Reclaiming Our Humanity

Reclaiming Our Humanity

December the 24th (Christmas Eve), 2042

I’m logging this entry with the hope, should we succeed, that my words will survive for future generations even if I do not.

Our world was defeated before we even knew the truth. I mean, we’d always suspected if aliens did invade our Earth, it would be a massive assault…shock and awe. Of course we’d seen the movies, fleets of massive ships settling into the atmosphere from space and targeting our major cities. The reality was, however, we were too spread out, dispersed to every corner of the globe. And, humans are a stubborn breed. Billions of people would resist an overt assault. A full scale invasion would be too inefficient, would take too long and cost too much. So, how do you conquer a planet without firing a shot? Easy, introduce a voracious microorganism into an underprepared population.

Experts called it the Peruvian Flu and it was horrific. Ironically, it started in one of the smallest villages you could ever imagine, high in the Andes and away from any place important. The whole settlement was basically decimated before the first videos started showing up on social media and it wasn’t pretty.

Imagine the worst possible scenario for an epidemic. Symptoms began with an innocuous mild fever and respiratory symptoms: coughing, sneezing, that sort of thing. Then the fever became a burning fire inside the victim which literally consumed their organs as they basically melted into a heap of quivering flesh. It was nightmarish and every bit of it was on the internet for the world to see, creating a worldwide panic.

At first, we had no idea how it was transmitted. It spread so fast, there wasn’t enough data to determine whether it moved via bodily fluids, casual contact, or air. Our worst fears were confirmed when whole groups of people with no physical contact at all began getting sick. The bug was airborne and there was no hope for a cure.

Ninety percent of the Earth’s population was dead in a matter of weeks, a dragon which consumed the world. After the storm passed, only a handful of us remained and most were completely destroyed neurologically, mindless zombies meandering aimlessly through the streets with no consciousness whatsoever…truly undead. Still, we had hope. Enough of us survived intact against the infection, though we were left to fend for ourselves on a devastated world.

Of course, we had no idea in the beginning the pandemic was, in actuality, a precursor to invasion. When they did finally arrive, there was only one ship and it was massive, soaring over the Atlantic to someplace on the other side of the world. Then, their scout ships began sweeping through our culled cities, searching high and low for the mindless drones they knew had survived…only they’d miscalculated. Not everyone was wiped clean and some even fought back. When a group of soldiers brought down the first scout ship, we learned a lot about their potential. More importantly, we knew they could be killed.

That was six months ago and those of us who were immune, hundreds of thousands worldwide, have kept to the shadows, staying intentionally out of sight. We developed a network, began talking to each other and planning a resistance. Hidden away, we patiently watched the aliens harvest every mind-wiped person they could find, some of them tagged with our GPS trackers. Eventually, we discovered the alien mothership over a broad expanse of barren desert in the Middle East where every human slave was fitted with a control collar and taken to drop sites around the world to mine the planet’s gold.

We’re all soldiers now but before the end came I was an epidemiologist, studying infection trends and that sort of thing. I’m sure the reason we survived, for better or worse, was because of the strength of human immunity. You see, our immune system can adapt to just about anything you throw at it, trillions and trillions of potential antigens, even alien it now appears. And my experience has shown me, no matter how bad or terrible the infection, there will always be survivors. I don’t think the aliens counted on that.

Anyways, we just crossed into France and I can see the beaches at Normandy from our Blackhawk. It’s our turn now, our moment to take our planet back. We’re going to make those goddam things pay for what they did to us. Hopefully, if we prevail, history will remember us fondly…God willing.