Non Superstes
(The title means “No Survivor” in Latin)
IN the early stages of humankind, devastating bacteria plagued the populace. Nearly wiping out life on earth until the coming of the first Ice Age, it was frozen under layers of permafrost in what was to become Finland. It has severely degraded inside brain dead insects for thousands of years.
The earthquake was treated like any other, stay above ground, get underneath a table and hang on it, the quake passed over. In the aftershock, layers of ice surrounding small towns started to crack open and the slow thawing process of entrapped objects began, including previously unknown species.
Workers slaved over the cracks to cover them, very few noticed ants crawling out of the holes in the ice, as is usual, not much thought was given at the time until small bite marks started appearing on the workers hand and legs.
The work got increasingly difficult to complete until they found it hard to stand, at first it was thought to be insomnia but there was no sign of the tell-tale symptoms.
This disease, dubbed “Ad Mortem” (Latin for “To death”), spread quickly through contact with vermin and bugs, it became well known and deadly, many tried to escape the pursuing wave of viral infections, very few survived a week in this harsh, new world, even fewer managed to escape the country.
As news spread, the rush to leave ensued chaos in Finland, two brothers were fleeing even before the outbreak became public knowledge; they travelled together with no company except themselves and made no exceptions to this.
The decontaminated roads were hard to find and very rough from years of use, their car was struggling to cross the split ground, the older brother sped up, the accelerator was struck and the vehicle dipped into a pothole, the engine stalled, the brother were tossed away from the car like ragdolls.
They lay there comatose for hours.
Another group of survivors, two female childhood friends from a neighbouring village were travelling by the same path further ahead, the sudden noise took them by surprise and the smokes acrid stench filled their nostrils as they headed toward the source of commotion.
The two motionless bodies on the roadside took them by surprise, the younger girl of the two picked up a stick after carefully checking for insects and prodded each of the boys in turn, after many prods the teen woke up to find the two girls staring wide with surprise.
On the road again, the group trundled down to the Finnish border, crossing over into the un-infected Russian land, they kept travelling until a town was in sight.
The company said their farewells and were going their separate ways until the older girl grew weak in the legs.
They were all in danger of becoming infected by this new strain of bacteria, this new airborne strain quickly infected the village and everyone in it, there were no survivors in the end.