Deadlocked 7 (11 page)

“Damn, man,” said Billy. “
Fuck him. You were better off without him.”

Reagan leaned forward and set his hand on Levon’s knee. He gripped it and shook his leg. “I think the first thing a man should aspire to be is a better father than the one he had. And I know you’d be a damn good father.”

“Provided some girl was dumb enough to fuck you,” said Billy.

Hero laughed and then swatted at his friend. “Listen to this virgin cracker.”

“Virgin?” Billy laughed as he avoided Hero’s swipe. “I might’ve only had enough to count on my fingers, but I had some fine ones in my day.”

“Shit,” said Hero. “I can count all the girls I’ve been with on my fingers too.” He started flipping his fingers rapidly, one by one counting to ten and then starting over. “It’d just take me a long damn time.”

“You two are hopeless,” said Reagan as he turned around to look back out the window with the binoculars. “Here I thought we were having an actual adult conversation and then you two have to go and pretend like you used to be Lotharios. You two wouldn’t know your way around a lady better than a vegetarian at a barbeque.”

“Listen to old man Reagan with the smack talk,” said Hero. “I thought back in your day they shackled women up in chastity belts and shit.”

“Not hardly,” said Reagan.

“All right,” said Billy. “What about you then? How many girls did you get down with in your day?”

“All that matters is one,” said Reagan. “The one I married.”

“Bullshit,” said Hero.

“Honestly,” said Reagan as he turned back around and set the binoculars in his lap. “I don’t know what the future holds for us, but you guys are still so young. Guys your age think they’ve got it all figured out, but you don’t know shit yet. These things you think are important now, like how many girls you slept with, none of that means anything when it comes down to it. When you grow up, you’ll find the one girl that matters. It’s not fairy tale bullshit either, I’m talking about really finding the woman that you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. The one you confess your soul to. The one you can’t stomach living without.” His voice cracked and he coughed. Hero realized Reagan was struggling with the memory of his lost family, barely stemming a breakdown. “Then, after you meet that girl, none of the others matter anymore. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a chance to have a family with that woman, and you’ll watch her love and care for your child. You’ll watch that kid grow up, and you’ll see yourself in him. All the love you have for that woman will be reflected in the child that grows up with the two of you as parents. Then maybe when you’re asked about how many girls you’ve slept with in your day, you’ll understand it’s the truth when you say, ‘Just one that mattered.’”

Reagan coughed again, then wiped a tear from his cheek. He chuckled uncomfortably and looked around the room. “Shit. All these pictures of this family in here are fucking with me. I’m crying like a baby over here.”

Hero reached over and put his hand on Reagan’s knee. “I’m sorry, man. Sometimes I forget how much you lost. Honestly, Reagan, I don’t think I’ve ever respected you more than I do right now.”

“Same here,” said Billy. “Give me the binoculars and go take a break, man.”

Reagan handed the binoculars to Billy as he got up. Billy took the old man by the shoulder and pulled him in for a hug that Hero joined in on. Reagan was shattered, the emotional dam that had held back his grief for so long had been ruptured, and he was struggling to stop sobbing.

Reagan pulled away and laughed uncomfortably again as he wiped his eyes. “Sorry guys, I don’t know where this came from. I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing’s wrong with you, man,” said Hero. “You’re a human being, and we’ve finally got some proof of it.”

“You take over,” said Reagan as he handed Billy the binoculars. “I need a fucking nap or something.”

They watched Reagan leave and then Hero raised his eyebrows as he looked at Billy. “Holy shit, that was heavy.”

“No kidding,” said Billy. “Didn’t expect that one.”

They were quiet for a minute as they ruminated on what had been said.

“You know what? I kind of did expect that,” said Hero. “Reagan’s been acting tough ever since we met him. He lost his wife and kid, man. That’s got to just tear a guy apart. I think that breakdown was way overdue.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said Billy as he sat on the seat where Reagan had been and looked out at the building through the binoculars. “Hey, hey, hey. I think I see something moving down there.”

“For real?” asked Hero as he took the binoculars from Billy.

“Yeah, look down near the right side of the rubble. Is that a person in there?”

Hero saw a hand pushing through the debris. “It sure the fuck is. Game on, brother!”

*   *   *

August 24
th
, 20 years after the apocalypse

Hero is confronting Beatrice in the cabin above the transfer facility.

“Hopefully we’re building a world that doesn’t need Gods,” said Bea
trice.

“Well, they sure the fuck don’t need people like you,” said Hero.

Beatrice crossed her legs and set her hands in her lap. “I understand your anger, Levon. I truly do. However, I’d ask that you put aside the self-righteous fury, just for a moment, and put yourself in our shoes.”

“I’ve got pretty big kicks.” Hero lifted his boot and wiggled it.

Beatrice cleared her throat, not amused. “Mankind’s desire to murder has always been the bane of culture. The unquenchable blood thirst inherent in man has stymied society since the day our ancestors built the first farm. Even in the most peaceful modern societies, this blood thirst reappeared, whether it was the invasion of countries that bore no threat to anyone but themselves, or…” Bea smiled and held up her finger to help exclaim her point. “How that same blood thirst got twisted into greed. Capitalism feeds on that greed, and businesses feed on the weak. It’s still the same blood lust, but the new blood is green.”

Hero shook his head. “Lady, you’re all over the damn map here. What’s your point?”

“My point is that we were doomed, and it was our very nature that doomed us. There was no hope of sitting down and talking things through, we were far past the point of no return. Every religion that ever sprang up across the globe was based on controlling the populace, taming them and twisting them to the will of the people in charge. Unfortunately, the same blood thirst I was talking about before reared its ugly head in our religions as well. The most bitter hatred the world ever saw was based on the fantasy of religion. Read the words of Jesus and you’ll have a hard time finding a reason for wanton murder, but you’d damn well better believe mankind found a reason, time and time again.”

“So you folks thought you’d make better Gods?”

“No,” said Bea. “Of course not.” She put her hand over her eyes, massaging them as she sighed. “I’ve digressed too much. All I was trying to explain was that war is in our nature, and it shows up on the battlefield, in the boardroom, and even in our churches. So, when scientists created the nuclear bomb, they started the inevitable countdown to extinction.”

Hero nodded and muttered, “Fucking Megadeth.”

“What’s that?” asked Bea.

“Nothing, sorry. Just a band my brother used to like. One of your scientists here was talking about the same thing; about how Einstein used to talk about how we were all doomed once the atom bomb was created.”

“Exactly,” said Bea. “And he’s right. That’s when our organization was born, with some of the greatest minds in the world coming to the same conclusion: That we needed a backup plan. The first members of The Electorate strived to avoid catastrophe, but things got out of control faster than we ever fathomed. When the bomb was unleashed, half of The Electorate insisted that the world would be aghast at the destruction it caused, and that mankind’s lust for war would end.” She shook her head and laughed. “It seems so jejune now, doesn’t it? They actually thought the development of the strongest weapon in history would give man pause. It didn’t take long for them to be proven wrong.”

Bea reached into her pocket and Hero stiffened his aim at her. She paused and held out her left hand as she kept her right in her pocket. “I just wanted a cigarette, if that’s okay with you.”

Hero nodded.

She took out the pack and offered him one. He shook his head. “
Not a smoker.”

Bea took out a long, thin cigarette and put it in her mouth. “Good for you. The world’s already doing a good job trying to kill you, no reason to give it a head start.” The cigarette twitched
between her lips as she spoke.

“Was The Electorate
the same people that developed the bomb?” asked Hero.

Bea lit her cigarette and nodded as she took a drag. “Some of them were,” she said as smoke
drifted out of her mouth. “Like I said, The Electorate was started by some of the smartest people on the planet. They hoped that the first time the world witnessed the horror of the nuclear age that war would end forever. That’s when the absolute worst possible thing happened.”

“What’s that?”

She pointed at Hero with her index and middle fingers, the cigarette pinched between. “Your president, Truman, dropped the first bomb and killed more than a hundred thousand people in an instant. An unheard of massacre, innocent babies evaporated from existence, the most horrific event in recorded history. And then do you know what he did, just three days later?” She grimaced while smirking, a devilish expression. “He did it again. If ever there was proof of mankind’s lust for death and destruction, surely that’s it. He didn’t even give Japan a chance to surrender before dropping another bomb, killing more babies for no damn reason at all. Not to mention that conventional thought at the time was the Japan was about to surrender anyhow, even before the first bomb dropped. When that second bomb exploded, we knew mankind was doomed. It was like the children in charge were handed a toy they couldn’t help but play with.”

Hero was about to say something, but Bea
trice spoke first. “It gets worse from there, if you can believe it. The Electorate was comprised of realists, and they recognized the enormity of what had been unleashed. Any optimists among them had their hopes dashed in the following decades. Instead of retreating from war once the atom bomb was let loose, our leaders rushed full throttle into the nuclear age. The arms race was on, and the world’s governments rushed to manufacture as many nuclear bombs as possible. In fact, the bombs built after Hiroshima were almost ten times as strong. I don’t remember the exact number, but I think at one point there were more than twenty five thousand nuclear bombs ready to be fired off. The United States alone had enough nuclear bombs to destroy the entire world dozens of times over. Now what possible sense does that make? Absolute lunacy, my dear boy.” She grimaced and seemed to hiss as she said, “Blood thirst at its very worst.”

“How the hell is what you did any better?” asked Hero. “You act like Truman was a villain, but he
killed a couple hundred thousand people; you killed six and a half billion.”

Beatrice took a long drag and nodded. “I agree, Levon. I’ve never thought of myself as the good guy here. The Electorate came to a terrible realization. We had to wipe out mankind to rebuild it, there was no other way. We chose to commit the worst atrocity in history so that our children could thrive in a world without war, without
illness, without fear. You see, there’s more to the story than just the atomic bomb. We had more reasons to be concerned about our future than just that. We had the ability to save the world from illness, but we had to destroy it first.”

“You’re talking about ending disease, right?” asked Levon. “Reagan told us about that.
He said you guys had figured out a way to end illness, but were worried it would lead to over-population.”

“Right. There are three factors here. The first is war and the start of the nuclear age, which we’ve discussed. The second is over-population,
like Reagan told you, which was nearly as much of a concern as the bomb. Believe it or not, before we released the virus the world was very close to running out of fresh water. There were nearly more people alive on Earth than there was water to support them, let alone to water plants, which is why so many of your corporations rushed to start producing bottled water.”

“What?” asked Hero with an unbelieving chuckle. “
Most of the world is water.”

“Salt water, yes,” said Bea. “Not drinkable water – big difference.
There were even oil companies that looked at water as the next most valuable resource to start charging for. Then, to make matters even worse, we discovered how to eradicate disease.”

“How is that worse?” asked Hero.

“Because we already had an over-population problem, Levon. Now try to imagine if no one died of disease anymore! You’ve just compounded the problem tenfold. Those of us in The Electorate are not evil people.”

“That’s debatable,” said Hero.

Beatrice ignored him and continued, “We wanted nothing more than to create a world where humans could live disease free, unafraid of war, and at one with nature. That was our goal, but we couldn’t achieve it without doing what we did. The Dawn program allowed us to eradicate genetic disease, and by only allowing the Dawns to breed we could ensure that future generations would be free of those diseases as well. Then, the anti-viral discoveries would allow us to destroy contagious diseases. Finally, the proper flourishing of beneficial bacteria would help us stymie bacterial infections. Our new society would be all but free of disease and illness.”