The only problem is, as unrealistic as this story seems, it’s all the truth, which makes it even harder to note down.
We used to call them Mertyvv because they always seemed so dead. It was difficult to kill them, they ate others, they had no human function. Dead, but still moving.
Dead but alive, I guess.
Like nothing any of us had ever seen before.
I suppose we could say all of that in a jovial, smug tone because despite the odds being stacked against us we managed to shut down the majority of Russia quick enough to keep the virus at bay. Everyone acted rapidly to get rid of anyone showing symptoms of the illness too. There was no sentiment, it was kill or be killed. Or give them up to science, I suppose, that was an option as well. Family ties had to be thrown to one side, friendships, lovers, all gone, but it was for the greater good.
Russia wasn’t totally saved, but it wasn’t all gone either. It was a victory. The media portrayed nationwide pride at an all-time high.
Although, the truth was it truly was a dark time, a very difficult time for our country, for all the people left behind, but we did it anyway. As a collective, we held the mindset that it was the only way to survive. We’d seen things go horribly wrong in other countries, and we didn’t want that to become us. The everyday man didn’t really discuss it, it just became the way we survived.
Red Square was the hub, the place where all the exciting things happened, the place where I worked with the Mertyvv since day one. I was put in charge of my own team, trusted to lead others into what we thought was going to save the whole damn world. They needed us, we were better than them. We survived where they hadn’t, and wanted to take that one step further by curing the others too.
It was probably going to help us take over the world as well, to finally be recognized as the leading world power. Maybe that was the main idea behind it all, but for me and the rest of the workers, we just wanted to put an end to everything, to go back to normal.
What a load of rubbish. Especially when we look at how things have turned out now.
We created it too, the antidote that is. Not my team exactly, although I’m proud to say that we had a hand in it, but we got the solution in the end. I don’t even know how long it took, we were locked away completing it without even seeing the light of day, but it was worth it.
There was a very celebratory mood the day things all fell into place.
Some negotiations were taking place, I never knew the details of them, but they were happening. Or, so we were told. Government officials had control of what happened next, and we were more than happy to let that be the case since we didn’t know any better. Having been locked away from reality for so long, we assumed they knew how to deal with it all. Things were moving forwards, progressing, I was under the naïve assumption that the world would be back to some semblance of normal at some point, that the goal had been achieved.
But I could not have been more wrong.
The antidote that we created was nothing, it did nothing. Maybe in a laboratory situation, it worked as it was supposed to, I guess I’ll never know because I didn’t see it getting tested, but in the real world, it clearly didn’t have anything like the same effect. It obviously wasn’t tested extensively enough because we were keen to get it out there, to save the world. Either that, or no one stopped to think about the potential side effects...
As a country, we were still smug, we were still under the assumption that we were better than everyone else. Not only had we survived the outbreak, but also the ones to prevent anyone else from being affected.
Our confidence became our downfall.
The news didn’t filter down to us for a while. None of the workers discovered what was going on until it was too late. We remained locked in our labs for a while, trying to find a way to replicate what we’d created into mass volumes for any other country willing to abide by Government’s terms, so by the time people started dying it was too late for us to stop what had already begun.
Everyone who wasn’t sick already quickly became ill. Maybe not with the main virus, it wasn’t having the same effect as that, but it was killing people.
We had a pandemic of our own.
Panic was the first side effect of that, people we went wild as they eventually found out they were going to die from the injection they assumed would save them. The streets became barbaric, like something out of a horrific crime movie or something. Absolutely awful. We locked ourselves in here, me and my team, and waited. I hated that, it made me feel like a coward, but it was that or die. I figured once the panic calmed down, we’d be okay and we could start again.
My team might not have agreed with me, but I remained positive. I had to try and see the silver lining, so it was that and the fact that we hadn’t felt the need to inject ourselves right away, because we were locked inside too far away for the virus to ever get us. Those factors were the only possible positives I could focus on during that initial terrible time.
Only now...now everything has changed. Now, it seems the next port of call is not to try again, not to bother saving the world once more, but it’s to drop a nuclear weapon. I don’t even know what exactly, or where, or why, but I’m sure we won’t survive.
How have we come from a place where we were going to help everyone, to killing off the majority of the world? I hate it, I despise it, it makes all the pain and suffering we went through mean nothing. I want to stop it, I want to take control of the situation and prevent it from happening, but I don’t have the power. I’m only Abram Orlov, team leader of some small section of a massive operation. Practically a nobody.
I have to try though.
Do I?
Yes, it would be stupid not to. If we’re all going to die anyway then I need to have a go. I need to stand up to everyone and have an attempt at getting people to see reason. I don’t think my words will mean anything, but I have to try. That’s why I started writing this after all, to let people know that not all of us wanted this to happen. In fact, most of us don’t, but everyone is too freaked out about the world and what it’s become to try, too beaten down by the horror that has become life. People are still putting faith into the Government, even when they’ve proved that they cannot be trusted.
Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to make a difference in this world. Maybe I’ll be able to stop all of this from getting any worse.
So, I guess here goes nothing...
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