Genesis Virus

by Pinto, Daniel

  Up above on the surface, it’s tranquil and has forgotten about the devastating impact of the Curio vehicle.

  Men’s hats and women’s wraps float away from them as they run to the banks of the lake, following the lead of a small crowd, who’s curious enough to stop and see, but not jump in. Helter-skelter kids peek over the water as if it’s the Grand Canyon waiting to swallow up any and all brave enough to cross the threshold. People block out the sun by saluting their foreheads and stand on theirs toes, waiting for…something to happen…above or below the crystal blue water.

  She comes through the water upright, stiff as a plank and as surprised as a person getting dunked for a baptism. “Help me.” She swallows more water and buoys, cresting the waves.

  A woman faints on the grassy knoll and a few kids tip over into the water, splashing her in the face. She bobbles, sticks a hand straight into the air and sinks, only her fingertips are visible.

  A Good Samaritan grabs her by the forearm and slides her onto the grass like a hooked fish being pulled up and over the edge of a boat. Her courtship with death is at an end. Her ribs feel like they’ve been kicked in by a donkey and her vocal cords are fried.

  “I’m Ava…thanks.” Spitting up water and trying to take in the group of people looking at her as is she’s about to give a speech that they are forced to listen to.

  The woman helping Ava is in the water ankles deep, with her hands on Ava’s shoulders. “Don’t worry Ava, everything is going to okay from here on.” Ava lowers her head between her legs and coughs; each cough makes her body ache in a new location. The kids walk by and pat Ava on the shoulder one after the other to congratulate her on surviving something so cool. An ambulance siren turns everyone around in eagerness just like an ice cream truck.

  “Over here.” People jump and wave.

  Ava finally looks up, her face strained, the woman’s still in the water lifting Ava’s limp legs to the shore; Ava has her disfigured hand under her shirt and she inspects her wounds in dismay, not recognizing her chewed up body. Her skin is both wrinkled and pulpy. Ava looks as if she’s been pulled through a keyhole.

  Stress has aged her by years. Ava has bald spots over her scalp, chunks of dyed blonde hair in her shirt, her vision is splotchy as if she’s been staring into the sun too long like Icarus, seeing black spots come and go. Her legs have polka dots of bruises. Her shoulders ache and her eyelids are heavily caked with blood, giving her black eyes with a blue dot in the center. Ava’s damaged, not broken. She massages her ring finger; her marriage to death was not consummated.

  The woman says. “They’ll fix you up in no time, you survived, that’s what matters, nothing else.”

  Ava recounts the last half hour in a abridged version and in a succinct tone to her savior standing in the water of Galilee Lake. Ending with. “I tried to save him and tried even harder to kill him.” Angry tears fill the lakes in her eyes; she shivers the cold water off. The woman is dumbfounded and hard swallows any thoughts away.

  Ava sucks in air as if it’s her last and refocuses on the woman’s drawn eyes, finds comfort in the relatable and steady expression, and genuinely smiles for the first time all day…until she sees the woman’s pupils double in size. Ava’s instructor/zombie wraps his arms completely around the woman’s waist and pulls her underwater. Ripples of blood vibrate outward in concentric circles.

  Everyone screams and runs over each other past the ambulance. Ava jumps back into the water with a rock in her fist.

  Chapter Eight

  1

  In the olden days, with each pregnancy, a woman was controlling three lives: hers, the baby, and the father, with full power and autonomy to do what she pleased for better or worst. Men were tired of being control under the guise of women’s rights and religious mortality. Therefore, the Opt-out Law was created, hated in public, but loved in private by politicians and citizens. The law was ramrod through Congress and made legal just as fast as laws are created to bail out the banks. Money and children both hold the ultimate sway on choices in life.

  The law’s more popular and unofficial name in the social consciousness was the Father Abortion Law, which allowed men to pay a nominal fee to the state signifying that they didn’t want to be a father and the woman they impregnated couldn’t be persuaded to terminate the pregnancy for whatever reason.

  The state then would notified the woman that, public child support will not be afforded to her if she decided to move forward with the pregnancy. And furthermore, that if she couldn’t prove she could care for the child on the own by a certain timeline she had the choice of accepting a government job such as joining the Armed Services or a public administration position. No more free money for being thoughtless with your life choices.

  The social programs I can remember which will not even scratch the surface are: CPS, WIC, Food Stamps, Section 8 housing, MIT transportation, Medicaid, and SSI. The national debt was in the trillions from raising babies into adulthood and then providing programs to house and feed those adults into retirement age and then provide them with more services until death. Taxpayers were raising babies for irresponsible parents and could not longer bear the burden of constantly paying for a stranger’s life and on top of that raise their own family. Communism can only work if everyone wants to be equal, if not it’s just another system to exploit people which was evident in every communism nation in the world.

  The Father Abortion Law eliminated childbirths for the sake of manipulation of men, mistakes, obligation, and the list goes on. The purpose of this law was to prevent unwanted pregnancies not promote abortions. Each state across the country was now able to invest more in creating jobs and better public education programs instead of only being at the whim of the federal government in a political tug-of-war for funds. High schools became a place of learning that provided a future rather than simply being free daycare and a revolving door that left teenagers unprepared for the real world, and who were blamed and ostracized when they failed to become the perfect citizens. Instead, more kids were able to attend college with academic scholarships rather than solely relying on a sport scholarship or the military to improve their lives. After high school or college, adults were able to get fulfilling employment and continue the cycle.

  To think that by focusing on childbirth, every facet of a country would be changed for the better. Life is about quality not quantity. Short-term thinking and parochial views have no place in a meritocracy.

  The Father Abortion Law had repercussions after a generation similar to China’s one child policy, by creating a disparity between the ratios of men-to-women. More men were born and the cycle of opting out of pregnancies caused the population of women to continue to diminish. Each person born now lived a better life because of better educated parents. Only now, the American population was reduced by half from 400 million to 200 million. America was more prosperous than any other time in history, until the Genesis Virus occurred.

  I miss the good ole days.

  The Boss

  2

  Ever since Jacob died, I have developed insomnia and this helps.

  A man in hell and a man in heaven, have something in common, neither is satisfied. People in paradise will complain if they were allowed to be their true-selves. Whining is to be expected, it should not deter personal ambitions. People’s feelings have no bearing on my reality.

  Nobody in camp knows my name. The Boss is not an evil moniker, it’s my way of distancing myself from the men and remaining objective in my decision making process. I make observations, not judgments. Sometimes, I hear my men talk about me behind my back, maybe they despise me because I do what they can’t do, I tell them what I want to their faces all the time. You can either kick ass or kiss ass to get to the top, which one do you honestly want to do? Don’t feel ashamed about your answer, own it.

  Humanity is on its last breath. America has a tabula rasa, a blank slate. A new beginning is nigh. I’m doing what’s right, not easy. I’m staking my claim
to this new frontier, you can help me build it or become the foundation. I don’t need your love only obedience. This is not a marriage it’s a job. Everyone has a hole in their heart and if you fill it, they will follow you to the kingdom of heaven or hell.

  America has continually endured the misconception of its own democracy, it was actually an oligarchy. A small group of people controlling everything. I don’t want to be king or president, I need the semblance of posterity in the world once again. If this is to be the last generation, what’s the point of my actions and life? Coveting personal meaning is not self-sustaining. Toddlers have this mindset. They’re cute, but helpless. A timocracy is a valiant idea if honorable men still existed. My group is not based on wealth, looks, lineage; it’s based solely on ability, a meritocracy, the fairest self-governing structure in a cruel world.

  Big lies have small beginnings. Especially the ones will tell ourselves. Stating to every person you meet, “trust me I’m not a liar, I just need time to prove myself for your benefit.” Becomes exhausting and is frankly a waste of my time. People expect you to hold their hand and kiss their ass in order to save them. Sorry you were born in the wrong era. Everyone has a tragic backstory, no better or worst. My help will not be based on your timeframe or in the manner you expect, but you will get my help, if you like it or not. I get it, (but don’t endorse it) time is the hottest commodity that each person is killing for, so to listen to some old fool with a pipe dream in a world where nightmares are king. Might come off as idiotic, but trying to stop me is a death sentence. So, stay out of my way or get in line.

  Self-interest exists, not good and evil. Morale exist not morality. And millions of books were written to convince you otherwise. Why overcompensate, because people need to be told the same lie over and over again because they have short memories. Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary. Always preaching world peace over inner peace. Great minds are concerned with the ordinary: the individual and reproduction.

  To create effective communities and to ignore the debate over morality is what I want to leave behind. A legacy. It is far better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Indecisiveness and ignorant confidence will be our end, not the undead. They’re a nuisance with a short shelf-life, when you factor in the elements of nature. They’re not as resourceful as cockroaches that can survive nuclear blasts (a small one) and actually want to survive, the stalking dead are prisoners on Death Row. Nincompoops.

  The Bible inspires every book and you need a degree to understand it beyond the handful of stories everyone knows. So if you read it, remember this? I think back on Psalms 116, “I said in my haste, all men are liars.” This statement is true and false at the same time. I’m a man and so I have to be lying, right? According to the statement. But if I’m lying this statement has to be false. It’s a paradox like every person who ever lived. There is a contradiction of thought inside everyone wanting to live. They’re naturally suspicious and untrusting about joining an idea not their own, that will save them, but also they want help. And can never get enough of it. It’s a hindrance when I’m trying to save humanity while at the same time trying to navigate myself in a world where everyone wants to stab me in the back as if I’m Caesar after crossing the Rubicon. I am no better than my followers, I go on missions and eat the same food and still they look at me like I live in an Ivory Tower. If a man has to get walked over his whole life, by turning the other cheek no matter what, to get into heaven then not’s a place I want to go. Besides, humans are glorified robots in heaven with no identity or feeling in order to exist in a place of perfection. In heaven, memories have to be deleted to make a person happy and constant happiness is the same as a heart flat-lining, contractions equals feeling.

  I was looking at the notes from my first speech to the group. The Last Brotherhood.

  Rules:

  We will not attack any group.

  We will not fight or steal from each other.

  We will not force anyone to join our cause.

  Goals:

  Create a police force.

  Create a judicial system.

  Create a Congress with outside members.

  Hold annual elections for command.

  Hard work can be shifted to someone else, but it can never be truly eliminated from creating a good or easy life. Struggle creates a better version of you, look to the flying butterfly compared to the crawling caterpillar.

  Historians will probably call me every four-letter word in the book and a fascist/dictator, but because of me, they’ll be alive to complain. I will be long dead and won’t care, so complain until you’re blue in the face. It’s what people do, when they don’t have to make decisions with no best outcomes only variations of bad. My father was a soldier and he would always say. “That person doesn’t know shit from Shinola.” Maybe he’s talking about me or maybe he’s talking about you. Only time will tell.

  The Boss

  3

  In the twilight, David stands nudging at the embers in the fire beneath the rotating deer. He wasn’t allowed to prepare dinner tonight because of last time. Nobody’s in the mood to think about eating dogs.

  David says. “Tonight, we’ll eat like kings,” he looks around, “and queens.”

  Lou says. “It would be great if men could get pregnant.”

  Ava says. “That’s the first smart thing you’ve said.”

  Lou says. “So we can have an excuse to be fat like women.”

  Ava pinches her fingers. “So close.”

  The Chief whittles a wooden figurine, beginning to look like a crude lion. “I miss and wish for those old boring days, that started out pointless and forgetful, but somehow became cherished memories with family.”

  Coop’s getting his brightly colored and decorative afghan from his pack. “Bored to death wouldn’t be a bad way to go.”

  Youngblood’s lying down with his head propped up by his elbow in the dirt, he opens and closes his hands slowly, saying. “Killing and cracking bones all day really takes its toll. We have to fight until we croak, what’s so different, in the past we fought to own the most stuff, and now we fight for life and stuff.”

  Delilah says to Youngblood. “Can I borrow some of your clothes, I think we’re the same size.”

  Lou laughs as he gets up to check on the food.

  Ava has David’s poncho on and she grabs the bottom of it with one hand to avoid the flames as she checks on the meat, she walks pass the Chief and the sounds of crickets chirping. Delilah’s shoving her palms under her armpits to get warm, David notices and tosses her his jacket.

  David says after the Chief says something to Coop. “If you’re not sure it you care about someone, imagine never seeing them again and you’ll have your answer.”

  Lou says. “You’re preaching to the choir.”

  David smiles and says. “Yeah.”

  The rest of the group look over at each other sideways with smirks. David says. “This may seem harsh. But there are some people in the old world I don’t miss at all. I didn’t wish their deaths, but I can live without them.”

  Ava says, “wow,” and shakes her head.

  Lou says. “Damn David, even that makes her upset.”

  Delilah zips up David’s jacket. “Hating everyone and having no beliefs is a way to protect yourself. It’s a clever self-protection trick, but it stunts your life and happiness.”

  “That’s not what I said.” David quickly stands up and moves his hands up and down horizontally in front of him as if he’s trying to silence a lynching mob. “It’s good to care about people, but you shouldn’t be hated if you don’t. The world is so big how can I love them all. I rather die a hated man who tells the truth than a liar.

  Cooper says. “I can drink to that. A man who doesn’t tell lies doesn’t have to remember anything.”

  Lou has a fading label bottle of scotch and brings it out. “It’s one of many bottles, tonight is as good as any.”

  Ava says. “What are we drin
king to?”

  Lou says. “How about to no one getting bit tonight.”

  Cooper’s eyes scan the group. “Just sleep next to one of those dead things, if you’re so scared.”

  Lou says. “I plan to, why do you think I’m drinking?”

  Cooper says. “Before bed every night, I take a swallow to take the edge off and because you never know it might be my last supper.”

  Lou shoves the bottle of whisky into David’s chest, goading him. “If you say and think you’re a man, drink this.”

  David says. “I’m not a big drinker, maybe in another life I was destined to be a drunk. How cruel this world is.” He makes two fists in the air.

  Lou says. “You want some or not?”

  David says. “Hand it over.” Hoping it’s the start of a olive branch. “You know, alcohol does not warm you up, it’s only an illusion, it actually makes your body colder.”

  Ava says. “Shut up for five minutes.”

  David gets startle, takes a swig from the bottle giving her the lingering eye.

  The Chief edifies Youngblood. “Humans have something in common with those things, both of us like to be in groups, everyone dies alone, but we live in groups.”

  Cooper and Delilah say. “Here, here.” Then both take a shot.

  After a few more rounds of liquor, David says. “Guys…we need to get to the Bermuda Triangle, so we can time travel and stop this virus from ever happening…” The whole group looks at each other, pauses for a second, and then breaks into laughter. Some throw their cups at him in fun.

  David waffles by saying. “Guys…I have something to say,” he chuckles and the group begins to disregard him, so he then says. “Listen, hey listen,” he stops then says. “Um, um, um.”