Mortus Corps 3

Note from the writer: Even as I am using this blog as a place to post bits and pieces of my new setting I am changing it.  It has already gone through one major change and maybe another if I can work it out.  Who knows when this will be finished but it will be eventually....

Too Little Too Late

As the time for the release of the plagues inhibitor closes riots and looting become more commonplace.  There are far too many people crammed into the downtown areas of the chosen cities to be easily controlled.  The remnants of the National Guard as well as several Army units are called in to help quell the riots and prevent any more collateral damage, both in the way of material as well as lives but unfortunately the military, in its already weakened state, is unable to act cohesively enough to have any sort of impact.

In an effort to stop even more people from flooding into the area hastily erected walls went up around the proposed safe-zones.  It is then decided that the military would be used to remove anyone that could not prove they belonged in the chosen cities out of the area.  Sadly these efforts ended in violence in many of the release sites as people fought for the right to stay.  After nearly a month of civil in-fighting the five American safe-zones were declared ready.

In each of the cities, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Detroit, and New York City, thousands of dispersal units were installed and prepped for use.  The plan was to use these high-tech sprayers to disperse the neutralizer into the air over the cities, thereby creating an area of relative safety from the airborne effects of the plague.  Massive walls around each of the chosen cities towered over the crowds as the dispersal units came on line on June, 21, 2078.

Amazingly the units worked although they were still less effective than the greatly weakened government would have liked.  It is believed that the neutralizers, currently only able to work at 45% capacity, allowed for the protection of roughly twenty thousand people per safe-zone.  Anything beyond this number somehow interfered with the delicate conditions that needed to be maintained for the units to operate at all.  For those that remained in the safe-zones things were bleak, but livable even if they were constantly subjected to the steady drizzle of chemicals and medicines that held the plague at bay.

Relations between those behind the walls, and those trapped outside were extremely terse and it only took three months before there were hostilities at the Los Angeles safe-zone as hundreds of plague victims crashed the walls, attempting to get to what they believed was true safety.  These clashes became more common across the nation and are still a common feature on the few remaining news broadcasts.

Outside the walls the plague continues to claim thousands of lives each year, but mankind has learned to adapt.  Whereas before outbreak of the Terminus Plague people gathered in their millions and hundreds of thousands, the survivors have learned that by remaining isolated and relying on their own means they could survive.  Today there are countless villages and settlements across the country and world and only a handful of large scale gatherings outside of the safe-zones. 

In some parts of what was once the United States someone can travel for days at a time without encountering another person.  Strangers are almost never welcome at a settlement and it is common for villages to resort to violence on one another in order to obtain supplies and goods they need.  Things have devolved to a more basic, and some would say primitive way of living.