Marti comes from Portland, Oregon and grew up in an upper-middle-class suburban home. She was finishing up the spring semester of her junior year at the Carver School, a high-ranking high school in Portland, and had just finished gone with her parents and little sister to visit her grandmother in Long Island for the onset of the summer holidays.
Marti was an academic, the child of two research scientist ex-hippies who worked for a firm in developing an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels. They lived comfortably, but certainly not luxuriously, and Marti’s parents raised her to be both sensitive to the planet she was living on but also to really want to learn. Marti’s favorite class is Biology, and she was all set to start a summer high school internship at a marine life study center. Marti never quite fit in with the “cool kids” she didn’t have an interest in things that were too girly, like cheerleading or being prom queen. She liked dressing comfortably – cords and a sweater were more her style, and putting on dresses and make-up were reserved for important occasions. She had a very small and closely-knit group of friends who'd all been close since junior high.
When the superflu began, it was quiet. It struck those in the cities hardest at first, and not wishing to contract what seemed like a serious bug, the family stayed close to her grandmother's. But by the time it became obvious that the problem was much more serious than they'd imagined, it was too late.
Marti's grandmother and mother were the first to fall sick, with her father and sister quickly following. Within thirty-six hours of the first sniffle, her entire family was dead. Her father, determined to stick around to care for his children, was the last to go. Before losing all his strength, he feverishly instructed Marti on what she would need: clean water, non-perishable food and a change of clothing, rolled up in a camping pack with a tent. She hadn't thought about it, but later realized her father was imagining there may be no places that weren't tainted by the dead. Steer as clear as you can from the recently dead, he advised her, adding that while bodily fluids should be avoided, it wouldn't be physically dangerous to be around them. It just was going to smell, he warned. The air would be best closer to the sea breeze, he said.
Trying to reassure his apparently healthy daughter, he said he was proud to know that she was a survivor, and was only sorry he wouldn't be able to help her. Lastly, he warned her, "I don't know what it's going to be like out there. Who is left...arm yourself. Be very wary of strangers." Soon after, he was gone, leaving Marti in a state of quiet panic.
Arm herself? Was the world beyond their part of the east coast so affected that all of American society would crumble? For a full day, Marti stayed locked in her grandmother's blue clapboard home. Every noise, every creak seemed amplified and designed to threaten and terrify her. What should she arm herself with? She'd been raised in a decidedly peaceful and anti-gun environment, and had even walked with friends and family in marches urging tighter gun legislation. She'd never even seen a real gun in person. But now...
By the day after her father's death, the heat was rising during the day and Marti couldn't take the smell or the knowledge that her family were all dead in various beds in her grandmother's otherwise tidy home. She packed up what her father instructed and some of their camping gear before heading out in search of someone else...or maybe just a gun that came with instructions.
