Survival_Book 1_And Tomorrow

by Ralph F. Halse

  Eventually, communication with his classmates and teachers trickled to nonexistent. Each morning as class commenced, Kitch sat at his designated seat and simply stared at a spot on the wall. No amount of the teacher’s cajoling, or kids bullying for that matter, could engage him. Kitch retreated to the only safe place he could trust, his mind. After several months of living a schoolyard and classroom nightmare, Kitch’s parents reluctantly placed him in a state-run school dealing with special-needs children. Somewhat naively, they decided he would receive far better treatment in such a place.

  One year on, following severe government cutbacks, the school was grossly understaffed. What staff remained were overworked and, in every way, under-resourced. Subsequently, high-need students failed to receive proper supervision. What was supposed to be a refuge degenerated into a hell-hole of abuse, misery, and neglect. A stuttering Kitch begged his parents across the dining room table nightly to be returned to the exclusive school’s less volatile teaching system. They finally allowed it.

  Two days later a twitchy but relieved Kitch paused to wave goodbye to his mom from his old school’s front steps. To his horror, Kitch watched his mother’s death approaching in the form of a dilapidated public vehicle moving along the road in fits of sudden stops and jerky starts. Despite frantic waving, he could not prevent his mom stepping onto the school crossing. Kitch could see the bot-driven school bus sensors fail to communicate with the crossing’s notoriously fickle warning device, but could do nothing except try to scream. That was when Tourette’s interfered in his life in a way that he would never forget.

  Mary McCall died of her injuries on a blood-stained sidewalk listening to an approaching ambulance that would not arrive on time. As Kitch’s mom panted her life away, she communicated to him by making tiny circular thumb motions on the back of his trembling hand. Accompanied by a weeping classmate, a distraught Kitch clutched his mom’s bloody hand until the last vestige of life fluttered from her broken body. In his immature child’s mind, had he not insisted he be returned to the exclusive school, his mom would still be alive. Following his mom’s funeral, his TS accelerated to debilitating levels.

  His father worked in a senior, public librarian’s role during that sad time. Shortly after his mom’s funeral, Kitch’s dad quit his job to raise Kitch and mourn their loss. With much love, Kitch’s father entered into a dogged pursuit of normality for his only child. Years later, along with umpteen hospital visits, his father, supported by dedicated medical staff, reduced Kitch’s symptoms from severe to mild.

  That was until Kitch became stressed. At that time, and even if medicated, he vacillated between mild tics and twitches to full-on limb jerking, cursing, and inarticulate shouting. It not only embarrassed the heck out of him in public places, but it also made simple tasks like obtaining a glass of water a major event. Subsequently, Kitch was housebound for days at a time. At home, stress manifested in equally debilitating and time-consuming bouts of Obsessive Compulsory Disorder, or OCD, exacerbated by panic attacks. The OCD came out of nowhere with punishing results.

  Mike McCall was a positive, caring human being. He kept Kitch moving to the point of exhaustion. As Kitch entered his teenage years, Mike was slowing down. Age and genetics were catching up with him. Teenagers, on the other hand, possessed oodles more energy than forty-seven-year-olds did. So it was to Mike’s astonishment, the morning Kitch turned fourteen, he emerged from his bedroom insisting Mike take him to the local kung-fu school. There, to father and son’s delight, his difference was celebrated, not ridiculed. Within three years, a confident, self-assured Kitch achieved the discipline’s highest rating. Soon after that, Kitch tutored club juniors with little evidence of TS. On his seventeenth birthday, Kitch commenced weapons training. Hours practicing complex maneuvers in a purpose-built basement with a sparring dummy and martial art weapons had knocked the edges off his OCD.

  Mike withdrew his son from the exclusive junior high to dedicate his time to home-schooling Kitch, shielding him from the nastiness of outside world. While that was a loving, parental thing to do, his actions failed to encourage Kitch to engage with the local teenage community at a time crucial in his formative years. Kitch became a passenger in life, staring out at a passing world from the safety of the family home through his VOID, linked to thousands of other teens.

  Real-time societal interactions consisted of an occasional bus, light rail or a public car trip to the family doctor, Charleston General or shopping mall for groceries, medication and martial arts practice. From time to time, Kitch encountered former classmates, now more mature, who accepted Kitch for what he was. Most were engaging and sympathetic to his circumstances.

  That, however, was not always the case. There existed human beings who enjoyed inflicting pain and exploiting weaker members of society. Accordingly, Kitch noted the world around him from the safety of the family home. Favoring the altered reality his VOID delivered in the privacy of his bedroom, Kitch controlled who he interacted with and under what circumstances. That was not to say Kitch was not intelligent. In fact, the opposite was true. He was preparing to enter virtual university studies in medicine when the pandemic struck. Kitch figured he would exploit his OCD to study and perfect kung-fu forms.

  As the pandemic set in, Kitch appreciated it was dangerous to venture outside on some level. It wasn’t until his father explained that it was no longer safe to walk the half mile to train club juniors that Kitch comprehended something big was up.

  Kitch’s OCD ensured his martial art skills developed from ordinary to superior. Accordingly, he was exhausted most evenings. Barely able keep his eyes open an hour beyond supper, he missed vital newscasts describing the pandemic. Kitch only tuned into the havoc outside when his highly agitated father accompanied him to Charleston General to receive an injection to ward off plague symptoms, only to be told, go home. We’ll contact you when it’s your turn.

  Pitch black outside and well past seven o’clock, Kitch was alone for the first time in his life. Panic was starting to set in. Kitch experienced not only hunger snapping at his insides, but intense fear for his dad’s safety. Kitch craved routine—it kept him, like all TS sufferers, sane. Six o’clock every evening, he sat with his dad at the dining room table, at which time, the pair discussed the day’s events. They laughed, argued, speculated on the horrors of the pandemic and world outside their haven, and where supplies could be scrounged. It was now seven thirty and Kitch was lonely as all get out.

  Very soon, Kitch would be fighting off a full-blown panic attack accompanied by facial twitches, tics, body jerks and shrieking outbursts. He had to gain the upper hand or risk a queue of infected lining up at his front door to investigate the noise. A razor-sharp hunger that hadn’t been adequately satisfied since supper the evening prior gnawing at his insides didn’t help matters one jot. But at least it was a distraction from what lurked outside. The flat sodas, stale cookies and out of date chocolate bars he consumed during the day hadn’t filled the need that growing youthful muscles demanded.

  Taking a deep breath, Kitch clamped his eyes shut. He concentrated. OCD enabled him to train his mind to employ total recall. He focused on his dad’s last conversation with him and replayed it second by second.

  “We’re running low on food and your medication, son,” his father solemnly declared, stirring an omelet made from powdered eggs stolen from military stores.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re down to half doses with two days left in the medicine cabinet. I’ve no choice but to go out tonight. We’re practically out of food, toilet paper, toothpaste, and soap. If O’Meara’s is out of the question, locating a drug store or mini-market in the dark that hasn’t been completely looted won’t be easy.” Chewing thoughtfully, Mike added as he served up, “If the military cleaned out O’Meara’s, I’ll work my way across the bridge to James Island. Though at a pinch I could take River Road to the airport to see what supplies the military might let me have.” Pointing a fork at Kitch, he ask
ed, “Anyways, son. Promise, you’ll stay put ‘til I get home?”

  “Doors shut, curtains pulled, quiet as a mouse, sure thing, Dad.”

  Kitch pushed his chair back to pull open a drawer under the table. He rummaged through old power cells, cheap picture hangers, scissors, screwdrivers and household junk until he located a tiny flashlight. Moving to the power supply unit, he tapped the off switch just like his dad had shown him. Kitch stood still listening until the small house noises quieted. Recently his father placed a stepladder below a window, onto which he climbed to peek out at the outside world.

  Like all twenty-fourth century Johns Island homes, the design was about preventing the effects of an overheated earth getting inside. Kitch’s home was a modest, working-class structure. Long, narrow windows were set high in walls filled with twelve inches of soundproofed, insulated, high-tech foam, contracting and expanding as the elements and house sensors required. After quietly climbing the ladder, he pulled the curtain to one side and peered nervously out. Not a light lit a house, or a street light a road or a park, for as far as he could see. Below a soft wind passing through gently waving treetops, Kitch detected a hollow moaning he couldn’t match to the evening breeze and shuddered with revulsion.

  Kitch secured the curtain before stepping down. He folded the stepladder away, switched the power on and engaged his VOID. It was the best his father’s credits could buy. Mike compensated for Kitch’s lack of real-time social interactions by providing him a high-quality personal information gathering device, capable of collecting and transmitting holographic images over the iNet. While every teenager had one, most weren’t as sophisticated as Kitch’s. Besides, high-quality VOIDs were standard fare for medical students, his dad proudly stated as he’d presented it to him the day after his entry exam results arrived.

  Kitch motioned his VOID to personal status. He commenced a search for recordings of teenagers he regularly followed across the iNet. Though Kitch didn’t always physically interact with former classmates, he loosely remained in contact with some, albeit from a distance, monitoring VOID casts, links, inane chatter and who thought what of important events. The teenager who didn’t record every waking event didn’t exist in the twenty-fourth century. Hormonal kids high on life, illicit drugs, alcohol or all of it, recorded everything. After all, they were the centers of their own universes. The most shocking casts were locked away under sophisticated encryptions snooping parents couldn’t break in a million years, or so their children believed.

  What Kitch observed made his blood run cold. As he flicked through personal accounts of daily events over the past months, his mouth went dry, and his heart hammered. He watched stored images of a vibrant twenty-fourth-century American society fail utterly by the plague’s fourth month—well, before that really. It was bloody chaos, mayhem, and wanton slaughter of innocents in the hundreds of thousands, eventually in the millions.

  The first critical piece of infrastructure to fail was the US power grid. When vehicles no longer accessed grid power, transportation ceased, buildings shut down, and home security apparatuses sealed people in. America’s heart hadn’t quite stopped beating, but it was teetering on the edge of oblivion. Without grid power to carry rail and road supplies, hospitals switched to emergency generators and businesses, along with governments, shut their doors. As electronic communication degenerated, foot power replaced the grid power, and food began to rot in commercial and private refrigerators. The same day, street battles for resources became common. In most cases, ordinary people fought to the death for canned food.

  Apart from healthy humans they could trap and cannibalize, the infected required no sustenance. The cruelty the healthy applied to each other and the infected shocked many hardened law enforcement officers to the core. Infected Americans became more lethal as they not only grew in number but were drawn by sound to living creatures desperately trying to escape overrun cities. Dogs, cats, cattle, sheep, all had the infected shambling in their direction sniffing and dog-paddling the air. Teeth bared, claw-like hands extended, the infected shuffled slowly but inexorably toward living sounds or odors to rip and tear at healthy flesh.

  Kitch watched in sickening, skin-crawling horror at whole classrooms of bemused students foolishly mocking infected classmates. Staggering teenagers who appeared to be mimicking some wild-eyed movie star were, in fact, not acting out a part in a movie. Mockery shifted to panic as students were attacked in bloody frenzies. Multiple uploaded images portrayed similar incidents in schools and colleges across the state. Streamed media of students showed them screaming, running, brawling for hiding spaces.

  Most teenagers wore VOIDs in a purpose-built chest pouch or on decorative neck chains or attached to belts and hairpieces. Mostly they rested in a purpose-sewn pocket readily available. Before fading to nothing more than hissing static, innumerable VOID images depicted dirt, the sun, grass, wide-open beaches, treetops and the infected milling about. Other VOIDs uploaded whispered conversations from students holed up in darkened rooms, houses, and classrooms.

  Every VOID feed Kitch viewed had one thing in common—not a one offered a fresh feed. He looked at the feed status as they repeated loops. The last feed was uploaded a month ago. Since then, nothing.

  Kitch sat back and ran his fingers through his hair. He realized how fortunate he was to have a father who enjoyed tinkering with old technology. Only last year, Mike sourced a solar sphere from a military junkyard outside the National Guard base. After restoring it, he installed the powerful collector on the roof. Bemused neighbors had insisted he was mad because grid power was virtually free since the US went over to Tesla power. Mike responded he was a single parent saving on power bills and that meant more credits in his pocket. Solar was outdated, sure, but freely available. Most importantly, it didn’t suffer from the frequent repair works caused due to war-time damage. Roof spheres supplied sufficient energy for Kitch and his dad to keep all their household appliances running uninterrupted.

  Calming himself, Kitch propped his head in his hands and his elbows on the table. He reviewed what he knew. US authorities had lost all control, except in small areas guarded by the military, but Kitch wasn’t living in one. Near one, yes. The airport. But his Johns Island home was out of the regular patrol zone. In other words, the military considered Johns Island lost to the infected. Washington’s general message to bunker down and wait the infection out hadn’t worked. The infected didn’t die off as medical experts predicted. Instead, their numbers grew to plague proportions. Healthy people fell ill, died and were resurrected—somehow the infection preserved them. Well, sort of.

  With a sinking feeling, Kitch finally understood he and his father were on their own, surrounded by thousands of infected who would kill or infect them in a heartbeat. Kitch’s emotions shifted rapidly. Tourette’s was the last thing on his mind since he was now deathly afraid for his father. As he shook his head at the hopelessness of his situation, he gestured his VOID off. Folding his arms, he looked up at the ceiling before staring out the window at an empty suburban street.

  Kitch found it hard to comprehend that he was living in a world where survival would be of the fittest. Kitch understood he was many failed things, but he wasn’t a killer. He wasn’t even certain, despite his kung-fu training, he could even kill an infected. On the one hand, he was grateful his father sheltered him from the outside horrors. On the other, he was slightly angry that he was so unprepared to deal with the grim reality beyond these four walls.

  Moving quietly through the house, Kitch made for the basement. The Chinese swords Kitch practiced with were made of thin, whip-like steel. Standing in the practice room and fingering a blade, he reflected on the images he’d viewed of the infected attacking healthy people. He figured he would require something more substantial to keep them at bay. Kitch chose an eight-foot Chinese fighting pole of polished hardwood sharpened slightly at one end. In a purpose-built cupboard for kung-fu weapons, clothing, and medical supplies, Kitch retrieved a d
ozen or so energy bars and warm sports drinks. These he placed into a backpack. He figured if he had to be gone for a day or two searching for his father, he would require sustenance.

  Moving back upstairs, he wondered how he would locate his father. VOIDs not only recorded, saved, and displayed images, but they were also tracking devices connected to satellites by light waves. But with the grid down, nothing outside their house worked. Kitch’s VOID could provide static mapping, but if his battery powered down, he was essentially blind. His dad was old-fashioned and prided himself on not being caught up in the VOID-carrying phenomenon sweeping the world, and refused to own one.

  Kitch possessed only a vague idea of Johns Island geography. Where his father was likely to search was a guess. Because the teenager made it his business to ignore the broader world around him, he relied upon his VOID for ninety percent of his information. Thanks to twenty-fourth-century technology, Kitch possessed little local knowledge of the world outside his home. As this truth sunk in, his left shoulder twitched uncontrollably. Kitch’s lips flattened, and his eyes narrowed as he cursed the affliction. As his shoulder settled, he felt the all too familiar spasm of the muscles under his left eye. Moments later, the muscles at the left side of his mouth joined in.

  Kitch’s anger flared to boiling point. He clenched his teeth, fists, and muscles. He hated and despised TS with a passion only the afflicted can truly appreciate. Without fail, TS kicked in when he most required clarity or needed to deal with a demanding situation. Unless he was medicated, he knew with a sinking certainty TS would make the task of locating his father, while dodging the infected, impossibly hard. There were times when he wished, fantasized even, that TS was a human he could beat the living snot out of for causing him such misery. Unclenching his fists, he took control of his anger and regulated his breathing. When he was able to think straight, Kitch plotted his next moves.