It started with old folk in their hospital beds announcing that the ducks were coming. We thought it was a joke about some old tv show they used to watch. Then when younger people, dying in accidents or of awful diseases, continued saying it, we started to worry.

You see our people are blessed with the gift of prophecy - even if it is only for the last few seconds of life. Some people’s prophecies are personal, some can predict local events, some even reach to far universes. Some are literal, some are cryptic, some take the best Deciphers in the world to understand. But most people’s words come true within the year.

We waited for the ducks to come. Scientists created repellants, poisons, alarms; anything to keep the ducks away. Researchers delved into every possible meaning of the word duck. Parks and rivers and lakes were monitored for movement.

I suppose the cruel thing about prophecies is their lack of clarity.

When a man in the north, out on a hunting trip, shot and ate a duck, he became patient zero in the Anasovirus outbreak. It spread rapidly; unrelenting, incurable, and fatal.

Everyone lived in fear of contracting “The Ducks”.