Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children!

About 14 years ago I read an interview with some smarty pants scientist that within the next 50 years or so the world is due a global pandemic that will wipe out a good portion of the population because medical science cannot keep pace with all of the new viruses the human race is creating. Think about our overuse of antibiotics and all of the antibiotic resistant superbugs we have, hell, now we even have super lice. That's right, we now live in a world that is getting warmer, polar caps are melting, trees are so dry that they exploded if struck by lightening or catch fire and we have now we have hard to kill cooties. This is why Suffer the Children gave me chills, there is a realness about it and if you think about it too much it could start to eat away at you and turn you into the next cast member of the reality series Doomsday Preppers.

In this case the global pandemic that wipes out a good portion of the world is known as Herod's and it only takes out children who haven't reached puberty. One day out of the blue, children the world over start dropping dead, there are no signs off illness, it just happens as though Samantha snapped her fingers or Jeanne nodded her head. The suddenness of the Herod Event leaves parents the world over grief stricken, society grounds to a halt and then there is the problem of what to do with the children's bodies. The bodies have to be hauled off by sanitation workers to be placed in a mass grave, not an ideal situation but a necessary one. The body count is so high the town of Landsdown doesn't have enough body bags for all of Herod's victims. After three long miserable days the children make like Lazarus and come back from the grave to return to their parents. It's a frigging miracle! God is good! Oh dear Lord, that smell, but it's a small price to pay to have my chi.... gotdamnit, the children just dropped dead again. 

That's right, the children die again as quickly as they came back to life, and it's soon learned that human blood can bring them back again, if only for a couple of hours at a time. This time society disappears completely, people don't go back to work, there are shortages in food supply, the "suicide" rate has skyrocketed and blood has become the worlds most precious economy but the problem is one can only give so much blood at a time. The blood trade has become a serious business for those who can afford it and for those who can't and have exhausted all of their donor resources it's time to make tough choices. Do they let their child go or do they find the "medicine" by any means necessary, and just like that, the rules and laws that we normally live by no longer apply. It's each parent for their child/children. I give DiLouie extra points for his very life like characters, I think I might be living next door to a Doug and Joanie right now.

If you take away the vampire/super natural aspect of the story it's frightening how rooted in reality it actually is. Something terrible will happen in the future that will affect the entire world and chaos and anarchy will be the only rule of the land. Barring any nuclear or environmental world events I say, stay somewhat dirty my friends.