* 𝖘𝖕𝖆𝖈𝖊𝖉 𝖔𝖚𝖙.

WHEN YOU WERE A KID you were practically convinced you were put on this planet to change the world. of course, your parents would have it no other way. they met researching cancer at harvard and they knew from the second you were conceived that you would be the biggest part of their legacy. well, the next biggest, after their work on antibody drug conjugates. you pretend it was fine, but they never really thought about you much, did they? the only time they showed heart was when you passed a final, so you did what you could. you spent night after night combing through textbooks and completing extra credit just to feel your mother’s warm embrace.

THE WORLD STOPPED BREATHING while you were still a boy. reports of a virus began flooding your stations. you didn’t think much of it until your parents pulled you out of school, speaking in hushed tones about their colleagues and their discoveries regarding a virus that remains uncontrollable. only days before the official FEDRA lockdown, your parents took you to the family cabin right outside of seattle. with them they hauled as much food and supplies as they could fit in their jeep, and you weren’t stupid—but they treated you like you were. they lied and told you that you all would be back home in a couple weeks; ‘we’re just being cautious,’ they said.

TWO MONTHS PASSED and the feeling that this might be forever began to settle. food and supplies dwindled more each passing day. and for the first time in your life, you held a rifle in your tiny hands. the same hands your parents guided to a pen and paper were steadying a killing machine. you regret not putting up a fight before they left on a trip into the city. maybe something could’ve changed, maybe they both would’ve returned with their lives intact—but your mother, with her once mellifluous voice now cracked and frail, came back several days later. your father’s hat in her hands was the only thing that remained of his memory. it was covered in blood. everything about her had changed and you could tell the second you noticed the vacant stare in her eye. she rarely ate the food she had managed to scavenge, spending the time she would’ve taken to sleep to whisper to herself. it was something of a prayer; ‘the world is not in balance / but i have done my part to right it / you have led me through the storm / now i must rest / may the current be calm / may you guide me home.’

YOU HAD LEARNED, after your mothers mental fog began to clear, what happened to your father the night he passed. you learned about the monsters that tore him apart and the outpost of survivors she found in a last ditch attempt to save the man she loved. they told her, in her weakest and most vulnerable moment, her husband had become corrupted with sin manifest. they held her in their arms as she sobbed, reciting that same prayer over her in unison as they silently disposed of his infected body. she wanted nothing more than to find the people who made her feel safe for the first time since the world shut down, and you wanted nothing more than to experience this with her. the journey down to seraphite island had been the closest you felt to your mother in your entire life.

THEY TRAINED YOU in the medicine of their people, as the elders had determined you to be too frail and too weak for the front lines. tension with the factions outside of your community only continued to rise, all while they were training your mother like a weapon. in your spare time, between rubbing fractures with oils and tinctures, curiosity called you to the outskirts of the compound where the corrupted remained untamed. there was still a fire in your soul and in your mind that demanded something bigger. the prophet had bigger plans for you, didn’t she? at least, that’s what you told yourself while you were dragging the remains of slaughtered corrupted into sheds to find out how they tick. you snuck books on anatomy and biology into your room and for nearly two decades you got away with it.

YOU'RE A PREACHER'S SON, so you're pious, aren't you? but you walk into church and you sweat like a sinner ... why is that? i think it's because your father was disappointed in you from the second he laid eyes on you. you had so much to live up to and it had always seemed too big, too out of reach. it's impossible to never live up to your potential if you never try to begin with. instead, you spent the most formative years skipping class with who your father would call 'folks from the wrong side of the tracks', dropping acid and stealing liquor. half of your childhood was spent behind bars with the other miscreant kids from your county—and the only thing you learned was how to do was get into more trouble.

ON THE DAY OF YOUR SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY, your father dragged you by the ear to the local military recruitment center and demanded you enlist into the army. his voice, that same voice you heard preaching fire and brimstone, telling you 'you're a weak, weak boy, allan. you're not right. you need fixin.' you need to be whipped into shape.' he was right. it took you half your life to realize this.

ONE SECOND, YOU WERE A BOY, and the next? a man with a gun. three years of your life are blocked from memory. you remember them only in fragments during night terrors. the men in the marines taught you very little, but they did teach you how to drink. maybe a little too much. you use alcohol to cope to this day. it'll kill you sooner, you hope.

JUST BEFORE SHIT HIT THE FAN, you met a woman who made drink feel trivial. you were soothed by the delicate pitch of her voice and the stories she wove with her mind. you fell fast and hard because you've never felt anything so beautiful before. nine months of bliss—before the world began it's quick process into rot and decay. she was on vacation with her friends in the foothills, due back in a day. the perimeters of the county blocked all entry or exit under military control and you knew because they sent you the orders. ordered to point guns at the people you knew, ordered to follow orders. and what did you do? you up and left. abandoned everything you've ever known, all because you were convinced you had nothing else to live for.