down!!” I whispered harshly because she was having a panic attack because she thinks they might have seen where we went. “They have no way to know how to get in! Everything is locked up Stella. BREATHE!” I grabbed her a water bottle and pulled out the locket. Inside it is a picture of my dad holding baby Stella and me on my moms lap. The last connection we have to civilization as we know it. The last connection we have to humanity.