Broken Mirror: Apophis 2029 (5 page)

  Earth's population had tapped over eleven billion, which exceeded what anyone had believed possible, all thanks to and the infamous mandatory health care laws pushing medical science and modern drugs that extending the expected lifespan; and of course, the crooked pharmaceutical industry spitting out erectile dysfunction pills like they were sex candy which, fundamentally, resulted in people popping out babies like they were going out of style.

  Wars tended to act solely as the thinning of the herd, but not nearly as much as in the old days when people used knives, swords, or rifles; now encounters were automated by robotic war droids or remote piloted bombers.  In the countries that had the technology real people were still pulling the trigger, but piloting a drone was still considerably more chicken-shit than to actually put themselves in harms way.  The over-bloated militaries around the world were too busy playing toy soldier to worry about caring for their citizens and basic human needs.  It's unfortunate science leaned towards creating new ways to kill one another, but for the obnoxiously rich and the elite; that's where all the profit was at.

  I had just started college again after finding part time work.  Robotics had actually
taken over a great deal of manufacturing jobs as I was growing up, which made things even more difficult for the unemployed.  Flesh Unions began to spring up, meant to assure real jobs for real people; but it was a constant battle with larger corporations to get them to comply. 

  The night the shit hit the fan I had been on the road out to see some friends out of town, after having gotten off late from work because of my dumb-ass boss assigned me a shift to work some surprise overtime.  Apophis had been visible in the sky for weeks, though far over the horizon from were I lived, despite the fact that most of the night sky was obscured by tall forest trees that lined the roads along my route.  I was listening to my digital music since the radio reception was horrible in this area, so I was pretty clueless to the emergency broadcasts when I saw a bright pulsating flash that lit up the sky followed shortly by a second surge.  A ghostly blue wave crackled momentarily over the heavens and my electric car immediately cut out and went as dead as a doornail. 

  I found out much later that it had been a naturally induced EMP burst that had rippled through the ionosphere created by the detonation of the asteroid as it skimmed the Earth's atmosphere and broke in two.  Lucky for me I had a few drinks and a crap load of nutrient bars in my trunk that I had inadvertently kept forgetting to put away since I reluctantly started my diet the week before. 

  My vehicle coasted to the side of the road and I got out only to find that my mobile link communicator didn't work either.  I waited for a long time out on that lonely dark road but nobody came.  I slept in the car and
didn't head out on foot until the welcome break of dawn that brought with it a strange wind.  So there I was, playing pedestrian with a backpack full of diet bars, not fully realizing just how valuable they would become in the long days ahead. 

  I never did make it to my friends’ house; military buses that had built in shielding from the electromagnetic pulse that swept the atmosphere traversed down the highways and back roads picking up civilian stragglers that had also been stranded along the route.  Ignorant as to what was going on, we were all a little dismayed our convoy delivered us to a large military facility down an unimposing dirt road out in the middle of nowhere.  Apparently there was a secluded training base along that highway that neither I nor anyone else had ever heard about; and which had never been recorded on any public data GPS map I had ever seen. 

  I was there for a few days with a handful of other civilians as we sheltered in a spare bunker during the erratic and brutal wind storms that kicked up in the days that followed, and the outside world went to hell.  It wasn't long until one day we woke up and looked out the windows to watch every last camouflaged soldier pack up and disembark, leaving us with orders to stay where we were for our own safety.  Later that evening our group heard a low hum echoing from the dark forest coming from droves of personnel carriers arrived with medical patients wearing masks.  It was this new unit of officers in their spiffy white contagion suits that gave us a clue something was direly amiss.

  They erected tables, then tents, then barricades, then barbwire as the few of us left there watched from the outside of their new containment fence. I was snooping around when, by chance, I overheard one of their doctors in a hushed conversation to his associate saying they planned to place all the civilians within the newly raised quarantine zone.  With that concerning knowledge fueling my fears, I slipped out of the camp that evening under the strange glow of the aurora lights that peeked through the scattered clouds.  These Northern lights were a new weather phenomena for this area as were the unusual lighting storms that seemed to erupt ever more frequently. 

  With little guilt, I was glad that I had been selfish over the weeks while in confinement and had taken the precaution to hoard my diet bars and a new stash of canteens acquired by slight of hand.  The military rifle was a last minute snag, an opportunity I could not pass up since fate had placed it within arms’ reach when one of the careless guards left to relieve himself in the can.  I slipped away in to the woods that evening and have been on the run ever since. 

  Though things were bad to say the slightest, I was still alive and still physically healthy considering the alternative, though mentally exhausted to a fair degree.  The things I have seen and witnessed these past few years had molded me.  The way society fell apart at the seams and average people had devolved into brutes, willing to kill one another over a bottle of fresh water or a mere can of beans; made me wonder what kind of future we were fighting for.  The stories I could tell would fill a book.  Maybe I would sit down one day and write one, if there was anyone left to read it.

  I got the impression that a few in this ragtag group were less open than others; then again, it wasn't my place to pry.  Whatever secrets or personal memories they wished to keep to themselves were blotted out after they had discarded their past and assumed their new names.  Some things were just downright hard to discuss, and seeming overly curious would only manage to open old wounds.  I, like so many others
,
had been initially infatuated with reuniting with our families when the disaster occurred; no matter how much of a far cry the likelihood of that ever happening actually was.  The truth was, the result of such a quest to pursue the fate of our loved ones would end not in any affinity of what we might eventually find.

  Shortly after my escape from the quarantine camp I had wandered into the outskirts of a small town, but was wary about making contact with any hostile residents or accidentally stumbling within sight of any military personnel.  After slipping into an abandoned home, I found several newspapers that recorded the world events I had missed during my visitation back at the camp.  Actual newsprint was a rare thing to find most people used digital pads for streaming information in our paperless society.  I would occasionally find expensive tablets tossed in the street like so much garbage that had been burned out and turned into useless bits of plastic and wiring by the massive EMP that had swept the globe.

  Limited information I read therein stated how the MN4 asteroid had penetrated our orbit earlier than expected and the official reports were that it had split into two sections due to a combination of atmospheric friction and Earth’s gravitational forces.  One half slammed into Saudi Arabia while the other came crashing down into the China Sea near the Philippines, with much of the larger scattered debris showering mostly over India. I remembered having seen a brief meteor shower on the horizon that first night as I sat alone in the woods in my car, but its view was mostly hidden by the woodland trees. Needless to say, nobody was prepared for this eventuality.

  Impact on both land and sea combined into a major cluster-fuck with devastating results.  As it turned out, the colossal dual electro magnetic pulse caused by the asteroid sections as they punched holes through the atmosphere was merely icing on the cake.  In our electronic age we had put far too much reliance on fallible digital technologies which left us prone to such astronomical events.  Apophis effectively turned off our modern civilization like a light switch.

  Life was very hard that first year, especially so from all the fine debris kicked up into the atmosphere from the Saudi desert.  Static storms covered the globe, frequently erupting without warning, especially in mountainous terrain.  Out in the Far East their populated shores were almost entirely obliterated by tsunamis and aggravated earthquake zones that intersected along Indonesia.  What inland floods had not destroyed, aftershocks did.

  The initial death toll in that first week was stacked in the billions.  Shortly after came rumors about radioactive debris, which sparked further hysteria when the sickness was exposed.  The enveloping cloud of the epidemic became ever darker when aggressive flesh eating staph infections had turned public fears into utter chaos.  Anyone with open or seeping wounds were at risk, and it was shown the virus could even spread among shared clothing or blankets.  The overcrowded conditions of the hastily erected medical camps provided an optimal environment for the disease. 

  Such outbreaks were rare, but the panic it spread among the surviving population brought out the worst in people.  Remove all rules and consequences of society and it will test the true character of your fellow man.  In every single case these provisional medical bases had evolved into quarantine camps, ones I made well sure to keep a wide distance from them whenever I strayed into their midst.

  I once stayed for several months with the remnants of a small family along a village road who had the blessing of their home being well hidden from the main streets by the forested rim of a mountain.  I traded my stay by frequently scavenging for supplies in the nearby city and helping watch their two little girls as their loving parents held onto their own faint measure of sanity.  It was exceptionally dangerous scouting the central streets where the Weepers ran rampant, so I stayed to the outskirts of town.  This new pestilence turned every metropolis into a mass graveyard.  Dead bodies or what scattered bones were left of them littered the streets.  Fires burned uncontrolled, and I watched over time how once angry crowds that mobbed the urban avenues slowly dwindled over the months into nothing more than a handful of cautious survivors warily picking their ground.

  Nearly every store had either been looted or was a haven for infected rats and vermin that posed as much of a danger as the people who were afflicted.  They ate off the dead, as did the birds who were not as vulnerable to the virus; but which in turn infected any stray dog or cat that might consume their remains.  I usually found slim pickings among abandoned apartments and larger office buildings with private cafeterias.  Clean water too became scarce, since you could not even trust the rainwater that might harbor the bacteria draining into the streets and gutters, so everything that wasn't bottled had to be boiled; making daily life a real pain in the ass.

  Though the steep decline in population assisted in making those chance encounters of dangerous groups far less frequent; there was still the ever present and growing hordes of the infected emerging from the outbreak.  Dozens of times I came across the diseased who were alone, huddled into dark corners and as quiet as death itself, or wandering aimlessly in a store or mall grunting to themselves incoherently.  Some Weepers just stood in place, still as a statue as if they were an abandoned mannequin
,
which made their presence far more creepy.  Such encounters were especially frightful if they went undetected and you accidentally stumble upon one within arms reach.

  Groups of armed survivors often went on rampages, screaming 'Zombie Hunt' as they picked off the infected one by one.  Unfortunately, even innocent bystanders weren't safe either, and were frequently gunned down in the heat of the moment.  It was sickening to watch and reckless behavior that only served too further spread the blight among the feral pets and hungry vermin. 

  One day while charged with watching their little girls as the mother slept and father was out gathering wood, I had been distracted while cooking them a meager meal only to come out to find the youngest girl in a shadowed corner of the yard while her sister was at the dinner table inside.  The child stood there in her faded white dress quietly petting a dead squirrel, its eyes filled with blood and puss.  I stood there for a long moment, horrified in silence while the little girl pouted as she caressed its head down to its limp bushy tail hoping in vain that the little creature was sleepy and might soon wake up; until I finally mustered the courage to speak and told her in a cold stiff tone to put it down.

  I could not bring myself to waking the mother as she slept soundly in her bed, oblivious to what had befallen her child; I bit my lip raw wondering how to explain how I had failed to protect her daughter.  Their father was out collecting firewood would be back by daybreak, so I kept my distance from the adolescent and everything she touched until nightfall.  I left a note for their father, scribbled in charcoal of a burnt stick from the fire he had built that morning.  I simply couldn't bear to watch the misery that would unfold when he read it come morning.  I slipped away into the night that evening while they slept.  The muffled gunshot I heard echo through their small valley in the early light of dawn still haunts me to this day.

  There have been moments in my life I wasn't exactly proud of, but I try to learn from my mistakes rather than ignore them.  Far too many people who gave up all hope went crazy.  I tried not to be one of them.  There were more times than I can count when I honestly entertained the idea of putting that gun of mine to my head, but something kept me from it.  I was stubborn, like my mother.

  Thorn and his odd cluster of rowdies had made a temporary home here in the industrial building, but hadn't quite mapped out the entire complex.  There were still sections that had been blocked off by thick locked doors, but I was certainly willing to help with a bit of exploration if they needed me.  As I slept, the elderly man, 'Roy' as Killroy had requested that he would rather be called, kept a keen eye on me through the night.  If I had shown the slightest sign of symptoms, I am sure he would have personally escorted me down the hall and pushed me off the balcony with a very long pole.

  However, he checked me again in the morning with a minor exam; flashlight in the eyes and inspecting my gums, and a short verbal test to see how coherent I was.  Apparently, he had some minor experience in the medical field.  At least he was kind enough to rewrap my cut hand, which had begun to heal normally.  Roy made sure to set some additional ground rules if I chose to stay with them there, noting the level of the water tank that fed the plumbing was low and to keep our showers sparse.  Followed by instructions not to take food or rummage through any one else's stuff, and to immediately report anything unusual that could pose a danger.  Pretty much all of it was common sense advice.

  The little boy had awoken and Thorn had brought him a plate of food to eat.  He looked a bit under the weather as if he had a cold, which Felix later confirmed while we shared the gas stove.  Haiti was in a pleasant mood, eager to check more floors as he wiped down a few metal pry bars with a soiled rag.  He commented how it was
'just like Christmas'
whenever they found a room with any amount of useful stash.  Food of course was the top priority on the treasure list, but as the scavengers we had all become, each of us had our own set of values to the knick-knacks and equipment we might stumble upon.  Basically, the end, if you couldn't eat it or use it for protection or could keep you warm,; it was usually considered worthless just weight. 

  It was a vast change from being on the run.  Here I could keep clean and dry nor and not be constrained by the limitations of what I could carry.  Thorn helped me set my pack items out to dry on a makeshift clothesline in the hall and let me borrow a pair of rubber gloves to set them out, making sure I understood they would only be safe to handle once they had completely dried through.  I understood their strict precautions; it was the only way they had survived this long.

  It was Roy's turn to get some shuteye after having kept vigil over me the night before while Felix kept guard in the main room with the boy.  Serena and Thorn carried a few flashlights along with the hand made crowbars Haiti had supplied; who was my assigned partner during this excursion.

  They had actually only arrived here a short time ago, and there were still a few upper floors and the basement area below the shipping dock that were left on the list to be explored.  A few were merely utility rooms that bore nothing but stagnant cleaning supplies and burnt out wiring.  I was glad to hear they had yet to find any cadavers, assuming the entire complex had been abandoned after the asteroid hit.  We could glimpse ragged desk calendars still set to that date as a ghostly reminder of our cursed past. 

  Wire cutters and other tools were prized finds as were sealable containers.  Discovering sanitary towels or even toilet paper rose to the level of luxury items, but truly useful articles such as bleach for sterilizing had long degraded since it only had the shelf life of a year or less.  Medical alcohol was the only true alternative, but had limited uses.  It was humbling to see just how many daily household items we used to take for granted in the past could disintegrate so quickly over the years.  Our modern society had become far too over reliant on the conveyor belt of excess we lived by that everyone so readily abused. 

  Remove global mass transit from the equation and life comes to a screeching halt.  Many people died because they had absolutely no clue what to do if a meal did not come from a deli or in a frozen tray from a grocery store.  City dwellers fared the worse.  When water stopped flowing, toilets ceased to flush and sewers backed up onto the streets; the reeking stench of it would drift for miles, and only added to spreading illness. 

  Frozen foods had rotted within days if not weeks with no power to keep anything refrigerated, and expired canned food was a crap shoot for botulism after several years.  Fuel for small generators became a commodity, almost as much as it did for spare parts when they would begin to fail.  Years later, everyone had used up the last of their stashes and was left to endure hardships far beyond their own wildest expectations.

  On the top floor, we broke into a sizeable office room belonging to the plant chief where we found money scattered around the floor.  It was just useless paper at this point, not even worth burning fuel.  I knew there were some people who resorted to using it in place of toilet paper; but money was incredibly dirty.  Of course, old habits die hard and at first, paper currency was used for barter as it had always been before, without entirely realizing that they were handling in essence a reusable napkin that had been touched by countless individuals who may or may have not been exposed to the virus. 

  Paper money soon became a possible if not prime carrier of the virus that was quickly exchanged through many hands on an hourly basis.  It was an oversight of logic that cost a lot of people their lives; and it wasn't until much later that people got a clue that they were helping to spread the taint among the survivors.