Torn (38 page)

“What’s up with Darius’ mother?”

“Wh
at do you mean? She’s very nice.
”

“Yeah,
but
so uncouth.”

“That’s terrible”

“It’s the truth,” Chuck said. “Of course, she’ll love it here.” He ran his
shoe
across the peanut shells. “Look at this floor.”

“It’s
atmosphere
.”

“It’s unclean.
Where is
Darius?”

“
He’s back
stage talking to the bar owner.”

“He’s not
gonna
come out and sing wearing shit
-
kicker boots, a
fringe
shirt, and a cowboy hat, is he?”

“No.” Bret chuckled.

“I’d
have to laugh if he did. Possibly make fun.”

“That’s better than bitching.”

“I do that well.”

“You do.”

“How are you feeling?” Chuck asked.

“Good.”

“Any
memories
?”

“Not of sex with Darius.”

“So you
a
re having memories.”

Bret
bit her lip.

“What?”

“Okay,
it’s not a memory, it’s an impression.”

“An impression.”

Bret nodded. “A feeling.”

“So how do you know it’s memory related?”

“Because I know how Blain died.”

“Continue.”

“I keep having nightmares, and I can’t
explain
it. It’s the same nightmare, and this dream has actually sparked a phobia in me. I worry about it all the time.”

“What? Jumping from planes? Trains?”

“Chi
huahu
as.”

Chuck coughed. “Chihuahua
s?”

“
Yeah
, why is that?”

Chuck laughed. “Ask Darius.”

“Do you know?”

“Ask
Darius
. I need a drink.” He started to laugh again, standing. “Do you want one?”

“I’m
pregnant
.”

“Have a glass of wine.
It’s good for your uterus.”

“Okay
.” She shrugged and watched Chuck. She jumped at the kiss to her cheek.
"Look at you spreading affection.”

“I like it,” Darius sat down. “Where’s
C
huck going?”

“Getting us a drink.”

“Me and him.”

“No, him and me.”

“You can’t drink. You’re pregnant,”
Darius
s
aid.

“Chuck said wine
is good
for my uterus.”

“What does Chuck know?”

“More about pregnancy than you. He had two kids. Plus, I had kids, I drank with Luke. Wine.”

“Look at Luke.”

“Hey
. . . .
”

Colin, who had arrived, in
terceded,
“Luke is a fine boy who is well on his way to being the next great scientific mind of our world.
Of course
. . .
”
Colin pulled out a chair. “
There’s
not going to be much competition.”

“
Where’s
Grace?” Bret asked.

“At the bar getting drinks. She said she wanted to go speak to the token black man.” Colin chuckled.

Darius sai
d. “Colin, Chuck is getting her
wine. Tell her she can’t drink.”

“Sure she can.
Wine is good for the uterus.”

Bret
smiled
smug
ly
and held out her
hand
. “There you have it.”

Darius grunted. “
I have
to go play.
”

“Wait.” She grabbed his arm.
“Before you go. Chuck said you’d know.
Why am
I having nightmares about Chihuahu
as?”

The corner of Darius’ mouth
raised
in a
smile and he walked away.

Bret’s mouth dropped open.

“Don’t worry about it.” Colin patted her hand.
“He probably doesn’t want you to remember.”

“I want to. I want to know why I am having the dream.”

“What’s the dream?”

“Just this
C
hihuahu
a yapping
viciously
.
I’m
scared in the dream then all of
a
sudden I see blood.”

“
Hmm
,” Colin nodded. “Makes sense.”

“Then please tell me.”

He grabbed her
hand
. “Only if you promise not to let it disturb
you
.”

“I
promise
.”

Colin took a deep breat
h. “When you were on that plane,
a
woman had a dog, a
C
hi
huahu
a. You
managed
to save it, Bret. You tucked it in your arms when you jumped from the plane.”

“Ah.” She
smiled
. “That was nice of me.”

“Yes. But
then
you were lost in the
woods without
food and Darius
roasted
it over an open fire.”

Bret shrie
ked.

“
Sorry
.”

“Did I
. . . d
id
I eat it?” She asked.

“You were starving
. . . .
”

Bret shrieked again.

“Darius said you ate more than him.”

Bret covered her mouth. Her stomach turned.
“I think I’m
gonna
be sick.”

Chuck returned and set the wine down. “What’s wrong?”

Colin replied, "I was just explaining the Chi
huahu
a story and why she could be having nightmares.”

“Oh,
yeah.
That’s a great story. I don’t get the nightmares, though.”
Chuck said. “
I mean
Darius said you loved every second of it.”

At that point
Bret
, hand tightly over her mouth, raced way.

Darius saw and came to the table. “What’s wrong with Bret?”

Colin answered.
“Well I told her about the Chi
huahu
a and how you blew it up.
Way to go, Dare-Dare
,
you have now
made
her vomit.”

“Great
. Just great. The head
-
injury
-
Bret gets sick, while the pre
-
head
-
injury
-
Bret sang my praises.”

“Why don’t you remind her when she gets back how much she worshiped your quick thinking and survivor skills?”

“You know what? I will. I’ll remind her. Thanks. Gotta play.” Darius returned to the stage and picked up the guitar.

Colin grinned arrogantly.

Curious upon seeing his expression, Chuck asked. “What is so funny?”

All but in a full blown gloating mode, Colin shook his head. ‘If you only knew.”

It was about two in the morning when Martin arrived at the Arizona site. It was project constructed in the late nineteen
nineties
in the event of meteor
impact
. Construction stopped shortly after the war on terror began and it wasn’t
continued

Until that moment.

Multitudes of trucks were present going in an
d
out of the
C
avarness
project. Martin’s
headquarters
were a command center
constructed
in the side of the mountain.

He was taken to his room first where he left his belongings and then to the project command center.

The project was named GEP, Global Extinction P
roject. It still
wasn’t
a
complete
setup, but a technician there said the monitor
ing
staff would be arriving at dawn and the equipment,
though
probably needing
tweak
ing
,
would be operation
al
by noon.

Where to even begin?

Not only was Martin in
charge of monitoring the events, he was in charge of overseeing the survival project as well. The specs for the survival city were left on Martin’s bed.

After taking a quick tour of the
facility
and realizing he’d need to tour it
again
after he
had some rest, he went to his room.

A bottle of
bourbon
was left on his night stand and he poured himself a shot
’
s worth to sip.

He kicked back on his bed, drink in hand and flipped open the construction plans.

A lot of what was amended was what he had suggested was needed in his thesis.

He was high
seventy
percent o
f the time he wrote that thesis;
he chuckled at that thought,
r
emembering
his
youth
and how
he
believed
marijuana
opened his mind more.

Now the
product
of a stoned young man was being used as
a guidance
tool for a national project.

Even laying on his bed, in the command center, encased in
the
GEP, Martin didn’t understand the whys of it all.

Perhaps the president was just trying to get a grip on al
l
that was going to happen.

It was obvious he was trying to ensure that an extinction
event
would not take place.

Martin knew a survival
city
wasn’t needed to ensure the human race would go on.
A general
,
running
operations
in some mountain
,
was obsolete in the final stages of survival. The human race was self
-
equipped with a survival mechanism. No matter
what
, no matter how, government project or not, the will to live would supersede the cause to die, a
nd when it was all said and done
, there would be people left to carry on.

He didn’t realize it, but w
hen Sgt. Mann felt the breeze hit him, he needed it. He
closed his
eyes and basked in the four
-
second glory. For a second, a split second, it chilled the sweat
on
his brow and he had
relief
.

Stationed in German
y
, Sgt. Mann and his family were moved to the United Kingdom
when the United States committed some of
its
European
-
based
soldiers
to
border
and watering hole patrols.

Sgt. Mann worked both.

He was glad that power was restored to the western portion of the UK, but that brought in more refugees. The
influx was under way, b
ut where to send the people was the question.

Cruise ships were
being
used to house refugees, and Sgt. Mann couldn’t help but think those people had it best.

Water, cool air.

The
heat wave
was
stifling
, and sitting in idling cars
didn’t help.

The refugees were all from France. Survivors of the Paris flare were traveling into Calais and taki
ng the ferry through the Strai
t of Dover into the UK.

They were com
ing by the thousands
.
Extra ferries were added, but that still didn’t help the wait.

There
was no power in France, and in the
heat wave
it prov
ed
to be
too much.

Although
the
Paris
flare
destroyed Paris
,
France
,
it scorched m
uch
of
the
countryside in the process.

A
surveillance
plane
flying over the outskirts of Paris
could
see bodies where they dropped from the oxygen
being
sucked out of the air.

But that wasn’t
what was
official
ly
posted on the Apocalypse blog ring started by some fiction writer. People would post what they saw or experienced on the blog ring, and people like Sgt. Mann’s wife would read it faithfully.

There were things he believed to be true, and
other t
h
ings
he didn’t think could hold water.

Water.

He h
oped he was on the watering hole
duty the next day.

The shortage of fresh water coupled with the
heat wave
caused the UK to establish
w
atering holes where people went and got cooled off. It was
recommended
to
visit
them at sundown.

Being on
watering hole duty meant being in the water.

It was better than standing in line, checking cars.

Where
did
they come from, where were th
e
y going, check their papers,
etc
. . . .

Sgt. Mann was just about ready to return fro
m
his ten
-
minute
break. He called his wife whom had hadn’t seen since they arrived.

“Paris had rain today,” she told him. “It rained hard.”

“All that smoke, bound to cause something.”

“Yeah, now it’s steam. It
put
out
a lot of fires, they say. And they think they’ll be able to get in and
rescue
. God, it feels good to have internet and television back.’

He said ‘I bet’, spoke a bit more about their daughter, informed her he’d be seeing her soon, and returned to his break.

He held new orders in his hand, o
rders that came via a note.

He was to report any incident out of the norm, no matter how small it
seemed
, if it was not of the norm, he was to email the incident details to General Myers at Project GEP.

Sgt. Mann wasn’t sure of what the GEP stood for, nor did he really care. He just wanted to do his job.

What constituted out of the ordinary was a wide open field. After all,
the thought of
refugees pouring into London wasn’t ordinary.

The
United
Kingdom
freely opened
its
borders
to refugees. This not only put the citizens on high
alert for
terror, it made the citizens angry.

How many protestors had they arrested for throwing things at the
refugees?

Walking back to his post, Mann watched two more cars being moved from the line. The smart
people
shut off their ignitions and stood outside.

“Thanks,” the young British soldier said to
Mann
, when he was relieved. “Just in time, too.”

“What do you mean?” Mann asked.

“See that long line?” He motioned his head upward.

“Jesus,” Mann commented, the line of congested traffic had no ending.

“Ten-ten ferries. Three of them. Thos
e
folks are not gonna be happy or smell very good.”

Mann gave a curious look.

“Poor povvies been waiting for
three
days to get the ferry.”

“Great.”

“Good luck mate,” the soldier smiled and moved out.

Mann waved the
next
car through.
He was one of fifteen soldiers working the lines. He asked his typical questions,
checked
the
paper work and moved them through. He gave them the information
al
pamphlet provided by the
government
. Where they should go, what they could do to be more comfortable.

Five cars later, the line from the ten-ten ferry began to arrive.

The window wound down.

Mann
caught
with the air conditioned air a whiff of a
putrid
order, held back a
cringe
. “
Where
you coming from?” he asked the driver. An older man. The car held only his wife and children, no belongings.

“Paris.” He answered, sounding nasal.

“Paperwork.” Mann requested.

The
wife handed the paper as she coughed.

“
Thank
you
.” Mann reviewed it.
After
asking a few more questions
, he allowed the car to pass.

Next.

The car was packed, people sitting on people. The driver
intermittently
coughed and sniffled during the processing. Sgt. M
ann stepped back. The last thin
g he needed was to catch a summer cold.

Mann wished him luck, t
o
ld him to take care of himself,
and waved the next car forward.

It wasn’t u
ntil the car after that arrived
that it
struck
him. Five cars in a row. All the
passengers were exhibiting cold symptoms. Maybe it was his imagination, he didn’t know. But no
sooner
did the six
th car pull
forward, and the woman driver had dark circles a
round her eyes and coughed, than
Mann
stepped
back. He told the car to hold on, and while pulling forward the barricade horse, called for a replacement.

“What’
s going on?” asked the soldier.

“Hold thi
s line while I find Major James,
” Sgt. Mann said and sought out the commander of the border operation.

He was in his tent on the phone.
When
he saw Mann he waved him in. The call ended quickly, and he asked what was up. He saw the stoppage of the line.

“It might be me
being
paranoid, but I halted the six
th
car. Five cars in a
row had sick people in it. Cold
s, you know. When the fifth car went
through
it finally rang to me. But when the
sixth
arrived
. . . .
”

“Your point?” the Major asked.

“My point is these are all refugees who were on a ferry together and waited together for two days.
Maybe it’s my imagination, or maybe they have something, I don’t know. We weren’t told to look for il
lness but
. . .
”

The
Major
held up his hand and walked from the tent. Mann
watched
him. He pleasantly approached the stop
ped
car
at
Mann’s line, the
n
walked to the next line.
He
as
ked that soldier some questions and moved to the next.

The Major then made his way to his
commanding officer
, and whistles blew shortly after that.

Barricades were immediately set up. People
honked
, got out of their cars, screamed and yelled. Major James,
uninhibited
,
walked back to the tank.

“I’m not a doctor,’ he said. “But you brought up a valid point. Thank you,
Sergeant
.” And he picked up the phone.

It wasn’t long after that orders were given to seal off the border. No one was allowed to pass. Gasmasks were mandatory, and until the health
ministry
arrived, the soldier
s
were to walk the line of cars and check each and every passenger for signs of illness. If they
contained
the
ill, they were to yellow
flag
the car.

Mann ran out of flags.
Of all the cars he checked, not one contained a well environment.

Darius wanted to kill his mother. Not that sleeping in the same bed with Bret didn’t have its perks, but i
f he had to listen to her throw
up one more time he
w
as going to scream.

And she didn’t do it quiet
ly. She was loud, a
s if every ounce of her insides were painfully searing upward.

He dreaded the thought of being in the birthing room.

From the desk in the bedroom
Darius looked up to a sound of up
-chucking
.

He was working on mathematical equations. He thought if he got up early, Bret would sleep.

Another upheaval, t
his one not productive.

There she goes, he thought. Nothing in her stomach. He looked at his watch. She had four more minute of the dry heave
s
.

Math problem. Work
. . . .

Up heave.

He dropped his pencil. “Bret, can you do that more quiet
ly
?”

Silence.

Darius smiled
.

The door to the bathroo
m flew open. “Fuck you, Darius.”

“What?” he said shocked.

Bret shoved a cracker in her mouth. “I got sick before, but never like this.”

“You were never this old before when you got pregnant.”

She gasped and choked, needing a drink of water.

“Your
body
. . .
”

“Are you saying I’m old?”

“Older. Older. I’m saying you’re older than you were when you gave birth before. Thirteen years make a difference.”

“So does bad sperm.”

He turned in his chair, laughing. “Did you just say bad sperm?’

“Yes.” Bret plopped on the bed, shoving another cracker in her mouth.

“So this is my fault.”