The End!

That's it, the end, that's all there is.

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Chapter 50- 20,000 Hours

Chapter 50

20,000 Hours

A Small blue planet

Smoke rose sullenly from the old city and the screams were nothing more than faded memories and distant echoes now.  A proud battle tank stood motionless in the middle of the street, blood turning black in the rising sun.

Barricades had broken and defenses had been breached.  Nothing was left to stand in the way of the storm.  A piece of cloth, now void of meaning, fluttered on in the breeze.

The parade ground was dotted with human shaped forms but no one spoke, no one cheered or saluted, or smiled, or laughed or wrote anything down.  No one remembered the Beatles, or Marilyn Monroe.  No one remembered the fall of the Berlin Wall or the Moon landings.

No one recalled their first kiss, their first crush or their babies first words.  No one cared or doubted, no one loved or hated, no one had a heart full of spite or a mind full of fears.

No one, no one, no one……

The cloth fluttered meaninglessly in the breeze

Chapter 49- Leaves In the Wind

Chapter 49

Leaves In The Wind

Chicago, Illinois

Jack Krane sat down next to his wife and looked at her face.  She was pale and tired but she was still wearing her make up.  She was facing the end of the world with her make up still on.

Jack stroked her back away from her face and she looked up at him now.  “Jack?” she said sleepily.

“Lucy, did you sleep at all?” he asked her.

“Yeah, some.  Thanks for keeping a watch out,”

“That’s okay.  That’s what husbands do for their wives,” he said with a hint of pride in his voice.

A gentle breeze blew through the house and the wind-chimes in the kitchen spun, singing softly.  Jack looked around but wasn’t wary.  They would have plenty of warning if they were going to have company, if they were going to be interrupted.

“Are you hungry?  Can you eat something for me?” he asked her.

She shook her head. She was thin now, she had always been slim but now she was skinny.  Jack supposed that it may not prove to be a huge problem.  The last radio broadcasts had said that the window was blowing south.

Jack kissed her on the forehead, another of their little rituals.  She smiled as she always had when he did that.  He wished he could remember them all, all of the smiles.  A smile when he got back from work, a smile when he woke up in the morning, a smile because of a bad joke, all smiles because she loved him.

Jack was a practical and pragmatic person and far from ever being considered quitter.  He had graduated high school and gone to Iowa State before transferring in his second year to Harvard.  They had told him he wouldn’t make it, that he wasn’t smart enough.  But Jack Krane had simply worked harder than the other kids.  He had made himself better and brighter by dint of application.

Even now, at the end of all things, Jack had kept working and kept them alive, kept them together.  Even when he knew it wasn’t going to matter, he had kept going.  But when the bomb was dropped in Texas, he knew that it wasn’t going to be long now.

“What will we do?” she had asked him, terror making her face bleak.

He had laughed this time and she had looked puzzled by this.

“We’ll be okay”, he had replied.

“How?” she had asked him with a note of desperation in her voice.

How indeed?  The things were everywhere now.  Even with the Air force bombing at will and the further threat of nuclear attack, they were everywhere. At night they would move on, attacking and killing and making more and more of them.

They had come to the old Summer house, with its wide open spaces and it’s beautiful orchard.  They had come with the clothes on their back and food in a suitcase.  And Jack Krane had wondered how, how would they be okay.

It wasn’t just America now, it was like the whole world was slowing spinning into the abyss.  Somewhere far away someone had pulled the stopper from the drain and now the world, the human world, was falling away.

He had taken care of Lucy during this awful crisis.  But in a way, protecting her was a way to avoid the full horror of the situation.  By protecting her, by keeping her sheltered from it, he was able to shelter too.

Now there was no sense hiding from it anymore. 

“It looked like two Suns rose over America,” she had said to him that day.  She had always had a lyrical sense that he had never possessed.  He had graduated from Dartmouth with a degree in English Literature and had written poetry from her heart.  It wasn’t sweet, like she was.  It was dark and sullen and Jack didn’t like it very much.  It conjured up the bleak landscapes of North Dakota where she had grown up.

She nestled into his shoulder now and she smiled.  There were no tears.

“You know, I realized I know how it will be okay in the end,” she said to her husband.

“So do I.  What did you come up with?” he asked his wife.

“It’ll be okay because we’ll be together,” she said with her smile.

They had linked hands then and waited for the sun to set.  She had spoken to him now, taking her turn to shelter him from the certain future.  She had begun with one of her favorite poems, Alan Ginsberg’s “Eastern Ballad,”

‘I speak of love that comes to mind: 

The moon is faithful, although blind; 

She moves in thought she cannot speak. 

Perfect care has made her bleak. 

I never dreamed the sea so deep, 

The earth so dark; so long my sleep, 

I have become another child. 

I wake to see the world go wild.’

They truly had seen the world go wild.  She kissed him on the cheek as they watched the sun set for the final time.

Las Vegas, Nevada

The lights flickered and died for the final time and there was a great dread scream.  People fled into the darkening sky.  There was a staccato flash of light as guns were fired, almost at random.An awful bellowing roar followed. 

The fountains stopped and the slot machines sat like a row of metal tombstones.  A roulette table stood sentry, a small metal ball meaningless now.  The bars of the zoo had been twisted by some awful impact and the birds weren’t singing anymore.

The air was full of grief.

Akron, Alaska

They sat on the snow covered hillside and watched the light show at the end of the world.  A great awful glare lit up the sky as a huge city vanished into a silent white light.  Some of them were crying and others were smiling.  Each of them greeted their own extinction in their own way, as had always been the human way to deal with adversity.

They were the last Americans now, of that they were sure.  What was going on was on its way towards them, the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem. 

Snow fell on the just and the unjust alike.

Hoboken, New Jersey

A man-shape blundered into view.  It’s face streamed blood from where its head had been but now there was only a bloody dripping maw, full of ragged teeth and tongues.  It was huge, this beast.  It stood nearly twelve feet from the ground, supported by the hideous form of more bodies twisted and fused.

It had no eyes to speak of and yet it seemed to perceive that they had now drained the last living things from the area.  It raised its head-shape and let out a coughing bark. There were others around, it knew that.  But there was no reason to stay here anymore.  Across the river the great city was a burning ruin now.  All of the life that had glared into the night was extinguished.

All of its landmarks still stood, ironic monuments to a dead race.  A raven fluttered down and landed on the roof of a car.  It pecked at the hand of a burned corpse.  As the beast lumbered into view, it took off with a squawk

Chapter 48- Fire For Effect

Chapter 48

Fire For Effect

Richmond, Virginia

A young man was stood outside late at night, holding his cell phone high above his head, trying to get a signal.  Perhaps he was waiting for his girlfriend to call, perhaps he was waiting for his mother to call, perhaps a great many things.  As it turns out, it didn’t matter at all what he intended, what he hoped or what he dreamed.

A surprising sight hopped into his view, causing him a pause.  A squirrel, no larger than half bag of sugar landed at his feet.  He took an exaggerated step back and laughed.  Maybe he’d been drinking, maybe he was on drugs.  Maybe he was afraid of squirrels.  As it turns out, it didn’t matter what he was afraid of.  All of his fears and nightmares were about to be subsumed.

The squirrel’s small bloody face tore apart as it leapt again.

A new day had dawned.

Ax, Utah

The convoy of trucks drove on, faster and fast, trying to get away from Salt Lake City.  The CB radio kept up the chatter and reporting that General McInnes had sealed off Salt Lake City, declaring the “Free State of Utah” and that he would no longer follow the orders of General Pierce, the false General of the United States.

Pierce had promised swift vengeance to restore the Union and the people who had once lived in Ax, Utah, had been woken by refugees, American refugees fleeing Utah as fast as they could.  So they had gotten out of bed fast, hair still a mess and make up not applied and grabbed whatever possessions they could.  They had fled into SUV’s and trucks, cars and Humvee’s and they had taken to the road.

Overhead, bat-winged “vengeance” awaited an order.  An Air Force Major curtly acknowledged the call and swung his B-2 Spirit Bomber around.  A single small black canister fell into the center of Salt Lake City, casting the fleeing refugees in a new shadow.  Another mushroom cloud rose above America’s bleeding landscape.

Chicago, Illinois

Jack Krane sat on his couch, a glass of whiskey in his hand.  His wife, Leah, sat sobbing against him as he watched the television.  Only one week beforehand they had watched in awe as Senator Long had delivered his “stolen night” speech and re-energized America and its people.

Now there were reports coming in that the world community had turned its back on America.  A multi-national force stood ready to seal “diseased and chaotic America” off from the rest of the world.  Jack shook his head.

“Too late, it’s all just far too late,” he said to Leah.

Washington, D.C

When the bomb finally went off, it blew apart the Stryker armored personnel carrier, just as it was intended to. But it also blew apart another forty or fifty innocent protestors who were gathered around what was once referred to as the Whitehouse.

The bomb also blew apart a huge metal fence and a white-stone building that had once inspired so much in so many.  America lost its capitol and it’s enforced leaders.  Heroes and villains died alike in a storm of fire and rock.

Later on a terrorist group claimed credit for assassinating America’s first ever tyrant.  The Generals that had set up their own independent commands jostled to take command whilst General Kyle continued to report rioting and chaos in Richmond.

Then he didn’t report anything more.  Richmond went “dark” after six nights of unspeakable blood and terror.  It was the first of many; it was the first of them all.

Valhalla Vector, Above the US

A squadron of F-22 Raptor’s flew, flanking a “Big-Eye” command and control vehicle.  The huge “Big-Eye” was set up as a bank of radars and computers, with enough optics on it to scan the whole of the Eastern seaboard.

But all you had to do was look out of your cockpit window and look down at the spreading darkness to know that whatever it was that America was at war with, it had spread faster than anyone could have expected.

There were no lights as such on in Richmond, Raleigh, and Baltimore or even in D.C.  Senator Long had moved the Capitol to Philadelphia and army units had swarmed towards the gathering night, hoping for a chance to redeem themselves in a bloody final battle against the invaders.

But they didn’t come to fight a war; they simply vanished into the population, into the undergrowth and into the air.  It turned out that to stop them completely required the kind of will that no sane human being possessed.

You see any living cell could be assimilated, anything at all.  Even patches of grass had been known to be turned into “the infiltrators”.  They weren’t a favorite choice, they wanted to be human.  But when no human was available, they would take on any shape at all. Mice, rats, cats and dogs, anything.

As fingers were pointed and hands were raised, the ugly truth came out that the one chance the human race had to seal these “things” away was to leave them where they had been found in the ice.  But General Pierce had given orders for them to be brought back and they had been lost into the mountains of Venezuela.

And now they were everywhere.

“That’s the order,” said Vampire Leader, the squadron commander.

“Are you sure skip?” asked Vampire Three.

“Affirmative,” replied Vampire Leader.  “We’ve got official strike orders,”

The F-22’s swung low with dizzying speed above the Atlanta skyline.  Missiles and bombs, twenty millimeter cannons cut apart the vast crowds of people caught on the bridge.  The great city was sealed off in fire and blood.

It was still just a token gesture.  You was as well have asked an ant to stop a volcano from erupting. You may as well have asked a small blind child to stop a turn back a herd of stampeding buffalo.

Nothing could stop the avalanche now.

Manhattan, New York

Screams and gunshots, a raging fire at Macy’s and a cloud rising above the Empire State building as the city that never sleeps went into its final death throes.

An orgy of death swirled around the littered and ravaged streets of 5^th Avenue.  Times Square had been the last effective blockade and it had fallen a day and a half ago to a horde of attacking beasts.  They had been getting bigger and bolder, more and more intelligent and more and more advanced.

Some of them were using guns too now.  Of course they preferred to catch humans alive so they could be “changed,” but when they put up a stiff fight, the infiltrators would simply cut them apart with gunfire.

Manhattan died slowly, taking its stubborn toll on the looters and the renegades, takings its brutal toll on the beasts that owned the night.  Their death howls filled the air over and over as flame throwers, Molotov cocktails and other weapons caused them to die a fiery death.

But as long as one or two survived, there would always be more.  There were always more.  And they didn’t need to sleep, they didn’t need to eat.  They didn’t feel pity or remorse or fear or fatigue.  They simply went on in an unstoppable tsunami of flesh and fangs, teeth and blood.  They swept America from the map, one city at a time.

Mexico was falling too, though the Mexican army was now joined by volunteer troops from all over South America.  And the Canadians were fighting a ranged battle with cruise missiles and sniper rifles.

The Chinese had a much more elegant solution to the American disease.

Sturgess, Texas

A new sun rose over America and a small town vaporized; metal turning into gas.  Thousands died in a split second and thousands more were swept away by the rising flames and fire.

It was still far too late

Chapter 47- Sleep Of Reason

Chapter 47

Sleep Of Reason

Washington, D.C

He’d always loved the Senate building a little bit.  It was a grand, gloating building and in its own way it was even more American than the Whitehouse was.  Hayden’s career had begun over at the Sam Rayburn building, working as an intern for congressman Jeffrey Haynes of Florida but it was as the Senate Minority Whip’s chief of staff that he’d made his current reputation.

Hayden walked past a pair of Airborne soldiers who were sat on the ground.  They both looked utterly stunned and young, far too young to be carrying assault rifles and body armor.  Hayden felt awfully sorry for them.  America had lost its identity in the last week but for the army, they had lost all their faith in the chains of command.  These airborne soldiers were guarding a largely empty building from a crowd of protesting citizens.

Elsewhere in the district people were throwing petrol bombs at the “pigs” that were in charge of the coup.  Already there were calls from rival commanders who wanted to remove General Pierce.  But Hayden couldn’t see what difference it made now. The die was already cast; the game was already played out.

He walked the empty corridors, still strewn in discarded paper work and blood stains, still riddled with broken glass and chaos.  Hayden shook his head.  They were in the end of it now, the final sands drifting to the ground.

“Sir?” he asked at the door.  Senate Majority Leader Dustin Long turned around from window and looked over at him.  As ever the old man looked untouchable in an imaccualte coal grey suit, with stark white hair and a black tie.

“Mr McDonald.  It’s a surprise to see you.  A welcome one,” said Dustin, his Southern accent still strong even when no cameras were on.  Hayden smiled weakly and entered the room.  The room was tidy but bare.

“I’m sorry but my staff are all at home.  I sent Jenny back to Atlanta,”

“How is she?” asked McDonald.

“Terrified, of course,” replied Dustin.

“I’ve come from the Whitehouse,” There was no point beating around the bush.

“I assumed as much.  As ever was the case with you son.  What does the damned usurper want now?”

“He wants us to legitimize him.  He wants you to reconvene the Senate,”

“He does?  He’s got another thing coming,”

“Other Generals have turned against him Senator.  The pack of dogs is utterly out of control,”

“Jesus wept.  Cant say I’m overly surprised though.  It got like that when I was in my days in service,” Dustin waved his hand to the medals in a frame above his desk.  A bronze star earned in Vietnam.

“War is the sleep of reason,” said McDonald, forgetting where the quote came from.

“The sleep of reason produces monsters,” replied Dustin.  “You always were smart for a yankee,”

A wry smile reached Hayden’s tired face.  “We’ve got to do something.  I think it may be too late for anything that isn’t just symbolic,”

“Symbolic, like old glory coming down.  Was that your doing too?”

“I wanted people to know that America had little or nothing to do with what was going on anymore.  The General has the reigns so he gets the responsibility too,” replied McDonald.

“Symbolism indeed.  The whole nature of a flag is symbolism.  But people fight and die for it.  I’d have gladly laid my life down for old glory a number of times.  But that was before the Iran-Contra affair, before the eighties and the rise of Reagan and the neo-cons.  And before those lunatics brought down the towers.  I don’t think the America I grew up with is alive anymore,”

“Senator, if we don’t take action, there may not be any America left at all soon,” said McDonald starkly.

“I know.  What do you recommend?”

“Speak to the people Senator.  I’ll get a camera crew here and as many Senators as are still in D.C  We’ll fill the Senate chamber and you’ll address the nation,”

“I’m not the President,” replied Dustin curtly.

“No one ever said you were sir.  But you are the Senate Majority leader.  You’re the symbol I want to show them.  That there is still an America if the people want it,”

“You still believe we can survive this damned insurrection?” asked Dustin.

“I don’t know.  But I know that hope will keep us going.  That’s what I need you to do.  That’s what America needs you to do.  Give us hope again Senator.  Speak like you did back in the seventies, speak like you did at the convention in nineteen eighty eight,”

“They didn’t like my speech much at the time,” replied Dustin.

“This is a time for American legends to be made, this is a time for American legends to be unmade,” quoted Hayden McDonald, aware he was crying a little bit again.  “I know that speech off by heart,”

Senate Majority Leader Dustin Long stood tall and straight backed and he looked back out his window.  Somewhere in D.C, a fire was raging out of control.  There was the distant hollow crack of rifle fire as America ripped itself to pieces.

“Get the cameras.  I’ll do my best to give them hope,”

“I will. Thank you,”
“You know that hope alone isn’t enough?” asked Dustin Long.

Hayden couldn’t bring himself to reply.  There was nothing left but hope.

Chapter 46- Twilights Last Gleaming

Chapter 46

Twilights Last Gleaming

Washington, D.C

Colonel Carpenter left the room but the shouting going on inside was still audible even with the door closed.  He walked back into the old chief of staff’s office.  Two men were asleep and Carpenter felt a pang of jealousy.

“Sleep,” he said to himself.  He remembered the old Henry V line about humble men with dreamless sleep.  Carpenter doubted he would ever have dreamless humble sleep again.

“Mr McDonald,” he said softly.

There was no sign that either of them had heard him.  Colonel Carpenter took a second to check his reflection and was horrified by the ashen faced stranger who looked back at him.

“Colonel?” came a sleepy voice.

“Jack,” replied Colonel Carpenter.

“What’s going on?” Jack Krane got to his feet and stretched.  His face looked more lined and tired than Carpenter remembered it being just two days ago.

Jack walked over and woke his boss up.  Hayden came up with a start and got to his feet suddenly.  Carpenter saw he was gasping for air and his eyes had turned an awful red color.

“Mr McDonald?” asked Colonel Carpenter.

Hayden McDonald stood there for a moment, trying to remember where he was.

“Mr McDonald, you’re in the Whitehouse.  You fell asleep in your office,”

“Jesus,” replied McDonald, his face reflected a perfect imitation of surprise.  But fatigue meant that he only felt the barest copies of true feelings.

“I’m sorry gentlemen.  I’d have let you sleep but there have been two developments that you need to be made aware of,”

Jack Krane poured coffee, tasted it and threw it down a sink.

“First of all, the test in Cavill has proven to be ineffective. A subject proved negative on the test but then was later found to be an infiltrator,”

“How did it fool the test?” asked McDonald.

“They figured out what response we were looking for, I guess,” replied Carepneter.  “We’re not sure yet,”

“What was the other thing?” asked McDonald.  Jack came back in passing him a mug of coffee.

“It’s crap, sorry boss,” said Jack.

Carpenter laughed in spite of himself.  The world was ending all around them and yet American’s still found the time to care about a cup of coffee.

“I’m afraid the other thing is very bad news.  General Pierce and the rest of the committee ordered an air strike against Cavill,”

“Fuck me,” breathed Jack Krane.

“Problem is that the pilots initially refused.  Eventually General Barrigan found a pilot who would make the strike.  A strike against Cavill was about 90% effective and a new cordon is being set up”,

“Did anyone survive the blast?” asked McDonald.

“No.  It was a maximum yield attack.  Nothing could have survived, not even a microbe,”

Jack Krane had stood there motionless for a moment.  He rushed out of the room.

Carpenter watched him run, as did McDonald.

A clock ticked on in the office.

“I bought that clock a year and a half ago in Athens,” said McDonald, in a matter of fact voice.

“It was a nice family owned antique shop, they’d had the shop in the family for more than one hundred years.  They’d seen all kinds of strife and sorrow.  The clock didn’t seem anything special to me but I wanted a closer look.  On the underside, the carpenter of the frame had cut in his initials and the date he carved them,”

Carpenter looked at Hayden’s blue eyes, rimmed in red like his soul was bleeding through.

“His initials were H.M, my initials.  The date was eighteen twenty five,”

Jack returned to the room pale and clammy.

“You okay Jack?” asked Colonel Carpenter.  He felt a growing affinity for the young Deputy Chief of Staff.

“I’ll live,”

“There’s more I’m afraid,” said Colonel Carpenter.  “Certain sections of the military didn’t approve of what the General did.  They’ve decided he has to step down in the next twenty four hours.  General Pierce believes that they intend to set up a permanent dictaroship so he’s going to resist them,”

“God help us all,” whispered Jack Krane.

“It may come to that, “ replied Carpenter.  “We’re in the early stage of s a for-real civil war.  Our country is about to go Bull-Run all over again and it’s with F-22 Raptor’s and M4 Rifles this time.  This is a disaster.  Even if the infection has been dealt with, the country wont be the same for a decade or more,”

“If it ever recovers at all,” added McDonald.

“Indeed,” replied Carpenter.  “I’m going to do my best to hold the pieces together.  Some of the generals are also calling for the President or the Senate to reassume political control. I’d like you to go and speak to the Majority Leader to see if he can play ball,”

“He’s a hard ass but he’ll do what needs to be done for the Republic,” replied McDonald.

“Is it too late?” asked Jack Krane. “ Are we just moving deck chairs on the fucking Titanic?”

“I don’t know yet,” replied Carpenter, telling a half truth.  “Right now it’s not possible to be sure of anything,”

“The flag, someone should take the flag down,” replied Jack.

“I just want you to both know that what you did was a vital service to this country and I believe that we may have pushed the tiller a couple of degrees between us,” said Carpenter. It sounded so small when he said it out loud but it was true in his head.  They had made a small difference here and there.  Maybe it was too late already, maybe the grave was already dug and America was just waiting to be buried.

“It’s been a pleasure working with you,” Said Hayden McDonald, offering a handshake.  Carpenter took his hand and shook it.

Hayden McDonald straightened his jacket and stood by his deputy.  “I’m going to head across to the Senate building and talk to the Majority Leader.  What are you going to do Jack?”

“I’m going to go home I think,” replied Jack.

“To Chicago?” asked Hayden, a hint of surprise in his voice.

“Yeah, to Chicago,”

“Okay then.  Well, I hope that…” the words shrank away into nothing and Hayden put a hand to his eye briefly.  Jack Krane shook his head, silent tears falling from his tired eyes.  Colonel Carpenter turned away from this incredibly poignant and private moment.

He took out his radio and made the call to the post-sergeant out by the flagpole.

America was no longer in residence.

Chapter 45- No Standard Solution Exists

Chapter 45

No Standard Solution Exists

Cavill, Virginia

The whirl of helicopter blades and the spray of dust and smoke, the old football field outside Cavill.  Doctors in hazmat suits, a flicker of light off the glass.  The slow ticking of the engine of a Stryker armored personnel carrier and the smoke from a cigarette.

A stream of meaningless static in a radio mic, a nervous look passes over Captain Thomas.  The day dragging on, the slow Virginian sun crawls across a gleaming cyan sky. 

A needle, another glint of light and an up-rolled sleeve.  A man volunteers and tests begin.  Beakers and jars, spinners and disks.  Lab techs look at readouts, close ups and tiny micro-scale organisms.

A test; a drop of blood on a screen and a thin needle.  Timers go off and on.  Reaction times and intervention times.  Another test, control subject and reaction times are measured against each other.

Captain Thomas leans back against the baking heat of the Stryker.  A bird chirrups in a tree.  A woman complains about the heat.  “Didn’t this used to be a free country?”  A soldier with a hard blank look on his face.  A days growth of beard, a dark blue assault rifle in his arms.

A small crowd of frightened and tired people, a test.  One by one they stand and are brought towards a tent.  A doctor, a soldier and a flamethrower, a needle and a beaker.  Blood goes into the machine and a reaction is tested.

The blood, the blood is tested and then burned.  Fires burn all over the town and smoke rises lazily like an accusing finger into a darkening sky.  Two planes roar overhead like vengeful Gods.

A cricket jumps and lands on an outstretched boot.  Soldiers burry another body and a line thins out some more.  A man, a man thought to be a hero stands in a line.  He stands in a line, in way he’s always been stood in a line.

The line that leads towards a tent; where a doctor waits with a needle and a beaker and a test that works.  Bodies are dragged away and then set on fire.

“Captain?” the crackle of a radio.

“Captain are you there?” comes the voice again.

Washington D.C

“There has to be another way,” breathed Jack Krane, sat behind the desk.

“The army are going to do it,” replied Hayden McDonald.  His arms were folded and his eyes were closed.  “I’m amazed they gave it as long as they did,”

“But the test, they said the testing was working,” replied Jack, his face gaunt and grey.

Hayden wondered about that.  How could they be sure what the tests were really telling them.  Hayden had read every report that had come in until his brain hurt from all of the paperwork, all of the numbers and all of the reports.  Even Colonel Carpenter seemed like he was running on empty.

“If they don’t secure things there, then it may be impossible to secure the situation at all,”

Said Hayden, repeating what Carpenter had said a day and a half before.

“You said it yourself Hayden.  If we sacrifice this, we’re not really saving anyone.  What happens if there is another outbreak?  Or another?  What happens if they just need an excuse to drop a bomb in the future?  They’ll always be able to say it was justified.  That it was a just war,” Jack stood up to make his point, arguing the point well as he had been trained to do.

“There’s no thing as a just war,” came Hayden’s empty reply.  “It’s all just a bunch of empty words and placards trying to justify what’s happened, what’s been done.  The truth is the truth.  The very action is its own justification,”

“What do you mean?” asked Jack Krane, afraid to hear an answer.

“That they are in power now and by dropping the bomb on Cavill, they demonstrate that power in the most real way possible.  The power of life and death,”

Jack dropped back into his chair.

“Is it already over then?” asked Jack.

“There may still be a small fragment of a chance left,” said Hayden McDonald, now quite sure that there was in fact, no chance at all.

‘You already know how this will end’ he had heard.  That was proving to be very true.  Nothing, nothing would be spared.

Cavill, Virginia

Tom McVay had stood in line and entered the tent.  The doctor, a pleasant open faced young man with sandy blonde hair asked him to hold his arm out.  Tom held out his arm, as instructed.

A needle appeared from behind the doctors back and went into Tom’s arm.  Tom didn’t even flinch.  He looked away into the distance, some old memory, some distant sensation.  Who knows what the memory looked like?  What sense had set it off?  What place it had taken him to.

“Does it work?” asked Tom to the Doctor.  Another man was flanking the doctor, a staff sergeant with an M4 carbine.  His face was grim and grimy.

“Yes it does,” replied the Doctor.  “It’ll take about ten minutes to get a result.  You may as well go and sit down again,”

“Would I know?  If was one of them, would I know?” asked Tom.

“That’s not how they work,” replied the Doctor.  “They don’t take you over.  They replace you.  If you can ask the question, then you are still human,”

“Doesn’t that mean I’m still human then?” asked Tom with a vague, exhausted smile.

“Maybe it does,” replied the Doctor as he kept the blood sample behind his back.

Tom looked at the hard faced Staff Sergeant.

“How do you think this will all turn out Sarge?” he asked him.

“I’ve no idea sir,” replied the Staff Sergeant.

“Me neither,” replied Tom but it was only half true.

Somewhere else in Cavill, a dog had burned.  But before it had burned, it had broken in half and the top half of it had grown terrible spidery legs, claws and dark black fangs.  It had never been a dog, of course. It had only resembled a dog.

What place did the dog’s memory take it before it died?  What sounds did it remember?  Where had it been?

Someone that looked an awful lot like Tom McVay reached slowly towards the shoulder assault rifle.

Chapter 44- Hastings

Chapter 44

Hastings

Cavill, Virginia

Captain Thomas stood in the village square of the ruins of Cavill and lit a cigarette.  The air was thick with smoke and the rank odor of death.  The clean up was still going on and the steady crack of rifle fire was broken up by screams and the whoosh of flame-throwers.

“Burn the bodies.  Burn all the bodies,” yelled Staff Sergeant Eckerson.

Captain Thomas stared at the huddled survivors of Cavill.  According to his sources, Cavill had a population of around one thousand.  They had found fewer than one hundred and fifty people left.  More than one hundred infilitrators had been discovered, generally mid-process, covered in blood and gore.

Captain Thomas had emptied the magazine of his M4 into the twitching bodies over and over again.  He’d then personally burned more than six or seven of them before he’d grown exhausted and numb.

He paced back and forth, looking at the crowd of shocked and mute people who may, or may not, be survivors.  Staff Sergeant Eckerson continued to speed around, barking out orders and occasionally directing efforts.

Captain Thomas preferred to just watch the crowd now.  There was a wide variety of reactions from them.  Some of them sat there blank faced and stunned.  It was a classic shock reaction.

One or two were on their feet yelling for help.  They wanted medicine, food and blankets.

One or two of them lay on the crowd crying their eyes out.  Captain Thomas wasn’t sure which ones were the most suspicious to him now.  How could he be sure of anything anymore?

“This is Captain Thomas to Lance-One,” he called into the radio.

“Lance-One here, over,” replied the voice.  Since the General had “resigned, Lance –One was the new call sign.  He’d been assigned early this morning from the Pentagon.  Captain Thomas didn’t care anymore who was calling the shots.

“Please advise, I have one hundred and fifty two survivors here. That is one five two survivors.  I cannot tell if they are infected or not.  Please advise on how to proceed.  Over,”

“Lance-One, will advise shortly,” came the reply.

Captain Thomas took another drag of his cigarette and waited.

“You okay Captain?” asked the staff sergeant.  Captain Thomas nodded but he wasn’t sure if he was convinced.

Elsewhere in the crowd, Tom McVay sat amongst the other survivors of the little town.  He had always been a quiet person so his continued silence drew not attention at all.  He looked at the tired and grubby soldiers.

Washington, D.C

Hayden McDonald breathed something that wasn’t too far from a sigh of relief.  The report had come in, Cavill was sealed off on all sides and the cordon was tight.  More units were on their way.

Meanwhile the other village in Venezuela was “clean” too.  The General was on the phone to the President of Venezuela who was rather unhappy about his country being bombed not once, but twice.

Still, Hayden McDonald knew that a lot of extra work was needed to truly fix the situation.  Colonel Carpenter came back to speak to them.  Even he looked a little happier.

For a second or two.

“We’ve got a rough decision to make and I wanted to get your measure on it,” he said.

“I don’t like the sound of this,” said Jack Krane, Hayden’s deputy.

“Yeah, you shouldn’t,” said Carpenter with a tiredness in his voice.

“Get it over with then,” replied Hayden.

“We’ve sealed off Cavill with about one hundred survivors at the scene.  All of the infiltrators that we were going to find are dead now and burned.  But we’ve got no way of knowing who, if anyone got infected at the scene and how many of the survivors are infected,”

“There’s a test isn’t there/” asked Hayden.

“Yes the Air Force says you can do a blood test.  But do we really want to take that chance?”

“What’s the alternative?  Keep them in there forever?” asked Krane.

“No, it’s cleanse the scene utterly,”

“Jesus fucking Christ.  You’re talking about bombing it aren’t you?” said Hayden grimly.

“Yes we are.  We’ve got no real choice here.  We’ve got to stay strong for the good of the human race,”

“What human race will be left if we just bomb anything that had any contact with them at all?  What humanity will we have left?” said Jack passionately.  “Why don’t we just shoot everyone but ourselves?  Just to be safe?”

“Don’t fucking joke about that, “ replied Carpenter.  “There are some that think we should just napalm anything that we’re even slightly worried about.  I thank my lucky stars I’m on the inside for this rather than the outside. Because, quite frankly, the General has decided that anyone who is outside is expendable now,”

“Expendable?  They are American citizens!” yelled Krane.

Expendable, Hayden supposed they had always been expendable hadn’t they?  Thousands of Americans’s died every day.  Thousands more were born.  They grew up saluting a flag and saying their pledge of allegiance, they voted Democrat or Republican or they none of the above.  They were truck drivers and mailmen, they were butchers and farmers, they were Wyoming ranchers and California oilmen.  They were the expendable, grimy, overweight, happy-go-lucky Americans.

“We cannot do this,” said Hayden.

“We’re not asking for your permission,” said Carpetner with some compassion in his voice.  “We just wanted to get your opinion on it.  General Pierce doesn’t think there is any other way,”

“Find another way. If we start bombing our own people when we aren’t sure, this will only get worse and worse,” Hayden shot back.

“Don’t you get it?  Even the fucking test isn’t one hundred per-cent proof.  If one of them breaks containment again then we’re fucking finished.  What if one of them gets to Richmond? Or Atlanta?  Or here?”

“Or New York?  If they do then we’re fucked.  But as soon as the first one broke containment that was already the case wasn’t it?  If this is cancer, then we’re already dead.  I’d rather we went on living like human beings then live a bit longer as a diseased animal,”

Cavill, Virginia

A dog barked a couple of times and wagged its tail.  The soldiers had rounded up and shot most of the town’s animals by now.  They were not afforded the benefit of the doubt like the humans were.

Deputy Andy’s collie-cross, Walker, was the last dog standing in Cavill and even he was not to last much longer.  He stopped by a tree and cocked his leg.  As there was a rustle in the branches above him, he whipped his head up suddenly to spot the passing squirrel.

There was a crackle of gunfire and a flash of light.

“Poor pooch,” said someone into their radio mic.  There was a whoosh and flames spread across the tree.

Chapter 43- The Final Cut

Chapter 43

The Final Cut

Cavill, Virginia

She’d always considered herself to be a good mother, to be a good person and to live her life right.  She’d always worked, even when Jeffrey was first born.  She’d paid her taxes, looked both ways before crossing the street and never done anything she shouldn’t have done.  And people in the little town she’d been raised in said that she was “a good sort.”

Mary Elizabeth Wagner had prided herself on that, on being a good mother to Jeffrey.  She’d spent money on making sure he had toys that would help him grow up with a brain in his head.  Neither Mary nor her husband, Mark, were especially bright.  Neither of them had gone to college and Mark had left high school before graduating.

Mary wanted more than that for Jeffrey.  He was going to be able to go to college if he wanted to.  It was a long way off but Mary wanted to give him every edge, every opportunity, every chance she’d never been given herself.  But America wasn’t about being given a hand out, it was all about the idea that once you were on your own two feet, you could run as fast as you wanted to.

Mary, often referred to as “Mare” by her friends, was a believer that Jeffrey was the future she had always dreamed about.  “If we get behind the boy, get our shoulder behind him, there’s no telling how far he might go,” she had said to Mark.  Mark had nodded, he wasn’t much for talking.  Mark was a good ole boy and heading for an early grave.  Beer and turkey sandwiches were his favorite things in the world, with Mary and Jeffrey probably following in after Sunday night football.

Mark had been willing to work extra shifts, stay on late and quietly help them save the money they needed to.  Mary had thanked him and been good to him.  She was a good wife too, knowing when to keep her mouth shut and when to speak.  She’d turned the other way when he wanted to drink and smoke with his friends and they often paid her the compliment that she, like her husband, was “ole country tough,”

There was another series of thuds in the distance and Mary looked up from her reverie.  She was wearing a familiar pair of cut-offs, not indecent but short enough to catch the occasional stare from her appreciative neighbours.  Her blouse was stained with a red sticky substance and now as scattered with a fine white powder too.  She finished what she was doing and walked back towards the bedroom.  Her eyes were wide, darting from one place to another.  Jeffrey’s CD would be ending soon.

Mary had always considered herself to be kind.  She had recsued “Mr Snuff”, the little kitten that had ended up in their house and had become Jeffrey’s treasured friend.  She had fought Mark to keep him and Mark had eventually backed down on that front.  She had taught Jeffrey that a kitten was a living thing, that it had feelings.

“If you look after him, he’ll be good to you and he’ll be your buddy,” she had said last summer .  She had always talked to Jeffrey like he was a little grown up and she hoped that by aiming high, she’d get him to follow.  It was working, already it was working.  He was the smartest kid in his pre-school and this made both Mary and Mark very proud.

“Proper little quiz-kid aint he?” Mark had said, a big smile on his face.

“I love you Mark,” She had replied.

“Yeah,” he had said back and gone back to his magazine.

She had knelt by Jeffrey in the garden, Mr Snuff not too far away and said to him.

“Now remember that he’s a living breathing animal.  So you gotta treat him right?  You remember how much it hurt when Tommy Cristakis pulled your hair at kintergarden?”

“Yeah mommy, that was nasty”

“Yeah.  Well that’s what it’d be like if someone yanks on Mr Snuff’s fur too.  He’s got feelings like you do”,

“I’ll not forget mommy”.

Mary found herself crying again and she stopped by the baby’s bedroom.  The baby, they still called him the baby even at four and a half years old.  He would always be their baby.

There was a crashing sound from the neighbors house and Mary wondered vaguely who it was in there now.  Whether it was the army or the others.  She wasn’t sure and she supposed it didn’t make any difference now.

She stood by the door and she looked bitterly at the cross that was on the mantle-piece.  “Jesus, you’ve let us down,” she said mildly.  She had gone to church every Sunday, she’d baked for the fund-raisers and she’d raised Jeffrey to be a proper little Baptist.  If this hadn’t happened, if they had been saved, if someone had saved them, then he’d have grown up Baptist too.

His first day at high school, dressing up for the prom, college, jobs, his first car.  His whole future ahead of him.  Mary bit back her bitter tears for her sons sake.  She entered the baby’s room where Jeffrey was lying on his bed, headphones on.  When he saw his mother enter the room, he looked up.

“What’s up mommy?” he asked.  He was a bright kid and he’d figured out that something was amiss.

Mary sat down and hugged him closed.  Jeffrey had learned that his mother needed to hug him almost as much as he needed to be hugged and he held on to her.  She cried over his shoulder and Jeffrey looked up.  The headphones slipped away and he heard the terrible crashing sounds coming from nearby.

“What’s all the noise?” he asked.

“Jeff, honey.  You need to take some medicine now,” She said.

“I’m not sick,” he replied

“Yeah I know honey I know.  But it’s like the vaccine you had. Do you remember that?”

“It hurt,” said Jeffrey ruefully.

“Well this is just some pills.  I crushed them up in some jam for you so you just swallow em right back,”

Jeffrey obeyed his mother’s strange instruction.  Sometimes adults would want you to do the strangest most inscrutable things and Jeffrey had already learned that if you just went along with it, it would normally be okay.  After all, his mother loved him very very much.

Jeffrey laid his head down, already feeling drowsy.

“I’m sleepy,” he murmured.

“I know baby I know,” she replied, tears pouring down her face.  The front door buckled under an unseen impact.  She looked away and lifted something small but heavy onto the bed.

“Good night mommy,” he whispered.

“Good night baby.  Mommy loves you”, she whispered back.  She looked up at the ceiling, a mobile spun in the breeze, cast in the dawn light.  She looked down at her son, seemingly fast asleep.  She decided not to take any chances.

There was a flash of light from a window and the sound of a gunshot.  Somebody wrenched the front-door to the Wagner house away from its hinges and threw it to one side.

There was another gunshot and another flash from the doorway.  A human-shaped figure entered the bedroom through a gauze of smoke.  It looked impassively at two small slumped forms.

There were more crashing sounds, guns and vehicles, death and screaming.

The human shaped figure walked calmly back out the front door to greet the new arrivals in the town.

The sun continued to rise

Chapter 42- Fading

Chapter 42

Fading

Villa Pylar, Venezuela

Surviving isn’t a binary status.  That isn’t to say that a person isn’t either alive or dead, that most certainly is true.  But a person can survive and not survive, it’s possible to be “half surviving”, it’s possible to keep running on empty, on four flat tires, to keep running before you break down for good.

Walking all day and all night, Oscar began to get the feeling that he was getting towards his breaking point.  Hannah had attempted to keep the conversation going, attempted to keep their spirits up.  The sense of expectation, that they had been setting off on a great adventure was fading away, being replaced by fatigue, sadness and injury.

Hannah had picked up the trail, drops of blood on the leaves, about six miles out from Villa Pylar.  Oscar had felt a new surge of energy and that they were closing in on their elusive enemy.  But the town of Villa Pylar had a population of around eight thousand.  Finding one invisible infiltrator in there was going to be nigh on impossible.

The two of them sat down to rest for a moment.  Hannah had kept the radio at her side the whole time and they had overheard the orders being relayed to Sabre-Two.  Villa Cyranno, Oscar’s home, was bombed into a pile of ashes.  Bones were reduced to less than dust.

Oscar had felt nothing at the time, nothing about the death of the town, the death of all of those people had had once connected with.  All he felt now was tired, all he felt was the ache in every joint.

Oscar now looked over at Hannah as she sat listening in on the radio. 

“Anything?” he said to her.  She looked up, her eyes were red and tired.

“Nothing that I can follow,” she replied wearily.

“Do you think we might be able to get some sleep before we head into the Villa?” he asked her, thinking it was unlikely she’d say yes.

“No, no we cant.  But I’m not sure we can go in there anyway,” she said back to him.

“Why?” he asked.

“Think about it Oscar.  There are eight thousand people in there, more or less.  If they’ve been exposed to these infiltrators we’ll never be able to find them in such a large area.  Our only hope was to catch them before they reached a major conurbation.”

Oscar followed her words as best he could and spent a second thinking about it, looking for the deeper meaning that she was laying underneath her words.  But his mind didn’t function like hers and certainly not on this level of fatigue.

“What are you actually saying Hannah?  No entiendo,”

She looked at him again with those tired eyes and she blinked twice before she spoke.

“Oscar, we cant do this now,” she said with a husky voice.

“What do you mean?”

“Let me finish,” she said, holding up a hand.  “We cant do this alone.  We’ve followed the infction to here.  So we’ve got to take action,”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“We’ve got to call in the air strike and burn this area clean,”

“No,” he said fiercely and got to his feet.

“Oscar!” she pleaded.

But Oscar had taken all he could cope with.  He couldn’t give up these people and give them to the fire like the villagers of his old village.  Oscar still had the belief, still had some hope left that they could go in, they could sort out what was going on, find out who was human.  They could do it.

Hannah gave him a look that was all imploring.  Oscar’s eyes focused on her machine-gun, slung around her back.  Oscar saftied his weapon and pointed it at her.  Her eyes fell.

“You’re going to shoot me?” she asked him.  “You know that might almost be a relief,”

“I wont shoot unless you try to call in that air-strike,” replied Oscar.

“You’ve got the drop on me Oscar.  But I might have to test you,” she said.

“Oscar,” came a voice from behind.  Oscar span around pointing the machine-gun.  Wharton, agent Wharton, was standing behind him.

“Oscar, she’s right.  We’ve got to call in the strike,”

“You!” snarled Oscar.  “You are dead.  You are one of them”

“I understand why you’d say that,” he replied.  “But I’m not.  That doesn’t even matter,”

“What the hell do you mean it doesn’t matter?”

“Think about it, kid.  The infection is out there.  And we’ve got no idea, for sure, how bad it’s gotten.  Any one of us could be infected,”

“I’m still human,” replied Oscar.

“Sure, so am I and so is Hannah.  But we’ve got no way to be really sure,”

“The test,” replied Oscar bitterly

“It worked, yes.  But we cant replicate it without whole blood to test.  We could all take turns burning ourselves but Hannah’s got a better notion,”

Oscar looked over at her, aware that he had his back to her.  But she hadn’t drawn a weapon.  She looked up and Oscar thought he saw a tear in her eyes.  But that could have just been the light.

“Oscar, we’ve got to call in the air strike and we’ve got to call it in on this location,”

Her hand waved across Villa Pylar.

“Yes,” replied Oscar.  “But you wont do that,”

“Yes I will,” she said.  “I’m going to and if you must shoot me to stop me, you go ahead.  It’ll be okay.  If you don’t shoot me, the air strike will kill us anyway,”

“It’s the only way to be totally sure kid,” added Wharton.

“Dios mio,” breathed Oscar.

“I hope so,” replied Wharton with a strange smile on his face.  “Hannah?”

“Yep, I’m ready,”  She looked at Oscar.  “Oscar?  Are you ready?  I’ll even turn my back if that makes it easier for you,”

Oscar looked down at the village and thought about it, thought about the mothers and fathers, women and children, old men and cats and dogs and chickens.  He thought about fading stucco walls and linen cloth, he thought of all the wooden stumps hammered into clay fired earth.

“I can’t, I just can’t.  I just can’t,” he said.  Oscar dropped the gun to the floor.

“I’m very proud to have met you Oscar,” said Hannah, her voice strong again.

Oscar wanted to reply but his mouth was dry and frozen.

“Okay do it Hannah,” said Wharton.  Wharton sat down on a big rock and ran his hands through his hair.  His side-arm was in one hand.

Oscar turned and ran towards the village, he ran as fast as he could, down hill and over stones.  He ran down the hill, half expecting to be shot in the back as he went.  He ran as fast as he could, running as fast as a human could run away from the onrushing flood.

Hannah put the radio receiver down and hugged her legs to her chest.  Wharton stayed where he was looking up into the sky.

Oscar ran towards the village, some remote survival instinct telling him to keep going and to fight against the very reality of the situation, a situation that he knew was utterly utterly hopeless.

Oscar ran, unaware that he was screaming.

There was a sudden flash of light in the center of the town and a rush of air.  Oscar felt the weight of the last two days drop away in an instant of heat and a flare of blinding light.