Journals of the Damned

by GJ Zukow

to as "Crime Hills". I've lived here all my life and never noticed any real difference in the crime rate here, in Pine Hills, and the rest of the suburbs of Orlando. Excepting of course Winter Park, where all the rich people live and their property taxes can support more police.

  My little sister had her bike stolen last night. Lucy, that's my little sisters' name, forgot to put her bike in the garage last night and left it lying no more than ten feet from our front door. In the morning it was gone. My mother, who works as a nurse at the Winter Park Hospital, has to budget for everything. I honestly don't know how she manages to be a working, single mother. Neither my, nor my little sisters father, contribute a single dime to help raise us. It had to be some low-life crack-head who stole it. Who steals a little girl’s bike like that? It was just a child's bike (and a girl's bike at that), an adult or even a teenager would be too big to ride it right. Lucy sobbed until the bus came to take her to school, only stopping her tears when she knew the other kids would see her crying at the bus-stop. All my mom could do was admonish her for leaving her bike out. The whole thing pisses me off.

  Enough of that drama. This morning before school and all night, ever since I got home from school, I've had to watch Lucy mope and whine. It sucks but she's going to have to learn that's how people are.

  I've been following the rat die-off in Asia, the spread is unbelievably fast. Still nothing on the local news or the national news. Where before the big cable news stations barely said two sentences about it, now they say three sentences. The only reason they talk about it, I think, is so they can show a couple of pictures of a field of dead, rotting mice.

  In the three days since I wrote about the disease, it has spread from the Ural Mountains to the Bering Sea. From Indonesia and the Philippines through India and into all the "Stans" (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and all the rest). Natural borders don't seem to do anything but slow it down for a day. It jumps mountains, oceans and seas like they were speed bumps. It has to be airborne.

  Nobody who is looking into this knows for sure just how far it has spread in reality. By the time the rats and mice die, it means that at least forty-eight or so hours have passed. It means that the disease (or whatever it is), is actually two days or more ahead of the corpses. By now it probably has reached Europe and may have even reached the Americas.

  Except for the handful of independent researchers trying to study this, nobody cares. In fact the consensus with most governments is that this is almost welcomed. The few people looking into this are saying that they won't even be able to figure what is causing this due to lack of money, labs and personnel for months. It may be a year or more, they say, before they can isolate and properly identify what is happening.

  Friday, August 24, 2012

  I'm sure the people who rejoice and say, "Thank God it's Friday.", never went to this High School. Every class loads me up on homework, including yours Mrs. Johnson. A five hundred word short story, on top of this two hundred and fifty word entry, plus a couple of hours for each of my other five classes means at least another ten hours of work I have to cram in my weekend. This is on top of my having to take care of my ten year old sister. My mother works the afternoon shift and on weekdays it's not so bad, as I only have to watch and feed her for a couple of hours until she returns. Saturday's and Sunday's I have to watch her for most of the day, unless my mom lucks out and gets her single day off on a weekend day.

  Lucy is still moody about the theft of her bike. She's been difficult and picky about everything, making me cranky. I hope she snaps out of it soon. If she keeps being like this for much longer I'm going to rip my hair out.

  Some girl's my age talk about having a big family when they get out of school. I, however, don't plan on getting pregnant for quite a long time, if at all. I sure don't want to spend the next ten years of my life changing diapers and wiping snotty noses after having a litter of children.

  So ends the more personal section of my journal. Now on to my continuing coverage of World events.

  People are getting sick, manifesting flu like symptoms. The reports are coming in from the same places the rat death started. The new "Rat Flu" is following the same dispersal pattern and rapid spread as whatever caused the rats to die off. Hospitals and medical centers in South Korea and southern China are flooded with the sick. There is no news from North Korea, there is never any news from that country so it's not surprising.

  Now the CDC has finally decided to start investigating. If they would have started investigating this sooner they would have had that much of a head start.

  The local news has started talking about the Rat-flu now, mainly saying that it's the start of the flu season and to "Get your flu shots now." My question is how can I get a flu vaccination against a disease that nobody has identified yet. From what I understand vaccinations are only good against that single virus it was created for. Nobody has even isolated the thing yet and we don't even know if it’s caused by a virus. But here the government is, once again, offering hollow words to placate the voters. Only the national news and cable news stations are speaking of the rat die-off and the new flu, but they speak of them like they're two separate things. I believe they're linked, just as many others around the world do.

  Since the last journal entry the mass extinction of the rodents is steam rolling along. The rat plague is in Europe now, as far west as Belgium. It has shown up in Egypt and Australia. Currently the disease has ventured into Alaska and spots along the Pacific coast of Canada.

  If the sickness spreads among humans like it has in the rodent population, (and all the evidence points to this), then this is easily going to be the most contagious disease in recorded history.

  For all anyone knows, this new disease could already be here. We could already be infected. We don't know what the incubation period for this is. For all we know, we may have been infected up to a month ago. The bright side to this is that there are no confirmed deaths related to the mystery disease.

  My prediction is within a week there's going to be a lot of students staying home.

  Monday, August 27, 2012

  My mom had to put in extra hours at the hospital over the weekend, preparing for the influx of sick people that will soon arrive like a flood. According to my mom, every flu-season sends a ton of patients into the system and this one is going to be bad. The Hospital, all the hospitals, are bracing for a huge wave of individuals who are going to contract the new disease. From what my mom says, the new sickness isn't deadly but it is very contagious. The doctors expect that up to ninety percent of the population will develop the flu like symptoms. The very old and very young are at risk, as are those with compromised immune systems. They say there will be more deaths because of this, just like with any other flu but because this is so widespread, the numbers will be greater (but the percentage will be comparable to other flu strains).

  The media has officially dubbed this strain the "Rat flu". The subject is suddenly all over the news now, driving a slight panic and causing cold and flu medications sales to rise dramatically. The CDC has named this new virus their number one priority. Although there is debate about whether or not this is actually caused by a virus. Within a week the CDC promises to identify this new strain and will then begin working on a vaccine. That means the first of the real vaccines will be available for the public by the end of next month. That may be too late. The disease is spreading faster than the rat die off.

  The "Great rat death" is showing up worldwide now. It has firmly established itself in the new world covering all of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. to the Mississippi river. South America and the eastern U.S. have isolated outbreak areas.

  The spread of the infection no longer follows the outbreak pattern of the rat die-off. At first it did, but now it starts to rear its ugly head wherever the rodent death shows up. Does this mean the illness has mutated? Maybe. Maybe we are infected already, it could have silently spread around the world a month or more ago and it's just now manifesti
ng itself. Either way, thank the Gods it's not a particularly deadly strain.

  This may be something new, something never seen before. The evidence for this is the contagion isn't specialized or limited to one family or species of mammal. It is making all the mammals sick. Reptiles are immune to this it seems. No mammal, big or small, seems to have any real immunity at all. Animals all over the world are affected, catching the illness at the same time people do.

  People are reacting strangely to this. Psychologists say it's the difference between the known and the unknown. Whereas before, with other flu strains, people could walk around thinking "I probably won't get sick." Now people are fretting about the fact that they almost certainly will get sick.

  Everybody, including the kids in school are wearing latex gloves and wearing masks over their nose and mouths. Everyone is using anti-bacterial hand sanitizer and are generally trying to do anything they can to minimize their exposure. It seems, even knowing that all their precautions won't stop them from getting sick, they do it anyways.

  Myself, I take a "come what may" attitude. If the fates dictate I will catch a cold, then there's nothing I can do about it. It's just a mild flu