In His Image

by James Beauseigneur

  But Decker couldn’t let go.

  The grip that had held him just out of the reach of death’s jaw now refused to release its hold. His hands were numb, locked together, fingers intertwined, and he could not make them move. His mother pulled harder.

  “I can’t let go! Mommy, I can’t make my hands let go,” he said, only now beginning to cry.

  “It’s okay, Mommy’s got you and she won’t let go.” She pulled. With all of her strength and love, she pulled. And then suddenly, she stopped.

  Decker sat bolt upright in his bed.

  It was a dream.

  It had really happened, just that way, but that was years ago.

  Still, inexplicably, he felt his mother’s tight grip on his right forearm. He tried to move it, but it hurt and it was heavy. In the dim predawn light he looked and realized what was happening.

  “Elizabeth, wake up and let go of my arm,” he said. “Come on, babe. You’ve been having some kind of weird dream or something.” Decker mused briefly at the irony that he would be telling her she was having a weird dream. “Elizabeth, come on, you’re hurting me. Wake up and let go of my arm!” Decker took her hand and pulled her fingers loose from his arm.

  Finally freeing himself and shaking his arm to get the blood flowing again, he lay down to go back to sleep. But something was not right. Elizabeth was a light sleeper.

  “Elizabeth!” he called sharply, but there was no response. He rolled over and shook her to try to wake her, but she would not awaken. He shook her again, but still she didn’t respond. Suddenly a horrible thought hit him and he grabbed her wrist.

  There was no pulse.

  He checked for a pulse in her carotid artery. There was none. He listened for a heartbeat, but there was nothing. His own blood pressure rose as his heart pounded in terror. His jaw clenched and his head began to ache. He tried to understand what was happening.

  CPR, he thought suddenly. Her body’s still warm. It must have just happened. I’ve got to try CPR. He pulled the covers from her lifeless body. It had been years since he had taken a class in CPR; he prayed that he remembered how.

  Let’s see, he thought, put one hand on top of the other on the middle of the chest. Wait! Is it just above the place where the ribs come together or just below? Just above! he thought. He began to apply pressure, but her body just sank with the mattress. He had to get her onto something solid. He grabbed her arms and pulled her to the floor.

  He tried again. “Oh, God!” he said out loud. “I forgot to check her mouth.” Decker pulled his wife’s mouth open and looked inside for any obstructions to the airflow. It was too dark to see.

  He scrambled for the light, but lost more time as his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness. He checked her mouth again, but could see nothing. He reached into her mouth with his fingers. There was nothing there. “God, help me!” he said, in tears of desperation. I should have just done that in the first place. He had lost precious seconds.

  He quickly blew two full breaths into her lungs and went back to his position above her, pressing with his palms against the middle of her lower rib cage. “One, two, three, four, five,” he counted under his breath, and then blew air into her lungs again. “One, two, three, four, five.” He repeated the process. Again. Again. “Don’t die … Elizabeth, please don’t die,” he sobbed. Again, and again. Five minutes. “Please, honey. Please wake up! God, please, let her wake up.” But there was still nothing.

  Got to call an ambulance. Just a few more. “One, two, three, four, five.”

  Decker grabbed the phone from the nightstand by the bed. His hands were shaking and his fingers struggled to dial 911 as he stretched the phone cord over to where Elizabeth lay. He held the phone between his shoulder and ear and began CPR again. The line was busy. He stopped and dialed again. Busy. How can it be busy? “God, help me!” he said again. He pressed the “0” button for the operator. It too was busy. He tried again, but it was still busy.

  Decker dropped the phone. He continued CPR for another thirty minutes, stopping every five minutes to try the phone again. Finally it rang. He held the phone between his shoulder and ear, continuing CPR, as over and over it rang. Minutes passed and it just kept ringing. Could he have dialed wrong? Now that it was ringing did he dare hang up? No, no! How could he have dialed 911 wrong? If he hadn’t dialed right it wouldn’t be ringing. Unless, unless he accidentally dialed 411, the number for information. It was unlikely, but in his state of panic, anything was possible.

  He hung up and dialed again. It was busy.

  It took only a moment while he dialed, but when he started CPR again he noticed something that had escaped him before. Almost an hour had passed and Elizabeth’s body was growing cold. She was dead. There was nothing he could do. She was dead.

  Decker sat down on the floor beside her and wept. The thought of losing her now, now that he had finally learned what it meant to truly love her, was more than his heart could bear. His muscles ached from the CPR. Outside their window the sun was rising just as it did on every other morning. Elizabeth always loved the sunrise. The clock-radio came on, and an announcer’s voice started in mid-sentence, but Decker didn’t hear it. He heard the noise, but that’s all it was. Tears streaked his face but he didn’t wipe his eyes. If all he had to offer Elizabeth was his tears, he would leave them where they lay.

  Soon Hope and Louisa would wake up. How could he tell them what had happened? For their sake, at least, he knew he must be strong. Still weeping, he picked up Elizabeth’s body and moved her back to the bed. He pulled the covers up, tucking the blanket in gently around her. Only now did the radio announcer’s words begin to pierce through the wreath of grief which encircled him.

  “Reports continue to come in from all around the world,” the announcer’s voice cracked painfully. “Thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe more, are reported dead in what is undoubtedly the worst single disaster in human history. The deaths seem to have occurred almost simultaneously in all parts of the world. So far, no one has any idea why this has happened.”

  What! What was he saying?

  The thoughts pounded like thunder in Decker’s head. Thousands dead? Was this what killed Elizabeth? How could this happen? Radiation? Poison gas? Terrorist attack? But why would it kill only some people and not others?

  As if in answer, the announcer continued. “There is no apparent pattern to the deaths: black, white, Indian, Japanese, Chinese; men, women, children …”

  “Children?” Decker said out loud. “NO!!!”

  Decker ran from the bedroom. A moment passed and then a scream of anguish ascended the stairs, ripping through the walls and shaking the tiny particles of dust as they floated through the morning sunlight. It was like no earthly scream, such a sorrowful howl. But no one heard it. They were all dead. Decker was alone.

  Hovering in the twilight of insanity, Decker stumbled up the half flight of stairs to the living room and made his way to a chair. Upstairs in the bedroom, the voice of the radio announcer continued.

  “Everywhere there is terror, everywhere there is heartbreak. Never has the world faced such devastating loss. No war, no plague, no event in history can compare with the scale of this disaster. And no one can be certain the death is over. Whatever has claimed the lives of so many, can it truly have struck so quickly and just as quickly be gone?

  “In our studio three of my coworkers have died, one as he stood speaking with me little more than an hour ago. There was no warning. As long as I live, the scene of my coworker and friend simply stopping mid-sentence and collapsing to the floor will be etched in my memory. And as I recall that moment when death struck here and around the world, I cannot help but ask myself, Is it over? Will it strike again? Will this sentence, this word, this breath be my last? Will the same happen again to others, to me, as has happened to so many?

  “Is this the end of the world? It’s not unreasonable to ask that question.

  “Can this be an act of unmatched terror and barbarism
? An insidious crowning achievement in the endless parade of man’s inhumanity to man? … Can it be anything else?

  “Tens of millions lay dead around the world for no apparent reason. At least thirty commercial airplanes are reported to have crashed into hillsides or fields or cities. In Brazil and Argentina, where it is mid-morning, carnage covers the roadways. Cars driven by victims of the disaster sped helter-skelter, careening into other vehicles and pedestrians. There are reports of nuclear power plants teetering on the edge of disaster as surviving technicians rush to fill in for those who died at their stations. Some who survived the initial disaster have been forced to leave their dead behind as they evacuate neighborhoods around overturned train cars spilling out streams of chemicals.

  “World governments are appealing for calm. People are being asked to stay in their homes. All forms of mass transportation are being shut down; planes have been forced to land at the nearest available airport. Even though the deaths appear to be worldwide, the governments of many countries are responding to the disaster as though it were an attack on their national sovereignty, placing their military on high alert and restricting fly-over rights to their own armed forces. NATO, too, has been placed on high alert.

  “No one knows what has happened, but we cannot help but ask: Have all the years of the War on Terror now come back to strike the civilized world? Perhaps this attack has been in the works for decades. Or perhaps it is a radical Islamic response to Israel’s construction of a new Temple in Jerusalem on the site where their mosque once stood. Clearly, if this disaster is the result of a terrorist action, they’ve gone beyond the destruction of a few buildings or the murder of the population of a few cities, and we are now in a world war.” The announcer paused, no longer able to hold back tears.

  “At this moment all over the east coast of America and Canada, men and women are waking to find their loved ones dead. It is all so hard to comprehend, so difficult to imagine. In time zones to the west, where it is not yet dawn, many are sleeping soundly, unaware of what has befallen our planet. For some it will be hours before they wake to find their loved ones lying dead next to them.”

  South of Hanoi, Vietnam

  Pedaling her heavily laden bicycle steadily along the unnamed road that runs north along the top of a dike on the floodplain of the Red River Delta, Le Thi Dao made good time on her way to the markets of Hanoi, twelve miles to the north. The handmade wicker baskets she carried were stacked tightly, then tied together in two rings and hung on either side of her bike, giving an appearance, to someone from the West, that she was carrying two enormous bagels. Squinting to see better, she stopped pedaling and began to drift. Ahead on the roadside, next to a grazing ox, a small patch of bright blue and red took on a familiar form. Lying there wearing her New York Yankees baseball cap was Vu Le Thanh Hoa, a friend from school. Her stiffening fingers still clutched the ox’s lead rope.

  North of Akek Rot, Sudan

  Ahmed Mufti held his rifle to his chest as he waited quietly but eagerly for the signal. Just fourteen years old, this would be the boy’s first time to participate in an actual raiding party.

  He had come south from his home in Matarak with his father and uncle and the other men to raid the Dinka and Nuba villages of southern Sudan for booty and slaves. So far, though, his father had made him stay at camp during the actual raids. Officially, the government of Sudan in Khartoum was opposed to the practice of raiding and taking slaves, but in reality, it was encouraged as part of the policy of Islamization.

  Driving the booty of cattle, sheep, goats, and slaves northward was painfully slow and with every mile Ahmed had felt the disappointment of not having been in on an actual raid. There was always the possibility of encountering the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), guerrilla members of the Dinka tribe, but the Dinka were poorly armed and would not likely attack a raiding party as large as Ahmed’s. It had seemed he would have to wait until next year to participate in any fighting.

  Then word came from the party’s scouts, who had been sent ahead to look for SPLA forces. Following a path that had been heavily traveled recently, the scouts had come upon a large group of perhaps two hundred slaves near a huge mahogany tree. Brought south by slave traders for sale back to their families and tribes or to some humanitarian group intending to free them, the women and children were escorted by no more than ten armed men. It was few enough that Ahmed’s father had agreed to allow Ahmed to come along. Now as he waited for the signal to converge on the camp, he stayed low to the ground and considered the number of Sudanese pounds that would be his from the sale of two hundred slaves.

  Finally the signal came, but it was not the one he expected. Knowing only to follow the lead of the other men, Ahmed moved slowly forward. In a moment, he came to where his uncle and three others from the party had stopped to look down at the bodies of two dead SPLA soldiers. He had heard no gunshots or sounds of fighting and there was no blood. Before he could ask, another call came from the direction of the slave encampment. With adrenaline rushing through his veins, Ahmed ran to catch up with the others, who were now charging to the encampment. At the clearing they all stopped. There was no sign of battle. Unsure of what he should do, Ahmed stood between his father and uncle. He did not understand what he saw, but he could see in the faces of the others that neither did they. Beneath the shade of the huge mahogany tree were two hundred slaves, just as the scouts had said, but nearly all of them were dead.

  Lavaur, France

  Albert Faure tugged at the reins, bringing his horse to a halt as he reached for his cell phone. “Faure,” he answered crisply. The Andalusian stallion shook its abundant white mane and took advantage of the pause to graze on the clover at its feet.

  “Something has happened,” the caller said. It was Faure’s secretary from his office at the Conseil Régional, the congress of the Midi-Pyrenees region of France. Faure was the region’s youngest member of the Conseil and, according to many, one of the most ambitious.

  Gerard Poupardin did not know how to explain what had happened. “Do not keep me waiting, Gerard!” Faure demanded. “What is it?”

  “Sir, it’s difficult to … A little more than ninety minutes ago, millions of people all over the world suddenly died without any warning or known cause.”

  Faure tried to understand, but of course could not. There was the desire to believe he had simply misunderstood. “France?” he asked finally, not knowing where else to begin his questioning.

  “There’s really very little information available so far. I have heard an estimate of perhaps a quarter million dead, but I do not know how they can estimate such a thing.” Faure gasped. “It does seem,” Poupardin continued tenuously, “that France and much of Western Europe may have lost far fewer than some parts of the world. Estimates coming from the United Kingdom are more than a million.”

  “The United States?”

  “It’s still early there, sir. Based on what we know from their east coast, they seem to have been struck much worse than we.”

  “Is this some kind of biological warfare? Arab terrorists?” Faure asked. It was an obvious question, but of course Poupardin couldn’t answer it.

  “Our borders and the borders of many other countries have been ordered sealed and the military reserves are being called to active service,” Poupardin reported.

  “Is it safe for me to return to the city?” Faure asked.

  “I don’t know, sir. No one is sure of anything. Nothing makes sense.”

  Faure thought for a moment.

  “There is one other thing, sir.” Poupardin paused. “The Conseil president is among those reported dead.”

  Faure thought on this bit of additional information and quickly considered how it might be used to his advantage. Stroking his horse’s neck, he scanned the Pyrenees Mountains, which mark France’s southern border with Spain. “I’m coming in to the office,” he said finally, and hung up.

  Pusan, South Korea

  His leg broke
n in two places, DaiSik Kim finally managed to free himself and struggled to climb from beneath the crushed remains of his tented kiosk at the Chagalchi Fish Market in Pusan. Stunned when half of the men and women in line at his shop had suddenly fallen dead before him, he had not noticed until it was too late that a bus had jumped the curb and was speeding toward him. From beneath the rubble where he was buried for almost two hours, he had called for help, but no one came. Now, as he emerged hoping to find police and ambulance standing by, he instead found a scene of unexplainable destruction. The dead were everywhere. The living sat sobbing or walked confused and dazed among them. The street in front of his stand, which hours before had flowed with vehicles of all sorts, was now frozen in shattered tableau.

  Brisbane, Australia

  Patrick McClure was working the closing shift at the bookstore in the historic Brisbane Arcade when the disaster hit. Amid screams and cries for help, his boss called the police and hospital, but the lines were already busy. As the sweeping scope of the disaster became apparent, Patrick immediately called his mother at home. After determining his family was alright, he did what he could to help others. The long arcade of shops linking Queen Street Mall and Adelaide Street was littered with dozens of bodies. Some of the victims were attended by friends or family who had been with them. Many other victims were alone. In some cases it appeared that several shopping companions had died together. It was hard to know what to do and there was no help from police or other authorities. Most survivors had fled, and with no other way to help those who had perished, Patrick walked among the corpses, laying them in what seemed a more suitable position than the sprawled knots into which they had fallen. Later he brought food and drink from an Arcade eatery to the few remaining survivors. Two hours had passed, and as he was bringing some clothes from one of the stores for an old woman to sit upon, Patrick noticed a man and woman with shopping bags walking among the dead, collecting wallets, purses, and jewelry.