Send More Paramedics - The Awakening


It is 2025.
The global environmental crisis continues to worsen.
Floods, hurricanes and rising sea levels dominate the headlines as the human stranglehold on the Earths eco-system reaches a critical stage.
International politics is in a dire state, with the confrontation between resurgent Islamic extremism and Western imperial militarism reaching new depths of savagery.
Passengers on the jets battering their way through the rainstorms into Dallas International and Heathrow exist in a tense limbo, all to aware of a recent spate of deadly terrorist incidents.
Race riots explode across Europe and the U.S. The G8 summit in Tokyo is overwhelmed by an unprecedented level of violence between protestors and the forces of law and order.
The situation in Africa reaches a critical stage, with aid agencies unable to cope with the humanitarian crisis presented by the continent.
India and Pakistan engage in a territorial standoff, which narrowly avoids developing into nuclear war. Chinese economic ambitions continue to grow out of all proportion, resulting in a number of environmental and humanitarian catastrophes.




In the midst of the maelstrom the first signs of the real crisis go unnoticed. Reports are confused as to the origin of the viral pandemic that sweeps the world from the early months of 2025, some experts favouring an origin in the forests of Central Africa, and others pointing to a series of localised incidents in South East Asia.

Internet rumours spread a variety of paranoid theories about the prominence of the virus, many implying the involvement of secret U.S. military research bases in the generation of the deadly strain.

International commerce and jet travel rapidly disseminate the deadly disease throughout the civilised world. A crisis of unprecedented proportions is suddenly unleashed upon a completely unprepared and overpopulated globe.

A vast amount has already been written about the peculiar nature and effects of the virus, however a brief summary of its chief characteristics is warranted at this point.

The precise strain responsible for the pandemic is of a previously unknown type, distantly related to the family rhabdoviridae of which rabies virus is the most well known. It is transmitted by contact with infected bodily fluids, usually the result of a bite. Onset is surprisingly soon after infection and is accompanied with a variety of associated symptoms, most notably headaches, cramps, nausea, vomiting, delusions and violent swings in mood and behaviour.

Condition deteriorates rapidly with the subject quickly becoming comatose and the cesation of all vital signs.

Unfortunately, this is not the end.

The catatonic state is followed by revival, the virus apparently moving on to a different stage of infection. Revived subjects are significantly brain damaged due to pervasive infection of tissue and associated haemorrhaging. The limbic system remains in a highly irritated state, and the patient's behaviour become saggressive in the extreme, dominated by a carnivorous appetite, expressed most gruesomely as cannibalism.

Subjects demonstrate a remarkable ability to continue functioning despite incurring traumas that would normally incapacitate or kill a human being. Prognosis for this stage of infection is unknown, but the virus does not seem to kill the subject, increasing the possibility of further transmissions. However, infection with the virus radically damages the body?s immune system and regenerative capabilities, leading to gradual deterioration and even disintegration of the physical frame. Death is not staved for these revenants, merely delayed.

The first reported mass outbreaks of the disease occur in Hong Kong and the Guangdong province of China. Official accounts remains hazy as to the link between these occurrences but the most plausible hypotheses draw attention to the role of the illegal animal imports as helping to ferment the generation of the deadly strain.

Virologists hypothesize that a number of existing types may have conjoined into a deadly cocktail through a process of genetic recombination. Its molecular structure shows surprising similarities to a number of strains prioritised by World Health Organisation initiatives not least the rabies virus.

Western news reports begin to relate stories of mass cannibalism and slaughter in the cities of Guangdong. The Chinese governments response is perhaps not inappropriately ruthless with the area being declared a quarantine zone and access strictly limited.

Nevertheless, certain intrepid Western news crews manage to infiltrate the province and send back reports. Once they realize the severity of the situation many choose to evacuate the area, and these crews are responsible for some of the first cases of infection seen in the West. The outbreak rapidly spreads to epidemic proportions, engulfing practically all of China and making inroads on the Indian subcontinent. However ruthless, the quarantine was not enough.

Once the full extent of the danger is realised Western governments are swift to react. Border regulations, stringent at the best of times, are rapidly reinforced. Wrath laws limiting the movement of people and produce between countries are hurried through the Western nations respective parliaments, along with a variety of measures granting extended powers to the forces of law and order.

Trade and travel are bought to a near standstill, air and seaports closed down and fortified. This leads to diplomatic problems between the governments of China and the West. Developing nations accuse the West of imposing an economic stranglehold. A U.N. summit is called to address the drastically worsening health situation in China. The U.S. demands a nuclear strike to eradicate the worst affected areas, leading to sabre rattling on both sides. Meanwhile, the infection is spreading by a variety of routes across the world.

From an early stage, news media adopted conventional refrain to infected human subject as ?zombies?. This seems only too appropriate to describe the horrific state of these victims; their faces grey as ash, bloodshot eyes burned into an inhuman blankness by this terrible fever.

Precautions adopted by Western governments prove to no avail. The speed of modern communications and the promiscuity of human traffic across the face of the globe turns China local infection into a global juggernaut.

No entry point seems exempt, all nations witness the breakdown of civil order and most governments retain only nominal control over their territory. Those who can, retreat into nuclear bunker systems developed during the Cold War. Humanity faces its most drastic reduction in population since the bubonic plague.

Life degenerates into near Dark Age conditions, with isolated enclaves of uninfected people hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Under these conditions life is cheap. Atrocities proliferate, the most savage survivors finding themselves at the top of a new and horrific food chain. Morality evaporates. The last humans hang on desperately amid the ruins of their former world. Numb and shell shocked, they move as though in a dream, the last memories of hope dying in their eyes. Nervous systems stretch to breaking point and many take their own lives. The fear is immense, intolerable, a crushing tide. A colonisation of the planet, by the virus, is almost complete.

Everything is not under control.

Man, that most tragic of primates, is brought low by a non-cellular, infectious agent, consisting of a single strain of RNA, a sub-microscopic killer neither wholly alive nor dead. Flaws in the programme, fragments of random chaos spiralling out through the genetic universe. The dead walk the streets while the living cower in holes beneath the earth.

The distortions are grotesque.

Screams tear open the fabric of the night.

The few survivors exist in a state of perpetual fear, forced to confront in every moment the reality of their own imminent demise. Choking, they stumble through half-death at strange unease, where phantoms loom at every turn.

The worst fears of humanity have suddenly, terrifyingly, come to life.