MORF: Virus Gone Wild

The mutation has spread.

At first, it only hit the adults, making strange things happen. They all soon died. Their bodies couldn't handle the MORF. Mononucleosis Oliguria Reflux Fasciculation, a disease that first made your throat swollen and raw, followed by an inability to urinate, then puking your guts out, and then finally you twitched and had involuntary muscle spasms. Alone, each disease was nothing, something cured in a bit of time. But MORF was more than that. It had the ability to kill.

And many were killed. Anyone well over the age of twenty had a body that couldn't handle the stress. Young bodies caught the disease but could handle it. A couple of weeks of bed rest and we were back to normal.

No, scratch that.

Better than normal.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should start with the Day that was the End.

Date: June the twentieth, 2123. It was a holiday. The birth day of our 53rd president, President Arnold. The president which gave robots equal right. I didn't care for it, but it was now a national holiday since he was assassinated five years later by a rouge cyborg. Go figure.

I headed home after hanging out at my friends all day. My small apartment was only big enough for two bedrooms and a bathroom. But it was only Mom and me. Dad had skipped town years ago. So what, he hated me anyway.

Mom was sitting on the couch, watching the TV special about the life and times of President Arnold. Every adult was forced to watch it to “further their educations on the way of the society”. I’m just glad I didn't have to watch the stupid episode. It was currently speaking about the assassination. Boooring.

I went to sleep. I don't even remember the bomb dropping. Actually, I doubt a lot of people do. I was slipping in and out of dreams when my bed started shaking and a blinding light woke me up. We thought it was an ancient atom bomb or something. My mom ran to my bed and held me close. I was still half-sleeping, not awake, not in a dream.

Within the hour it was pandemonium. The bomb passed but there wasn't fires and people burning to death. No, it was so much worse. News casters got the information and blocked every station, then filled it with tales of woe. New York was on lock-down. I lived in one of the tiny apartments in the middle of the city. We couldn't go anywhere.

I don't remember much of that day. Then again, why would I want to? The news said that a bomb was dropped in New York, New York with an infectious viruses that contaminated the air. Transmitted by the wind and touch, the government closed off the city. A black cloud covered the city. One we couldn't escape.

The old people went first. Their bodies couldn't even handle the first signs of the MORF plague. When their throats swelled up, it cut off their oxygen supply. Anyone with a large open wound died, too. Scientists are still trying to find out why.

Soon, the adults began to die off. The first week of the plague, before it even had a name, I sat with my mom in our apartment. Alone. She died one night. She was shuddering uncontrollably in her bed. I tried to call the hospital but they told me that they already were past max capacity. By morning she was gone.

I guess it's for the better. My mom was too kind for the stuff I had to do to survive. The first month passed and I was out of food and too scared to go to the store. Gangs roamed the street, made up of kids no older than twenty. A group broke into my apartment and torched the place. I thought it was over.

Two months passed and I had found a burrow of my own. Near the bridge was a “gang” of kids like me who had lost their family and home. I found my close friend Cassandra there. Sadly, she died later on.

I had given up. I was sure that my life was ruined. I wanted to end it before I went through the MORF cycle that would kill me. But I couldn’t do it. You see, humans are stubborn beings. We want to live. So when it came my time for the MORF, I was more broken than ever. I had to go through it without food and good shelter. Yes I had friends, but no one was close due to all the death.

It took me a day to go through my MORF cycle. Each second felt worse and worse. I wanted to close my eyes to sleep and never wake back up.

Back to now.

Obviously I lived. Otherwise, I wouldn't be telling you my sob story here. So, I went through the MORF. I woke up two days later. I was laying in the pile by the river which was full of dead bodies. There was nowhere left to put all the bodies at that point. I screamed and screamed from all of the bodies around me. Rotting flesh, half opened eyes, it was a horror movie.

I ran back to my group at the bridge. A couple of kids screamed or cried or fainted. I hadn't been close to any of them, but I knew that a couple of them had dragged my body to the pile, my death was known.

So how was I alive?

To be honest I didn't have a clue. Some kids called me a witch and found some pitch forks. Then the realized how medieval they were being and figured it had something to do with the science of MORF. Meanwhile, I was changing. I noticed how I could sleep less and remain as awake as ever. I could run faster, jump higher, and I was smarter even.

More people in the group began dying off. Only one or two of them returned like me. Another month gone and only ten other people remained. I don't think any of them even new my name. We kept everything a secret now. I don’t think I even remember my name.

I have a new clan now. The MORF's. We are the survivors of the plague that swept the city. And now, the MORF has morphed us. We are the elite. The strong. The brave. Heck, we're better than the Marines!

We wander. We live nameless. We do incredible things. The only survivors of the virus are the people in my group, a girl my age (17), her boyfriend that almost twenty, a boy/girl pair of twins, both eighteen, and a little boy no older than six. An unlikely group, but we make it work.

We can lift cars with one hand, run over water, solve impossible problems. We're special.

The city's been blocked for a year and a half now. There is a giant black cloud that blocks the sun everyday, all day. My group and I tried escaping but we're not fast enough to dodge the bullets that the army shoot at us in their ridiculous gas-masks and gloves. They're obsessed with breaking New York City off from the rest of the world. To kill the disease. The government is waiting for us all to die out.

But they never suspected that we would survive.

And now we're going to take our city back.