Immortal

IMMORTAL 1

I’m going to die.2

Slowly, my life is slipping away from me, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. It’s like when you are in a bathroom with a slippery floor. You tell yourself that if you fall, you will grab hold of something and balance yourself, but when you actually slip, and you know you’re falling, you don’t grab for anything. You allow yourself to fall. It’s just so sudden, you don’t even have time to manage your reflexes.3

That is currently what I am doing-I am allowing myself to fall. It’s happening slowly, but the way it came was pretty fast. I just didn’t think this was going to happen. I had promised myself that no matter what, I wouldn’t die like the rest of them. I would survive somehow. But seriously, that’s life-there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.4

I guess if I fought hard enough, I could overcome this disease that is plaguing me. But I don’t want to live anymore. What is there to live for? My family is dead-with the not-so-notable exception of my brother, who is a zombie. I don’t want to go back to him, to that damned camp, living with an air of sickness and misery around. I don’t want to be the one who changes his diapers, and makes sure he is alright, and keeps him propped up in front of the TV, not allowing him to escape, and play, the way he always did. I don’t want to watch him struggle with himself anymore.5

*6

When you’re twelve, you don’t think much about the serious aspects of life.7

I was a privileged young girl, attending one of the best private schools in the world, living happily with an annoying elder brother who was always protective of me, and two parents. I wasn’t really concerned about all the issues in the world-I had everything, so why should I care for others? It wasn’t like they were giving me something I didn’t already have. A lot of people in my school despised me for my air headed-ness, but I was also one of the most popular girls.8

I didn’t care about how hurt my friends were when I randomly skipped their birthday parties for another, depending on how lavish the celebration was. I didn’t care how hurt my parents were when I got bad grades and was nearly suspended from school. I didn’t care how hurt my brother was when I started smoking and even gaining an interest in drugs. I thought they would take care of me forever, no matter what I did.9

But one day, my mom returned home devastated after her general checkup. She had lung cancer, and it was rapidly spreading to her heart. Even then I coolly ignored the possibilities of her death.I thought such things were not written in my fate. But they were. A few weeks later, a wave of depression was going around my school. Parents of many of the students had been detected with various forms of cancer, high blood pressure, jaundice, malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, polio, yellow fever-forget the fact that they had been vaccinated, their BMI was perfect, or that the disease didn’t even belong to our country-it was like the virus causing the whole thing just didn’t care whom it affected and how. The person just had to be affected.10

After that the weather went awry. It snowed one day, rained the next, and then the sun shined till some of us suffered strokes. The virus was now trying to invade the climate, set up an international base. Forget the Taliban, the virus was a deadlier terrorist. 11

But the virus did not kill. It left its victims semi-paralyzed, unable to do anything much except sit up and stare. The victims literally became zombies. That is why the scientists named it ‘Immortal’. Though it was just a complex version of well-known diseases, it was difficult for doctors to treat-the nature of the virus kept changing. One day it would multiply rapidly, producing offspring like rabbits. The other day it might go on a rampage and kill its own offspring. It was like a cannibal that kept ingesting its kind again and again, as if testing its offspring, seeing whether they were fit enough, and eating them if they were not to its liking. 12

We were so torn apart in grief and anger by this virus, that we lost our senses. We just wanted someone to blame. We were confused about why this was happening, why this horrible virus had targeted us. We started accusing those who had not been affected by the virus yet of spreading it. Countries began warring against each other. Old conflict rose like magma in a volcano and began to bubble till they let out hot fiery lava. However, people forget that the lava given out by a volcano burns its own slopes. They openly sent out their children into the war. We were willing to live in camps, as long as we saw that supposedly villainous other country defeated.13

Some of us were pretty foolish. They wanted to get glorified, remembered as brave heroes who sacrificed their lives on the battlefield. Others, like me were pretty scared. For the first time in our lives rich kids like me being made to leave the safety and comfort of our luxurious homes to live in scary-looking camps where you had to share this large hall with thousands of other people. We pretended we were Harry Potter and his friends during the Battle of Hogwarts, while the evil Voldemort and his army waited outside. It was the only way we received any solace from living here.14

Living in the camps, I heard frightening stories of how the children of the other countries were made to sacrifice their childhood on the battlefield, fighting against people twice their age as thousands of people died every day. I behaved normally enough, but secretly, this air of death was turning me mad. My elder brother had been drafted into the war. His fiancée had been rendered senseless by the virus-she still lies comatose in this very hospital. I prayed to God-even though I had been the most non-religious person until then-to save his life. Earlier we would laugh at the fasts performed for the well-being of our family members, but now that the virus was rapdily spreading, and the war was taking so many lives, we indulged in them like they were eat-all-you-want binges. 15

My brother did survive-he was sent back after suffering a shrapnel injury to his leg. When he came back he wasn’t the brave man of twenty-two who had openly proclaimed he was ready to fight for his nation. He had joined his fiancée and become a part of the living dead. He could still speak and hear, but he chose to remain dumb and deaf. He would stare with wide eyes at the TV each day as death and destruction played out in front of him. My mother was still a vegetable while my father had committed suicide. My brother was the only relative I had left, and now I had lost him too. I cried so hard that night, and I wondered whether this was nothing but a nightmare, the kind people often have, and when they wake up they realize the gravity of all the wrong deeds they have done and apologize to everyone. But it was too horrific to be just a nightmare.16

You know, in all apocalyptic stories, there is always one character who is brave and daring and handsome and incredibly smart. This character always manages to escape from sticky situations, owing to their hundred thousand and one abilities. Me? I was just twelve when this fiasco started and though I tried my best to self-educate myself, I was helpless. No matter how much I read, researched and asked the most reputed scientists, there was no answer to this problem. You know, in movies I used to see these people cowering and screaming and waiting for the hero to come rescue them and I used to laugh. I am one of those people now. There’s nothing much I can do except cower and scream. Though the virus steals away that from you too. It leaves you powerless, unable to resist in any way possible.17

We tried to be happy in those camps we lived in. We tried to ignore the fact that we could die in a bombing or be drafted to the war. We tried to ignore how our world was literally becoming a dark world, as day by day, the sunlight kept diminishing. We tried to be happy with grey skies, and the even greyer faces of our family and friends. But we were not able to succeed. Even the smallest glimpse of happiness was denied to us.18

Once, I thought I’d found my hero. He wasn’t at all super-smart, or handsome, or tough. He too was like me, your average human, unable to revolt against any deadly viruses. He used to work as a labourer in a factory, but in these camps, all the barriers of caste, community and religion were crossed. He promised me we would find an end to menace, though I knew his promises were futile. We worked together for a long time-considering that most people were unable to evade the virus for more than a few months, after which their immune system went for a toss. He comforted me whenever I broke down, unable to see the inactive state of my once-joyful brother.19

But he was soon drafted away to the war-and killed. Some of the women in the camp were unable to see him with me, almost happy, while their own husbands, brothers and sons were dying on the battlefield. I do not harbour any grudge against them. Perhaps if they’d allowed him to live here any longer, Immortal would have turned him into a zombie too. 20

After his death, I performed experiments on an almost regular basis. You see, I was trying to invent something that would defeat the virus. No, it wasn’t a cure-there was no hope of any cure against Immortal. But, as I said, it would defeat Immortal. It would put a permanent end to all the misery in the world. What I had invented was a new, deadlier, contagious virus.21

I named it Death.22

*23

In a hospital full of comatose people, only one person was still in her senses. In the next room, the doctors worriedly discussed her health. She was showing a new specimen of Immortal. They did not know how to deal with this latest case.24

Suddenly, a nurse burst into the room without warning. The doctors looked up, annoyed. “Sorry, but the patient!” she gasped. “The patient…something is happening to her!”25

The doctors worriedly rushed into the patient’s room, where the patient smilingly took her last breaths. She gestured for one of the doctors to come near her. The doctor looked around hesitantly. He then came near the patient.26

She raised her hand, and placed it on his arm. He shivered. The hand felt cold and clammy.27

Taking back her hand, she died ,while Death transferred itself to a new body.28