The Old Man & the End of the World | Book 1 | Things Fall Apart

by Harrison, William Hale

The cage next to her sat empty for the moment. When she first arrived it was occupied by a small black man who said his name was Deuce. She tried to talk to him, and at first they conversed a little, but his remarks were rambling and disjointed and soon made no sense at all. He had turned a few minutes later, tearing off his clothing and shaking the walls of his cage trying to get at the people in the cages around him. Soon several men came. They all wore helmets with dark visors and black suits that were made of some kind of woven plastic material like the stuff they made soft-side luggage out of. Under their visors they wore something that looked like a futuristic gas mask. No skin showed anywhere on their bodies.

  All three of the men wore black guns in holsters around their waists, like policeman, and also wore bright yellow guns of some kind that she thought might be Tasers. Two of them carried black military-looking shotguns, ugly things, not like the beautiful wooden ones her father used to have for duck hunting.

  The third man carried a device with an orange handle and a long orange rod sticking out of it that ended in two tines, like a large fork. As soon as they got near Deuce’s cage, he grabbed the fencing in both hands and flattened himself against it, his mouth pressed against one of the open diamonds formed by the fencing. It looked like he was trying to fit his mouth through the gap so he could bite them.

  The man with the fork thing touched the tines to Deuce’s rib cage and there was a sharp crackling noise, and he flew back as if he’d been punched. His whole body seized with several violent convulsions and then he lay still. He ended up on the floor in an oddly contorted position, his body seeming to curve itself around the spot where he’d been touched.

  “Hit him again,” one of the men said. The man with the orange thing, which Karen now figured was some kind of cattle prod, knelt down and stuck it through the fencing and touched the bottom of Deuce’s foot. It crackled again, but this time Deuce didn’t move. The man straightened up and they all walked away, ignoring Karen in spite of her attempts to talk to them.

  Pretty soon two large men in the same kind of suits but without any shotguns or cattle prods came by, wheeling a gurney. One of the men pulled out his Taser, and opened the door to Deuce’s cage and kicked Deuce in the foot. When he didn’t react, they wheeled in the gurney, collapsed it onto the floor next to Deuce, rolled him onto it, raised it again, and wheeled him out of the cage. She had insisted and then begged that she be allowed to speak with someone in charge, but they ignored her, not so much as even making eye contact.

  After that there was nice young lady named Taffy who said she was from Scarsdale. She and Taffy were able to talk some, though Taffy mostly laid on her cot and wept. Taffy disappeared during the night while Karen slept.

  Three days earlier Karen had been sitting at her desk at the Wilmer Bank in midtown Manhattan, where she served as the branch manager. Her secretary, a complete nitwit named Marnie, had walked into her office and handed her a folder. As Karen reached out for it, Marnie glanced at her hand and then stopped, backed up, and retreated from her office, closing the door behind her. Karen watched, puzzled, as she hurried straight to the security guard. She saw Marnie talking animatedly to the guard, who grabbed her by the upper arm and asked her a question, an intent look on his face. Marnie nodded vigorously in response. He turned and said something to one of the personal bankers at her desk nearby, who immediately picked up her phone.

  He approached Karen’s office with a large set of keys in his hand and immediately locked Karen’s door from the outside. She watched him with a puzzled frown on her face. She raised her voice to be heard through the glass. “Mr. Dewey, what exactly do you think you’re doing?” Dewey, an ex-cop in his sixties, had always struck her as a reliable, if a bit dull, sort of person. “Please unlock that door immediately.” She began to rise from her chair.

  “Sit down!” he yelled.

  “Really, Mr. Dewey, I—”

  “Sit down or I’ll shoot!” and suddenly he had his gun is his hands, pointed straight at her face. She sat down, shocked and perplexed.

  “What’s this about? I don’t see—”

  “Your hands, ma’am. Show me your hands!” She looked down at her hands, and to her horror she saw a faint but unmistakable tint of blue under the skin of her fingertips and in the lines on her palms. She quickly tucked her hands out of sight in her lap.

  “There’s nothing wrong with my hands,” she insisted. “Now quit all this foolishness right now!” But Dewey refused to comply and the gun never left her face.

  Less than ten minutes later, the bank lobby filled with police, all wearing breathing masks and white rubber gloves. A short heavyset policewoman came to her door, backed by several other men and women in uniform. They all had their guns drawn.

  “Ma’am,” she said in a calm but commanding voice, “I want you to put your hands out in front of you, palms up where I can see them, and approach the door.” Karen hesitated and the calm part left the woman’s voice. “Do it now!”

  Karen moved as ordered toward the door with her hands in front of her. “Listen,” she said, “I’m sure this is just a mistake. I was reading a magazine earlier. This is probably just ink that—”

  “That’s far enough, ma’am. Now I want you to turn around and walk back to your desk, keeping your hands where I can see them. Now I want you to lay your chest flat on the desk and keep your feet on the floor. That’s fine, ma’am. Now place your hands behind your head with your fingers intertwined, and spread your feet apart. Farther. That’s good.

  “Now, ma’am, these officers and I are going to enter the room. If you move from that position, even slightly, you’ll be shot. Do you understand me, ma’am?”

  Karen said weakly, “Yes I understand, but really, if I could talk to your supervisor I’m sure…” Her voice cracked.

  She could hear the door open and people moving around behind her. “Now we’re going to take your hands from behind your head, one at a time. If you resist in any way, you’ll be shot. Do you understand me, ma’am?’

  Karen could feel tears welling in her eyes. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  Hands grabbed her forearms and brought them down behind her. She felt something binding her wrists together and it tightened with a zip and bit into her flesh. “Ow! That hurts!” she said through her tears.

  “Ma’am, we’re going to stand you up now.” Hands grabbed her upper arms and stood her up. The next thing she knew, someone had slipped something over her head and tightened it under her chin. It smelled like an old pillowcase, but she couldn’t see through it. Helpless, she allowed herself to be marched out the door. Outside she felt herself being lifted. Someone said, “Up you go,” and then more hands grabbed her and forced her onto a hard bench. She could hear the doors close and they began to move.

  “Excuse me,” she spoke up, trying to make her trembling voice sound firm, “I demand to speak to your supervisor—”

  She heard a muffled voice say, “Shut up, lady!” and someone kicked her quite hard in the shin.

  So now she found herself in this awful place, gripping her cage as though she was drowning. She felt dirty and tired, and her head ached, and she felt itchy all over. Some men walked by, two of them in black… stuff, and two more in things that looked like people might wear… somewhere. She couldn’t think where.

  “Supervisor!” she shrieked, rattling her cage. “I demand to speak to your supervisor!”

  At least, that’s what she thought she said. A string of garbled syllables and grunts came out instead.

  One of the men in hazmat gear glanced in her direction. “Sounds like this one doesn’t have long to go,” he said, and kept walking.

  Chicago, Illinois

  May 12th

  Jack Booth adjusted his big Sony X400 ENG camcorder on his shoulder and peered at the sky overhead. Dark angry clouds boiled above the Dirksen Federal Building across the street, looking as if they could o
pen up in a deluge at any moment. C’mon, a few more minutes, he thought. They had some great tape already. He gave it an even chance to be picked up by the wires for the late news.

  After the Makoko video Jack and his producer, Rudy, became media stars for about fifteen minutes, even doing a couple of the morning talk shows in the US. They’d both received a nice fat bonus, and Reuters gave them their choice of their next assignment. Jack requested Chicago if they had anything there, because he really wanted to spend some time with his family. Rudy decided he was up for some deep-dish pizza, so they went as a team.

  In front of him his friend and sometimes lover Anita Reyes, who replaced the late Trevor as their on-air talent, was conducting an interview with one of the demonstrators. The woman was in her early twenties, with a shock of pink hair and studs through her eyebrows and one nostril. She bobbed and gesticulated wildly as she talked, making it hard for him to keep her centered in frame. Her shrill and insistent voice grated on Jack’s nerves.

  “This is another unlawful move by this fascist government, you know?” she was saying. “I mean, what about rights? What about personal liberty? How much more of our human dignity are they going to take away?”

  Behind her on a hastily erected platform in Federal Plaza, a woman Jack didn’t recognize but who played a character on a popular streaming drama shouted into a bullhorn, leading the huge crowd in a chant. “Humanity! Humanity! Can Never Be Denied!” over and over again. The crowd, which had already closed Dearborn, threatened to spill out onto Adams. Dozens of Chicago cops manned barricades along the sidewalk and across the end of Dearborn, hoping to allow traffic on Adams to keep moving, but it looked like they were losing the battle as the crowd swelled in size.

  Most of the demonstrators looked young and hip. Tattooed and wearing expensive clothes made to look worn, the youths held signs that read things like “Hospitals not Jail Cells!” and “Fear Will Not Solve Anything!” and “Science Not Violense!” Jack smiled at the misspelling. About a third of them wore face masks, he noticed. Jack glanced at the police at the other end of the block. Almost all of them were masked. Jack wore one too, but not Anita. She’d taken it off while interviewing people. Jack didn’t like that, but focus groups had found that people strongly preferred not to see on-air talent wearing masks. It made them “uncomfortable.” Kind of like porn stars wearing condoms, Jack thought.

  The actress on the platform had ended the chant, and now harangued the crowd. “My aunt! They took her! They took my aunt and nobody knows where!” The crowd roared its disapproval. “They said that she was Infected but we never saw any proof,” she yelled. “They grabbed her right off the street!” Her voice shook with indignation. “They’re disappearing people! They’re disappearing people just like the juntas did in Central America!” The crowd responded again, but this time a little less enthusiastically. Jack suspected a lot of them didn’t know what a junta was.

  The girl with the pink hair disappeared back into the crowd. Anita looked at him over her shoulder and pointed, “This guy! This guy here!” She stepped up to a man in a green jacket with a long hipster beard. “Sir? Excuse me, sir, can I speak to you for a moment?’

  The man turned and eyed her and the camera. “Sure, I guess.”

  “Sir, what do you think of the way the Infected are being treated?”

  “I don’t know, it doesn’t seem right, I guess. I mean, all these people are hauled away and their families don’t even get to visit them? Then when they die, the families don’t get them back to bury? I don’t know, I don’t think that’s fair. I mean, why aren’t they in a hospital or something?”

  Anita pressed him, “Sir, what do you say to people who say that this T.S. parasite is one hundred percent fatal, and we can’t risk having hundreds of people turn when they’re in a hospital?”

  “I understand that, I guess. It just doesn’t seem fair.” A big raindrop splattered on the man’s forehead and a couple more hit his cheek and suddenly it was raining hard all over the plaza. People shrieked and laughed and ran for shelter. Jack snatched a nylon cover out of his coat and quickly wrapped it around the camera, and then turned to follow Anita as she sprinted to their nearby news van and dove inside. Their producer, Rudy, sat at his console and gave them both a thumbs up as the driver up front put the van into gear and pulled away from the curb.

  Anita raised her hands and exclaimed, “Oh, shoot. My hair! I’m soaked!”

  Jack laughed and handed her a towel. “You still look terrific,” he said. She did look great. Beautiful, in fact. She’d been born in Colombia, and came up here with her parents when she was a little kid. In her teens she started modeling. She’d found it boring and hated all the pressure and the infighting, so she’d quit and gone to Valparaiso and majored in meteorology. She’d wanted to do the weather, but when she graduated, aspiring meteorologists greatly outnumbered on-air job vacancies. She’d applied to WGN, the local Chicago independent and they let her come in for an interview even though they really weren’t looking. The news director had seen her tape and liked her spark and her bright intelligent smile and offered her a job as a street reporter.

  She stood out quickly, and producers at Reuters, with whom WGN had a long-established relationship, were quick to poach her. Now she’d come full circle, back to her home town, but now as a serious foreign correspondent instead of Wanda the Weather-girl, as she liked to say.

  Jack looked out the back window of the van and could see people running away from the demonstration in small groups, their coats and jackets pulled up over their heads. “I don’t get it.” Jack shook his head. “What’s the alternative? Do people think they can sit around their loved ones and hold their hands while they turn? And then what? Have kill squads standing by so they can rush in and zap them right in front of their families?”

  Anita sighed, “Honestly, I think a lot of people don’t understand. Nobody’s showing them the real videos, the ones we see. It’s like they think when people turn, it only puts victims in a bad mood and they run around naked.” Working at the station, they got to see the worst of it, the people being torn apart, the Infected covered in blood and gore. In his younger days, Jack had seen the aftermath of half a dozen firefights and bombings, but the footage they were getting was as bad as anything he’d ever seen.

  However, the public only got a PG version of the crisis. The old TV news adage had it, “If it bleeds, it leads,” but that wasn’t really true. In the US, TV news almost never showed blood. After a terrorist bombing, people in Europe saw mangled bodies and blood-stained streets, but over here all they saw were ruined store fronts and burning cars, and maybe a guy getting his head bandaged.

  Starting from when the Tawada-Soseki parasite, as the government now called it, or Bluescale as Jack still thought of it, first hit the Far East, everything had been sanitized. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the other big social media outlets quickly moved to ban the gore and carnage. People still talked about it constantly, of course. The cable news programs hardly talked about anything else. But actual gut-wrenching footage was another thing entirely.

  “I think when more people turn, when people start actually seeing them attack, a lot of this will go away,” Jack said.

  “Do you think it will come to that?”

  He nodded. “I do. There are more people coming down with it every day. It’s already starting to strain the ability of the government to keep up with it. And look at the infection rates. Right now we’re looking at about one case in a hundred thousand in the US. In Japan and Korea they’re looking at rates as high as one in a hundred. Japan has had over a million cases!”

  Jack had closely followed the latest updates on the spread of the parasite. One of the odd things about the infections were how they seemed to cluster. Secondary infections, where people had caught the infection through a bite, were often found together. But primary infections were also clustered. Across the Far East, Russia
and South Asia there were towns and districts where dozens or even hundreds of people were found to have succumbed at about the same time, all turning within hours or even minutes of each other, and then smashing like a wave into surrounding communities. In Christchurch in New Zealand, one upscale residential neighborhood had over a thousand people turn in about an hour, most of whom had shown no symptoms a few hours before. Experts on the news programs had suggested that this might be explained by the vagaries of wind and weather. Meteorologists were brought in to explain how shifting and swirling wind might cause the spores to be concentrated at rates hundreds or thousands of times higher than in other areas a few miles away.

  No one knew for sure, but common sense and expert speculation both seemed to indicate that the speed with which people became symptomatic after exposure to the spores probably depended on the number of spores inhaled. Certainly a bite, which transferred millions of the spore-like cells from the Infecteds’ mouths, seemed to supercharge the process, causing people to turn within hours or minutes, not days. Experts assumed that the people whose conversions were quickest after a bite might already have been infected but not showing symptoms yet. There was still so much they didn’t know.

  While in Chicago, like other Reuters crews they usually operated out of WGN’s studios on the North Side, where they had all the best equipment for satellite uplinks and data compression. By the time they reached WGN, Rudy had already uploaded all their interviews and b-roll to the editors. Jack secured his camera in the equipment room and then he and Anita headed upstairs. In the hallway they ran into the news director and one of the anchors in conversation. “I’m telling you, Gene,” the anchor was saying, “If the shit hits the fan in this city, I’m grabbing Connie and the kids and heading for my place on Kentucky Lake. We’ll ride it out there. This city could be a war zone by fall.”

  Anita grabbed Jack’s hand. “How about you, Jack. Are you going to take off if it gets bad?”