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The Ebola outbreaks in West Africa in  2013-14 gave a great scare to the global community and exposed flaws in the myriad international Non Government Organizations and aid groups which commonly operate around the world. In particular, several recorded cases of aid workers who had been unknowingly infected with the virus but were allowed to return to their home countries without proper medical checks, and several subsequent infections of hospital personnel, incited outrage among the general population at the perceived lax nature of the 'humanitarian' approach to infectious disease control followed by NGOs. In the face of the public outcry, most governments implemented laws which mandated proper procedures for those returning from assisting in known disease outbreaks. This led to NGOs and aid groups concealing their operations and the movements of their volunteers to avoid the new measures.

In 2017, a spate of viral outbreaks occurred in the same geographical areas that had been affected by the Ebola outbreaks several years earlier. This coincidence, coupled with victims displaying symptoms that seemed to be those of Ebola, led to a mistaken belief that the outbreaks were a resurgence of Ebola. Aid groups and volunteers flocked to the region to treat those affected by the virus but no effort was made to determine if the outbreaks were indeed Ebola or something else. The belief was compounded when new Ebola treatments seemed, initially, to be effective as expected when given to infected patients.

One year later, in 2018, the first western victims, all of whom were aid workers or volunteers, began to be diagnosed as having been infected with the virus and quickly placed under quarantine. When these victims began to show symptoms completely different from what was expected, national health and disease management organizations began studying those infected in the hopes of identifying both the virus and any possible treatment options. In June 2018, every single identified victim of the virus successively began to die, one by one, only to resurrect minutes, hours or days later. This new development confounded scientists and sent the world into a panic.

In light of the developments, the United Nations and other global organizations, like NATO, took swift action to quarantine the African continent to hopefully prevent the spread of the virus, dubbed the 'Horizon' virus by the world media. A total air and sea blockade was instituted, focused primarily on the northwest, north and east sides of Africa where other countries could be reached in relatively short periods of time. A multinational ground force, spearheaded by Israel and Jordan, constructed a series of layered defenses and barriers on the western side of the Sinai peninsula that completely blocked, controlled and monitored everything west of the Suez canal and the Gulf of Suez.

Every attempt made to flee Africa by air, sea or land was met with a military reaction. Africans were forced to return to the continent while any tourists from outside Africa were taken away for quarantine until it could be determined if they were infected or not. The continent itself began a slow descent into anarchy. This descent accelerated when outbreaks of the virus began occurring across north and central Africa. Countries all across the world began to impose strict controls on those wishing to enter while anybody who had been in West Africa during the initial viral outbreaks were detained and quarantined for testing and observation.

Left-wing moralizing groups, disliked throughout the world due to their 'holier than thou' attitudes, held protests around the world to oppose the new protection measures and demanded both the release of those quarantined and the lifting of the full blockade of Africa. In several countries, these groups quickly discarded peaceful protest and moved straight to active resistance, spiriting aid workers into hiding and hindering efforts to quarantine them. Within several week, the consequences of this 'resistance' became clear as the first outbreaks began to occur outside of Africa, due to those infected which had been hidden away escaping from where they were kept and the concurrent infections of their erstwhile allies.

Within three months of the first outbreak, several small countries around the world had been completely overrun by the inhuman creatures whilst many other countries were combating their own outbreaks and thus were unable to aid them. It was at this time that scientists working on analyzing the 'Horizon' virus made several discoveries about the virus and how it was spread. It was found that victims who were bitten directly by a 'roamer', as the creatures themselves had been dubbed, had a greater than 85% chance of becoming a 'roamer' themselves. Contact with infected blood, however, was unlikely to cause a change unless it entered the blood stream directly through open wounds. Those bitten by a 'roamer' could could turn at any time as analysis of eyewitness accounts concluded that there was no single consistent time frame for the infected to turn. In the case of death, an infected person would immediately turn as soon as their heart stopped.

By March 2019, every country that hadn't already fallen was suffering from outbreaks and the chaos that followed. Attempts were made to contain the growing swarms as best as possible. Military forces, along with police and other emergency services, worked to defend and evacuate civilians from areas under threat to zones that could be properly secured from assault. These efforts, however, were thrown into anarchic chaos once the virus spread reached a saturation point and those infected began to turn after only ten minutes.

One area greatly affected by this unexpected change in the virus behaviour was the city of Sydney in Australia. At the time of the Sydney outbreaks, and the subsequent fall of the city, i was just a sixteen year old student in year 10 of high school. I was there as the suburb i called home was overrun and the city became a living hell.

My name is Asterin Prior and this is my story.....