Tesla Bethel
Lantern Staff
I don’t understand why I never saw it before. The destructive tolls we as people have on one another. We feed, and take until there is nothing left but the silhouette of what we once were. We can all put the blame on each other. “Well you should have done more,”
But in all honesty. We all could have done more.
Now I stand in a barren landscape, throat dry, lips cracked. It was supposed to work. The vaccine was supposed to help, but instead it tainted our water ways, killed our crops, and killed our brethren. It no longer mattered what race or ethnicity you were, it didn’t discriminate.
It decimated leaving nothing in its waste. It didn’t care if you were twenty years old with your whole life ahead of you. It didn’t care if you were three with your eyes having just opened to the world. It was cold, uncaring, unfeeling. Oddly, that’s the way everyone was the months prior to the outbreak.
Once it hit our waterways it was officially a pandemic, and our crop yields dropped drastically. Within months it was eerily similar to the dust bowl everyone learned about in elementary school, but that was Kansas. It wasn’t supposed to happen in Oregon.
I would stay in the forests, or what’s left of what I would now call a grave yard. The dead trees stand stark against the barren landscape, if the water hadn’t mutated the wildlife.
Those that didn’t get sick and die adapted. Even humans adapted. As if Darwin himself pushed the fast forward button on the evolutionary process. We mutated.
“How much longer till the settlement Lena?” said a small voice. That was Ren. She was only seven when it all started. I found her skin and bones of what used to be known as Portland. Her parents dead from the illness the vaccine was supposed to save them from. Her birthday’s next week. A year ago she would have asked for presents or a party or a birthday cake. Now she just wants a place where she can feel safe, and clean water. I would kill for some clean water right now my attention going back to my throat.
“It’s just a little farther.” I said squinting as I peered through the rippling heat waves in front of us to see what was beyond. There! I saw it just a couple hundred yards away. Built into the side of a mountain surrounding the cave was a small encampment.
Tents littered the region, Health care professionals, well what’s left of them anyways going around dropping the cleanser into the buckets of water everyone hauled with them. I looked at our own bucket; we gathered water from the stream miles away.
Ren gathered the water while I kept sight for any animals. They were all blood thirsty now. I turned around, we only had an hour or so before it was night. I could see the eyes of the animals waiting patiently. We were easy prey at night. Readjusting my pack,
“Let’s get a move on, we only have a little light left.” I said as I started to pick up my pace.