A Son’s Gift

(The following story was written for the SciFi X-Prize competition Seat 14)

The police herded us through a plastic tunnel into an airport that looked deserted. I guess the plastic tunnel wasn’t enough to protect us from everyone else? No one understood what was going on. Had the plague broken out in Tokyo? The Sickening? The Walking Dead briefly crossed my mind, but the thought was of course completely ridiculous. Then the line reached a machine that looked much like the full body scanner I had to go through to get on the plane to Tokyo, except this thing had a few more of those swiveling bars that went…