Near the North Borough, East Borough.
As soon as the smog dispersed, Daisy disregarded the pouring rain and hurried home from school. She even slipped and fell on the way, leaving a bruise on her face.
The moment she arrived at the apartment entrance, she spotted a four-wheeled freight carriage parked by the street. The white cloth covering it had been soaked through by the rain, vaguely revealing corpses of all shapes beneath it.
Masked doctors and nurses were still busy carrying fresh corpses out of the apartment and stuffing them into the already overloaded carriage bed. Those that could not be fitted in were covered with black cloth and laid by the roadside to await the next carriage.
"Mom... Freyja..."
Although she had already anticipated it on the way, the last shred of hope in Daisy's heart was shattered by reality only now. She murmured those two words and moved toward the entrance, only to be stopped by a police officer standing guard nearby.
"Don't come any closer. You might catch the plague!"
The officer's expression had long gone numb. In just half an hour, he had watched the carriage make two round trips and haul away more corpses than he had ever seen in his life. He had also stopped four or five survivors like Daisy.
These "lucky ones" stood to the side with vacant eyes, blankly watching the busy doctors, as though their souls had been carried away with the dead by the carriage.
Soon, the carriage piled full of corpses slowly started moving toward the other side of the street. The survivors held behind the cordon began crying and shouting.
"My Andy..."
"Dad! Dad!"
"Mom, Freyja..."
Daisy sobbed weakly as she watched the white cloth grow farther and farther away, round a corner, and vanish from