Yellow Rain Fever

Dear Survivor- If you’re reading this, I’m probably dead. It’s for the best.

You see, about four or five days ago, a storm rolled in. Now, this in and of itself isn’t anything strange. The clouds and the rain though, they had a yellow tint to them. It smelled weird and tasted funny too, none of us could really nail down what it tasted like, and all we knew is that it was some sort of chemical or other.

Now, the important thing to know is that we’re a small Hoosier farming community, maybe 1,500 or so people, so unless some radical has a grudge against corn and soybeans, I doubt it was a terrorist attack.

Anyway, a few hours after that weird rainstorm started, people started getting violently sick. The ones affected couldn’t stop throwing up, there were reports of extreme nausea and even an onset of what they thought was tuberculosis, because the ones diagnosed had a bloody and agonizing cough.

Authorities noticed a trend almost immediately after people started getting sick, in that it seemed only fairly weak people got ill. The sick, old, and young were the only ones who got sick with those violent symptoms. It retrospect though, they got the easy way out.

People that were diagnosed with the illness, dubbed the Yellow Rain Fever, died just hours after getting sick. Some of the victims’ immune systems who were already sick just couldn’t handle the increased fever and vomiting, some were simply too weak to handle much of a sickness in the first place, like the old and the very young, and some actually died of blood loss due to the consumption like cough. But they all died shortly after getting ill.

When people were nearing death, they started hallucinating, or what we thought were hallucinations at the time. They all saw these, dark, shadowy humanoid figures with glowing yellow eyes, lurking in dark corners or just inside unlit rooms.

There were only three or four accounts of these figures, due to the fact that almost no one could speak in their final moments of the sickness. It was enough though, people with the same disease sharing the same hallucinations, it made almost everyone extremely paranoid, as common or shared hallucinations, they reasoned, meant a type of drug or chemical.

After the reports came in of these shared hallucinations, the most paranoid of our population started barricading themselves in their homes. Said they were going to wait out the storm, literally and figuratively.

When most of the initial victims had passed, we started seeing fairly normal people getting extremely sick. Healthy, middle aged people getting the same symptoms, and worse, some of the victims actually faced necrosis before their deaths. The second wave of people who were sick didn’t even make two hours. Same as before, there were several reports of people seeing those black, shadowy figures with the glowing yellow eyes, waiting in corners or dark rooms.

Our small town was devastated at this point; we had lost two or three hundred people by now. And I was absolutely stricken with grief when my dear wife Muriel, may God rest her soul, was diagnosed with the Fever.

By the time we had lost another 100 people, and the disease was announced to be contagious, we were quarantined by the CDC, and government agents were coming in to check out the town decked out in air-tight radiation suits, said they were trying to find the cause of the storm.

Not even an hour after the agents came in, they evacuated. The thing is though; there was no story about this on the news. I don’t know what those CDC guys did, but apparently no one was able to contact the media. There was a mention of a flu epidemic in our town, and that’s it.

My friend, Mark, came over to my house almost immediately after the report on the news aired. “A flu epidemic?” He yelled, absolutely enraged. “We’ve lost almost five-hundred people to this bastardized mix of symptoms from tuberculosis and food poisoning, and they say it’s the damn flu?” I tried to get him to calm down, but he wouldn’t have it. He said he was going to go get out of town, to try and contact the news, something, anything but staying here waiting to die. The thing is, I kind of agreed with him, I’d much rather go out fighting rather than sitting around and praying not to get this damned fever. There was something in my gut telling me it would be a bad idea to try and get out. I told Mark that I was going to stay here for the time being, he said fine, that if I wanted to die here as a passive waste, that was my decision. So Mark left in his truck to try and escape the quarantine. It was the last time I saw him alive.

Things got progressively worse from there. First, the disease spread, there were reports of another five hundred people infected. Of course national news was worthless, but channel six, the local news, was running a Fever Watch. That’s how I got most of my information. After the next wave of reported infections, symptoms got worse again. Pre-death necrosis was a symptom of almost everyone with the disease at that point, not just an unlucky few. Victims also getting extremely paranoid as their illnesses progressed. Almost all of them were scared of the same thing, of the dark, shadowy figures with yellow eyes creeping in dark areas.

Our whole town was in hysterics, people who had boarded up their homes early were envied. Looting and arson was widespread, our town was a chaotic symphony of anarchy. As the disease spread, nearly seven hundred people had succumbed to the Fever. There were some really minor details that unnerved the living hell out of me, like how the infected started saying the figures were getting closer, not lurking in just pitch black areas anymore. I was mortified when Muriel, who had only had a slightly wet cough and a light temperature up until that point, started screaming about dark figures lurking in the corners.

When the local news reported our population was nearing eight-hundred after only nine hours after the first yellowish storm cloud rolled in, I locked myself where I am now, in our cellar.

Muriel’s already gone, those damned shadow men got her, and they ripped her throat out. Those news stories were bullshit and I know it, it was these fucking creatures that lurk in the dark that killed everyone. I know, because I’ve seen what they can do firsthand. Muriel’s lying upstairs in a puddle of her own blood because of those figures.

They’re watching me now, with those hungry and greedy yellow eyes. They want me, I can see the dark desires, the urge to feed in their eyes when they stare at me. They’re sitting in the corners, where the light doesn’t reach, waiting for me to make one wrong move, to turn my back or fall asleep, well I’ll be damned if I get eaten by some God-forsaken monster.

They think they have me, I can hear them now, their joyous whispers; they’ve seen my bloody cough. The beasts’ whispers are deafening now, they know I’m growing weaker. What they don’t know however, is that I’ve taken a lesson from Mark. I still have the power of choice. Do I want to go out in defiance, or sitting, waiting for the inevitable? I have to remember to pray to my dad, thank him for leaving me his revolver.

They’re getting closer. I have a few minutes at most, they’re getting closer. At least I get to end this how I want it to end, not how they want it to.

–

Subject: FORWARD ALL; ADDENDUM, SITUATION REPORT 37-B To: ALL From: ADMINISTRATOR PAIGE

Message: Hello ladies and gentlemen, I’d first like to wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Now, as you can see from the attached document, Project Ion Rain was a massive success. Only ten hours after the weapon was activated, our city of choice was almost completely eradicated. With initial reports saying that 95% of the population died due to disease,4% are clinically insane, and 1% having committed suicide, as you can see from the document above.

Yes I know, there are ethical issues involved in this, why test Ion Rain on our own citizens? First off, the equipment involved to actually produce the deadly toxins from seemingly thin air are not carried around or smuggled easily. And it takes weeks of preparation; we simply don’t have the resources to smuggle this Project into an enemy country and keep the thing hidden.

And the way I figure the situation, and the President agrees with me on this one, is that if we can blame this incident on a terrorist attack, we’ll have the backing of the public to invade whoever we decide to blame.

Well, see you all on Monday, have a nice weekend.

Sincerely, Paul Paige, Administrator of the Central Intelligence Agency.