Dawn of Revelation

by A N Sandra

  “Wow,” Helena said.

  “Your mother beta tested huge swatches of Asia and Africa, and we have infrastructure in places where gaining infrastructure is terribly hard. If we didn’t have that there is no way to do this efficiently. The main infrastructure we were working on when your father found out about the planned alterations on the chip was in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires.”

  “But without mom?” Helena inquired. “I know Mom was done with her part, but she was supposed to make sure that everything integrated.”

  “No one else in the world will probably be able to do it as well as your mother, but no one is ever replaceable.” Miss Jan sighed. “The only reason Project Plan B got this far is because your parents are the focused people that they are. But there are so many people working on it now that it is its own machine.”

  “So, after a year goes by and most people have chips… what will happen then?” Helena wanted to know.

  “Well, it really won’t be most people. More than half. But it won’t matter because the virus they created will become airborne once the chips activate it, so unchipped people who are within a ten-foot radius of any sick person will be contaminated.” Miss Jan looked sick herself right then. “Since people won’t even feel sick at first, they will mingle with the public, spreading the disease to unchipped people.”

  “So, being unchipped won’t save anyone?” Helena asked to clarify.

  “Well, remote religious communities might be fine if they can sequester themselves and remain self-sufficient. That is the main reason the Hollister Foundation is pushing Urban Relocation so fiercely.” Miss Jan swallowed hard. “The virus makes a hole in a person’s heart and they die within twelve hours of activation. Most people will never feel more than slight discomfort until the very end. People will die in waves so that their bodies can be carefully disposed of without being a public health issue to the people who remain. Whole cities will perish in less than a day and a half. The Global Forces will set fire to the cities and turn them into crematoriums that will make Auschwitz look like child’s play.”

  “Why won’t the Global Forces people get sick if the virus is airborne?”

  “They have a vaccination for the disease, and the Global forces people are already vaccinated.” Miss Jan took a deep breath. “We have a better vaccination, though. Your mother and her assistant Natalie developed it. The people running the show put too much faith in their own vaccination. According to your mother, they think it has a small failure rate, but the real failure rate of their vaccine may be as high as twenty-six percent.”

  Helena gulped. Peter, who had been listening at their feet while he cooked their dinner, stood up.

  “That isn’t an appetizing thought,” he said. His eyes were red from the smoky campfire.

  “Your mother and Natalie made some changes and made a better vaccine. All of you received it when you thought you were getting flu shots. Your mother discreetly made sure that certain world leaders got it before she left. Natalie and your mother’s other assistant… what’s his name…”

  “Jase.”

  “Yes… Natalie and Jase are making small batches of vaccine and going around giving them out.”

  “That can’t be effective.”

  “It’s what we can do. Your mother is studying and trying to find a way to make an oral vaccine that can go in water supplies.”

  “Do you think she can do it?” Helena perked up.

  “No. She doesn’t really think she can, but she is trying.”

  “Oh.”

  Peter handed the pot to Helena. “Your delicious dinner is ready.”

  “I think delicious is a stretch,” Helena said, stirring the beef stew. The steam that rose from it did not actually smell like meat, or anything familiar for that matter. Maria would be embarrassed to hear her being rude. “But I’m hungry. Thank you.”

  “So, what’s their story?” Peter asked before he put a hot bite of food in his mouth.

  “Excuse me?” Miss Jan looked at Peter quizzically.

  “What’s the reason these people feel entitled to off everyone on the planet? They must have some reason other than being evil narcissists. Which, I get they are evil narcissists,” Peter hastened to add. “I just wonder what they are telling each other is the reason they’re doing this other than general population control.”

  “They say they are the most developed of the human species. They tell each other they are simply exercising natural selection. But mostly, they are people who have most of the money and resources the world has to offer, and they don’t want to share the planet with us anymore.”

  “Makes perfect sense,” Helena said sarcastically.

  The sun wasn’t warming her up, but it was comforting to Helena when it came through the trees anyway. She lifted her face to the sun and tried to keep her feet moving.

  “Watch it!” Peter scolded.

  “I was just trying to feel the sun,” Helena apologized as she straightened up from tripping over a tree root. “I’m a Texas girl, I need the sun like I need life blood.”

  “You’re not a Texas girl anymore,” Lourdes said. “Don’t slow us down. Keep moving.”

  That was a little rich for Helena coming from Lourdes. Miss Jan led every day’s hike. Peter followed her, and Helena either followed him when she didn’t need alone time or stayed behind everyone else when she did. She never held anyone up. Either she was close to the front of the pack or behind it all the way. She held her tongue but made a face at Lourdes.

  “Shhh!” Miss Jan rounded on everyone and pushed them back the way they had come.

  “What—”

  “Let me—”

  “Be quiet!” Miss Jan said fiercely. Ray and Tawna had caught up and they all stood quietly on the path for a few minutes. “Let me go check.”

  Miss Jan crept forward while everyone else stayed quiet in a semi huddle.

  “Just stay here a bit,” Miss Jan whispered, coming back.

  “Can we have a snack?” Ray asked.

  “No food!” Miss Jan hissed. “There’s a mama grizzly bear and two cubs up there.”

  “I wanna see—” Lourdes sprang forward. Helena almost knocked her down, but Miss Jan stopped her effectively by catching her Achilles tendon with a judo-like stealth.

  “Do not move,” Miss Jan said in a very low tone, but very firmly to Lourdes. Looking at Ray and Tawna, she spoke firmly again. “Do not eat! When female bears have cubs, they are more dangerous than usual. When they smell human food, they become quite deadly if they have a taste for it!”

  All of them stayed huddled, not moving. Helena remembered playing freeze tag when she was in grade school.

  “Stay here,” Miss Jan warned. She crept down the path again and came back soon. “Let’s move forward, making plenty of noise so we don’t surprise them. If you see the bear or a cub, back away slowly.” She looked hard at Lourdes who looked away.

  Helena was sure that Lourdes would run straight toward any bear she saw. She hoped the bears would only eat Lourdes if that happened.

  Moving forward slowly, Miss Jan led the group and made plenty of noise to let the bears know they were coming, and they made progress. Helena was hungry; she knew all of them were hungry.

  Even without a watch Helena had become a good judge of what time it was by using her instincts. It had to be after lunch, but they were moving at a snail’s pace.

  “I’ve seen faster wedding marches!” Helena complained in a loud whisper to Peter who shrugged.

  The trail veered at a steep angle uphill and there were a lot of tree roots to navigate as they walked. The ground was muddy, and it was hard for Helena to pick up her feet. Miss Jan didn’t slow down, and they just kept walking.

  Shadows began to lengthen. Tawna and Ray dragged farther and farther behind. Helena realized that they were skipping lunch altogether. She began to hope for dinner.

  “We’ll stay here,” Miss Jan said.

  Helena looked around the small clearin
g with approval. In only five days of camping she was learning what made a good spot. There would be no wind here, but plenty of room to spread the tents out from each other and running water nearby.

  “I’m so hungry!” Peter said as Miss Jan began to set up her tent.

  “We’re all hungry,” Miss Jan said. “We will combine lunch and dinner today, and we will have to combine another meal later since we are short one whole meal.”

  “So, we aren’t getting lunch and dinner now?” Helena was almost dizzy.

  “No, we are having half a power bar and a whole dinner. Tomorrow we’ll do the same thing. We have a lot of rocks to climb the last day on the trail and we can’t skimp on food that that day.”

  “Oh, man!” Peter said.

  “There isn’t a choice,” Miss Jan explained. “I thought about it all morning.”

  Tawna took Miss Jan aside and began to chew her out.

  “My children need nourishment—” Tawna began. She pointed a finger at Miss Jan and Helena noticed that Tawna’s manicure was ruined. She looked like a down and out drag queen with her snagged fingernails and her hair sticking to her face.

  “She won’t get anywhere with Miss Jan,” Helena said to Peter in a low tone, stepping back from the trouble.

  “I wish she’d just leave,” Peter said.

  “We haven’t gotten that lucky yet. I wonder what they had to do to persuade Tawna to come to the middle of nowhere with her darlings to stay alive.”

  “It must have been very convincing.”

  Finally, Tawna’s ragged voice stopped raging and Miss Jan took several deep breaths before rejoining the group.

  Dinner was sullen. Everyone did feel full by the time they’d eaten their half power bar and normal dinner, but the very idea of eating less had been demoralizing. It had been a long day and they were worn out. Helena went right to bed when she had eaten.

  “Oh, I wish I had box springs,” she said softly to herself as she shifted around in her sleeping bag trying to get comfortable. There was a very thin foam pad under her, but no matter how carefully she chose a spot there was always a bump or dip somewhere that caused discomfort.

  “Because of your mom we don’t have anything anymore.” Lourdes came in the tent.

  “Tomorrow you should sleep with Ray and I’ll sleep with Peter,” Helena told her.

  “No way,” Lourdes said.

  “If even you don’t want to be around your own brother it’s pretty sad,” Helena said. “I’m tired of you and Peter and I can share a tent.”

  She closed her eyes and tried to sleep. She had been exhausted until Lourdes had been unkind about her mother. Then her heart had started to beat faster, her adrenaline had kicked in, and she had gotten upset. How dare Lourdes ever criticize her mother? Christina Harris was a world famous medical researcher with one of the highest IQ’s on the planet. Lourdes’s mother was a gold digging tramp. There could be no fair comparison.

  There was no way to get comfortable, Helena finally decided. She must have fallen asleep because she was jerked awake by Lourdes screaming again. The sleeping bag next to her was empty. Lourdes must have gone to the bathroom and gotten scared.

  “Shut up—” Helena opened the fly of the tent to look outside. The scene before her was not what she expected at all. Lourdes, Ray, and Tawna were sitting around the embers of the campfire eating power bars and a grizzly bear had intruded on their midnight snack party. The bear was right in front of them, staring at their food.

  Helena zipped up her tent again while Lourdes screamed at the bear and Tawna and Ray yelled at her to be quiet. Miss Jan was surprisingly absent from the entire scene.

  “None of you helped us at all!” Tawna fumed when the bear finally left, and Miss Jan, Helena, and Peter came out to assess what had happened.

  “You took food that was for everyone out of the bear bag,” Miss Jan shook her head angrily. “Why would you think we would risk ourselves to help you?”

  “We needed that food and you wouldn’t give it to us!” Tawna projected honest outrage.

  “Well, you need to understand that you will bear the mistakes you make on your own when you do something so foolish!” Miss Jan snapped. “The bear didn’t hurt you, go back to bed. Only Helena is coming with me and Lourdes can share her tent with you. I’m not sharing a tent with someone untrustworthy.”

  “Thank you!” Helena picked up her things quickly and moved right to Miss Jan’s tent before she could change her mind.

  “We need to stick together,” Miss Jan said when Helena was inside the tent. “We’ll watch the food more closely.”

  “No problem,” Helena said.

  I’m sorry, we’re just not getting in the miles I had hoped,” Miss Jan told everyone as they drank cocoa and ate breakfast.

  “You probably overestimated what’s possible,” Tawna told her bitterly, sipping coffee with her face full of resentment.

  “What we need to do now is concentrate on how to cover fifty miles in two days,” Miss Jan said. She didn’t look toward Tawna. “It should be doable. That’s twenty-five miles a day. Ray, I need you to pick up the pace so that you’re keeping up with everyone.”

  “I’m not even twelve and I carry as heavy of a pack as everyone else,” Ray said. “I’m hungry and I don’t like the food we’re eating. I need good food and rest.”

  Tawna looked at him with deep pity. Helena wanted to shake them both and bonk their heads together. Peter and Miss Jan looked just as unsympathetic as Helena felt.

  “I’ll carry some of your stuff, Ray,” Lourdes said softly.

  “You are such a darling girl,” Tawna gushed.

  Helena felt like puking.

  “Ray already has the lightest pack. I packed his pack lighter than anyone else’s and I don’t put extra food there anymore,” Miss Jan informed everyone. Turning to Ray, she spoke firmly. “You need to keep up. Do you understand?”

  “I’m doing my best,” Ray whimpered. He looked toward his mother for backup.

  “Leave him alone!” Tawna scolded Miss Jan.

  “We don’t want to be out here an extra day without food,” Miss Jan warned her without an apology. “The landslide was a problem, but we calculated for a couple of small emergencies. We are thirty miles behind where we should be, at least.”

  “This is not Ray’s fault,” Tawna said in an ugly tone. “My kids are giving up their whole lives because other people made mistakes.”

  “A lot of people are going to lose their lives because of the selfish plots of others,” Miss Jan said harshly. “Your suffering will be living with your family in a beautiful mountain valley for several months. Billions of people are probably going to die over the next few years.”

  “That isn’t our fault!” Tawna shrieked.

  “It isn’t ours either,” Miss Jan said gravely.

  Helena wished Miss Jan would punch Tawna, because she was pretty sure Miss Jan could lay her flat with one strike. Tawna gave Miss Jan a murderous look, but Miss Jan held a level gaze back at her.

  “You owe your life to the Harris family’s charity,” Miss Jan said with a smile. “It’s too bad you don’t realize it.”

  “I’ll set up our tent tonight,” Helena told Miss Jan brightly to break the murderous tension that Tawna exuded.

  “We can worry about set up after we make our twenty-five miles,” Miss Jan said dryly.

  At least Tawna and Lourdes would have to set up their own tent now, Helena thought. Every night Helena had set up the tent she and Lourdes had slept in and Miss Jan had set up the one she slept in with Tawna.

  “Let’s pack up and move out!” Miss Jan said, tipping her head back to drink the last of her cocoa as if it were a shot of something potent.

  I don’t know how to do this,” Tawna said as she tried to set up the tent she was to share with Lourdes.

  “I’ll tell you how, but you need to do it,” Miss Jan said firmly.

  “We’re getting some boundaries established, finally,” Pete
r said quietly to Helena as Miss Jan directed Tawna through the process of setting up the tent.

  “I think Miss Jan is tired of waiting for Tawna to snap out of it.”

  “Well, the first day Tawna must have had a monster hangover, and now she’s probably having some withdrawal issues.”

  “Maria hinted that Tawna had started drinking a lot recently,” Helena said. “I couldn’t have guessed the real reason in a million years.”

  “Well, now we know why Dad wasn’t available for anything at all for the last few months,” Peter said.

  “This whole thing is so bizarre I can’t think about it for more than a couple of minutes at a time.”

  “I think you’re going to have a long time to process it,” Peter predicted.

  Helena pictured the coming winter, wrapped in an Eskimo coat and living in an igloo chewing whale blubber. They were probably too far inland for that picture to be prophetic, but Helena was afraid that Peter was correct.

  We had some harsh words this morning, but we need good attitudes to get through this day,” Miss Jan said at lunch. “On that note, Ray feels his pack is too heavy. Could we all carry a pound out of Ray’s pack and lighten it five more pounds?”

  Ray smiled, Tawna smiled, Peter and Helena nodded, rolling their eyes at each other.

  “Great, let’s get this show on the road!” Miss Jan said, too enthusiastically.

  One extra pound wasn’t noticeable to Helena and it improved Ray’s spirits considerably to feel that he had been catered to. The trail was easy enough for a long time, well cleared and only slightly sloping uphill.

  “Oh, snap,” Peter said up ahead of her.

  “Oh, snap is right,” Helena said when she caught up to him a few seconds later.

  Berry vines of some sort had grown across the trail in a thick tangle. There were large rocks on one side of the trail and the berry vines grew as far as the eye could see in the other. The vines were quite lovely, covered with tiny white flowers. Unfortunately, they had large thorns also.

  “Here we go ‘round the mulberry bush,” Miss Jan sang. “Let’s go!”