than it already was.
On Saturday afternoon, people were on the move across America by every means available to them. Because it was a weekend, the reaction to flee was much easier to act upon. In most areas of the country, the quarantine orders were impossible to enforce and the spread of SDC was accelerated and broadened.
The near-extinction of all human life in North America was now inevitable. It would progress at an exponential pace. The news of the U.S. actions spread quickly around the world, accelerating the panic everywhere.
By midnight in Washington, the number of infected had grown to well over a million in North America, with a slightly smaller number in Europe. SDC had reached every large center of population in North America and Europe. Almost three million people were infected worldwide.
The crisis that had occupied the president’s day had left him in despair. When the last meeting ended at midnight, he was in desperate need of sleep. He went to his bed reluctantly, leaving orders to be awakened if there were any major developments. He lay awake for almost an hour, worrying about what the next day would bring. He need not have worried about his capability to deal with events the following day. His exhaustion finally overcame him and he went into a deep sleep. He was dead within an hour.
North America died quickly, with fifty thousand dead on Sunday, five hundred thousand on Monday, five million on Tuesday and fifty million on Wednesday. With few exceptions, by the end of the week, all of the more than three hundred million inhabitants of North America were dead.
Europe died almost as quickly, with fifteen thousand dead on Sunday, two hundred thousand on Monday, three million on Tuesday and fifty million on Wednesday. As with North America, by the end of the week, nearly all of the seven hundred million people who lived in Europe were dead.
By Monday July 27, 2015, only two weeks after SDC had claimed its first victim, most of the seven billion or so inhabitants of the Earth were dead. The Earth was now truly ready for a new beginning.
Part 2: The Survivors
The nature of SDC was such that it could have resulted in the extinction of the human race. The extremely infectious nature of the SDC virus combined with the short time period to fatality had catastrophic results.
The speed and high rate of infection after any type of contact ensured SDC would spread widely and rapidly. It was unfortunate that Jim Henderson’s trip to the trade show in New York ensured the rapid spread of the contagion, both within the United States and internationally. Any type of isolation or quarantine plan was doomed to fail right from the start.
Any attempts at diagnosis and research into potential cures or preventive measures were aborted by the fast spread of the contagion. This resulted in the rapid breakdown in civilization in all locations that became infected. When the nature and results of SDC became widely known, the natural impulse to flee just accelerated the rate of spreading. This ensured that even isolated communities were invaded by fleeing infected people and quickly became infected themselves with almost one hundred percent fatality.
The extinction of the human race would have been complete within less than three months except for a very fortunate accident of nature. On a random basis, one person in every hundred thousand or so had been born with a natural genetic immunity. These people were as susceptible to SDC as anyone else. However, the infection did not generate the deadly enzyme in sufficient quantity to affect their normal body mechanisms during their sleep.
They caught SDC like everyone else. However, the only symptoms they experienced were the runny nose and slight headache. In most cases, they lived to see all their family, friends and all the people in the communities where they lived die in their sleep in a period of less than a week.
For many of the survivors, this experience was just too much to bear. When they realized what had happened and that they were now very much alone, they had no desire to continue living and they committed suicide by whatever means were available to them. Many just stopped eating and drinking and died from dehydration or starvation.
The random nature of the genetic immunity ensured that the survivors were spread across the world in approximate proportion to their original population. This was irrespective of race, gender and age and was in a ratio of about one survivor per hundred thousand. Earth’s population was reduced from more than seven billion to about seventy thousand by the end of July. In the vocabulary of twentieth-century environmentalists, Homo sapiens had suddenly become a critically endangered species.
The total population of North America was now about three thousand. Most of these people were in the big cities. In spite of the panic-stricken urge to flee that occurred in most centers of population, the infection and dying was too quick to allow many people to act on their impulse to flee.
The cities quickly became very unhealthy and unpleasant places to be because of the large number of unburied bodies quickly decaying in the summer heat. Because most people had died in their sleep and in their own beds, most of the bodies in the cities were confined to their homes. Shops, factories and offices were largely free of bodies. It was in the living spaces—the apartments, townhouses and suburbs—that the smell of decay quickly became intolerable.
The SDC survivors in the large cities either left them for the surrounding countryside or moved into the offices and shopping centers. The nearby smaller towns and villages became the most common places of choice for most survivors. They were close to an adequate quantity of food and other supplies. It was easy enough to make a new home without requiring too much effort to dispose of the dead.
The same pattern occurred outside North America, with about seven thousand survivors in all of Europe and about sixty thousand around the rest of the world.
Canada: The Survivors
In the small town of Morrisburg, Ontario, Michael Warren was the only survivor. Morrisburg was situated on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, across from the small town of Waddington in northern New York State and forty miles south of Canada’s capital city, Ottawa. Prior to SDC, the population of the town was about three thousand.
Michael had lived with his parents in Morrisburg all twenty-one years of his life. At the time of the catastrophe, he was working as a junior auto mechanic at the local Canadian Tire store. He became aware of the deadly contagion when the first news reports of unexplained deaths in Glens Falls were broadcast on the local radio on Thursday, July 16. Even though Glens Falls was only an hour’s drive from Morrisburg, he did not give this news much attention. He went on with his regular day at Canadian Tire, without any real concerns beyond what he was going to do with his friends on the weekend.
On Friday, things changed dramatically. The reports of large numbers of unexplained deaths in Glens Falls, New York and other cities in the United States became more and more urgent during the day. The first deaths in Canada were reported from Ottawa.
For Michael and his workmates, this was too close to home for comfort. Not much work was done on Friday afternoon, with employees and customers crowded around the television in the Auto Service waiting room. As they discussed the news and possible courses of action for themselves, they were not aware the SDC virus was already en-route to Morrisburg.
Three sources of infection reached Morrisburg on Friday. One family fleeing from Glens Falls had come to pay their relatives a surprise visit in Waddington. They had passed their infection to the owner of the local liquor store when they purchased beer and wine. On Friday afternoon, two Morrisburg residents had taken their boat on the short trip across the St. Lawrence River to pick up a couple of cases of cheap American beer from
