The Dutch

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The advent of 'The Dutch', as those of us left call it, was one of those things that crept up on the unsuspecting country with such overtness, that quite frankly it was pretty embarrassing. Another of those Great British blunders. Of course, the embarrassment soon faded into horror as the virus spread to epidemic proportions.
It all started in London. At first, nothing seemed to be wrong. Sure, the homeless looked a little rougher, a little more destitute than usual, but didn't they always? Then weeks later they started dying in quite substantial numbers, which caught the attention of the media. It was initially assumed that it was just a severe case of winter flu, but irregularities caused some talk among the medical community; these people were literally wasting away, their muscles almost dissolving from their bones.
The first major concerns arose when a young, healthy student by the name of Karen Townsend was taken ill. There wasn't much to the story, except for the fact that she was a somewhat philanthropic philosophy major from King's College London, who spent her free time working at soup kitchens for the homeless charity Shelter. She was from a fairly well off family in the Midlands, and was apparently a model student. About a week after her admission, the news broke that she had tragically died. Everything had been tried, but whenever they gave her something to eat, she just complained about being hungry again ten minutes later. Her body was metabolising and using the food so fast that her energy levels kept dropping, until her body began to actually eat itself. She wasn't to be the only one, but she was certainly the first named victim of the virus, which made it all the more personal.
It was a given that she had contracted this from the people she had been working with; such close proximity to the infected for extended periods of time. The worrying question on everybody's lips was this; how could a perfectly normal, healthy girl such as Karen succumb to this…whatever it was…so quickly, and end up dead within seven days?
The symptoms of the virus seemed to be somewhat similar to muscular dystrophy, an incurable disease which causes progressive muscular wasting, poor balance, and difficulty walking, amongst other things. One of the more acute forms, known as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, from where we got the name "The Dutch", is a rapidly worsening form of the disease, which often causes death by the sufferer's teenage years. However, it is a genetic disorder, and it doesn't kill people in such short periods, which got people even more worried. This obviously wasn't what was afflicting the city now, so what was going on, and why were previously healthy and fit people dying inexplicably?
An answer came after perhaps a score or so of new cases sprung up in London within a three-day period over the New Year. It had snowed this year, but nobody's attention was directed at the weather. Reports were coming in thick and fast from all over the capital. People were dying fast, and the general public was getting scared. This seemed to be not only incurable, but also highly infectious. It turned out that those with a healthier immune system were actually more at risk. Medical professionals cited the Spanish Flu of 1918, which killed more people than the war had. Back then, peoples' immune systems had gone into overdrive to fight the influenza, to the point where their white blood cells stopped being able to discriminate between infection and normal tissue. The destruction of lung tissue caused liquid to build up, causing respiratory failure, and death.
This was what was happening now, but on a much wider scale. Because the Duchenne virus attacked the whole body, so did the white blood cells, which only served to speed up the process exponentially. The reason the homeless had taken longer to die was that their immune systems were already shot from fighting the colds and other minor infections they caught living rough, and so they had very few white blood cells left, which in a twisted sort of way worked to their advantage.
Because this was so new and unexplained, and more importantly incurable, so far as everyone knew, a panic gripped us like never before. The day these new findings were reported on the news, people stopped leaving the safety of their own homes unless absolutely necessary, and those you did see out, stocking up on supplies, wore white surgical masks, and wouldn't walk within ten feet of each other.
The train stations in London became packed, as people tried to leave the city to escape the virus, but when they got there, there was nobody to drive the trains. Still, people found ways to leave, which in the end only served to spread the virus. Days after the mass exodus, there were confirmed cases in all of the major UK cities, and so the panic spread. Not soon after, mainland Britain was quarantined, and a state of emergency declared.
It was chaos. The social and economic implications were astronomical: when a chip pan fire in a housing estate in Brixton turned into an inferno, it levelled most of the borough of Lambeth, and half of Southwark with it, leaving people homeless and at risk. There was simply no one to help put out the fire. Thousands of businesses collapsed through lack of income, or even people to run them for that matter. When Parliament met to decide what course of action to take, only the front benchers turned up. By the next meeting, even the Prime Minister was absent. Fear gave way to greed, and many ventured back outside and began looting, for all the good their possessions would do them. How would your 36" HD televisions work without power? Why wear designer sunglasses when no one ever ventures outside to see you in them? It was utter madness. But that's humanity I suppose.

It is now March 2008, and just shy of three months since Karen Townsend died. Those of us who still populate the capital now live in the underground system. It's not an easy existence by any means, but we do what we can with what we have, and what we can scrounge from the streets. This isn't simple looting as I mentioned before; this is survival. Many of the supermarkets still have tinned goods and other non-perishables left. Of course, the places stink to high heaven; rotting fruit and vegetables drip from the shelves – I mean who loots carrots? But as long as you're in and out quickly it's not too bad, plus we're pretty much covered from head to toe with some hazmat suits we pilfered from a biotech lab.
Before this catastrophe I was a somewhat religious man, but after seeing the depths to which man can sink, I have lost all faith in a higher power. I have heard tales of, seen – and to my shame, taken part in – some of the most atrocious, inhumane things imaginable. Such acts of self-servitude and indecency towards one's fellow man that it makes my skin crawl just to think of them. You see, in times of extreme hardship, such as these, pity and self-sacrifice do not factor. Not after a while, anyway. Desperation took hold, and the fight for resources has become bitter, to the point of violence – and even killing. I'm certainly not proud of what I've had to do to stay alive, but it's either that or die myself.
I am at least not alone in my struggle. People have banded together and pooled resources, so that we might have a better chance of survival. I'm sorry to say that most of these groups are based on ethnicity and religious belief – when the question of where the virus came from arose, of course everyone blamed Islamic fundamentalists: it seemed like the most logical explanation, based on the current political climate. Since then we have discovered the truth, but the divisions have held. Those who blamed them are far too proud to apologise, and besides, there is no way to make a public apology.
Ah yes, the source of the virus; the origin of our woes. As I've said, it wasn't terrorists. Was it then a terrible plot by a shady organisation bent on world domination? Don't be silly. An act of God? Perhaps, but based on my current belief system, I don't buy it. No, the Dutch was brought about by a group of scientists. Evil, insane scientists, I hear you ask? Not quite…
It was in a central London lab – the same, in fact, from where we stole our protective gear – that a group of researchers were conducting research into muscular dystrophy. While we rooted around, one of our party, a scientist herself in her former life, started looking through the research notes. Now as I said before, the hereditary form of muscular dystrophy has no cure, and apparently they had thought that maybe if they could treat a viral form, they'd be a step closer to curing the real thing. Obviously the first step in this was engineering a virus; no mean feat I'm told. We don't know the exact details of how it got out, but from examining the staff profiles (apparently they have to go through background and lifestyle checks to work in such hi-tech facilities), we discovered that one of them was a volunteer for a certain homeless charity. How they didn't succumb themselves we don't know either, but I figure that some people have immunities to other diseases, so why not this one?
So anyway, life goes on, and we wait for word from the outside world, but as of yet nothing. I guess they have to be sure that it's safe, and that the virus is gone before they send in relief or whatever. I just hope that it's sooner rather than later…