Chapter 3: Eve of Dystopia

Upon returning home, I made my daily rounds. The first task is checking the mail. Next is greeting Ms. Sirius, who, cursed with the neatness bug, patrols the hallways with a broom and dustpan in search of any filth that may have accumulated in the far corners of the apartment building.

"There's much worse conditions to have than being neat, Marcus, like my bad knee. If it weren't for for it, I'd do the second floor too!"

She'd always say. Lastly came the garbage, but that was on Mondays.

After retrieving the mail and bidding Ms. Sirius a good afternoon, I made my way back to the apartment. I flipped through the three letters came in my hand, and my eyes came to rest on the last one. It was a plain white envelope with a return address of our local government's capitol. The window on the front showed, in bold letters "Inoculation notice for: Katherine Renault". I scratched my head in confusion, since there aren't any letters that arrive in our post box that come from the local government. All I've ever seen were bills, scams, or more bills, so this one caught my eye. But seeing as how it has my sister's name on it, and what appears to be the correct address for the seat of government, it must be something important, and not the usual scam.

Still looking at the front of the envelope, I made the turn to our apartment. It's probably been years since my sister or I have gotten any shots from a doctor, but still...

"Sis, I have a letter here, it says it's from the government. Something about an Inoculation notice."

She came out of the kitchen, her face the picture of curiosity.

"That's odd isn't it?"

"That's what I thought too."

She scanned the unfolded page of paper that was inside the envelope, her brow furrowing with every line.

"This doesn't look legitimate at all, what is this? An inoculation mandate? For what? I've not heard of anything going around lately that would warrant that."

The paper fell from her hands to the floor as she reached for the phone.

"Marcus, get me something to write with, I'm calling the representative for our district."

"Sure."

I glanced at the TV while I grabbed a pen and scrap of paper off a nightstand in the Livingroom. The headlines read "TalVir project underway as of last week, Inoculation mandate approved by a narrow margin proceeding the World Government Council debates. Letters informing eligible recipients of their mandatory vaccinations could arrive as soon as today."

"Weird."

I left it on while I took back the writing utensils. When I came back, she was already speaking to someone.

"Yes, what exactly is this mandate again?"

She paused for a response. Her frown grew deeper every second, the brows of which nearly formed a V at their furthest extent. Finally, the person on the other end finished talking. My sister's frown dissipated.

"Suppose it can't be helped. Thank you for your time."

I looked at her expectantly, with the now useless pen and paper in my hands.

"Next Thursday we need to go for an appointment at the hospital for the government mandated vaccines. Apparently, a nasty strain of flu over in Asia is starting to pick up steam. They want to stop it from spreading quickly, so it was their only choice."

I nodded. Must be what I saw on TV earlier. They've been broadcasting news about it for weeks, but they never mentioned anything about a flu.

-

Thursday came, and saw us pulling up to our local hospital clinic. To say it was packed would've been a serious understatement; whether I looked to the left, right, behind or before, there wasn't a single view without columns upon columns of bodies and vehicles. The parking lot was a complete disaster. The cars that managed to find a parking space early on were either hopelessly trapped amid other vehicles, or swarmed with a writhing mass of pedestrians that wove its way between the vehicles, along the sidewalks, and on the previously pedicured to now decimated lawns. My sister let out an exasperated groan behind me, letting her arms fall to her sides.

"Well isn't this just peachy. This will take hours... for Christ's sake."

I couldn't quite believe it either. Our town is relatively small compared to the one just north of us, yet nearly a thousand people were all swarming the clinic. There was barely room to breathe, let alone walk. Feeling dizzy from the cacophony was the least of anyone's concerns, for everywhere you turned you faced what was tantamount to a stampede.

"And there's even more people coming!"

I pointed through the mass of bodies to the stream of cars parked along the right of way on the other side of the parking lot. I couldn't see an end to them. The line stretched out behind the low hill beyond the clinic's parking lot.

"I suppose a bunch of them are from the district over. They're probably what's left of the folks that couldn't stand the wait, and decided to come out to the boonies."

My sister surmised.

So we waited. An hour went by; we were about a quarter of the way through the line. Another hour went by, another quarter... My sister's face was beet red from standing in the sun for so long... or is that her patience wearing thin? I couldn't tell, and wasn't feeling cheeky enough to ask, either.

Another hour later, we finally managed to take the first step up to the clinic's door. I wiped the beads of sweat off my face, and looked around. Three hours didn't seem to have an effect on the numbers.

Another thirty minutes saw us inside the waiting room of the clinic. My sister was talking with with one of the clerks at the front desk. The room was suffocating. Every seat was taken, so I was left standing in a corner while I waited for my sister to finish with the paperwork.

The door at the back side of the waiting room which presumably led to the office portion of the clinic opened. A heavyset man in a lab coat emerged, carrying with him a makeshift megaphone made of paper and tape. He hurriedly whispered to the clerk beside the one my sister was talking to, who then shook his head in despair

"I'm sorry to announce this, but we are currently out of vaccine doses everyone. Call us to reschedule for the next time we can get a shipment in."

The clerks all began to parrot the same words to each of the on-comers. The heavyset doctor left the clerks with his impromptu megaphone and made his way out of the clinic, probably to repeat the same to the masses outside.

-

"That was a waste of god damn time."

The sudden cancellation of our appointment didn't sit too well with my sister. Of course, it didn't with me either, but I didn't need to steep in the pot of enmity, she had enough anger for the both of us.

"The first doses of vaccine have been administered to nearly a quarter of a million recipients over the past three days, and that number is expected to triple next week as production continues to ramp up."

The TV's buzz could barely be heard for my sister's rant. it's a shame we didn't get to be one of those quarter million today, but such is the way of things I thought, sobered in the fiery tongue lashings my sister dealt to unnamed hospital personnel. I just hope next week won't be the same.

-

School has ended yet again. It's the day before our rescheduled appointments, and I was about halfway between Mr. Candors' usual diner pitstop and home. I went through the cross walk just before the turn down my lane, and was just about to make the turn, when a streak of gray crossed my vision from left to right. Startled, I began to turn my head to look at the speeding thing, when another blur of gray blasted past me in pursuit. Before I could react to the second on-comer, the first had already fled into a nearby alleyway.

I barely managed to catch a glimpse of the second blur's figure; the height of the average man, clothed in a gray trench coat, and a dark gray scarf and fedora, both of which were positioned such that his entire face was nearly obscured save for the eyes that leered between them. He too, disappeared into the alleyway the first figure ducked into. Cautiously, I peeked around the corner I nearly ran into them at, and then to the direction they went, wondering if another was to come by.

It was in this moment, with the two speeding figures, my bewildered self, and the monotonic drone of day to day life, that the life I knew for nearly twelve years, ended.