[ WP ] A new virus evolves to help people instead of harming them .

No one saw it coming. The asteroid was 500 meters on its long axis and traveling at nearly 90 kilometers per second. It struck 15 miles north of Minneapolis and gouged out a crater 10 miles across. The fireball rose into the sky like the unblinking eye of an alien god, burning with fury and malice. The city was destroyed, along with much of southeastern Minnesota and Northwestern Wisconsin. The scale of the damage could only be described as biblical. Fire and debris rained down from the sky hundreds of miles away, and the jet stream pushed the towering pillar of ash to the east, where it would fall like snow across hundreds of cities, blocking out the sun for days. 
 
 In the height of the Midwestern summer, a strange winter had come. I remember riding in a truck filled with other emergency personnel, a piled in and racing at top speed across the surviving roads. It was like a scene from the end of days. The pressure wave had toppled every structure, every tree, every blade of grass. It was all pounded flat like a heavenly fist has slammed into it. Not an entirely inaccurate analogy. Bridges were gone. *rivers* were gone. Their waters had been ripped up and boiled by the heat and pressure. Cars and trucks were hurtled miles through the air, reduced to the crunched and mangled remains one might find in a junkyard. I thought it was impossible anyone could have possibly survived the terrible onslaught. And still, we drove onward, into the heart of the destruction looking for survivors. 
 
 The media reported that anywhere within 20 miles of the impact site would have a 100 % fatality rate, but emergency services had received more then a few panicked radio calls from where Minneapolis had once been asking for help on shortwave. We humans are a tenacious bunch. 
 
 Our truck was all volunteer workers. The army and national guard had been mobilized, but they were focused on the outlying areas, cities where most people had survived the blast but had been injured. There were buildings burning out there, collapsed, every window shattered, the streets filled with glass a blood. And then of course, the looting had started, forcing emergency services to concentrate on helping those they could reach. 
 
 This far into the blast zone though, an eerie quiet had descended over the land. There were no birds, no sirens, no noise at all save for the sound of our truck's engine and the tires crunching on debris and ruined pavement. 
 
 It took days to pick our way inwards towards the city. As we grew closer, there was less and less to see. Even the grass was gone. The ground had been scoured clean as if God had just wiped away everything. Occasionally some forlorn structure would be spotted, standing alone on the endless plain like a lost sentinel. The corner of a steel framed building, the trunk of a tree, a smooth concrete foundation that had been tilted to the side by the colossal forces unleashed against the land. 
 
 The bridge over the St. Claire river was gone. So was the St. Claire river. The only sign that a river had been there were the huge barges tossed hundreds of feet across the pulverized remains of Lakeland, and the huge concrete pylons embedded in what was once a riverbed. 
 
 We set up our camp on Raspberry island, or what would have been Raspberry island if there was still a Mississippi river. Even the mighty Mississippi had been ripped away, nothing left but silt drying in the weak, ash clouded sun. Across the'river' was what had been St. Paul. The skyscrapers had all toppled over into towering heaps of metal and stone, the small buildings were just gone. What was left of them had probably been flung hundreds of miles south by the ferocious wind. 
 
 We erected our radio mast, rising defiantly above the destruction, and began broadcasting our location. Tents went up next. Housing, medical, a cafeteria, and an administrative building. We could handle up to 500 survivors, and looking at the scale of destruction, that many seemed exceedingly optimistic. 
 
 Still, they came. Looking wide eyed and haggard, clothed in whatever intact scraps they could find. When the first group of survivors forded the muddy river bottom, they looked to all the world like zombies, covered in dirt and mud. It was three men, two women, and two children. We got them fed and cleaned up and they passed out before we had a chance to ask them about their experiences. 
 
 I was sitting outside looking out over the ruined city when Toby, one of our medics, came up to me and sat down, stealing my cigarette from between my fingers and taking a long drag. 
 
 `` Hey man, try asking.'' I said with an unhappy grunt as I fished another cigarette out of my pack. 
 
 `` There's something weird going on Jen.'' Toby said worriedly. 
 
 `` No shit, its the end of the fucking world practically. You expect anything to be normal?'' I snorted and lit the new cigarette, inhaling the smooth menthol and nicotine burn. 
 
 `` That's not what I meant. That group we brought in? They did n't have a scratch on them. Not one. They were as close to perfectly healthy as I've ever seen a person be. How does that happen?'' 
 
 `` Dumb luck?'' I suggested with a shrug of my shoulders. `` There were a few million people living around here, some of them were bound to get lucky. That's why we're here right?'' 
 
 `` Not *that* lucky.'' Toby answered. `` I expected broken bones, burns, cuts, scrapes. I mean hell, I got blisters just putting up the tents. Those people looked... perfect. Flawless.'' He shook his head. `` I ca n't explain it.'' 
 
 `` You sure there's anything to explain? Give it a few days, wait for some more survivors to get in, it was probably a fluke. Or maybe they had a fallout shelter or something they hid in.'' 
 
 Toby nodded his head, looking out in the fading light, took another drag of his cigarette, and fell to the ground unconscious.
