The Populace

by Patterson, Aaron M.

  “This is your home. Over the bend is a series of small barracks to house you temporarily. The barracks, which are actually very small huts, have been designated suitable due to their distances from each other. We will assign each of you one hut and guide you through this speaker to the one assigned to you. We will retrieve your name, profile, brief history, and possible contact data from those once close to you. You will then remain in your huts until better housing can be provided. Supplies will be placed near your hut each morning. Your wastes, as in your piss and your shit, will go in the working latrines in each hut, as Maszerk’s sewage system still works, fortunately. In each hut is a cell with charging plates and a spare battery. You are strongly encouraged to keep informed of the situation through your cells. If and when communication comes back online, you can try to contact people from your past. It, as well, is encouraged. We are still on the grid here, so electricity is abundant. The huts are not air conditioned, however. But under no circumstance are you to leave your huts. Open a window if you need air. Cameras are being erected around Maszerk to ensure we don’t have people trying to wonder off. If you are seen, you will be terminated.”

  Spelled out. I was terrified. What the hell were we doing being willingly caged up like dinner meat? This was the first moment I started understanding suicide as a viable option. It truly was. Either keep going around these blind turns where fun is likely to never exist again or end myself. I was not and am not religious. I have no moral misgivings about suicide, so it would be a clean break. And yet, it never really came to the forefront of my mind like it did the others who were successful at it.

  This was the first week following the Ire. Murder, loss, regret, hopelessness, and finally visions of a banal future for all human inhabitants of the planet. And even then, the first of August seemed like a millennia ago.

  ~~~~

  Chapter 2

  Enter the System

  While I am alone right now, I can’t say my life is precisely terrible. I garden, I watch old late 2020’s television repeats, I laugh, and I have some friends. Indeed friends, but more on that later. This cabin provides a world for me as I provide a life for it. We’re intertwined, pupated organisms feeding from one another. It was not always this way.

  Life in the huts, or shit rows as we commonly called them, was abysmal the short time after the Ire began. We all awaited the arrival of these now-mythical cabins they kept mentioning without any detail. The short-smart callout programs on all our cells provided us to reach those local to us, more specifically people within a mile. They would install callout names and brief bios on the cells so we knew to whom we spoke. And it was almost instantaneous when we began reaching out.

  I believe it was the twenty-eighth of August. I’d found a routine in the hut, most of which was to keep my sanity. Sleep, eat, light workout, sleep, think, sleep, eat, and sleep. Sunup to sundown, it worked for three weeks. That night I heard the noticeable sound of my cell dinging in horribly off-key chimes. It was a first. I looked at the screen. Babblerook came across the screen. I saw the brief description, but maintained it was a joke. J Babblerook, White Male from St. Cloud, 23 Years Old. Yes, it had to be a joke, so I ignored it. I saw another one pop up immediately after it. HayJo was the word coming across the screen. Certainly another fake name. But I caved. I touched it to reveal the rest. Haydon Jones, White Male from Duluth, Minnesota, 31 Years Old. This was my first friend following the Ire.

  I accepted the short-smart call by pushing the button and placing it in front of me. On the screen was a tall yet dreadfully thin man possibly removed straight from a big farm, his straw hat and overalls as coarse as any burlap bag. “Is this Haydon?” I asked, my northern voice wobbly from not speaking to a soul in about a month. And I’m sure Haydon had noticed my badly-stained white tank-top shirt as my only top—nobody had done any laundry in the same amount of time, meaning we smelled.

  “This is Haydon,” he replied. Northern country guy to the T. “I saw your callout. Wall? What the fuck is that?”

  “Short for my name. Wallace. Wallace Auker.” He could have easily looked at my bio to get that information. Certainly, he wasn’t one of Minnesota’s Mensa members.

  “Stupid fucking name. Willis, you said?”

  The first person to say a word to me in a month and it had to be possibly one of the stupidest people left on earth. “Wallace, you idiot.”

  “You’re callin’ me an idiot, Willis? Well that can get you killed.”

  “Walk over to my hut and see what happens,” I said. I was teasing of course, as it would bring on the Ire. By now everybody knew that. Or I thought they did.

  “I’ll walk over and cut your throat, Willis. I promise. I don’t like no guys calling me stupid.”

  “I welcome it, Haydon.”

  This went on for probably an hour. Back and forth bottomless threats with neither of us having any intention on seeing them through. It honestly became fun after a while. The curse words being heaved around, the pent-up rage we’d all come to know due to isolation and regret, it was all being released. It was for this reason that I think Haydon, stupid and backwards as anything, was much smarter than me. He set it up. He wanted the relay of insults. Why? For companionship. Just to talk. Sad in some circles, but highly necessary to both of us. Brilliant.

  Something was started from it. I would have never anticipated it. We became friends over the next two weeks. The insults and threats gracefully morphed into casual conversations about our pasts, our fears, and what we will do when the Ire is over—we both knew it would likely never be over in our lifetimes, but the game had to continue.

  “Your wife, Donna was it?” I asked him one morning during another long conversation.

  “Nah, it’s Diane. Diane, Wallace. We’ve been over this dozens of times. Do you listen?”

  We both chuckled.

  “Then Diane. You still haven’t heard from her?”

  “She’s not in our range, Wallace. I told you that. If she’s alive, she will be in another collection of huts somewhere. The day of the Ire we—“

  “I know, I know. She was at the bank settling a land grant dispute in the next town.”

  “No, you don’t listen. She was at a bank in Minneapolis settling a student loan dispute.”

  “How am I supposed to know more, Haydon? You always end the story there.”

  I looked on at the screen as my new friend lowered his head and began to weep.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him.

  “Minneapolis, Wallace. Minneapolis. Downtown at a big bank. Millions of people all over the place. She called me about a half hour before everyone went crazy. ‘I shouldn’t be long’ she said. ‘We’ll have a nice dinner tonight. Love you, baby’. That was it. Lord knows what happened thirty minutes later.”

  “She could have gotten out, Haydon. We never know. And I’ve been reading some news feeds lately about the possibility of a percentage.”

  “That shit? Wake up, Wallace. How could anybody know there’s a small percentage of people who aren’t affected by the Ire? Whoever they come in contact with is almost destined to be somebody with the Ire. Then they would die and the statistics get ruined.”

  “News said possibly .5% of the population is immune. That’s something.”

  “And the odds that she was suddenly surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of .5% people are next to nothing. And it’s certainly nothing to hang my hat on, Wallace. No, I hold onto no hope that I’ll see her again. Hell, I may see nobody again.”

  Like lightning, the sorrow I’d repressed for a month and a half struck me and took me over. Haydon’s last statement made me realize I, too, would forever be alone. I would never see my dad again, my sister, my aunts, or my friends back in Bemidji. I cried along with Haydon, the cell still held in my hand. It lasted many minutes. But we had, in some way, each other to cry on, or near.

  Although it was not exactly direct human contact, the cells worked to keep us sane. Others tried to contact me fr
om the nearby huts, but I pretty much ignored them all. I had something good with Haydon and I didn’t want to muddy that up with too many friends. As it was, I never had many friends before the Ire, which was probably why it was easier for me to survive in solitude than most other people. He would have made a good lover if I were gay.

  Haydon and I kept a nearly-direct line of contact over the next few months. It was the last week of December, cold and very snowy, when progress finally began to be made on the whole cabin promise. We were told by our cells to step outside our huts for an announcement. Why it couldn’t be announced over our cells is beyond me.

  “People of the Maszerk huts,” a man said over the speakers. “My name is Jean-Terry Moreau. I have been appointed the Statesman of this development, which is the Minnesota Number-5 development. From that you may deduce that there are four before you and countless after you in Minnesota and you would be quite right. Minnesota has thirteen developments for survivors. Every state in the United States has developments, and the numbers vary due to population. But this is Minnesota Number-5. It is my duty above all else to inform you that you are not being detained. We, myself included, are being contained. The populace has been stricken with an unknown condition that makes us ravenous killers in the presence of other human beings. We are not allowed to be in the presence of others. This you know. What you may not be aware of, however, is that this condition is likely to continue for years, decades, possibly until that last man on the planet is killed. It is our sworn duty, not just mine but yours as well, to certify that such a fact never sees the light of day. Containment at this day and time is our best hope to continue our species.”

  I kind of knew that already. He continued.

  “We have spent the last three months creating livable abodes for you, the choosing survivors. You have heard many mutterings of cabins since August. That day is here. Shortly, you will be walked to your assigned cabins. This is different from the huts you reside in today. While you were forbidden to remove yourself from the huts, each cabin has a large fenced-in yard for you. You are very strongly urged to use this land for agricultural purposes, the seeds and instructions provided inside each cabin. This is our effort to maintain your way of life as closely as possible to the way it was before we were afflicted with the Ire. Televisions, some from before 2020, are in each cabin for entertainment purposes. We will air repeats of shows similar to what you’ve probably been seeing in recent months with potentially newer over-the-air programming in the future. Due to the overuse of electricity, mainly in the form of charging your cells in recent months, electricity will be curfewed from twelve midnight until 8 o’clock each morning. This will not include heating in winter months, as gas heat will be provided. Each lot has a well to a known aquifer beneath the land. While this water source should be reliable, it may sometimes not work, at which time you will contact us.”

  Us? Who is us? Was this some new dictatorship taking us over? As if the Statesman were reading my thoughts, he explained.

  “There is now one government, one world entity. Currency is immediately devalued to nothing. There is but one agenda, and it is to see our species survive whatever has taken us over. Since the heavy lifting of research involving the Ire has been in Bern, Switzerland, it has been decided to make Bern ground zero for the new Centralized Authority. The CA, if you will. All mandates, litigations, edicts, whatever now come directly from Bern. There is no ruling person in the CA. Only people like me, possibly people like you, helping to keep us alive.”

  The Statesman took a breath, long-winded after the speech that changed everything.

  “We will start with the resident of Hut-1 over to the left. If your name is Veronica Taper, shout at your loudest for confirmation.”

  She was too far for me to hear, but apparently the Statesman heard it.

  “Thank you. Please follow the lights to your right to be directed to your cabin. As for the rest of you, remain in place until your name is called. This could take a while, so please be patient.”

  And it did take a while. About four hours later they called my name. It sounded glorious. Something was actually getting done in this ugly mess we were experiencing. Even in a new world void of luxuries, the sound of my name being called was truly a monumental luxury.

  The time had come for me to stroll into my new home, an exciting feeling amongst so much abhorrence following the Ire. It had only been five months, but it had already felt like a decade without anything solid in the form of progression happening.

  I stood before it after being directed there by beams of light from a crane on the road. It was small. However, not too small. The walls were wooden and brown, hence the title of ‘cabin’. If I had to guess without knowing the dimensions, I would say the cabin was probably about one-thousand square feet. Again, not as small as we all thought. And probably four times the size of the wretched huts we’d called home for four months.

  The roof slanted from the front down to the back with solar panels on top. It had a small covered porch on the front. A red brick chimney jutted out of its right side. And the yard on the lot, front, back, and sides, it seemed larger than the yard at my dad’s house in Bemidji. Most clearly, these people were attempting to give us better lives than we all deserved after what all of us had done—it was rather apparent that most if not all of us who had survived had done so through the death of another.

  I entered the cabin. The first room was a modest living room with standard amenities—a nice sofa, a reclining chair, a coffee table, and a TV above the mantle of the real fireplace. To the right was a single table for two people, although I would be the only one using it. Behind that was the kitchen, its sink, refrigerator, counters, cabinets, and stove all somewhat small but incredibly nice. Between the living room and the kitchen was the hallway leading to a sweeping bedroom in the back, the size of which I’d never known in my life. The bathroom, complete with shower, toilet, sink, and washing machine, was off to the right in the bedroom.

  “Huh?” I said aloud. This was thoroughly unexpected. It wasn’t a shabbily thrown-together place to sleep at night, much like the huts were. This was a home, true to form. The Centralized Authority, whatever it was really, honestly wanted us to live instead of just stay alive. Perhaps the legendary quip was right all along—you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, the flies in this case being our continued existence.

  I had power, water, sewage, food, entertainment, and comfort. It was a half-a-year dream come true. Even so, it was a mere fraction of the lives we had before the Ire. Before the Ire. Redundant, I know. But that was life divided. Imagine a triangle pointing upward. Everything before the Ire was traveled up. On the first of August, 2030, we crossed that apex and went down. Way down. We had a long way to go to level out, as the Ire was only five months old. And this new society, one without currency, war, possibly religion, and human contact, it was the standard definition of ‘new’. Indeed, we were all infants to it. Growing up again was just getting started.

  ~~~~

  Chapter 3

  From There

  If I had a routine in the hut, what followed that year in the cabin was a certified exhibition of tedium and repetition. And I loved it. Well, relative to the situation the previous year, I did not have it bad. It was my home, my place. I would say I longed for human contact, but I honestly got used to my many, many chats with Haydon over the cell. I found myself forgetting that he wasn’t actually in the same room as me on occasion as we talked. Complacency buoyed me above the ocean of depression.

  Oh yes, there was depression, and all people felt it. Each day we would receive a report over our cells called the Succinct Figures Chart. We were given very accurate numbers of the people that day in our development, in all the developments in Minnesota, and somewhat less accurate numbers of people left in the United States—what was once the United States, as borders were quite irrelevant anymore—and then the world. We knew the next day if one of our fellow Fivers offed themselves
or if they left the confines of their cabins to seek out others and killed or got killed. I would say in that first year a good 70% of the Fivers we lost were due to suicide. Reason dictated that the same was likely in every development in every land. Humans, no matter how different, are still alike in so many ways.

  My routine saw me through the day. In the cold months before we were able to grow food, I would start the day with some coffee on the stove. We still had access to basic foods such as pork, chicken, beef, and dairy, as there remained many brave ones out there on the land farming daily. As such, I liked my eggs. Scrambled with cheese.

  Following breakfast I would head out to the end of my walk, the front of my property, to retrieve my food for that day. In all honesty, I believe the CA overfed us the first year in our cabins. Nevertheless, it was pleasant to have. I would try to workout, often just performing a few pushups or jumping jacks and a run around the house, and then jump in the shower for a long four-minute cleansing.

  I would watch some television, maybe nap, then go to the table. It was at the table where the conversations began. With Haydon I would talk, often one continuous conversation lasting into dinner and beyond. Oh, I would cook dinner. I’m not such a fan of dinner, but it was part of the routine. Then TV while talking to Haydon, more talking, to bed with the cell in-hand, and then sleep. Mundane, of course, but what else was I to do?

  April brought about the planting of crops in my narrow lot behind the cabin. But that was nothing special, just hoeing and sewing. Special was my growing relationship with Haydon. Purely platonic, yes, but we were rapidly becoming more than brothers. We knew everything about each other by summer. It was far and away unlike any friendship I’d ever had in my twenty-three years. And our conversations grew too, some lighter and some much, much darker. I can recall one late-night chat in June during a violent thunderstorm, one which would have normally contained a tornado siren before the Ire.