Ilze Hugo

“When the Down Days first came swinging, the government hired workers in plastic suits to spray the streets each week. Everyone was told to wash their hands with chlorine, disinfect with bleach. Within six months the shelves at your local shop were filled with new brands, plastic bottle after plastic bottle promising all sorts of miracle properties. Some people took the ads to heart, started cleaning like their salvation depended on it. A few suckers even started drinking diluted bleach, thinking it would cure them from the inside out.”
― Ilze Hugo, The Down Days

“The cradle of humankind was also the cradle of guns and germs and death. All those little red flags on the map the color of blood. The soil here was thick with bones. This had always been a city shaped by germs. These streets were birthed by disease. And one day, it would be destroyed by it.”
― Ilze Hugo, The Down Days