Ernie
Legacy Name: Ernie

outbreak

One year.

It had been one year since the zombie outbreak.

Three months since they had found the cure.

One hour since his simulations had told him it would happen again.

Ernie stared at his computer screen, still willing the results to change. He had been staring, head in hands, for the last hour, hoping. Just as he had stared at the screen so many other times in the past year, first when he was tracking models of spread, then when he was working to find a cure.

No one was going to listen to him. They had been too slow with the cure, at least according to the general population, and had lost too much trust. And, of course, even if they did listen, no one was going to want to hear what he had to say, not when they were still celebrating their survival and the return of their loved ones.

The outbreak had started slowly, just like in the movies. A couple strange infections, which in the end stages drove the patient into a rabid state. When the first few had died, there was hope the infection would just burn itself out... but then the infected had started to come back to life.

The zombies were animalistic, and unresponsive to normal human interaction. They killed and ate everything that they were able to catch, and while they weren’t particularly clever their sheer strength could overwhelm many normal defenses.

The hospitals had been wiped out quickly, as it had turned out the vector for transmission was saliva of the patients who were still alive but had reached the rabid stage. People had been left to fend for themselves and their families. Ernie and his team had been locked inside their lab, in a bid to keep them safe while they attempted to develop a cure.

And they had, but it had been a slow process. Slow enough that the world was now in shambles. There was also fallout over the fact that while the zombies were back to their pre-zombie state, their appearances had not gone back to normal. They still looked dead and rotted.

None of this would matter soon, though. Not if the models were correct. Not if it was going to happen all over again.

Credits: Profile design and code by: Ringo | Overlay by: frederick | Story by: Trithie