Three years after the disaster, the corporation's walled cities were the only habitable places left in the place, maybe in the world. The outskirts had become a no-man's-land. The swine and other feral animals had claimed the fields, the forests, and the highways. They had multiplied. They had adapted. They were no longer a plague. They were the new ecosystem.
Inside the walls, life was orderly, clean, and expensive. Families paid off their endless credits in the desperate hope that their children would never have to see what lay outside.
Outside, the swine grew larger. Outside, the swine waited.
And in the executive suites of the corporation, the board toasted to eternal prosperity.
They hadn't defeated the plague.
They had monetized it.