by Greg Gotti
“You don’t understand. I’m in the zones. I don’t have the anti-bodies. You gave me CPR. I’m going to freaking catch the Haze. I’m a freaking dead man. I need my suit. Where’s my freaking suit?”
John looked at Maria with a puzzled look. He knew she couldn’t understand what Williams was saying, but she looked just as confused as he felt at that moment. John pointed at the back door.
“It’s hanging on the line drying out.”
Williams took off running through the door and John and Maria followed. They watched him run to where his suit hung on the line and fish something cylindrical out of the pocket. He messed with it for a moment before sticking it into his leg. It was some kind of injection. He pulled another tube from his suit and repeated the process. John could tell the man was seriously scared. He pulled his suit from the line and stripped naked. He ran to the lake and dove into the cold water. He was scrubbing himself with his hands like he was trying to wash off some sort of invisible dirt. He swam back to the edge and got out, still wiping himself clean all he could. Maria went into the house and came back out with a blanket, which she held up offering to Williams.
“No! No, I can’t! It might be infected!” Williams was almost hysterical.
“It isn’t infected!” John yelled. “We use it all the time!”
“You don’t understand. You don’t understand! You’re obviously immune. Everyone in here is immune, or you’d all be dead. You’re carriers. Every last one of you are carriers!” Williams pulled his flight suit back on despite still being dripping wet in places. He strode over to them.
“You are a Soona, right?” Williams pointed a finger at John.
“Yes, I am.”
“She doesn’t look like a Soona to me,” he said pointing at Maria.
“She isn’t. She is a Rista. This is her house.”
“What the hell’s going on here?” Williams demanded angrily.
John stepped towards Williams, and Williams jumped back, still obviously afraid of catching some deathly disease.
“You’d better remember you’d be dead in that water right now if we hadn’t fished you out! Why don’t you back off and calm down instead of yelling at us?” John’s face was turning red to match his beard, and Williams blinked. His shoulders slumped, and his voice lowered significantly.
“I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry. You’re right. You didn’t deserve that. You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just that people from this area carry a virus there is no cure for where I come from.”
“America.” John’s voice was flat.
“Yes, America,” Williams said nodding. “They keep you all sealed up tight in here so it won’t spread like it did when the Haze wiped out hundreds of millions of people years ago. This is where they dumped everyone who had it. Don’t you know?”
John shook his head no, and Williams looked on in disbelief.
“Good freaking grief. You gotta be kidding me. How can you possibly not know about the Haze?”
“I don’t know,” began John, “I mean, I have heard stories, but I didn’t know what to believe. I only know this used to be called Colorado because my grandfather called it by that name to the day he died.”
“No, that is its real name; rocky mountain high and all that. Listen, you have to get me out of here. They won’t let me back in now that I’ve been exposed. I can’t just go to a border and show them my ID. They have agents who will quarantine me. They’ll take me somewhere for “observation” and I’ll never be seen again. If you help me cross back, nobody will ever know you helped me.”
John thought for a few moments before his face took on a determined look.
“Here’s the deal: You tell me everything, and I give you my word as an officer I will get you out of here or die trying. You leave out the smallest detail about anything I ask, and the deal is off.”
“Some of this stuff is highly classified,” Williams began. “I can’t tell…”
“Don’t give me any of that,” John said waving him off as he shook his head. “That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
Williams grimaced. John could tell he didn’t like this at all, but he had him over a barrel and they both knew it. He felt a stab of guilt for putting a seemingly honorable man in such a position, but this might be the only chance he’d ever have to find out the truth. His life had been turned upside down, and if he wanted to build anything good with Maria, he needed to know exactly what they were up against.
“What do you want to know?” Williams asked.
“Where is America? How far away?
“America is all around you. I mean, not like right here, but it arches around the zones.
“Where?” John demanded to know.
“It goes from the Atlantic to the Mississippi in the south, and it goes up and over through Iowa, across the Dakotas and down this way into Utah and over to the Pacific down to what used to be Mexico.”
“I don’t know these names you mention,” John said.
“Yeah, I don’t suppose you would,” Williams said. “Mexico was a country that existed before the war. They were our allies, but the Haze hit them as hard as it did America. Mexico descended into anarchy and the government fell. A lot of the wealthy business owners had their own private militias down there even before all hell broke loose. They banded together and made a government of themselves. They used former soldiers from the American and Mexican armies to train their militias. They formed something they called ‘The Federation’ and used these troops to establish a standing army. The people who survived the Haze and the other sicknesses were starving and desperate. They were happy to sign up for the new military. Once they re-established government down there, they implemented it throughout Mexico.
“What does this have to do with us?” John asked.
“You live in what was originally known as a quarantine zone. This is where they relocated all the people identified as carriers; people who didn’t get sick but infected others with the virus. There was a northern zone and a southern zone. The southern zone included the eastern part of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The northern zone was Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and part of Nebraska. Everything east of the Mississippi was ‘Clean America.’ The areas between the Mississippi and the zones were American, but they were basically a buffer zone.”
“Why did they make two different zones?” John asked.
“It was originally thought there were two different strains of the Haze. It affected different people in different ways, so scientists believed there were two different versions of the sickness. They set up the zones with one type of sickness in the north and the other in the southern zone. When they realized everyone who reacted one way was white and everyone who reacted another way was at least partly Hispanic, they began to figure it out.”
“What did they figure out?”
“Different races of people have different genetic markers. That is what makes me black, makes you white and makes her brown. Usually, anything that makes one race sick makes all races sick. Nobody really knows where the Haze came from, but it was definitely man-made. It was specifically designed to affect a certain race of people. There was a white strain and a brown strain that killed people all over the globe. Black people were affected much less than white or brown ones. Most black people in America are really of mixed heritage, so it was kind of a crapshoot with them.”
“A what?” John was confused.
“Another expression,” Williams said. “It means it was hit or miss. Most of them were unaffected though. Whoever designed the virus made sure it didn’t affect people above a certain level of black heritage in their blood.” Williams purposely avoided saying “DNA” to avoid another explanation.
“The government made a law that anyone who tested positive for the virus was relocated to the zones until the crisis was over. Only the crisis was never over. The Haze went worldwide. People panicked; resources became scarce. Nations went to war, and the whole global order descended into chaos.
Nations simply disappeared as their people died in large numbers. The survivors formed tribal communities that eventually joined up with survivors from other nations to form new countries. America stayed in pretty decent shape when it came to the war because of our geography. We sent troops to help like we always had done, and things seemed to be settling down until some maniac detonated a nuke in Kansas City.”
“Nuke? Detonated what? What are you talking about?” John was totally confused.
“A nuke is a nuclear bomb. It is basically the most terrible, massive explosion you can imagine. It destroyed the entire city in a matter of seconds. It does more than destroy the city and kill people. It makes it so people can’t live there for years afterwards until the effects fade away.”
John’s head felt like it was spinning. All of this was new to him. He had never heard of these places Williams mentioned, and this story brought him to his biggest question.
“None of this explains why the Soona and Ristas are at war. How did that happen?” John’s face bore a lifetime of pain and his expression must have reflected it because he saw Williams’s demeanor soften and his face bore a sad smile.
“Look, man; this was a huge mess. The government had people there to make sure there was clean drinking water, plenty of food, and everything people needed. People were angry about being in the zones for years. They’d been told it would be months at most, and they were demanding to return to where they came from. People were afraid of more outbreaks and pressured the lawmakers to keep the zones contained. People in the zones started forming militias and trying to fight their way out. Some of these militias from the northern zone ended up clashing with militias from the southern zone. It escalated into more and more until the two zones were fighting. They basically turned themselves into their own little countries and went to war with each other. American troop commanders refused to send their men into the zones to put an end to it because they feared the Haze would wipe out entire units and some refused on ethical grounds. So the government decided to pull their administration from the zones and stopped shipments of food and medicine. They figured the zones would start running out of supplies, and they’d lay down their arms. From what I’ve read, the President really did want to help them. He wanted to reunite the people and restore the states in the zones. Something happened inside the zones though. People lost family and friends in the war with the other zone. They wanted revenge. They wanted payback and what they perceived as justice for their fallen loved ones. I think they wanted peace, but only after they’d settled the score. The Federation offered to absorb the southern zone, the Hispanic one, and they happily accepted. This caused them to be powerful enough to force the people of the northern zone to surrender, or so they thought. The newly enlarged Federation took on the name of its leader at the time: Antonio Rista. They made huge gains in that first year, but this only succeeded in uniting the different factions in the north. They formed their own new country: What you know as the ‘Soona Nation.’ The war has raged ever since.”
Williams continued. “People tried to get out of the zones. They wanted away from the war; they wanted to go back to where they’d lived before the Haze. They just wanted to be Americans again. A lot of Americans wanted to let them come back. There was a huge debate about it. Some of them managed to come back. Sympathetic troops and border guards let them come through rather than them die as a result of the war in the zones. What they didn’t know was: The virus had mutated; at least that’s what they say happened. Within a couple of months of relaxing the borders, there were outbreaks of the Haze all over the place. A lot of people in the zones ended up dying, but every last one of them who lived was immune to the Haze. If anyone got out, they could infect entire cities and counties with the virus without ever getting sick themselves. From Oregon to Minnesota to Maine there were outbreaks and people dying. Many people had been outraged at how their white and brown neighbors had been pulled from their homes and sent to the zones against their will. Once Americans began dying, people’s sympathy was replaced with fear. Laws were passed making harboring someone from the zones a federal crime punishable by death. People demanded the zones be secured, and the military was instructed to make sure they were. Anyone found to have allowed someone to escape from the zones was arrested and jailed or worse. Fear drove everything. Most browns and whites were made to live in areas like this; far from the population centers. The zones were left to live or die on their own. It has been that way ever since.”
John was skeptical. He watched Williams as he told his tale, but he saw no lie in the man’s eyes. He believed him. He wasn’t sure what to believe about anything anymore, but he believed this man was telling him the truth; at least the truth as he knew it.
“Here is something I have always wanted to know,” John said. “Why do only the Americans have airplanes?”
“Oh, we aren’t the only ones with planes. They have them all over the world. You just don’t have aircraft in the zones; at least not any that fly. There would be no way to secure the borders if people could fly in and out. Decades ago, I guess there were still helicopters and planes here, but after Kansas City, the zones are a strict no-fly area. Any unauthorized flights here are shot down by missiles without question.
“They keep the zones sealed up tight,” Williams said. “They mainly use natural barriers like rivers and mountains to create borders, and there is a neutral strip separating the border from American territory. Sometimes, people manage to sneak across the border, but it is almost impossible to make it across the neutral strip with the patrols, motion detectors, and infra-red cameras.”
“The what?” John asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The patrols and what?”
“Cameras. Infra-red cameras. You know, they see in the dark?”
John shook his head and even in the darkness, Williams could see his total cluelessness.
“Man, you’re an officer, and you don’t even know. They really do keep you people in the dark; metaphorically and literally,” Williams said with a tone of disbelief.
“Hardly anyone tries to cross the neutral strip anymore. It isn’t like it was when the zones were first set up. Those people remembered what it was like when they were allowed to travel freely anywhere they wanted, and they wanted to return to the United States. They remembered what it was like before the war, and they were angry about being kept in here. Now, people rarely bother attempting illegal crossings. There is basically a huge fence with razor wire and guard stations every so many miles. If you manage to sneak across the border, they just get into their vehicles and swarm to you once you trip a sensor camera. You don’t sneak through the border; you just don’t.”
“You said we have to get you out of here,” John said. “How are we supposed to do that if nobody can sneak across the border?’
“I know the system. I did my first year of service patrolling the border before I secured an appointment to the Academy, which used to be in Colorado by the way. Trust me, John. If we can get there, I know how to get us through.”
“So there really was a great war during The Fall,” John wondered aloud.
“It’s known as ‘World War Three,’ and there were two such wars before it. The third war was the worst though. People had created such advanced biological weapons that they were able to wipe out vast swaths of people without firing a shot. They simply released a virus inside the population of an enemy nation and allowed people to die by the millions. That’s where the Haze came from. Somebody managed to infect several key cities with it, and it spread through the country. Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis… People passed through on their way to somewhere else and took the Haze with them; tens of millions of Americans died.”
Williams continued. “There were other things worse than the Haze in other parts of the world. Some people made germs that wiped out everyone; nobody survived those. The whole thing got crazy. Nations thought they had designed biological weapons they could contr
ol, but some of these diseases mutated and became something nobody had an antidote or vaccine for. The human race was on the verge of being wiped out. Finally, America and her allies put together a coalition to seize control of every known biological weapons facility on earth and restore stability to where the war could end. The truth is: The war had started with a roar and ended with a whimper. People didn’t even care about why they had been fighting in the first place. They just wanted to live and not watch their children die. It took years, but science found cures and vaccines for the world’s diseases. America survived; many other countries didn’t. America is still the world leader of the global order; maybe even stronger now in relation to the other nations than before the war. The biggest problem now is the zones. People are terrified of them. Hell, I am terrified of them. Nobody has a good answer about what to do with them.”
John sat there processing all of this. It was so much information in so short a time, and it was tearing down everything he had ever thought he knew about the world. The High Council obviously had to know, which meant they had rewritten history; but why? He was a high-ranking officer, and even he had no idea about any of this until today. Something much bigger than he could currently wrap his mind around was at work. He knew Williams might be holding something back or slightly distorting things, but something told him that wasn’t the case. Williams seemed ashamed, even angry as he had told the story. It was like he didn’t approve at all of what happened in what he called “the zones.” He wasn’t quite ready to trust the man, but his gut told him Williams was being straight with him. He knew he couldn’t stay here with Maria anymore. They had to make a move before the Ristas came up here looking around. After Williams crashed his airplane into the valley below, it wouldn’t be long before the mountain was crawling with Ristas.
John looked at the morning sun, which was now rising steadily into the morning sky. It was already getting hot, and he figured the Ristas would realize by nightfall there had been nobody inside the aircraft when it had crashed. They would spread out and search the entire area in a grid search; at least that is how he would do it. They needed to move. He thought of what Williams had said, and an idea began to form in his head.
