• The actions of a single person can change everything. My action of killing one of the Others did just that. There seemed to be fewer of them roaming the blood-filled streets. My wife and I took the opportunity to move to a safer location. Speed was our friend, and sound our enemy.
    Unfortunately, we couldn't take a single step without making noise, and the shin-deep blood slowed us both. We took back alleys and single-lane streets as much as we could to avoid detection. Our home had been raided once while we were still in hiding, so very little food was available to us there. We decided to check around the neighborhood for survivors and/or food.
    No luck on survivors, but we did find enough food for three days in a house three blocks from ours. This was also the first place we met the Tainted.
    There was a scratching sound from behind a door. The sound surprised me. I lifted the weapon from the Other that I had killed and aimed at the sound. I was careful to open the door in a way where I would be protected by it.
    A hand shot out from the open portal. Spots of flesh had turned black, like frostbite, while most of it was ashen white. The contrast was stunning. Next out of the door was a leg and a foot. A full body clambered out through the door next.
    The person standing in front of me was obviously diseased. I threw caution to the wind and greeted them. The diseased wretch turned his head toward me. The eyes were what prompted me to shoot. Black, like the spots on his flesh. No whites, no iris, no pupil, but entirely black. Like holes in the skull.
    Blood splattered the hallway. The thing's torso now had a hole through it. A deep and fatal wound. But it still stood up. It faced me again. The deep holes of its eyes staring me down. I fired again, blood flew everywhere. The thing's head was now only a memory. It did not get up again. After replacing my blood-soaked clothes for a new, clean outfit, we set off again.

    A single person can kill one of the Tainted, and a single person can kill one of the Others. But there are always more of the Others, and more of the Tainted. I surmised that people that had been exposed to the blood flowing in the streets had become Tainted. But if the sea had not entered your body, then you would be clean still.
    The doctors had agreed with this. It was a logical explanation to a logical problem. They could understand it. But the problem they couldn't comprehend was why the Others were here. No one knew. A blood-transferrable disease is easy to explain. An unknown race coming to destroy our own is not.
    I was one of the luckiest people on the planet. I had survived the raids, obtained a weapon from the Others, and had even killed my share of them. I had escaped the Tainted, and I still had a family. No one was that lucky.
    All of the others hiding in the hospital had lost loved ones. Most were now orphans, widows, and widowers. Some had been single, but had lost neighbors that had been like family.
    Also, none of those in hiding had fought the Others or the Tainted. They had never even had close encounters. The doctors, my wife, and I were the only ones. But maybe we shouldn't be counting ourselves lucky.
    My wife was dying.

    We've captured one. Its weapon is now ours. The bravest of the ones in hiding (or perhaps the stupidest) created and successfuly executed a plan to capture one of the Others. He used my weapon to do so.
    We have removed its mask to find that it is a he. We asked his name. He responded with spitting in our eyes. He called us savages and whores and threw all kinds of threats at us, but he was tied to a chair. He could not hurt us with anything other than his words.
    What bothered me the most was that he looked human. He sounded human. He was human. And this meant that all the Others were human. We were being erradicated by our own race. My question was: Why?
    The prisoner would not answer any questions. He gagged any time one of us came near him. He truly hated us.
    But after a few days, he softened. Starvation, thirst, and the threat of death can make a man spill his guts all over the floor. But what makes it happen sooner is kindness and compassion. We treated our prisoner as a person, not a killer or a savage or an inhuman thing.
    He called himself Jonas. The Others were a group of humans set above the rest. They became advanced beyond all races. Beyond all nations. Beyond all borders. They had obtained the devine right to rule over all people. They were superior, and that is what they called themselves. Superiors.
    The Superiors' intention was to cleanse the world of all impurities, meaning other humans and their civilizations. But this crowd had provided a puzzle. Tainting.
    They had never expected that a single disease would spread across the planet and double the work for them. As soon as one was killed, they became Tainted in the blood of the rest, and would kill everything in their sight. It was even more gruesome the way that the Tainted killed.
    The Superiors had found out that they were not so superior to a creature that had to be killed at least twice. All of us in the hospital kept to calling them Others. except Jonas, who we referred to by name. He eventually stopped calling us savages as well. It was beginning to look like we could maybe get along.