Pestilence

Before all this started you worked selling poorly built, but extremely overpriced housing to the unsuspecting. You have always hated the job but you have to do something. Recently divorced from your wife of 3 years, one morning at breakfast she called you "a right boring sod and crap in bed" before leaving never to return. You now live in a cheap part of town, but not in one of the houses you sell. Your name is or was William Taylor because at this moment in time you are not really sure.

Thinking back, it is difficult to remember an exact moment when it all started. Like a lot of the large events it started very small. In the beginning it just seemed like a particularly nasty form of flu sweeping the country. Many blamed cattle, some illegal immigration and others thought it all down to genetically modified foods.

It always started the same way, the person infected would have a very bad head cold that no drug or remedy would help. Then blinding headaches would strike, the type that sit just behind the eyes. Prior to the headaches dissipating, small boils and sensitive areas on the skin would form all over the body. This would be rapidly followed by flu like symptoms lasting anything up to three weeks. During this time madness and incoherence would development, with death following soon after.

Nicknamed by the press the 'Pestilence', how it spread no one could say and everything from the food eaten to animal bites got the blame. The last reports on the television and radio, before they went silent, ordered the population to remain calm and stay indoors.

A week since the television and radio stopped, you have just started sneezing and a terrible headache has arrived. Scared, you head to the nearest medical centre.