Bodies from all parts of the country lay strewn around the streets. It was not a pretty sight. Crows surrounded the landscape, pecking open each corpse and opening up more and more holes as blood poured down the street into the drains. Most cities had no coffins available. Most cities were stuck scrambling to move bodies out of the streets. Most cities were once again forced to inhale the smell of death that had been arriving so soon as it left.

It played such a perfect representation of the Black Death, or more recently the 1918 Spanish flu. People collapsed in the streets and bodies littered around everywhere. The only difference now was instead of blue skin or pus-filled blemishes covering the bodies, it was bullet-holes. Lots and lots of bullet holes.

The sight was sickening, but PlagueDoctor had been used to it. Working with the diseased never looks prettier. Whether it be pus-filled lungs, bloody diarrhea, necrosis, rotting gums, he had dealt with it before. But clearly when the sound of vomiting upon someone opening their door echoes throughout the country, as it had been for the past month, it was obvious change needed to come. Nobody should be forced to watch the decomposition process every other week outside their front door. Nobody should have to fear the worst of a disease should come to them. And nobody needs to see loved ones rot in front of them as they are helpless to do anything.

RichardWad had generously given PlagueDoctor a new opportunity; one to expand Richard’s business and now to begin one of his own. This was a new experience for him; one that would leave many memories but also begin the introduction process to the leading hands. Something that, he hoped, would put some new perspective into the world and inspire any form of change, but to be different about it. Not to be your average “new face on the block” but to make a difference for everyone and to spread new trains of thought.

He gathered his medical equipment and members and strolled out of the headquarters of Aphotic Order. He stopped along the way and set up a pedestal, and stood above it as a crowd slowly formed to watch as the odd-looking figure started to speak:

”Ladies and gentlemen, at this time in the midst of a shootout, I have been given authority to branch outwards in replacement of the late Javier, and all I have to say at this point is I may not be around for a large amount of time anyway considering the...events going on. So all I really have to say is good luck, enjoy the short moment of a new crew...”

”...and wash your goddamn hands.”

PlagueDoctor stepped down from the pedestal and led the way to his new headquarters, although the impending future ahead shut off a smile that otherwise would’ve formed across his hidden lips.