Jornada del Muerto: Prisoner Days (3 page)

After successfully using The 146 in vaccines
to conquer human disease, scientists turned their attention to the
lucrative luxury market. Within two years, there were vaccines for
everything from chronic pain to writer’s block. People began
getting vaccinated every year to uphold immunity to things like
obesity. The most popular luxury vaccinations were for issues once
relegated to expensive plastic surgery -- penis size, large
breasts, and round behinds. One shot, once a year, and you could
have the body you dreamed of. Luxury vaccines were created for
people from every walk of life. There seemed to be no downside.
Overall, people started living longer, and, worldwide, the
birthrate went down.

Soon, food was genetically modified to
accommodate the individual climates on every continent. Soon, even
the most arid corner of the world had transformed into a bountiful
bread-basket. China jumped in with their own versions of
genetically modified food. Within five years, the entire continent
of Asia, including the poorest of poor in India, were well fed and
disease free. Globally, people were living longer, and prosperity
reigned.

Veterinary medicine was the only holdout. In
2021, the American Kennel Club (AKC) tested a vaccine and found
that it changed an animal’s temperament. The AKC ruled against use
of the vaccines. More than one animal lost his Westminster Dog Show
title because of the discovery of vaccine use. The head of the
AKC’s eldest son happened to be a Senator. He passed a bill which
banned the use of DNA-based vaccines in animals in the United
States. The EU followed suit. A year later, under the “Cruelty to
Animals” act of 2033, the ban was modified to exclude some farm
animals - -- particularly chickens, turkey, and beef.

The end of disease reduced the need for
medical personnel. Low-paid technicians took over the duties of
seasoned, well-educated doctors. Countries closed their health
departments, and the World Health Organization was reduced to a
skeleton crew. The world was healthy and well fed. There was no
need to fund these organizations. Without oversight, The 146 was
used to improve cleaning supplies and other household products.

What no one realized is that every vaccine
and food product contained the same DNA sequence -- The 146. Food
researchers had piggybacked on the successful vaccine by using The
146 as a DNA anchor for the food-specific modification. The world
was awash in The 146 and the protein created by it, The
146-protein.

For more than ten years, most people
received a 146-based vaccine at least once a year and ate
146-modified food. At first, the only repercussion was greater
health and vitality. Then, quietly, in out-of-the-way places, there
were reports of trouble. The kooks of the world bred terror over
vaccines. Even Dr. Bonner’s label told of the coming apocalypse
caused by The 146. Most people did not notice anything was
seriously wrong until it was too late to do anything about it.

I had never received a vaccine until I moved
into this cell. The new vaccines were too expensive for Indian
Health Services, and the US Government wasn’t about to give away
their fancy vaccinations to freeloading Indians.

My pueblo had its own store of seeds. Our
gardens and farms were grown from seeds handed down over the
generations. Even if we could afford the new, modified seeds, we
had no interest in them. The Native American population as a whole
was so small, that no one noticed we weren’t participating in The
146-based vaccination and food programs.

Prison is the exact opposite from the
pueblo. Prison populations are among the first vaccinated. The
officials say it’s because of the close quarters in prisons, but
prisoners know they were being used as guinea pigs for the general
population. Every year, without fail, we’d get a needle full of
something that was supposed to keep us calm, compliant, and disease
free.

George had received every single vaccine,
going back to childhood. In the Pen, they vaccinated him first, so
that he could help enforce the vaccinating the rest of the prison.
I was often overlooked. I think I’ve had five vaccines in my entire
life.

The food at the Pen was the cheapest they
could find -- mostly food-like products made out of modified soy
and corn. We rarely ate anything that remotely resembled a
vegetable. Day in and day out, the prison population was dosed with
food and vaccines modified by The 146.

The last round of vaccination went like
clockwork. A technician came to the Pen and dropped off the
vaccine. This time, the vaccine included modifications to decrease
depression and reduce sexual aggression. The government was
attempting to end sexual assault the way they had ended
disease.

George was the fifth person in the world to
get this vaccine. We know this because we found his vial a few
years after everything happened. His vial was numbered
00000000005.

At exercise that day, he had laughed about
being a guinea pig. It was a beautiful day -- warm and clear.
George was in a great mood because he’d just been informed that he
would be released in two years. Although he never would have
admitted it, he was also excited to be free of his sexual
aggression. The idea of a life free of the sexual aggression which
had defined his life made George laugh so hard that the sound
echoed off the building. I stood in the yard, looking up at the
blue, cloudless sky and listened to that echo for what seemed like
an hour. It was a single moment of joy -- profound only because of
what happened next.

Eight hours later, he came to my cell. Or I
should say that his soul came to my cell. Well, more like a part of
his soul came to my cell. Ah hell, I don’t really know what part of
George came to my cell. I’d never seen a split soul before that
night. And I don’t know if George had always had a fractured soul
or if it happened that night.

I raised the alarm that George was ill. When
the guards found him, he was lying in a fetal position on the floor
of his cell. He was shivering with fever and unresponsive. The
guards dragged George’s body to the infirmary. The technician in
the infirmary said he’d had a stroke, but I knew differently. The
bright, wonderful, charming predator I’d known as George was gone.
They let him stay in the infirmary for three days. The medical
technician said there was nothing they could do, so the guards
dragged him to his cell to recover. When he returned, he could
barely move. He was no longer able to speak. During our exercise
hour, he worked through a single exercise routine, the same one we
do now, without his traditional daily variation.

Within three months of George’s “stroke,”
they began distributing the new vaccine worldwide. They vaccinated
about half the Pen population in one day. By nightfall, my cell was
full of souls again. I worked to send them along, but unlike any
natural death, these souls were tethered to the Pen by some
unnatural force. Even those souls who wanted to move on, begging to
join the afterlife, were stuck at the Pen.

I heard more than saw what happened next.
Bodies bereft of souls began eating their way through the prison
population. The screams and cries of those eaten in their bunks
echoed through the Pen. By nightfall, my cell was packed with
souls. I worked day and night to send along the untethered souls,
the souls of those eaten. Outside my locked steel cell, on its
quiet, forgotten hallway in the lower basement of the Pen, the
massacre continued.

When the sun rose the next day, October 31,
2046, the violence was unstoppable. The guards thought they could
contain the carnage by keeping the prison in lockdown. They were
wrong. I didn’t receive a meal that day or any day after that.

The guards let George out to fight these
soulless cannibals. But George was too ill. Instead, he stole a set
of keys from a dead guard, came into my cell, and broke the key off
in the lock. Even in his witless state, he knew I would care for
him. He knew that I was his friend.

We waited out the siege together.

We drank water from my sink. We didn’t eat
for almost a month. I was so busy sending along all of those souls.
I barely noticed the hunger. But George suffered. No longer able to
speak, he whimpered and mewed like a lost kitten. It was his
suffering that forced me out of our cell. I fought with the cell
lock and door for days until, in the middle of a bright day at the
beginning of December, judicious use of my pocket knife dislodged
the broken key and the door swung open.

I won’t describe to you what I found. There
aren’t words to describe that kind of slaughter. The unnatural
bloodbath haunts my dreams to this day.

As my grandmother had predicted, the
invaders to our lands had turned into wasps. The combination of the
modified food and vaccine had turned the prison population into the
violent, mindless creatures without souls most often called
zombies. I prefer the name my ancestor gave them -- wasps.

For the next month or more, I would build a
maze of bonfires from the human remains. Despite the open and
broken windows, the prison filled with the smoke and stench of the
pyres. The smoke kept the wasps away from George and me.

I left our cell every morning, piled another
stack of bodies or body parts, and lit them on fire. With the wasps
on my trail, I would race to the kitchen and lock the door. We had
electricity and natural gas then so the refrigerators, freezers,
and stoves functioned. I’d cook a feast for George and pack it into
cotton bags which I would tie onto my back. Through the fire and
smoke, I retreated to our cell.

By accident or divine design, George began
to heal. The monthlong water fast had flushed the free-floating 146
out of his system. Through my care, his fragmented soul
reintegrated, possibly for the first time, and returned to him.
Once I was able to provide food, his body began to heal. But his
mind has never been the same.

We spent the next month like that -- eating,
sleeping, and waiting. The prison had received a shipment of
dry-food supplies the day before the prison was inoculated. We had
enough food in the freezers to last us for years. In fact, by the
time we lost electricity, George and I were hunting game and
farming the exercise yard.

I am spent just thinking about this awful
time in my life. I need to quit for today or I’ll lose hope
altogether. I’ll try to write more tomorrow.

Emil by George

11/03/2056

How could this happen? I’ve asked this
question for years. If I get a chance, I’ll go over the specific
science of how people turned into wasps. For now, here’s an
overview of what I learned from scientists prior to their
destruction.

DNA’s primary purpose is to create proteins
to be used in the host. One hundred and forty-six nucleobases is a
tiny piece of DNA. The 146 was taken from what seemed like empty,
unused human DNA code. In order for it to work, The 146 needed to
merge with human DNA. This meant that every time any protein was
made, this set of codes was available to make protein.

Unbeknownst to anyone, The 146 creates a
tiny protein that destroys higher brain function. Scientists called
this protein ‘The 146-protein’ when they discovered it. This
brain-melting protein was not eliminated by the liver or excreted
in waste. The 146-prrotein built up in the blood. And, given enough
time, even people who had never received a vaccine would eventually
morph into to wasps.

The only reason The 146-protein didn’t
immediately disable people was that it was unable to cross the
blood-brain barrier. This was a known flaw in the vaccine protocol.
For example, despite all of their best efforts, scientists were
never able to create a luxury genius vaccine. The original
developers of The 146 believed this was a safety feature. The next
generation saw it as a drawback that left them unable to treat
mental illness.

The last vaccine resolved this problem by
blowing a metaphorical hole in the blood-brain barrier. Once the
hole was created, each heartbeat brought the brain a flood of The
146-protein. The result was that people transformed to wasps
overnight. This transformation would eventually be called “The
Great Human Transition” by the yet-unaffected media. 1 billion
vials of this particular vaccine were created. They gave out a
little less than 500 million of them.

By the time George fell ill, most farm
animals had been eating The 146-modified feed and receiving The
146-modified vaccines. They were in the same situation as human
beings. Farm animals began turning right about the time people
changed. Many wild animals and birds of prey transitioned because
they had been eating rodents who, in turn, had been eating modified
seed. The 146-protein transformed humans and animals into wasps
overnight. The wasps’ brains had turned into a liquid mush the
consistency of oatmeal. They became so infirm, I wondered if they
had been deteriorating bit by bit all along.