My name is Bea. I’m writing this in my notes whenever my phone has some battery. Electricity is rationed now. I dunno if that’s the word. It’s just rare. I’m finding more power the further south I go. Shocker. That’s the Tories for you, always looking out for the Southerners. Hopefully I’ll find some wifi in London bc if there’s gonna be internet, it’s gonna be there. I want to share this. Maybe on Tumblr. I think Twitter is all of the rich fuckers. They control everything now. ThEy GoTtA sToP tHe FaKe NeWs, YoU kNoW. Idk how they’re not infected yet. I’ll find out when I get there.
I want people to see this. My story. My truth. The ACTUAL truth.
But there’s barely anyone left now. No one with a working brain anyway. I won’t even be here for much longer. Not in a functioning human being way. Seems stupid now. Like. Who am I writing for if everyone is dead? Or whatever ‘dead’ means now. Certainly not the dipshits in power. Not that they’d care. Idk. Maybe I’m writing so I don’t lose my mind. Gotta hope for a better future or something like that. A future without covid. So, here goes nothing.
This is what happened in the covid pandemic.
Coronavirus started in the back-end of 2019. It took over the world in no time. No one knew where it came from. The scientists told us something. Governments said another. People stopped believing it. It came from China apparently. A fish market or something. Definitely not the biology lab just up the road. Covid is like SARS so they said it came from bats. But then it was a pangolin. Wtf is a pangolin?
It was awful. If the biggest brains in the world had no idea what it was, how were they gonna cure it?
There were rumours and theories. Obvs. There always is. If there’s gaps, people will fill them with shit. Comforting shit, but still shit. Some said it was a hoax. Others said it was biological warfare or something like that. Government conspiracies. End of days. That sort of thing. People said modern medicine was a scam bc there wasn’t a cure yet. The government was trying to thin out the population by knocking off the oldies. Lockdowns would last forever to control us all. Yk. That kind of crazy stuff that’s almost believable.
Finding a vaccine ended up as a dick-measuring contest. The governments were like children, screaming about who had the best deals or who was the closest to saving the world. A bunch of little boys seeing who could climb the biggest tree before someone hit the floor and painted the grass red. I reckon if they’d all worked together, it wouldn’t have ended up like this. Who knows? Might not have made a difference anyway. Idk.
My phone is dying.
Jesus. I haven’t been able to find a working outlet in weeks. So now I’m squatting in some woman’s attic. Loving the drifter/tramp vibe I’ve got going here. She’s infected btw. Seriously infected. It’s gross. Most of the house is covered in slimy awfulness. The attic isn’t too bad but there’s still a slick squish every time I move. But needs > musts and all that shit.
Totally forgot what I was supposed to be saying. I dunno what needs to be said to get the point across. There’s so much to cover. Everyone is dying. Or dead. Living dead? Is there a PC term for walking talking rotting corpses? I wish I could just say covid killed everyone. The end. But it’s more than that and I gotta be detailed so whoever comes after me knows wtf happened to the world.
That’s something. The world. I’m in England so I dunno what’s happening anywhere else. Things were a mess here before the mutations started. Before the pandemic started but that’s a whole other story. Once covid hit, there was panic obvs. Then a weird it’ll-be-fine thing. When people started taking it seriously, it was clear our government was fucking hopeless. They didn’t know shit about anything.
Lockdowns were thrown around like party favours. And the government WAS partying while people died. Kids losing parents. Parents losing kids. People saying goodbye to their loved ones through a fucking Zoom call?! Bullshit. And through all that isolation, while they were spewing vague BS messages of hope on TV, and they were having cheese and wine parties behind closed doors. The lockdowns didn’t do anything. Well… they did when people followed the rules. But why should we follow them when the Tories aren’t? So the virus kept spreading. People kept dying. The government kept partying between their press conferences. They were just a little something to keep us distracted. It failed. The parties were made public knowledge. That was when the riots started.
Everyone was just DONE. The amount of U-turns the Tories did was beyond a joke. Do THIS. Do THAT. Wait. Why are you doing THIS and THAT?! Don’t do THIS or THAT. It was all bullshit. Everything started falling apart. No one wore masks anymore. Social distancing? Nope. Self-isolation? Lol. Not a chance. Everything fell apart.
Then the virus mutated.
Fucking phone battery. Squatting house found me. Crazed bitch bit me too. Good point to mention actually. Covid doesn’t spread like that. Or if it does, it’s slower than breathing it in or whatever? The OG covid spread through coughs, sneezes. Teeny little drops of spit of mucus or all that nasty stuff. It needs to get into the lungs. The little bubbles that swell every time you take a breath. Aloe vera or something stupid like that. Now that the infected are decaying, avoiding infection is almost impossible.
I know all viruses mutate. I’m not brain dead. Not yet anyway. But this was different. It wasn’t just a worse cough or more resistant to medication or whatever tf viruses do when they mutate. What had been covid was gone. Something else had taken over. People started to panic. Really panic. Society went to shit.
Oh! Our prime minister got beheaded. BEHEADED. People were sick of the Torie’s shit. So they decided the new-and-improved virus was their fault. It wasn’t. Ofc. But people weren’t thinking anymore. They knocked off the PM and burned the rest of them at the stake. Crazy. And they got away with it. No one got arrested or charged or even told off. Everyone started going around like… “Laws? What laws?”
I wish I could describe it. It was as if without a big useless figurehead in charge, England became a warzone. It was like that film The Purge. The news was crammed with crime. People were getting raped and mugged and murdered. Nobody cared. The police tried to keep order for a while but it didn’t last. Scary shit.
With all the chaos, the virus spread unchecked. The hospitals and morgues noticed the change first. People who had been dead for hours or days or weeks just got up and started walking about. We started paying attention then but it was far too late. It was labelled as a miracle anyway. Oooooh! We’ve learned to defeat death! OOOOOH. SCIENCE!
Idiots.
Anyway, everyone tried to go back to normal. Children went to school. Adults went to work. Grocery shopping. Chaos hadn’t stopped the virus, acting normal wouldn’t either but people wanted familiar comforts.
I think the new virus was already making the rounds then. There was such a drive to act like everything was alright. People were choking on their own breath, hacking like their lungs were tied in knots. But they still hauled their butts out of bed at stupid-o-clock and went to dead-end jobs in customer service or whatever else. The fucking buses are still running! Not that you’ll catch me on one. The seats are all discoloured with a sticky layer of dead skin. It had to have been the virus… It’s easy to spread the bug when everyone acts like it doesn’t exist.
In the beginning, it was impossible to tell who was dead and who was alive. The new virus is just like covid. It starts with the coughing. Maybe a fever. Not everyone that had covid symptoms had New Covid (it never got a proper name, so I’m calling it New Covid). Not at first anyway. Now any OG covid symptoms is a New Covid symptom too.
There isn’t a single street in this country that doesn’t have a constant backtrack of people coughing. It’s almost like a heavy wind, sending ripples out across the streets. The air is thick with hundreds of rattling, wheezing coughs. It makes everything misty. Between that and the sticky layer of pus and skin that covers every surface, avoiding infection for this long is a miracle. I think some of us are just more resistant? I’m not a doctor.
But once that cough starts, it’s all over.
The older infected people creak. Their bodies have gotten stiff and their joints scream with the effort of walking. Like dead people. If dead people moved? Their bodies bloat. It’s not surprising, they’re dead and dead bodies bloat. And blister. Big yellow blisters inches in diameter. Nothing is silent anymore. No matter where you go, there’s a sickening bassline of grating joins , cracking skin, and coughing. But they keep going somehow. It should be impossible. Shit. Phone is dying.
TLDR! There’s stages to the infection:
Cough and blocked nose. Flu symptoms.
Body bloats ft. gross yellow blisters
Stiffen of the joints
IRL living post-mortem photos
TA-DAAA!
Finally found an outlet. Still don’t have much battery tho. I dunno what else to say. I don’t know how it spreads. I think it’s just the same as covid? Yk, coughs, sneezes, close contact, saliva… I think I’ve already said that? I cba to look back at the notes anymore. Too many. The point is, I’ve been bitten a couple of times since squatter house. And a few before that. The bites went purple around the edges, swollen and rock hard. The little indents from the teeth tho, they turned into yellow blisters. When they burst the smell is disgusting. It’s what I imagine a slaughterhouse smells like in the middle of an Indian summer. I burst them all at once. It doesn’t stop the air smelling bad (it always smells like rotten flesh and death) but I don’t smell so bad?
I had all those bites and I’m still not infected? Idk. Maybe it only infects you if you breathe it in? Maybe I’m immune. The saviour! Lol. Fat chance. I’m not a doctor. The doctors were useless anyway. Gotta go, phone dying.
Squatting again and earned three more bites but I got power soooooo success? My throat’s been tickling lately but I’m not coughing so obvs I’m not infected. And I need to write to keep it together. Getting a little stir crazy. I’m just outside of London now btw. Still hoping that Downing Street has wifi. Maybe some wine and cheese if I’m lucky. My head is hurting, gonna write later. Maybs about the rich people still using Twitter and being not infected. Idk. Need a nap.
Haven’t had power for a while. Got infected too. The blisters are starting. Phone charger isn’t working too good. Didn’t wanna risk getting another one. Broke into #10. They have wifi. They have clean air. And theyre eating the uninfected for immunity. Seems to be working too. Maybe if I eat THEM I can get cured? Eat the immune and get immune? Worth a shot lol.
Hope people still use Tumblr. Or find phone one day. Idk. Things are bad. If u see this plz cure the virus.
About the Author
Keila Thorogood is a university student and an avid horror fan from the North East of England. She’s been writing from a very young age, beginning with poetry before finding her niche in short stories. Even though she’d been dreaming of it for years, she only recently decided to attempt publication.
