Soliloquy’s Sacrifce Chapter 13
Fourth Reading
I am back inside of David.
I am a full-grown man riding in a dark-colored limousine. Samuel is sitting next to me. He has his phone to his ear and is engaged in a heated discussion with someone from the Immunology Institute, presumably the Director. Samuel is imploring the man to do more, but the man is adamant the Institute can do nothing. The vehicle we are in is taking us to see, firsthand, the victim of a new pathogen that claimed at least two other people who were not Chosen. He closes his conversation with the Director and turns to me.
“All three victims were in Mexico on a Habitat for Humanity mission. All three came down with fever at the same time. Two died in Mexico. Only this one came back and now the CDC has her quarantined. All of them are from families of the Chosen, but all are unselected. I was told that none of the locals, Chosen or unselected, were reported as being sick, but they weren’t sure of that. So where did they contract this from? What do they have in common?”
“Samuel, we wouldn’t even know about this if they weren’t members of families with Chosen. People get sick all the time,” I remind him.
“But the plague? Or pseudo plague? Or nuevo plague? Or whatever they’re calling it? The Institute has no interest in helping the unselected? Where is it written the Institute is only for the Chosen? Why won’t they get involved?”
I shake my head. The Institute’s only concern has always been just the Chosen. I don’t understand Samuel’s question. In frustration, Samuel turns his focus to the passing landscape outside our windows and sits silently fuming.
The car we’re driven in slows as it exits the freeway to climb up the hill into La Jolla. When we crest the top of the ramp, we get a glimpse of the ocean beyond. The air conditioner is on full blast to counter the midday afternoon 90-degree heat. We drive up and down the small hills and around curves until we come to an older home tucked into the hillside. There is a black and white police car parked in the driveway. Our driver/bodyguard turns into the driveway and stops behind it. When we open the doors, we are hit with the Santa Ana heat. I shift my shirt collar and step out into the sun. Samuel exits the car from the other side and rounds it to head for the front door of the house. Before he gets there, a police officer steps out from the patrol car and intercepts Samuel and me. They shake hands and it’s clear the policeman is one of the Chosen. The policeman accompanies us to the front door where he rings the doorbell and knocks on the door.
Samuel waits with his head down and his shoulders slumped. His body posture shouts regret and defeat. When the front door opens, a white-haired man who appears to be his early seventies greets us and shakes Samuel’s hand. He looks frazzled and worn. His hair is askew and he has several days’ growth on his face. His eyes are rimmed in red. A smell of sickness comes from inside the house.
A younger man in his thirties walks up behind the man and introduces the older man as his father, and says he is also the father of the woman, Alice, we have come to see. I immediately feel the younger man’s despair and when I look over to Samuel, I see it’s a heavier burden for him—he sags even more. The younger man is one of the Chosen. The father is not and we’re told the daughter is also unselected. The son introduces himself as Charles.
While Samuel gives his condolences to the father and Charles, the police officer says we need to hurry inside. He does not want us seen here. The father nods vacantly while Charles beckons us to follow him. He leads us through a richly furnished living room, into a hallway decorated with painted portraits and then stops at a closed door near the end. He waits for us to assemble there and tells us to prepare ourselves. With that warning, he opens the door to the bedroom.
When we walk into the room we’re assaulted with a potpourri of odors: decayed flesh, antiseptic cleanser, perfumes, and medicated ointments. There are life-support machines arrayed around a bed on which a woman is lying beneath a blanket and sheet. Machines beep and buzz and monitors show graphs with moving indicators.
“How long does she have to live?” Samuel asks.
“The doctors don’t expect her to make it through the night,” Charles quietly reports. He is obviously distressed.
“Why isn’t she in intensive care at a hospital?” Samuel inquires.
“We requested she spend her last days here instead of in a place as foreign as a hospital. Hospice was called in and she was drugged to suffer as little as possible.” His voice quivers as he speaks.
Samuel stares at her face that is half hidden behind the breathing apparatus. “What are her symptoms?”
“Swollen lymph nodes, fever, headache, fatigue, bleeding from the eyes and nose, abdominal pain. Diarrhea, vomiting, gangrene of the extremities, bloody sputum, difficulty breathing, open sores, rash.”
Samuel reaches for the blanket and says to Charles, “Do you mind if I look?”
Charles shakes his head. “That’s what you’re here for. There’s nothing more anyone can do for her. If this helps someone else then it’s for a good cause.”
Samuel lifts the blanket and stares at the disease-riddled body beneath. “Ring around the rosies, pocket full of posies,” he laments softy to himself. He grimaces at the array of rashes and pustules on her skin. He shakes his head and then turns to Charles. “How long ago did she come down with the first symptom?”
Charles is on the verge of tears. “Three weeks ago.”
Now she is on the brink of death. Even with all the current technology. Amazingly fast. “What of the others?”
“The first died within a week. He was in his seventies. The second passed away two days ago. She was in her sixties.”
“How old is your sister?”
“Forty-two.”
“The older ones succumb quicker. Anyone else from their crew come down with symptoms?”
“Everyone who was not Chosen and was an American has gotten sick. I’ve heard that a few of the locals are reported to be ill, but that’s unverified.”
“And the CDC?”
“They’ve not identified the pathogen.”
“I was told it was plague or a variant of that. Now they’ve quarantined you and your family?”
Charles shrugs his shoulders.
“What about your father?”
Charles shakes his head and says, “No” very quietly. “He didn’t go with them to Mexico.”
“Probably saved his life, didn’t it?”
Charles bursts out crying. We wait silently for him to finish. Samuel takes one more look at Alice and then replaces the blanket to its former position. “And your mother?” he asks.
Charles can barely get it out. “She died a month ago. She was not Chosen.”
“Same symptoms?”
Charles nods again.
“She came down with it while she was in Mexico before Alice got sick?”
Charles is silent and looks off into the distance.
Samuel pats him on the shoulder and says, “Thank you for having us. We will see ourselves out.”
He motions for me to follow and we exit the room silently. At the front door he thanks the father, offers his condolences and then we’re escorted to our car by the police officer who stops us before we enter the car. “You were never here and this didn’t happen,” the police officer commands and then looks around nervously.
Samuel assures him nothing of this will be mentioned to anyone except the Director of the Institute. He thanks the police officer then orders our driver/bodyguard to take us to the beach by the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club. On the way there he is silent and stares out the window. I know better than to disturb him when he’s like this so I sit silently and wait for him to make conversation. Once we stop in the parking lot at the water’s edge, he takes off his shoes and socks and throws them on the floor of the car. He rolls up his pants and asks me to join him for a walk in the water. On our way there, he’s on his phone in a conversation I can’t hear. The beach is full of locals and tourists, som
e lying on blankets and others playing out in the summer waters.
When he finishes his phone conversation, he turns to me and reports, “This is not an isolated incident. People with her symptoms are popping up around the globe.” He looks out into the horizon over the ocean. “I needed this, to feel the pain of the loss to our Chosen ones. I needed this to put things in perspective. We as a group have to know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of this suffering. We can’t simply shut ourselves inside our homes and turn a blind eye. Just because we knew it was coming doesn’t relieve us from responsibility to our fellow man. We must help them if we can.”
“Isn’t that what the CDC is for?” I ask.
“The CDC doesn’t know. They can’t isolate what’s already out of the bag. It’s going to be a catastrophe of epic proportions.”
“The Institute saw a case of it two years ago and then about a year ago issued the appropriate vaccinations to the Chosen. They got notice to the CDC, but it was ignored.”
“The Institute should have pressed the issue.”
“You know as well as we all do the Institute’s ability to serve the Chosen only works the way it does as long it stays under the radar. No presence. No publicity. ”
Samuel shakes his head. “The Institute says it appears to strike hardest with people thirty and older. The young react only mildly to it but serve as carriers. Infants appear to be completely immune to it.”
“We’re talking unselected, I assume.”
“Yes, of course. We are as immune to it as the infants. But it’s like something out of a horror movie—the smell, the awful rash, and the pustules. The Institute expects it to spread like wildfire. They say they do not know how it is transmitted or where it came from. They are convinced that it is too late to be contained. They think it has been around since before they first discovered it and it’s now just hatching from some incubation period which means that it will be everywhere.”
“Only the unselected,” I clarify.
“Yes. Already there are reports of the Chosen being singled out as the cause of this misfortune. In primitive parts of the world, we’re being cast as witches and demons. Yesterday, a Chosen healthcare worker in Nigeria was burned alive as a witch by the very people she was helping. The local Chosen fought back and it was a bloody massacre of unselected. The Chosen do not go down easily. Now there is a movement afoot to have all the Chosen distance themselves from the unselected instead of working among them to help them. It’ll make things worse. We’ll become polarized; the gap between us and them will become greater and greater.”
“It was predicted this would be the outcome.”
“So? That doesn’t mean I have to accept it. My God, just because we are the Chosen doesn’t mean we have to stand by idly and watch them die.”
“And when they attack us for helping?” I challenge.
“I...I just don’t know. There has to be a better solution. I understand why the Institute can’t get involved but...”
I look out over the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean and feel the warmth of the Santa Ana breeze on my back.
“I’m so ashamed,” I hear him say. “I should be able to do something more about this.”
“You can’t know everything, Samuel. You are not the God people make you out to be. Don’t fall into that trap,” I tell him.
He stops and glares at me. “Not the God people make me out to be...” he cuts himself short and then collapses down into a sitting squat in the sand where he hangs his head in defeat. He is trembling as if in stifled crying.
“The pain Charles felt. It’s like someone ripping out your insides. For him, it is loneliness. He and his sister were very close, like twins who could finish each other’s sentences. The emptiness he feels at her loss, such hollowness. His despair about a future without her, so dark, so helpless.” Tears are running down his face.
I give him a moment to collect himself before I ask, “What is the Institute going to do, if anything at all? What is their plan?”
“Nothing. No plan. We’re supposed to be the Chosen. How does that bode for future generations? What kind of legacy do we pass on to them?”
“We always knew nature would strike when the world reached the overpopulation zenith. Does it matter if we can’t stop it? It’s going to happen, with or without us,” I declare.
His phone rings six times before he answers it. He listens, pockets it and then stares blankly out at the ocean for a few minutes. “Another mob killing, this time in India and once more the Chosen fought back. Now the local Indian police have issued orders to detain all Chosen from that community. They want them to be held accountable. It is the beginning of the world turning on us.”
“This is what we’ve been preparing for all these years. The moment is now.”
Soliloquy’s Sacrifice Chapter 14
Fourth Reading Continued
I’m in the back seat of an SUV which is racing down Aero Drive towards Montgomery airfield. The military vehicles, in front and behind, escorting us there are filled with Chosen who are heavily armed. The air is electric with angst. In the back seat, Samuel is unconscious. The bleeding from his gunshot wounds are stabilized, but it is imperative that he be flown to a “Chosen only” facility. There can be no further risks to his life. All medical facilities in the area have been compromised by the unselected. Because of that, it was decided he be flown to a base only the people flying him there know about. There he will be operated on and cared for by Chosen medical staff. No unselected.
The Chosen marine driving us is on a rant. “’Shelter from the storm.’ Why in God’s name did he think it was worth his life to try and talk those crazies down?” The “crazies,” as he calls them, were a group of distraught parents whose children are afflicted with the latest version of the mutating plague. They accused one of the teachers who happened to be a Chosen person of being responsible for their children’s affliction.
I could offer nothing. Samuel was convinced our role was to help those who the rest of us knew there was no help for. The plague had moved so fast that everyone was taken by surprise. Now it killed both young and old unselected. Soon it would kill almost all unselected. Nothing could stop it. It was natural selection at work.
“’Shelter from the storm.’ All they were looking for was a goat to sacrifice. He should have listened when we told him it was too dangerous. I mean, those are military families. They have guns. They are trained to use those guns. They are looking for an excuse to use those guns. Just having us there was not a guarantee of his safety. Now we have the blood of dead parents on our hands as well as his blood. ‘Shelter from the storm.’ I warned him, dammit. I warned him not to try to placate them.”
The marine’s repeated reference is to a Bob Dylan song Samuel had become entranced with. He was listening to it when he jumped up and yelled to no one in particular, “Shelter from the storm. That’s what we need to be. That’s what our destiny is.” He was over the edge. The strain of the conflict was wearing him down. The suffering his empathic powers delivered to him was more than he could bear. I saw it in his eyes, heard it in his voice. He was frantically grasping at straws.
“I will talk to them, offer them shelter from the storm,” he had declared.
“There is no shelter for the unselected,” one of the marines guarding us yelled. He had long grown tired of Samuel’s whining and crying for the unselected. “They die, we live. It’s as simple as that.” I think Samuel’s Messiah status had long ago lost its magic for him. To him, Samuel was just a poor S.O.B. empath who couldn’t take the strain.
“Besides, Bob Dylan sucks!” He further exclaimed, growing tired of listening to Samuel’s choice of music. He was covered in Heavy Metal tattoos so his choice of music was literally on his skin.
Samuel ignored him and continued with how he would offer these poor people shelter from their storm of suffering. He would touch them and absorb their pain. He would suffer on the cross for them—wear a crown of thorns f
or them if that was what it took. Their suffering would be his and they would thank him for it. He would ease their pain. He was adamant he be allowed to go to them. He said he would adopt them, make them his own.
Exasperated by his constant haranguing, I said, in sarcasm, “Like William of Perth, the patron saint of adopted children?”
He replied, not knowing who William of Perth was, “Yes, adopted, like William of Perth.”
I clarified, “William of Perth had his head bashed in and his throat slit by the child he adopted.”
He waved me off, saying, “We must care for our brothers and sisters. The past is not the present.”
When he took his demands to the officer in charge, he was flatly turned down, but something like that never stopped Samuel. When he was on a mission, mountains stepped aside for him, especially mountains of the Chosen. After much persuasion, the commander relented and we were off to the base to meet with the parents of the afflicted. Not one of the people in our entourage felt this was a good idea. To them, we were walking into the enemy’s lair and no good could come of it. And it didn’t.
The meeting with the military families had gone from bad to worse in only a matter of minutes. Once their guns were brandished, all hell broke loose. It was Chosen vs. unselected. Now Samuel was critically wounded and we were transporting him to a plane to be flown to safety.
I hear gunfire from one of the vehicles ahead of us and then our SUV dives off of the road. I am thrown to the side and hit my head on the door frame. The next thing I know I am being carried out of the SUV by two marines. My shoulder hurts like hell. I look to my left and see a red stain spreading under my sweatshirt. I’ve been shot. In the background, I hear the whine of jet engines. Someone is yelling at the men carrying me. I can’t make out what is being said. Then I hear, “Get them both on the plane. I don’t care if there is only room for one back there, make room for two. Get them both to wherever the hell you’re taking Samuel. Do NOT give me shit about this!”
Aliens, Tequila & Us: The complete series Page 17
