The Future Wildfire of a Virus World

There was very little time to buy groceries. The shops were emptying fast. Panic had spread throughout our town.

All around me people looked scared.

A man violently shoved a woman to the floor in his rush to grab more toilet paper. She sat there, crying, unable to comprehend the severity of her situation. America was falling apart and it was all my fault.

I was a successful writer in terms of a small audience. My prose was patchworked together from tabloid musings. I was gutter press. A glorified blogger. There would never be any future courses dedicated to studying my words. No literature students would question hidden depths or meaning. I was comfortable being relatively unknown. I was no James Joyce.

It all happened so fast. It’s what they used to call ‘going viral’. One day I was a nobody, the next I was being quoted on all the dailies. The New York Times did a feature piece on my story. I starred in a commercial with The Rock. My face was plastered on Times Square. Ellen DeGeneres came out of retirement to interview me. I did an interview for Italian Vogue.

Heady days.

I tried explaining that I was no expert. All I did was express my fears. In truth, I never stopped expressing them. Over and over. I warned people of what would happen. I wrote satirical pieces. Humorous pieces. I quoted scientific studies. Government papers. Years of research. I had built quite a following, close to 100K on one platform.

Few took notice until the big one.

That was the fifth wave of the pandemic. The one where people stopped caring. Yeah, there were truckers in the streets blocking the roads. Petrol was through the roof. Commodities were getting scarce. So many protests. People didn’t realize they were all carriers. Every one of them had the virus. It was a super spreader event. The same scenes were repeated in city after city, country after country. Collectively, the world had given up.

But I knew. You see, I had done my research. I knew about the long-term issues. How the virus affected the body after years. I tried again and again to tell people the truth but they called me names. They said I was doom-mongering. They said I had no evidence. They said it was all harmless. Nothing more than bad flu.

I never wanted to live in a world full of masks. I had to stay safe for my child. I didn’t want to put her at risk, sending her to school where the virus spread. I did what I had to.

I learned basic survival skills. I feared the worse. It wouldn’t be toilet paper this time, it’ll be medicines. It’ll be drinking water. It would be fresh crops. Vegetables. Tins of produce.

Nobody listened. They didn’t listen when I mentioned the avian flu wiping out chicken and turkey farms. All they wanted to talk about was hate speech. Joe Rogan. Whoopi Goldberg. I showed them a bias in who they followed and they gave me a one-finger salute.

What can I say? It’s the American Way. I’m alright Jack. I’ve taken care of myself. My daughter is safe. Outside the world is raging. Republicans are firing off guns, the press is hyping the war between Russia and Ukraine and somewhere in New Zealand, there’s a fool who demanded the reopening of borders only to witness thousands die.

I blocked him. I had no time for people who wouldn’t listen. I was right. I had enough idiots to deal with in the comments section. I didn’t need to hear about how vaccinated New Zealand was or how Denmark had taken down all their mandates. What mattered was what was happening in the US. It was out of control.

Do I regret anything? I simply wished people would have listened sooner. It felt pointless some days. Like screaming into a wall. Everyone flinging their toys out of their prams. Bunch of immature twats.

Once my story blew up, the world really did fall apart. The long-term effects of the virus had begun to manifest. People were too preoccupied with shouting opinions on Twitter to notice any patterns. Hundreds began to die. Then thousands. The paparazzi called me ‘The Wildsayer of Doom’. That one article was trending globally. My words finally had power.

I came to this shop to collect a few final items. News had broken that Russia wasn’t stopping at Ukraine. The faux-Chinese war was a distraction. Our over-run essential workers were now dying from over-exposure to the virus. Transport had ground to a halt thanks to the truckers demanding freedom. Our crops died on the vine with no immigrants to pick the food. We had closed borders and no itinerant workforce.

I grabbed the last water bottle and ran. Within ten minutes I would be safe in my bunker.

This wildfire is due to run a few more years. There is no pleasure in being right. Maybe next time someone will listen.