RedRavenPoems

REFLECTIONS OF THE PAST

Everything burns, everything dies. Everything turns to dust in it’s own time.

I remember the day it all started. The day the worlds end came about. I was only a young boy at the time. Old enough to understand that things were changing, would never be the same again. Yet still young enough to not understand the how, the why, that this happened. Now as the years have flown by, after i have survived horrors unfamthomable, I look back and understand. I mourn the people that have perished in this hellscape of a world. I mourn for those that are still to come. Even more than that, i despise those who brought this about. Looking back, it makes me sick. Greed was the culprit, pure and simple. The greed for money. The desire for riches and power. A craving for status, for recognition among peers. Some might even say it was for progress, the noble may even foolishly say it was for the betterment of human kind. To prolong the way of life we were accustomed to in those days. To this, I say bullshit. Progress and bettering of lives was never on the agenda. Only the rich becoming even more so, those with power increasing it. The truth is in the actions. Only the foolhardy would ever deny it. Those who haven't lived in this world after the line was crossed. It started simple enough. The stripping of the land for trees. Yes, i suppose an argument can be made that we needed the wood for homes, for our tools, and to make fires for warmth at first. But what about after? When we had the resouces for other ways? We continued to tear them down, to clear vast regions of land for more housing, more room to grow food next. But very rarely did we replace those trees. Then as we advanced we moved even further. By the time I was born, the earths shell had been ripped wide, deep gouges into her flesh. To plunder. We needed the coal for our fires, it was better than wood. It heated our homes, powered our plants, produced our electricity. All while belching swaths of black clouds into the air for us to breathe. Then we discovered the metals within the earth, and we dug feverishly for them. We made tools, they made our lives easier. Then we made weapons and war. We drilled for oil. We dug for precious gems. We made war for them, and much blood was shed. All the while the land was ruined by our actions. She was never allowed a chance to heal. The balance shifted ever so slowly. Wars tore apart the land as we bickered and fought for supremacy, or more to the point, for proffit. Still the Earth bled, and we ignored her. The oceans ran red with blood from the fighting, and needless slaughters. The skies thickened and chocked us with the plumes of acrid smoke. Finally the balance tipped. The scales had swung too far at last. It was the insects that suffered first. Beehives fell, the queens dead, the colonies falling quickly. Our food supplies suffered, but we coped, though we paid dearly for it. Then more pollinators fell, and our food suffered again. But humans are resilent. We struggled on. Next came the live stock. Herds of cattle died of sickness. Hordes of pigs and goats sickened and perished.

Even the great flocks of poultry fell victim. There was precious little meat, eggs a rarity. Fresh milk or other items even more so. New laws were passed, prices rose. Millions starved. Many perished, and the survivors, they grew restless. Countries went to war, gentle bickering flaring into bitter hate, terrifying anger. Desperation caused unspeakable acts to be commited, in the name of survival. No one batted an eye, for everyone had one goal in mind. To survive, and the hell with everyone else. But still the worst was to come, and it arrived in the winter of 2025, when i was only ten years of age. That was when the plagues began. No one knows who released them. Some of the old timers say it was Russia, or perhaps China. Others swear it was America itsself, trying to reduce the population, lessen the amount of mouths to feed. The politicans and others couldnt go hungry after all.

Really though, does it matter in hindsight? It simply happened. They started simple enough. Most people thought they had a cold. The usual: caughing, hacking, slight fevers and chills. No big deal. A couple aspirin and some rest and all would be well. Only it got worse. Sores would appear on the neck or the face. Sores that would fester no matter the treatment, and eventually burst, speading the lesions to other parts of the body. The pain was excruciating from what I've seen. This was only the begining. The fever would skyrocket, burning the mind until it was gone, leaving only an empty husk behind. One that still lived in its own way. Swamped in the maddness of the pain, and filled with rage towards those not afflicted, they would often rampage until their destruction. The first case to reach this state caused the death of five, and injured dozens more. Each injured person ended up with the disease, and the cycle would repeat. The disease, jokingly called the Plague at first, became a real plague quick enough. It tore through cities, spread across continants, faster than any could anticipate. Society collapsed, Cities burned in the nights. Still the clock ticked downward, faster than ever. Safe places were built. Soem of the cities were walled in, keeping the Infected out. They kept out all the lower classes as well it seemed. You had to be important to get in. Oh a few would open their doors, but only every so often. Those who entered were seen shortly after hanging by their necks from the wall tops, executed as "suspect Infected". It was better to stay away. Those of us unlucky enough to not be in the Citidels, we struggled. The land was tainted by poison. The animals as well. Most were unfit to eat, but we had little choice. We fought and scrabbled among ourselves outside the walls of those cities, and we survived. We ended up surviving far longer than most of the Citadels. For they fell when i was only fifteen, five years after The Plague began.