John says I should be sharing more info, just in case. We won't share our location-- if we're online, there's no way of knowing if the eaters are, too.
I guess the best place to start is at the beginning. As far as we know, about a year ago, something happened. We never heard for sure if it was an experiment that escaped or a terrorist attack. But somehow, the eater virus got loose. There were a few cases scattered up and down the east coast earlier this year that made people joke about the zombie apocalypse. Within a few weeks, the jokes stopped. It was real.
Well; except for the zombie part. They aren't zombies. Not exactly.
See, the eater virus is a twisted, cruel sickness. There is no death and resurrection; and the worst part is, the eaters keep their memories and their voices and look and walk and talk just like normals. There's no easy way to tell them apart from someone who hasn't been turned.
The virus causes an abdominal tumor that blocks the uptake of certain nutrients in food, except when consumed in human flesh. Right after you're infected, you might lose your appetite. Regular food tastes bitter, or sour, or like ash. Maybe you chalk it up to a stomach bug. Maybe you ignore the tiny signals when you smell or see other people. The slight salivation. The empty grumble in your stomach.
A few days go by, and you start feeling sick. The more regular food you eat, the worse it gets. From here, there are three ways it can go:
A lot of turned people starve to death refusing to give in and eat human flesh, or put bullets in their brains.
Some go crazy, and kill everyone they can get their hands on to satiate the hunger inside.
A rare few keep every cold ounce of sanity they have, and enjoy it. These, we call hunters.
It doesn't seem to matter what your personality is like to begin with. The nicest lady I ever knew, Mrs. Robbins, taught Sunday school and held monthly bake sales for orphans. A month into the disaster, they found her chewing on what was left of a 6-year-old boy.
Now the eaters that don't starve to death live together in tribes that roam what's left of the world, searching for any normals they can turn or eat. Something keeps them from killing each other, though they will immediately turn on any member of their troop that dies. There must be a trigger in the virus, too, because sometimes they just bite you to pass on the disease.
I'd like to think John and I would both choose to starve to death or put a gun in our mouths. I hope we never have to find out.
