Samantha May - NPC Prologue

Roanoke Island, NC - Dec 2060

Samantha May did not appreciate water, or boats.  Particularly Sam did not appreciate boats actually rolling on water.  Sam could feel her stomach bob and swell with each briny-blue wave.  Which is why Sam ate so heavily before boarding the ferry.

The only thing Sam liked less than her body standing on a boat on the water was the hack of a dry-heave.  She ate pasta in preparation - for the quality of its viscosity.  The ferry was crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with puking refugees and hurling hopefuls.  Even the military types, local and federal militias alike, chundered their breakfasts across the ferry’s deck or over the side.  Sickness slopped over the edges of the boat, touching unwisely bared toes and splashing on ankles.  Sam was pretty sure that the sea air, the constant retching, or the boat’s malicious motion would have her join the heaving before long. 

Everyone was dirty, but no one was infected.  The Weed stuck out like lightening under UV, and lights were hung like a Christmas horror over the rails and bow.  Most passengers were too weak and desperate to run a dock blockade or convince even a child they were uninfected.   

What the ferry was loaded with were Runners, Caravaners, and Gypsies, all fleeing the Weed which had taken hold of mainland civilization.  Few were let on the boat, and fewer would be let off.  Everyone was subject to review, there were few slots, and every community had a say in how many drifters were aloud in. 

The Weed had changed everything.  Sam had watched, as social order crumbled, politicians scrambled underground, and everyone else clamored for safety.  Cities were combusting; LA was literally at war with itself, Detroit abandoned to a Mafia Warlord, Tampa under the control of an infected madman, and Philadelphia held captive by an artificial intelligence originally designed to run the city infrastructure.  Over seas, it was worse.  All branches law enforcement had been drawn inward with the National Guard, abandoning the countryside to lawlessness.  No worries, Sam thought; She herself was law enforcement, and she was being drawn inward.  

 

Sam wobbled off the boat, sensible shoes tapping against the pier.  Shielding her eyes against the spiking sunlight, Sam could just make out a hazy charcoal scratch of smoke in the air.  No surprise there, columns of acrid angry smoke were common enough in a country spiraling out of control.  The IU in her purse had buzzed her about the explosions at the airport earlier in the day.  She was surprised, who had the time and strength for terrorism in this day and age?  The Bluetooth in her earring buzzed that another update was available, but Sam wasn’t in the mood.  Any hint that she had a IU and it would likely be gone before she hit shore.  Those kinds of tech, once so common they had their own private garbage bins, now were reserved for the rich who bought the new tech, and the frugal who maintained and updated the old.  Sam’s IU was wrapped in electrical tape and tinfoil, and was still probably worth more than a black market kidney.

The IU’s quiet voice poured advertising poison into her ear, but Sam wasn’t listening, focusing instead on her breakfast, finally hitting the floor.  

The ferry exploded with like a human piñata when it hit the dock.  No one got shot, though, so Sam counted it toward a good afternoon.  Most were turned away at the town line, but Sam had her papers, approval of employment and request for residence.  She went through with nary a word, just a quiet sweep of fluorescents and the streets of Roanoke were opened wide.  She passed the abandoned rental lot, hopped over the wreckage of an old kinetic scooter, and strolled down the quiet island street.

The Roanoke streets were empty.  Not unusual, even for lunchtime on a weekday.  The Medusa Weed had turned Americans into a quiet, whispering, skulking sort.  Cities were powder kegs, brewing cauldrons of explosive potential, while small towns were distrustful, paranoid and unafraid to lynch.  Sam could feel herself being watched, was sure that she was noticed as a stranger, and hoped that in a town this small, word would have got around that she was expected. 

Sam had wandered into downtown shopping when it became clear that something other than small-town cowardice was at play.  Shops were closed, and the streets were all but pedestrian free.  There were no cars, but that wasn’t unusual anymore, jut difficult to get used to.  She looked up and around, thought to ask a bored looking street juggler where everyone was, then saw the column of black smoke rising from the south and thought better of it.  The fire was at the airport, her IU chirped, everyone, was there to watch the fire.  Biggest thing to happen to Roanoke since the end of the world, she thought.   

Samantha had to admit, she was a ‘Runner’.  Her ‘Flight or Fight Response’ first triggered when her boss got the Medusa.  Sam chose flight.  The mainland had become strange and desperate in months recent.  Medusa disease was rampant, rationing of food and water increasingly common in urban centers, and terrorist attacks a weekly allowance.  The Red Wolves and the Coyote Army - collectives of anarchists, Klan dropouts, and environmentally conscious Neo-Nazi's - had become an evermore-frightening threat. 

When the news shot through the net that one of the wildlife protection officers on Roanoke had died in the line of duty, Sam nailed her transfer request to the door and left the militarized madhouse of Fayetteville behind. The shrinking Outer Banks were still considered 'Vacant Zones', and had not been victim of mass exodus like the rural mid-west and the Canadian north.  Roanoke was as good a place as any to wait out madness and plague.  Science will catch up soon enough with a cure for the Medusa; genetically modified foods, desalinated water, fusion power; something was bound to turn up, and then everything else would fall into place. 

The town hall was pleasant, unsurprisingly brick, and apparently vacant.  Sam imagined dozens of politicos scrambling for the eye of the camera, each one more eager than the last to explain the airport fire and how they had the situation ‘under control’, right.

The stairs were white and textured like vanilla wafers.  She tapped up the steps, eager to see her new office and then get off to what was left of the island's deeply eroded beach.  No crowds today, too many Wolves on the loose.

She breezed by a police officer, his attention distracted and his face red with anxiety (Aren’t there airport fires everyday these days?, chill out).  She tapped up onto the platform before the modest wooden doors, barely catching a glimpse of a homeless man to her right.  The vagabond was handing a little girl a balloon with one hand while holding what looked like a rabbit in the other.  A harried looking, seriously-dressed woman tried to prevent the exchange, but the ragged man was insistent.

Sam's hand gripped the door handle when she heard the little girl yelp with pain, and the mother - dressed so seriously - screamed like a woman in a slasher flick.  Sam dropped, her body spilling like water over the corners of the stone steps.  Her head bounced like a basketball against the textured stone, and she lay there paralyzed while a great tearing sound filled the air.  Her eyes rolled wildly in their sockets while every effort couldn’t even move a toe.  Sam started to panic, mind racing wildly while she could feel her heart slowing.  The sound grew ever louder, pulsing with a screaming beat.  Her eyes slowed and became sleepy, the world growing smaller with every blink.  Between her eyelashes, at the brink of blacking out, she could see the vagabond looming over her, a smile on his face.