I have a very good reason for not writing much tonight, and putting me behind even further (now I need to do 5 nights of 5000 all over again). I went out to the movies, and came home tired. That’s all I got. I have no energy drinks to keep me up. But I will do whatever it takes to get those five days of 5000 in. I won’t lose NaNoWriMo. I will win. I win every year.

I also need to research a bit more about Srinagar. Look at some photos, learn some of the culture, some of the background. I wanted some time to do that as well before jumping completely into it. So, Hemmings has only just entered Srinagar at the end of this writing while I do s’more research on the place.

Word Count: 71,746

The reporters never seemed to grasp that humans were coming back to life. It was mostly describes as a virulent strain of some common bacteria that caused death in about a week. In most cases the reporter never said much more. Then the reporter would stop talking and the channel would flicker into a scene of utter chaos and madness, sadness and distress, some town in the middle of nowhere was dying and there was nothing the world could do about it. Then there would be some other, completely unrelated topic for the same reporter to announce to the public. But it always came back to the devastation occurring as entire towns were wiped off of the face of the earth. They knew absolutely nothing, but I knew soon that those same towns would be engulfed in a greater chaos once all of the dead spawned again.

For twenty minutes I sat, watching that completely ignorant report about Athan’s Disease. Everybody in the world was so clueless! They were clamoring for safety without knowing what they were fleeing from. If some had known, they might have lavished the chance to fall ill, as Dr. Doradwe had. But at the moment everybody was running away. Always running, running from anything that remotely resembled a sickness, and illness, a disease. There are more things than just Athan’s Disease that humans call a “sickness,” and we run from all of them. We run from most things. As a race, we are cowards who fear everything but what is already around us.

All the cowards began to board the plane. The twenty minutes had passed. They were calling my row. I stood up, walked over to the gate entrance and handed my ticket to the receptionist, who then let me pass into the gate. It was cool inside the gate – much cooler than it had been in Westendorf, even when it rained and far colder than I had thought it was outside in Vienna. However, inside the plane was warm and comforting – a climate I thought I would also find in India. But I had never been to Srinagar before. I did not expect to be flying to a city near the very tip of India. I did not expect many of the things I was soon to discover in Srinagar. It was a beautiful city, but its beauty was taken away almost entirely by what I discovered there.

The plane was crowded, far more crowded than the plane to Austria had been. Many of the passengers seemed to be returning home, not knowing the grave mistake they were making. Others were the normal tourists, who would also learn that they had faulted by boarding that plane. I, however, knew I would be getting into another odd situation – but I did not know how odd. I never suspected anything like what had happened in Westendorf would ever surface again. Westendorf, I told myself, was an isolated case brought about by one man’s radical beliefs and everybody else’s fear. Srinagar was already on the road to becoming a second Westendorf. I just couldn’t see it coming.

The plan dispatched and took off. In the air, silence prevailed. Everybody was quiet, many were asleep. There was no noise aside from the rush of air outside the plane creating a low humming noise on the inside. I was sitting in a window seat, where I consistently touched the window in order to feel the refreshing, icy surface. Once I was satisfyingly chilled I laid back and let myself freeze completely, into a deep sleep.

When I awoke the plane had landed in Srinagar Airport. It looked beautiful from inside the plane, but I knew waiting outside was a battle with Athan’s Disease that might not end well. I prayed that it would end happier than Westendorf. A complete failure. That’s what Westendorf had been. Disgrace, to my name. Inside the plane, before actually entering Srinagar, I lavished in the final moments of silence. Gathered my things, and exited the plane. Outside of the plane I was treated to quite a sight – the airport was far nicer than the one I had come through. I expected Srinagar to be far nicer. Somebody on the plane had been comparing Srinagar to Venice. I could only expect unparalleled beauty. Beauty that could be so easily destroyed by sinking it into the sea.

Fourteen kilometers from Srinagar. That’s how far I was from the next city I would have to treat; that is how far I was from all of the patients whom I knew would be rushing in and out of what was probably a very large hospital inside the city. I took a taxi, hoisted my luggage into the truck, and beckoned him to drive onward until we reached Srinagar. Luckily, it seemed as though everybody spoke English. Everywhere I was sent, I assumed immediately that everybody would speak English. If I was to go to another location from Srinagar, I knew they would speak English there, too.

Srinagar was, indeed, beautiful. It was a town set entirely beside a lake, which shimmered in the new morning light. That was how many hours I had been on the plane. I couldn’t imagine that I was now halfway around the world from where my journey had begun. It didn’t seem far at all from the United States. It felt like I was five minutes away, but I was really many hours by plane. I was many, many sleepy hours from my home. As I entered the city, I caught a glimpse of the oncoming chaos. People were already running around, panicking. This was what Athan’s Disease brought to al beautiful places on Earth – terror, calamity. It was shocking. My taxi driver refused to bring the taxi into the city. He’d heard about Athan’s – not by name, of course – and only wanted my payment so that he could exit the outskirts of Srinagar as soon as possible. I looked around, trying to spot as much danger as I could. It was far milder than Westendorf. Not everybody was dead; in fact, there were many, many people alive. If I had to assume, I would have at that time said that half of the city was still living, and had no plans of dying. I paid the cab driver and ran towards the city. The lake sparkled; there were houseboats on top of the shimmering silver water. Each houseboat was its own confined world, worlds that I now wish I could travel into and hope that assimilation never reaches me.

Srinagar itself was full of panic. However, instead of people remaining inside to avoid the disease, everybody flooded into the streets to discuss with their neighbors what was going on, and possible prevention. Many were out on the streets simply to talk gossip about who they heard had kicked the bucket. I felt that this was slightly heartless, but all the same I was curious – who had died, and how many? And what would they be doing to the bodies? Surely there was no hidden pile of bodies here. But I didn’t doubt that there was something similar. Something told me that the entire world was doomed to act in the same manner towards those inhuman mutants. Where were the bodies kept? Had anybody woken up? Or were all of these people the spawned, every last citizen of Srinagar already infected and those who were currently dead filling the next-in-line position? Several citizens on the street spoke in their native tongue, and I could not understand a word. But for every person that spoke in a foreign language, there was another who spoke in English, allowing me to instantly hear their conversations. I tried not to look as though I was eavesdropping in on everybody – granted, eavesdropping was difficult to do so with so many people around. I did not focus on taking in the beauty of Srinagar. Taking in the beauty was wasted on Westendorf, and it would have been wasted there as well. Athan’s Disease stole the beauty from everything. Athan’s did not care what a person, or a city, or a country, or the world looked like. All it cared about was finding a suitable host, and perpetuating the host’s life as long as possible. Srinagar was doomed for perpetuation, and there was nothing beautiful about that.