No one really knows who started it.

All we know is the first signs showed up somewhere in China. It was slow at first; a few people in a province got sick and died, then the doctors caring for them got sick, and so it spread. Within a year both Europe and Asia were completely taken over with it. Some people tried to escape the continent, but the governments shut down all ports and airports to contain it.
I was only ten when I noticed something was wrong in the world.
The stock market collapsed, and the president went into hiding. But not before he could declare Martial Law and block off all connections we had with other counties; all transport and trade.
But South America wasn’t so lucky.
A few of them managed to get out of Europe on private boats and land somewhere in Argentina. But on the way over some of them died from the virus and were dumped into the sea to avoid contamination, which just gave the virus the opportunity to infect the ocean.  Oddly enough it didn’t kill marine life, but sea water could no longer be filtered or drunk.
To this day the color of the ocean is no longer a clear blue; it’s murky and forbidding.
Once the virus started spreading in South America the military set up compounds; vast warehouses full of artillery, food, clothes and breathers. With some of our scientists in South America trying to contain the spread, we learned more about it. The virus was airborne, in the water, and in the air. Simply being in the same room as someone with the virus could infect someone, drinking water without first boiling and filtering it would to it too.
They also found out that some people had immunity to the virus, and these few were put in these special compounds to try and find a cure using their genetic code.
A year after it showed up in South America, guards on the border couldn’t hold back the hordes anymore; the virus started leaking into the U.S. I heard whispers between my parents that it started to mutate; it didn’t just kill people anymore. The people infected where being controlled by someone, or something. I wasn’t allowed to watch the news reports of them attacking people in the streets, but mom and dad were watching it constantly. The year I turned thirteen we were evacuated to Canada, since some people thought the virus couldn’t survive the cold weather.
But they followed us there.
On the way mom and dad came down with fevers; the first symptom of the virus.
That day the commander in charge of transport shot them himself and had their bodies burned in an effort to prevent a further spread. Somehow my brother and I didn’t get it, but we were put in the back of a truck alone for the rest of the journey to make sure.
He’s all I have left now; it’s just he and I.
I had another brother who as married and lived in Florida. But once the border between South America and the U.S. gave way we never heard from him again.
Mom and dad were pretty sure they didn’t make it.
The fourth year after it started the virus started to mutate even more. Dogs, birds, cows; every living animal got sick. Food started to be scarce if you didn’t live in one of the compounds, and weapons were even worse. People couldn’t survive without at least a gun, but all of them were being stockpiled by the military in preparation for a long war, so not many survived without help.

I’m eighteen now, and I live Compound M. with my brother Ian. I’ve seen some of what’s left of the world around our compound on missions I’ve gone out on, but my brother Ian doesn’t let me go out too far on any missions. Even though I finished first in my age group and I’m one of the best shots in the compound, Ian is still very protective of me and doesn’t let me out of his sight.
But I still I live in the hope that one day…I’ll be able to step out of the compound without a gun in my hand, and without the worry that at any moment I might be attacked.

Chapter One: My Normal

“Duck!” Ian shouts.
I drop to the ground and roll to the side. A split second after the bullet whizzes through the air over my head, a body thuds to the ground next to me. I look at the dead face of a boy who looks no older than me, but who has been so mutated by the virus that he’s barely recognizable as a human being.
Ian’s hand closes around my arm and pulls me to my feet, “You okay?” he asks.
I nod, “I never saw him coming.”
Ian takes a quick glance behind me and pulls his rifle close, “C’mon, let’s get back to the craft.”
I pick up my rifle from the ground where I fell and nod, “Okay.”