The plague struck like a snake, silent and deadly.
Its designers had been patient, planning their attack with meticulous care. First, their scientists developed a virus that, once unleashed, would work within hours, giving its victims no time to respond. The virus was stored in small canisters, each with a timing mechanism programmed to open the container on a given date, at an exact hour. The canisters themselves were then hidden in the ventilation systems of buildings, on the undersides of airplanes, inside the walls of water towers.
At the same time, the leaders of this invisible war inoculated their own people, shielding them from the plague that soon would sweep over their enemies. When the end of the world came, they told each other solemnly, only the righteous would remain.
So on the day the virus was released—from tens of thousands of locations, all at the same moment—the war was over before anyone was even aware it had begun. People dropped in the streets, collapsed behind the wheels of cars, fell unconscious in the fields, and slumped forward in desks and cubicles. They died while cooking dinner, while watching TV.
But those who had engineered the plague hadn’t truly understood what they had created. It spread so fast, and was so deadly, that it crept across oceans and continents with the speed of nightfall. And it mutated so frequently that even the safeguards and vaccines didn’t work. The architects of the plague fell as quickly as their enemies.
And the third thing no one had counted on: the plague killed all of the adults. But it left the children.