Earth Keepers

by Jorge Alejandro Lavera

  “He shot her in the heart. Not even on land with a surgeon...”

  “It’s okay, it doesn’t hurt anymore,” Leonora said, smiling at the captain. Her small chest didn’t move any more.

  No, no, no, this can’t be happening. Leora thought about what she could have done to prevent it. Should she have gone in and shot the father the minute she saw him? Could she have been more persuasive? How did she fail? She hugged the little girl’s body more tightly and started to shake her. She heard someone sobbing. It took a few seconds to realize it was her. She tried to control herself but couldn’t. This was her fault. She should have shot sooner.

  The doctor put his hand on her shoulder.

  “We saw everything from outside, Captain. Nobody could have done better. The guy was demented.”

  Leora felt bitter. Probably hundreds of millions of children had died this week. What did one creature more or less matter? Because she couldn’t help but feel directly responsible, that’s why. She knew that the doctor wasn’t to blame, but couldn’t help her response:

  “How does that help that little girl?”

  The doctor looked at her for a moment, then, looking in the first aid kid, gave her a pill.

  “I order you to take this and get some rest.”

  “Do you think I’m not capable of controlling myself?”

  “Nobody would be capable of that. Take it or I’ll have to forcibly restrain you and give you a shot. As the medical officer, I have the authority to do it. If you take it voluntarily, and rest awhile, it will show me that you have control of your faculties.”

  Leora straightened up completely, still hugging the girl. For a moment she saw red with fury and impotence. She breathed deeply, tried to control herself and realized that the doctor was right. She delicately placed Leonora’s body on the floor and stood up. Then, without further discussion, she took the pill and swallowed it without water. Staggering, she went to her cabin, where she showered, changed and went to bed for a while. Nobody bothered her until the next day.

  INTERCEPTED

  MSC Grandiosa, November 27, 2027. 7:30 a.m.

  Leora rested for several hours in her cabin per the doctor’s orders. Afterwards, now under control, she spent a long time on the bridge. She kept a dozen communication officers working in twos for two hour shifts, trying to communicate with whatever there was. All communication was by satellite, which fortunately continued to work. They even seemed to work better than usual. Leora supposed grimly that it was because they were dealing with less and less traffic.

  On one occasion, one of the officers managed to communicate with another cruise ship. The communication wasn’t very long and it really seemed to be a desperate call from the other ship which was in the Mediterranean to see if they could help them. As they told it, they had docked in France five days ago and then navigated towards Greece. A couple of days later, people started showing symptoms to something like the flu but last night they’d started dying en masse. Within a few hours, they’d lost half the passengers and crew, and those who were left were pretty sick. They tried to get close to some city. The first ones refused to let them dock under threat of bombing them, even though the people threatening them sounded ill as well. In the end, they hadn’t had any responses from anyone on land, and they feared that if they didn’t dock right away, very soon they would be a ghost ship sailing on auto-pilot through the Mediterranean.

  A few hours later, they passed by Mar del Plata without stopping. At one point, the captain heard a commotion and saw a lot of people peering over the railing of several decks, pointing down. She also heard the thud of something crashing into the ship.

  Fearing it was someone trying to board the ship by force, she peeked out. “I wish I hadn’t looked,” she thought later. Hundreds, if not thousands, of bloated and bluish bodies hit like punching bags against the side of the ship as it passed through. A circular marine current had kept them close to the coast, going round and round as they slowly decomposed and were devoured by fish. If they’d arrived because they were swept along by the ocean tide, brought by some river, or thrown there once they were dead, they’d never know.

  She tried to forget what she’d seen. Passing through the decks, she saw more than one green face. There wasn’t much conversation, but the few there were, and the looks from those who didn’t say anything, all communicated the same message: Thank you for keeping us aboard, since at this point, no one doubted that staying on board until now had saved their lives. The issue was now when and how they’d be able to disembark and be safe.

  They’d continued at a constant speed following the coastline and they were near Blanca Bay. It was just past one in the afternoon when the monotony of the trip was abruptly interrupted. Several alarms rang simultaneously, including the ones for approach and for collision. A moment before, there had been nothing on the horizon or on sonar, so Leora shouted an order to stop. The engines were put in reverse for a moment, which caused the boat to brake very quickly, although at the cost of a lot of noise and vibrations.

  “Captain...”

  “I already saw it, Giuseppe.”

  Everyone on the bridge, and so did most of the people on the ship, probably. On the starboard side, they saw the immense cloud of bubbles that appeared in the water, followed by a mass that was slowly rising.

  “It’s an Ohio Class II?”

  “It has the American flag on its side.”

  “Yikes, let’s hope they’re approaching in a good mood.”

  The Ohio Class II submarine was a nuclear submarine capable of launching intercontinental Trident C6 class missiles. Just one command from the United States was enough for the submarine to automatically launch a dozen missiles into the stratosphere, where they would open and a cluster of nuclear weapons would find their target from each missile—dozens of weapons of mass destruction that gave one the chills. At over 650 feet long, the submarine was an impressive monster, though next to the MSC Grandiosa, it looked like a toy boat. Leora knew, though, that proportions were deceiving. The cruise ship was gigantic, but however small the submarine was, it was also a formidable ship. Of course it was a war ship, which meant that its crew was composed of military people.

  The communications system allowed a voice to be heard, in English. Leora almost screamed. She made an effort to calm down and took the microphone.

  “MSC Grandiosa, this is Captain Robert Miles, of the USS California. Over.”

  “USS California, this is Captain Leora Shapira of the MSC Grandiosa. Do you need assistance? Over.”

  “Captain Leora, we were going to ask you the same thing. Is everyone on board okay? Over.”

  “We were very lucky to be recently starting to sail on the high sea when the epidemic started and we didn’t dock after it had been discovered. No one on board was ill. How are you? Over.”

  A minute passed.

  “We’re all fine here. Can we see you in person? Over.”

  “You believe what I told you just like that? Over.”

  “Captain, we know your route. From the information we have, if someone had got infected during your last contact on land, the disease would have killed you all by now. Over.”

  “Is it necessary to see each other? Over.”

  “Captain, if we wanted to harm you, a couple of torpedoes would be enough to send you to the bottom of the ocean, and you wouldn’t even know what hit you. Over.”

  Leora looked at the officers on the bridge. Romano shrugged his shoulders.

  “Why do you want to see us? Over.”

  “Let’s say some of my men would like to stretch their legs and personally, I’d like to talk to a colleague about the future. In private. Over.”

  “Very well, Captain, prepare for a transfer maneuver. You may board with whatever men you want, and if you behave, I’ll even invite you for a swim. Look for the visual signals that they’ll send you to line up your ship so that you don’t scratch my ship. Over and out.”

  Her officers looked
at her with a half-smile that she tried to avoid.

  “Well? What are you waiting for? Go put out the transfer plank for that old piece of junk.”

  ARRIVAL

  Rho, November 27, 2027. 11:27 .m.

  The city appeared inaccessible on all sides, except for the main road that led to the entrance gate. After so many hours of traveling, Juan Carlos and Sofía were tired, but both of them were wide awake from the excitement of seeing their new home. Actually, they were excited at the prospect of seeing someone alive.

  As they got closer, the size of the wall and of the entrance doors themselves became notable.

  “It looks like Jurassic Park,” Sofía commented.

  “Just what I was thinking—I hope there are no dinosaurs behind that door.”

  He decelerated to brake calculatedly about fifty feet from the entrance. There was no one around.

  “Now what? Ring the doorbell?”

  “I suppose so...except that I don’t see any bell.”

  He took off his seat belt, opened the door of the truck, and asked Sofía:

  “Wait for me here, I’ll go up and see if there’s a bell or something.”

  “Dad...” Sofía said warningly, but Juan Carlos had already got out of the truck and was walking away.

  He’d barely got five feet when he heard a voice that said:

  “Wait where you are, please, a representative from the city will be here in a few minutes.”

  Well...he wasn’t going to stand there like a statue, leaving his daughter alone, so he slowly returned to the truck and got back in.

  “We’re waiting.”

  Ten minutes went by before a small door in the main gate opened on the right.

  “Logical, it isn’t necessary to open such a large gate for just one person to go through,” he thought. As the door opened, they noticed it was as thick as a safe and surely as strong.

  As soon as the door opened, a young woman with dark hair, aquamarine eyes, and an impressive figure came out. She was wearing tight black shorts and a kind of green tank top that left her belly bare. Juan Carlos felt his breath catch. Sofía poked him in the side.

  “Hey, what’s wrong with you? If you don’t change your face, they’re going to arrest you as a degenerate before signing citizenship papers. Close your mouth. And don’t drool.”

  Juan Carlos was stunned, and then smiled.

  “Come,” she requested. They got out of the truck and approached the young woman who was already coming up to them.

  “Juan Carlos, Sofía, I’m so happy that you’ve arrived, welcome. I’m Althaea.”

  “Um, well, you already know who we are. How do you know, Althaea?” Juan Carlos asked.

  The woman smiled and explained:

  “There’s a camera connected to face recognition at the entrance. When you were no more than 500 yards away, the center knew that you were arriving and sent me the notice to come greet you.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Before going in, I must ask you if you have firearms?”

  “Of course not,” Sofía assured her.

  “Yes, I have a pistol.”

  “What? Dad!” Sofía shouted. “First, why didn’t you tell me? And second, why did you tell her? Now, we’re not going to have a weapon?”

  “Daughter, if the worst had happened out on the road, I didn’t want you trying to handle a weapon you don’t know how to handle, and as for now...if they have facial recognition that works from 500 yards, they certainly have the capability of detecting hidden weapons.”

  “If you want to carry the weapon with you, I just need to know to tell the guard not to detain you when the scanner goes off. Although I should tell you it will slow things down when you go through any control, especially if we’re not with you. The most practical thing would be to leave it with the entrance guard. You can get it back any time later.”

  Juan Carlos hesitated, but then opened his jacket and showed her the shoulder bag. He unhooked it, rolled it up carefully and handed it to Althaea. When he approached, she breathed deeply and said:

  “Hmm, you smell very good. It’s strange, because...” Suddenly she got quiet, looking at Juan Carlos out of the corner of her eye, as if she had spoken without thinking and suddenly realized it.

  Juan Carlos was left standing with his mouth open.

  The door started to open, at first slowly and then faster.

  “Please, proceed with the truck and leave it parked in the space marked on the left.”

  They went back to the truck and Juan Carlos went forward slowly. When they passed through the gate, it immediately started to close again. He could see in the mirror that Althaea followed on foot behind them. Towards the left, there was a parking area with a few vehicles. He headed towards that and left the truck as close to the entrance as possible. He shut everything off and faced Sofía.

  “Well, it is what it is. We’re here.”

  They opened the doors and Althaea approached them.

  “Take the personal things you’ve brought. Although you won’t need food or drink, you can take what you brought, the same with clothes, shoes, electronics and everything else. You can leave the key in the truck or take it with you, it doesn’t matter, though I recommend leaving it in case it needs to be moved. In any case, you’ll also have a vehicle in the city.”

  “Okay,” said Juan Carlos, “I’ll leave the key, then.”

  He and Sofía both grabbed their backpacks and suitcases that were in the back seat of the truck. When they closed it, Juan Carlos couldn’t help but look at it with nostalgia. In the end, it had been his home for a couple of days.

  Althaea took a cell phone out of her pocket, pushed some buttons on the touch screen and kept it in her hand. In a few seconds, a vehicle appeared on a side street and stopped very quietly next to them.

  “Come with me.”

  They followed her without protest. The car had six facing seats, no steering wheel and no one to drive it. They got in the car, throwing the packages on one side and sitting on the other side, looking towards the center of the city. Althaea at one window, Sofía at the other, and Juan Carlos in the center.

  Althaea pressed some more buttons on the device and the car began to accelerate in the opposite direction from which it came, towards the center. The vehicle stayed to the middle of the wide street and continued to accelerate. The only noise was the wheels on the pavement.

  Althaea casually rubbed her leg against Juan Carlos’, who felt the color rising in his cheeks. What was happening to him? He felt like a horny adolescent. The truth was that he even felt Althaea’s scent and he loved it. It wasn’t perfume, he realized with surprise, but an almost imperceptible body odor. He looked at her and she did the same with an almost feline look. It would not have surprised him if she had suddenly started to purr.

  “Is this an electric car?” Sofía asked. Juan Carlos almost yelled out. He’d gotten just a ‘little’ tense...

  “Of course,” Althaea smiled, “Self-driving, as you have seen. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  The car was driving at breakneck speed, in spite of being silent, when it started to decelerate and then a small noise was heard, while changing the direction of the pull of inertia.

  “What speed were we driving at and what is that noise now?” asked Sofía.

  “We can talk about that later. Now we’ve arrived and your dad is going to have a very important interview. Do you mind waiting outside, Sofía? My friend Damaris can show you some interesting things.”

  “Sure...” Sofía agreed, looking at her father.

  The vehicle stopped at the base of a tower building in the city center.

  After unloading the bags and leaving them inside the building, they went after Althaea, who was leading them. When they got to the elevator, Damaris was waiting for them there. Althaea pressed the door panel and while it was opening, and said to Juan Carlos, pointing to Damaris:

  “We’re going to the top floor. Sofía is safe wi
th her.”

  Damaris smiled at Sofía and Sofía returned the smile. Juan Carlos looked at her and frowned.

  “Do I know you? You look familiar.”

  “I’ll be okay, Dad,” Sofía assured him. “It’s the doctor who gave us the vaccines, remember?”

  Juan Carlos raised his eyebrows, relieved to remember her.

  “Ah, yes, you had a steady hand. Be careful, Sofía.”

  Juan Carlos got into the elevator and Althaea pressed the button for the highest floor.

  REVELATIONS

  Rho, November 27, 2027. 12:05 p.m.

  Juan Carlos got out of the elevator and found himself in a large space. Upon stepping out, there was a reception area and then a wall with a single door. A red light shone very dimly on a panel to his right. He also noticed what looked like a list, in big letters in relief on the wall, but he couldn’t read it since it was in Greek characters.

  “Do you like our new commandments?” Althaea asked.

  “Is that what it is? I can’t read it.”

  Althaea smiled and said:

  “It was an arduous job to achieve it. No messiah brought them down ready-made from a mountain. We’ll read it together later.”

  Althaea put her right hand on the panel and the light changed from red to green. The door opened and they entered.

  Althaea looked surprised. She took his arm and tried to say something, but Juan Carlos looked at the young doctor who was waiting inside. That doctor...was that his Raquel?

  His heart skipped a beat and for a moment he felt a buzzing in his head. His blood pressure had dropped from the shock. He moved his tongue in his mouth, completely dry, and when he could articulate something, was only able to say: “Raquel?”

  The woman looked at him even more surprised and said: “Yes, I’m Raquel. Do I know you?”

  Juan Carlos couldn’t form any words. Yes, it was his Raquel. And at the same time, it wasn’t. She was much younger than his wife. She looked exactly the same as when he met her, so many years ago. Raquel didn’t have sisters. What was going on here?