Genesis Virus

by Pinto, Daniel

  This ain’t no place for the dreary kind. The seven headed beast has risen out of a sea of blood and is knocking at our front door. Are you a wolf or a sheep? None of us will be old lads with a twinkle in our eye, sitting on a rocking chair on our porch, dying in peace and comfort. To survive we have to get lucky everyday, the undead only has to get lucky once. A plain old death is the dream. Staying alive is my middle finger to these retarded monsters. My senses are heightened because I lost everything, I’m like a tongueless and deaf traveller, not blind. My eyes are finally truly opened. I don’t wear my loses as a badge of honor like some people, it’s more so an everyday reminder that everyone left in my life is precious.

  Always the runner up never the winner in life, this now is the cherry on top of a shitty life. Is a full life incognito even qualify as a life? I’m not alive enough and I’m not dead enough. I’m doubly fucked. I’m trapped in the dreaded middle. To be alive is fine, but my next conquest is to achieve the highest quality of living even if it kills me, hope not.

  I also will not be worked like a dog nor fucked like a bitch by any community. I rather be a nomad, free to live and fail on my terms. No time for cunty shit. Is it insane that I want to live forever despite what has happened to the world? I’m not sorry that I don’t want to die for every random person on the street. Those who never actually lifted a finger to help anyone only consider that true bravery. Also, if a person chooses to constantly fail because they know someone will feel obligated to help them, they’re using kindness as a weapon to make others look like they’re bad guys if they refuse to help and I don’t respond well to ultimatums. Why do I have to sacrifice and do without in the name of your happiness when you haven’t a care in the world. Self-sacrifice is a choice not a duty. It’s good to care about people, but you shouldn't be hated if you don’t want to die for them. Legions and legions of dead soldiers with one mindset to murder me when they get a chance is enough to worry about without rescuing every Tom, Dick, and Harry jerkoff. Who mourns the last woman standing? Who judges her?

  Perception is a bigger part of reality than truth in every subjective idea and theory. Especially, when perception is applied to putting people into boxes of easy to understand categories that fits more with their agenda. I don’t like labels in regards to identity because it gives people a reason to prejudge and not to listen to you, before you even open your mouth. “There goes the illegal immigrant on her way to steal.” “There goes that black kid to sell drugs again.” When someone makes generalizations or oversimplifications to prove who you are in their favor, they will definitely be incorrect. But it’s a clever weapon to make someone seem right by putting you down.

  Personal experiences are distinctive, but you’re still the billionth person to experience them. Everyone’s life is the same bullshit wrapped in a different way. However you act, you will always be a cliché or stereotype. Because there is so many trite labels created by the feeble minded, to belittle individuality. There’s only two ways to act in every situation: do or do not, or to be or not to be. I’m a slave to this reality. None of this eliminates the meaning or value to one’s life. We have a chance to be new people; everyone who ever doubted us and thought they knew us is long gone. I didn’t kill them, but I’m also not crying for them. To label me is to negate me.

  The first person that told me to get over my family’s death, I kicked their face in and said get over it. Grief changes shape, but it never ends. I never had a typical big sister (Maria) until a few years ago, now she is gone like before, but why does this time feel so different? A part of her remains in my niece Abigail. I will be whatever she needs me to be: mother, father, sister. Titles do not matter only our connection is important. Abigail’s safety is above everyone else’s including mine. She is my one goal, I care about Phillip, my brother-in-law, but he is not my blood. Every single journey begins with a single step and haters. It’s only natural, people don’t believe in what they can’t see when it comes to everyone else’s pursuits.

  To be honest, I never wanted responsibility. I want to help you, but I want to help myself more. When did honesty become a bad thing, it’s normal to feel emotions with a negative connotation that are not aligned with a fantasy version of what it is to be human. It’s too hard to be phony 24/7 and it makes life pointless if everyone is acting like their idealized version of themselves. I’m not promoting negativity, only the acceptance of it and moving past it. Expectations create personal truth that reinforces our beliefs, but expectations are not fact, merely introverted opinions. The only people who do not feel quote unquote bad emotions are psychopaths and the walking dead, and look how they turned out.

  No one has ever been one thing or had one feeling in their entire life. Be it personality traits or beliefs. If this was the case the world would have been simpler, boring, and a place far worst than my current living arrangements. There is no natural law that stipulates a person can’t feel opposing emotions at the same time about an idea or thing. We want to be individuals, but we also want to be part of a group. A bit of that cave men survival instinct kicking in during our modern and civilized times. Everything boils down to the SELF, once you strip away all the polite layers of bullshit. We love and hate life, but that doesn’t make either emotion invalid. Variety is the spice of life, especially the bad times. Good is a standard to aim for, but only if bad choices exist. If good or bad exist without the other, then actions would have no meaning and will only be something to do to past the time. A person can share the same ideas as a stranger, but that doesn’t mean they are alike. Me and this Boss character both value children, I understand his methods, but don’t condone them.

  In the future, we will tell the children about this time like it’s one of Aesop’s Fables, they will laugh and be afraid for a moment. If I was to ever to have a child. I would tell him or her. “It’s fine to see the good in people; but be prepared for the worst in them.” I might have to spank them to get the point across. Not out of anger like morons are lead to believe, it’s a teaching mechanism and lessons everyone should have received growing up. The world would have had less self-entitled assholes. In my family when you made a mistake, either big or small, you get called out for it, there’s no tip-toeing around fragile emotions or hiding behind politeness like experts preach to do, who had no kids themselves or well behaved ones. Making mistakes will make you smarter, only if someone helps you realize why it’s a mistake and that’s what family’s for, to help you become a better person. Because a family filled with lazy self-righteous narcissists that enable each other is not a family, it’s a high school clique with the illusion of love.

  But I’ll tell you one thing I’ll let the father handle the sex talk. Who ever the lucky bastard might be.

  If you’re reading this, you must have killed me or is just a nosy son-of-a-bitch who has taken this after my death. Either way, I thank you because a warped version of me shall live for just a little longer in someone’s consciousness. Go figure.

  I recently read a bestseller then I had to literally wipe my ass with it and I wouldn’t be the least surprise if you’re doing the same thing with my ideas.

  I need to get my shit together, for tomorrow.

  Ava

  Chapter Five

  1

  The man in charge enters the room first. “Humans have been having babies since the dawn of time what makes yours so special? If I may ask beyond the standard responses.”

  Phillip follows him. “Because she’s mine. You’re creating all this havoc for kids. Right? So you shouldn’t have to wonder.” No one has told Phillip that Jacob was this man’s son, but he suspects it. Maybe this is grief working its way out of the system.

  “This shall be your new living arrangements, you can decorate it later as you see fit. Everything you need is down the hall.”

  Phillip and the Boss are standing in an empty room with no door or windows, but it’s cleaner than his last, smells like bleach. The harsh light reveals every pore of the men�
��s faces.

  The Boss says. “Did you know? When the Genesis Virus started to gain some legs, the military rounded up the homeless when everyone was forced to stay in doors, and killed them first like scum. That was an institutional decision to enact wide-scale death, that’s not us here. I judiciously select who dies like every great leader in history because someone has to. I’m an agent of change. I don’t know about you, but I won’t be complicit for the end of civilization.”

  Phillip takes his time. “Why is anyone’s judgment better than mine?”

  “Exactly.” The Boss shakes his pointed index finger at the ceiling as he paces like a professor. “Someone has to have the power or chaos will kill us all. Before our time, laws had to be created and enforced to force people to treat others like their equals and it still didn’t work. Self-governing ourselves is the best answer throughout time and it does get better, but never at the beginning of a reset of a nation. Nothing of worth is suppose to be easy and that’s the issue with people they demand/need perfection and freewill without consequences. Which is impossible, hence eternal unhappiness in one’s life. Humans want continual gratification minus hard work. And when people don’t get constant satisfaction for no effort, it always has to be someone else’s fault. Leaders are the first to blame when life doesn’t go a certain way. And since God is the final leader, he is the best target to blame because he can’t defend himself unlike me. Instead of throwing stones, come up with a better plan and take the power away from me.” The Boss pounds his chest with both fists in jest.

  Phillip slides down a corner to sit. This man loves to hear himself talk like David. David never talked about his Uncle, this man, then again he never ever talked about any lost family members, no one really does anymore. I don’t. Why dig up the past? Keep that love and hurt wrapped up together and buried deep. This man is exhausting. It’s not enough to be on his team, he wants you to kiss his ass too.

  Phillip clears his throat, then says. “Someone as delusional as you, will one day take it all away. I guarantee it. There has never been a short supply of mad fucks in this world. And you know what, I’m still here...” He shifts his restive body. “The beauty of brainwashing, is that a person doesn’t know they’re brainwashed and actually defend ideas they think are they’re own. Killing for peace is like fucking for chastity. A great slogan from the past that still applies.” Phillip slides his head back pointing his chin at the man.

  The Boss starts to walk away, halfway turns with prayer hands “O Lord make me chaste, but not yet. A holier man than me and you once said.” He smiles. “The truth doesn’t need your belief in it to exist.” He shrugs. “Why do soldiers even exist if people want to share power? You’ve seen action while serving.”

  Phillip says. “America the land of the free and the home of the brave at talking shit. Only a handful of people have ever wanted to destroy this world, the majority were just blowing off steam with hate talk and say what they would do if they had ultimate power because it’s fun to pretend to be God up to a point…and I fought for the good guys.” Phillip shuts his eyes as if to become invisible, immediately regretting not keeping his mouth shut, it’s like throwing water on a grease fire with this guy.

  “According to whom. You? Torturing and killing one’s people is the most vile form of tyranny, but not the only method. Control through Big Brother surveillance, wealth manipulation, and company law creation through corrupt federal agencies, controlled your mobility of social stature in the United States as well as everyone else’s for generations. I bet you join the service just to get your family over the poverty line and when you became a veteran, you could barely get a job as a waiter or even qualify for veteran’s assistance. Society didn’t care about the men and women who fought for them and were quick to dismiss the military as an unnecessary expense that created psychopaths if one of out a million shot up a public place.”

  Phillip says. “The military had a budget in millions for Viagra pills, but no funds or programs for the guys who came back crazy. It comes down to fucking again. Old officers wanting to get their rocks off with their mistresses and the soldiers who actually fought, getting fucked if they survived.”

  The Boss says. “Long-term control is better for governments because someone has do the work so the wealthy can spend their money. The richest sixty-three people in the world had as much money as the poorest three billion people. Was this an accident? There are no utopia nations only functional ones and it has always been about which nation can efficiently control their people the best, not who’s the happiest.”

  Phillip rubs his chest in small circles. “Life has to be about more than winning over everyone else. The person who gets it all will have enemies.”

  “Jealousy from others is no reason not to fight to have it all and achieve self-actualization. Life is always going to have losers, don’t hate and punish hard working individuals.” The Boss squats in the corner across the room, looking at Phillip. “This is advanced common sense, it’ll take a while for it to click. I can talk to you like an idiot if you want to be one, so you can feel better, it makes no difference to me.”

  Phillip makes a jerking off gesture. “Sounds more like propaganda from a man who loves to hear himself talk…I bet you were a used car salesman in the past.”

  The Boss says. “Phillip, you’re a relic of the old world, change is constant, stand on the shoulders of giants or lay beneath their feet. Hating everyone and having no beliefs is a clever way to protect yourself in having not to choose a stance and be judged for it. Right or wrong.”

  Phillip stands up slowly with the help of his hands on the walls. “I was living fine until your men beat the shit out of me.”

  The Boss laughs at the honesty in Phillip’s voice. “Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. The world is nothing without the continual birth of people and that can’t happen if women stay in weak communities.”

  Phillip says. “Occam’s razor…David taught me that.”

  The Boss says. “People need simple answers and will let a leader worry about the how. I will take on that burden for humanity. We will never become who we were suppose to be, we’re forced to be what we have to be, to survive this life. I’m living, not judging.”

  Phillip says. “Where’s my daughter?”

  The Boss walks to the middle of the room under the buzzing lights. “This is a proxy war, we think were fighting each other for one surreal reason, but the real reason is because it’s in our nature, we’re worst than those things because we’re alive and we promote killing each other.”

  Phillip says. “I kill in self-defense and that’s the extent to my murdering.”

  The Boss says. “Of that I have no doubt. Because you don’t agree with someone, it does not make you right by default.”

  Phillip points at the Boss and himself. “It works both ways.”

  The Boss points at Phillip with a proud smile and shakes his hand. “There you go, fairness, no one is right or wrong, only ourselves matter. You can extend that to protecting other people, but you do it because it makes you feel good, a subconscious benefit, but a benefit nonetheless. Thanks for this chat Phillip. Let’s go check on Abigail, shall we.”

  Phillip lets out a heavy sigh. I guess I past the test with flying colors because this torture is over. The Boss leads the way out the door. And for a split second Phillip sees his opportunity to snap the man’s neck. No. This is the real test, not to fail.

  2

  Sunlight burns Phillip’s retinas to the crisp; he turns and leans his forehead against the door in migraine pain. He has on new clothes, no weapons, and is freshly shaven. He and his daughter spent yesterday filling his room with stuff and he filling his daughter’s head with lies about her mother.

  Phillip steps away from the metal door before someone throws him back in the hole. Fresh air clears his sinuses and the knots behind his eyes. The sky has a surreal texture to it. Warm temperature has always been a w
elcome. He has no recollection of the helicopter ride, he was equally surprised and frightened to wake up in a black hole. Abigail is not safe. Don’t let your grief over Maria get her killed by these rapists. Premature happiness like pride comes before the fall. Where the fuck am I? Who am I now without a group relying on me? What’s my purpose? Should I be thankful I’m here and not among the dead?

  Glad to leave the interior drabness and suffocation of the unknown underground, but his legs feel a bit stiff as if all his muscles atrophied into nothingness. He ventures around the superstructure trying not to limp too much. It’s contained bedlam; the cacophonous sound of bustling life mirrors his group, that no longer exist, thanks to him.

  The open area is as big as a department store parking lot and as busy as one inside on Christmas Eve. He settles into the local patois and mannerisms, but stands out like a sore thumb due to his big size. Most of the men look like Average Joes you wouldn’t care to look twice at, not at all like the monsters he was imagining, but the day’s young. Paul is no where to be found, killing him is no issue, killing him for the sake of the man who killed his wife, Ava, and his friends that’s the hard pill to swallow.

  The first new voices he begins to clearly hear is. “I’m here aren’t I?”

  “Clean the crap out of your ears and listen good. Today groups of us will hit the road for sumshit, doesn’t matter, as long as you don’t halfass your job, you’ll see tomorrow. Understood?” He slams his hand on the hood of a car and points at his buddy.

  “Not really. I need some Captagon for my nerves, to focus.”

  It’s a bust, Phillip walks on.

  “What would be the story they tell of us. The Holocaust makes the Jews interesting, and American slavery makes the Blacks interesting. What will be the one thing we will be remembered for?”