Sci-Fi Short Story: Science Fiction Story About a Lethal Virus

The silence rings in my ears as I walk the empty streets. I remember playing the game Population as a kid. Always over-playing my hand, I'd allow the population of my make-believe country to grow until the resources were exhausted and disease decimated the people. I'd laugh about being the only one left.

Now it's not a game, and I scream, running down the silent boulevards, the only survivor in my hometown.

Darkness falls and with it, the dew. I'd take refuge in a home, but bodies lie in every house, in every tunnel and subway station. I always thought it would end in a nuclear explosion, with a third world country building a bomb and blowing us all to kingdom come. Or that we'd pollute the earth so badly that one day no one would be able to breathe. I don't know if that would have been better or worse.

The sun shines the next day, and if I close my eyes and hold my nose so I can't smell the decay, it would almost seem like life is normal. How can it feel normal and not be?

I want to blame the doctors. They were the ones who said there was no need for the shot. "We've eradicated the disease and more people have serious problems from the side effects of the vaccine than from getting the illness."

But they lied. Or were stupid. Or maybe both, because one little contingent held on to twenty vials of the stuff. Microscopic death in a test tube, and you'd never know you were exposed.

Sweat drips down my neck and my shirt sticks to my back. Thirst gets stronger every day, and yet I don't dare drink the water because of contamination by dead bodies.

A fly buzzes past, in an erratic pattern that reminds me of the air show at the State Fair, looping over and over until he drops dead-a black speck lying at my feet.

I close my eyes and remember what the doctor said when I asked for the shot. "You've already had a form of the disease, so you don't need the vaccine. You're lucky in that you've got extra protection because you grew up on a dairy farm."

He was right; I did have immunity because of the cowpox I'd had as a kid. But he was wrong about being lucky.

Those twenty little vials-the same vials broken in transit on the flight I piloted-had mutated into SP152, an ultra lethal smallpox virus that crossed from species to species.

And because I grew up on a dairy farm, death passed me by ... but it knocked on everyone else's door.