Blazing white lights flickered for the millionth time as she walked the halls of the hospital. Blood smeared along the pale-yellow walls, the doors and the floors. Her military grade boots stuck to the tiles, a sickening sound as they peeled up, leaving behind her path in shades of red and black. PPE and unidentifiable body parts littered the halls.
Aura Tavias dissociated, her mind wandering to better times, when her daughters ran along the trails and forests of her home. Their giggles echoing through the trees as they tracked small animals and bugs. She grew up in a small town in the rural northwest of Finland, her family firmly rooted in the land, farmers by trade and hunters by choice, she knew both the land and how to survive even during the harshest of conditions.
Her life was broken by the news reports of a virus ripping through country after country. It came quickly and left nothing but chaos in its wake. She wasn’t surprised when governments started spraying the streets to try and combat its spread. It was far away. It couldn’t touch her or her family; or so she thought.
These were nothing but distant memories; distractions from the grim reality in which she was now living. In a world where distractions mean death, she could not afford to lose focus; the only reason to come into the city was to find the medications that might help ease the suffering of those who had become infected.
Her oldest daughter was the first to fall, followed by her husband and youngest. The virus was unrelenting, indifferent to age, gender, or creed. And through her losses she became the same; remorseless. For the first few months she became numb, surviving was the only thing on her mind, albeit passively. She wandered both forest and field, finally finding herself in the outskirts of Nyheim.
Through her travels she found a new appreciation and direction for her life, for the new normal that was thrust upon the world; she would survive and help those that she could. For those with no hope, a bullet would suffice.