Superflu

From what Cei could tell, these zombies felt no pain, had impaired eyesight and sharp hearing. But now that he thought about it, this was a pretty standard zombie set-up, but the one major difference he had seen was their ridiculous speed and had run with seemingly inexhaustible stamina. However, if people were careful, they could easily dodge as these zombies lacked both agility and reaction speeds.

But there was still something that eluded him; he had no idea how it spread outside of bite transmission because for all he knew he might be turning right at this minute. He had no idea if it was spread by water transmission or some other method after all these zombies couldn't have appeared out of nowhere, but he didn't have enough information to make a guess, and this was driving him crazy.

He didn't like to leave things up to chance, so the first thing he wanted to do was gather information. So, it was only now that he regretted smashing his phone. But still, he thought he made the right decision at the time as he had no idea about the government's response to this issue. And so he made the call in an attempt to test the police response and as seen by how the first responders responded it was clear that they had no idea about what was going on, or at the very least they were not prepared for this kind of situation.

This allowed him to at least rule out that low-level officials were aware of the situation and would likely not know how to respond if this blew out of proportion. He could also tell that these kinds of events were not only occurring in this city or at the very least that the top government officials could not track its spread. But even if half of what he had deduced was true then he knew that the next few weeks were not going to be pleasant.

But now that he knew that this was likely going to spiral out of control in the next few days, he knew he had to take advantage of his early knowledge and make some preparations.

He had created a deadline in his head to be prepared by at least the end of today, and the first thing he wanted was more knowledge so although risky he made the internet cafe on the next street his first target, and so he started moving.

And in the distance just as he was leaving the apartment complex and was about to make his way down the street he could hear the sound of sirens moving closer to his location before the faint sound of shots and screaming could be heard. Hearing this his face turned a little overcast, as he could roughly deduce that the second group of police also had no idea of the situation. Making it all the more likely that his deductions were correct.

But besides the gunfight that was becoming increasingly quieter in his ears, everything in the city seemed almost normal with everyone partaking in their daily life with a blissful ignorance plastered all over their faces. But he didn't scorn them for their ignorance as he knew that if he hadn't gone to that interview today he may be acting the exact same. And so he managed to uneventfully make his way to the nearby net cafe.

Once he arrived inside the newly built net cafe, he greeted the pretty female attendant who was sitting languidly on the attendant desk. And with a warm smile, he gently greeted the woman and asked for a private room. The female attendant who had heard his greeting straightened her back before she looked up at his handsome face before she blushed slightly at the sight of his warm smile. And although she was a little dazed by his warm greeting she managed to regather herself quickly and ask for the money for the private room.

And In her mind, she slightly admonished herself for almost giving the key pass away for free, but she just couldn't help getting lost in those dreamy emerald eyes. But as she gave the pass away, she couldn't help but feel a slight twang of pain as she watched his gallant figure slowly disappear into the private booth.

But to Cei this was just a side note as he sat down in his private booth blissfully unaware of the thoughts of the pretty young attendant. and powered up the PC that lay dormant on the desk.

Although it took a while, he finally managed to open up the web browser and proceeded to sort out his thoughts for a second before entering his first search query. He thought that he shouldn't underestimate journalists as if there was news to be found, they would find it whether it was through hell or high waters. And so he opened up a news site called metro news and although most of the news was irrelevant and unimportant he did find one news article that caught his interest.

It was an article about a mother who had eaten her own child and was killed in a shootout with the police. The article was well put together however it lacked any real information of importance, however, there was one thing that caught his interest. Apparently, this women had just come back from a holiday in China and she had fallen extremely ill on return with a bad case of the flu and was in the hospital for three days and just as the virus seemed to be at its most dangerous stage she miraculously recovered overnight but just two weeks after her release she was dead and she had eaten her own child.

The reporter had added this as she thought that the women might've been misdiagnosed and might've had a case of rabies, and wanted this to become a big medical malpractice issue.

But Cei knew it was likely that this woman had become a zombie, but that was not what worried him, what worried him was that the flu may have been the cause of the zombies. This would give all potential vectors of the zombie virus almost two weeks to turn, this would allow vectors to pop up all around the world under the disguise of a serious flu.

So the next thing he searched up was any news regarding a new flu epidemic, and low and behold the first search result came up under the title 'the hidden flu epidemic'. It introduced the article by saying that a new strain of flu had been appearing all over the globe in the last two weeks with some countries having an infection rate of as high as 20 cases in 1000 people with the flu being substantially worse inside cities. And although this epidemic did create some noise at the beginning as none of the patients who were infected seemed to die the clamour eventually quietened down, or more appropriately it could be said the news was suppressed by governments all around the world.

They couldn't afford another pandemic mass hysteria, at least not after the spread of Covid-19 that struck the world like lightning last year. But seeing as it was a non-lethal infection it was rapidly suppressed to avoid panic after all the Covid-19 pandemic affected all walks of life, and the economies of many countries have still not recovered from the huge damage the virus caused.

However, if what this new flu infection was what he thought it was, the world was in a very dangerous situation indeed. With some places having as many as 1 in 50 being infected, and main cities having substantially more.

Cei slowly layed back onto his chair and took a deep breath. As a thought slowly formed in his mind. The world was probably fucked.

If the flu was indeed a precursor to the zombie transformation. And if this was indeed the case, the governments probably had only just found out in the last few days. And if it was indeed the case, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the link betwwen the flu and the zombie transformation. But even if they did know, they probably wouldn't take any action. Why. Because they would likely come to the same conclusion as him. The world is fucke. All they could do is protect some strategically important locations and try to cope with the aftermath of the zombie transformations.

After all, it was likely even the army and government was infiltrated by the zombie vectors. He could even imagine that right now all the goverments accross the world were in a huge panic trying to come up with some reasonable contingencies. But it was almost impossible to track the spread and distribution of the virus in such a short amount of time, so now they were at the mercy of lady luck with the zombies able to pop up everywhere and anywhere.

But still depending on how the situation develops, Cei could easily imagine the military and government sites being overrun. This did not bode well for him, as now at the worst he will have to assume minimal to no goverment intervention in the containment of the zombie outbreak.

Taking one last breath he made one last search and jotted down an address and prepared to leave the internet cafe. But alas life is never straight forward as when he opened the door he saw the young attendent running towards him with a zombie hot on her tails.

"Fuck."