3 Racoon Virus
I sit here with many tears. I can hardly write anymore. I don't know why I didn't get the Racoon thing earlier. I just didn't get it. I was spared, I suppose. As the time nears, I'll at least give it its proper name. Raccoon Virus.
Neither spelling nor arithmetic had been President Färt's strong points. He had people for that. So when he misspelled raccoon as racoon, but got the word virus right, he was given full marks anyway and the word was officially changed, in both the USA and the UK.
"See, it's shorter now!" he exclaimed. "That's gotta be an improvalment." He's gone now, of course.
No one knows how it started. A raccoon. A man, or a woman. Maybe some excrement or urine that splashed onto a wild berry. Maybe it wasn't even direct but was transferred through another species. I don't know. What bites humans and raccoons? One explanation: a cross tick. In the short term, he, everyone, you who hated or actually relished epidemics, did you imagine nothing's gonna...
There is no long term.
The raccoon virus has spared just one. I don't know why. I sit here alone, with so many fears I can hardly write.
I see now that it's like a reverse Fibonacci series. A few days ago there were, statistically, about 34 left. Obviously there was no news of the numbers, it's just an extrapolation now. The next day, 21. Then 13, unlucky for some. Unlucky for millions actually. Eight. Five. Three. Two. One. One. I sit here with so many stupid tears and fears and years, I can hardly write any more. Time is very strange. When does tomorrow start? Whose midnight? California, where there are none left? Europe, none left? Is it at the change from one minute to midnight that the zero will strike? Is tomorrow now? The time approaches, anyway.
How odd, how... what was the word we kept using? Yes, how unprecedented. It all is. Was. In the next minute it will be zero. I can't accept it. I must accept it. Gone. All gone. The final state change. A species disappears. Not a bit left. 1. Then 0.
And the last raccoon dies.