This story is aimed at the Royal Road 55555 words challenge, but will continue even after the event ends.
1 year after the Outbreak:
The Capital City finally came into sight as we climbed over the last obstacle. Our troop, consisting of the last fifteen surviving bipeds, was hungry and tired. We had trekked through the last ten miles within only a day. I still had enough food and water. Our great luck had been the sculptor, whose awls had done wonders. In the eight months we had survived together, we had carved over a hundred pairs of ¡°sabot shoes¡± and flat slippers. In fact, they were improperly called so, because they were nothing but pieces of tree trunks tied to the foot with woven lime tree bark rope. They were, however, much more comfortable and efficient than going on bare soles. The wooden clogs were much heavier and less practical over long distances, but the knockoff boots and sneakers that most of us had owned at the beginning of our journey, had long broken down into pieces. Each biped had two or three pairs of differently unassorted stockings standing on their feet. In fact, they were just rags that you might call socks. The cold wind of December was ravaging our whole group. Everyone was coughing and their noses were clogged, but nobody said a word. The pharmacist''s suitcases had done wonders. The last chamomile and mint flowers had been boiled two days ago. The colonel and the architect were, despite their age, the so-called ¡°tea masters¡± who carried the heavy tea pots. The youngest of us helped the weakest to keep up. The math teacher, who had gotten his right leg amputated over three months ago, was being rolled along on a medical stretcher by the two of the students. We had taken the thing from a burnt-down and abandoned ambulance that we had encountered on the outskirts of the last city we had gone through on our way back. The magnifying glasses of the Math teacher, a great collector of lepidoptera, had been very useful to us for lighting campfires. A month ago, the sculptor had carved a lime-wood prosthesis leg for the Math teacher, a prosthesis that now seemed to be of no great use. My daughter and doctor''s daughters marched with more aplomb than veterans from the foreign legion. From the backpack of my daughter, the two heads of the ¡°cat-knight¡± Othello and the ¡°tiny barker¡± Obelix could be seen poking out. The two furries didn''t say anything. The life from the last nine months had made them into the very best of friends to the whole group. They had escaped so many times the fate of being turned into roast meat by the hordes of hungry bipeds. The doctor was right. As long as the two furries will stay alive, then we will survive. They had become the lucky mascots of the last surviving group of bipeds in the area, and probably in the country. The killer virus had ravaged the land. During the last few days, we had encountered tens of thousands of bipedal bodies and animals on our way. The animals that had not been killed by the virus, had been slaughtered by hungry bipeds instead. I had taken from the nearby abandoned houses that we passed only what I thought might be useful. We stopped at a huge villa on the outskirts that had almost been left untouched by the bipedal locust swarm that had driven away from the city by the second wave of the plague produced by the mutant virus. In the middle of the living room, there was a huge concert piano. The priest sat down at the piano and began to play the Sonata of the Moon. We all sat on the carpet in the living room to draw our breath. The judge, the architect, the geologist and the two mechanics removed the provisions from the backpacks. The Colonel took out from his backpack the last two bottles of moonshine, which began to circulate from hand to hand. The two students had found in the adjacent shed some fire logs, which they had begun to smash appart with their axes. In a few minutes, they had lit up the fireplace. My daughter, the surgeon''s three daughters and the old chubby EMT medic lady, the mother of my unfilial fatass of a disciple, took the "pots" and started making tea. Strangely, the manor grounds we were currently stopping at had even possesed a stable, which was now inhibited by the leftover corpses of the unfortunate equines and mules that used to reside within. Move the two donkeys on the piano, and it would have been just like in ¡°An Andalusian Dog¡± of Luis Bu?uel. Surrealism would blend with reality. The old well in the courtyard of the villa had not dried up, and the water inside seemed acceptable at first sight. The world had gotten rid of the killer virus by killing anyone infected along with it, so the rest didn''t matter anymore. And even so, the water would get boiled anyway, to remove any residual bacteria. The manor had been the first ¡°intact¡± building that we had encountered on our way back. The amazing thing is that inside, we had not found any residual human bodies. Otherwise, all of the buildings that we had encountered on our way to the city had been just smoking ruins, full of corpses. But now, there were only ten miles left until we could enter the capital proper, and we were tired. The geologist''s maps and calculations didn''t lie to us. We had chosen secondary roads, which would prevent us from meeting with other hordes of desperate and hungry bipeds that might have left the cities to avoid the plague outburst caused by the virus. It is very likely that the last of the other bipeds had died long ago, because while traveling on our way to get where we were at the moment, we had crossed many mountains and planes but we had yet, for over two weeks, to encounter any other human being that was still standing.
All the things that I had learned about humanity and about humanism had lost all of their value. The bipeds, at least those who had survived the first and the second wave of mutant virus deaths, had become only ferocious beasts. The struggle for survival had killed their weaker peers. And everything for what? Just to survive a few more days, weeks or months? These months had proven to me that the human species was by far more brutal than any other creature on earth. Faced with unimaginable challenges, the human species had shown its cruelty and abusiveness once again. All the philosophers and scholars of humanity now meant nothing. Humanity had to be reset. In fact, the reset was still ¡°currently undergoing¡±, but I was wondering who would be left standing by the end of it all. We only had fifteen people left. I doubt others would have survived as well as us, confused, sick and unprepared as they had been. From the latest news I had been gathering on the radio during early June, it seemed that the situation had been just as desperate all over the world. I was hoping that at least some areas of the world had been spared the despair of the hordes of bipeds who had escaped the fear of the deadly virus outbreak from the confines of the big cities. But if things had gone down the same way as they had in my country, I didn''t have high hopes.
Next day after we left the villa, we walked ten more miles towards the city¡¯s edge. We stopped inside a forest and decided it was too late to continue our journey. I was all tired and full of muscle fatigue. We decided that it was safer to wait for the next day, then form two teams of three people, the strongest of us, then go and explore the capital city (or what was left of it,) for anything useful. If there was no danger to be found, then we would come back and bring the others. But no one thought about what we would do next. What if the capital was just as deserted as all of the cities that I had passed through? In our minds, it was all about getting "home", but where was "home" at anymore? For nothing was as before. We all slept the exhaustion off. No one was in the mood for food anymore, since it all tasted like crap. Myself, the architect and the colonel remained on guard. Our preservation instinct told us that our sufferings were not over, and that we should not risk anything. We had gone through too many misfortunes to make it to the end.
I wondered what had happened to the rest of the bipeds in Europe and around the world. I hadn¡¯t known anything about the rest of the "civilized" world ever since the 1¡¯st of June, when I had left the Capital City with my mother-in-law and my daughter. The pandemic was growing crazy at the speed of light back then. In just under two months, the second wave of the pandemic had killed over two billion people. The human species had never encountered such a thing in the entire history of its existence on the blue planet. All the known wars and plagues throughout history had failed to kill even a quarter of the amount from this figure. And everything had happened in barely sixty days. Looking back, the first wave of the pandemic had been gentle. It¡¯s the second wave that had hit harder, the one that had destroyed the rest of humanity, after the virus had mutated to a more aggressive strand. All of the horrible things told to us by the geologist, the last person to get glued to our "tribe" of survivors, were perfectly real. He had survived like a miracle during the first wave of the murderous pandemic. The fact that he had lived in the USA for another month, and that he had just arrived onboard a cargo ship in Eastern Europe, was a pure miracle in it of itself. Now I totally believed what he had told us, that everyone was gone. However, he had no reason to lie or exaggerate. He had thought that he had been left alone on this deserted planet, until he had ran into us. But we were hoping that there would be some surviving bipeds somewhere, still trying to restart the wind turbine power plants or the hydro dams. For the moment, these were the only feasible energy sources available. I did not think that atomic or coal power plants would still have the ¡°juice¡± to function anymore. It was clear that we would be forced to ride bikes for transportation for a long time from now on. I was trying to imagine how the few other people who might be left around the world would survive. But my tired brain, brined in nine months of intense survival activity, just refused to give me an answer. Without realizing it, fatigue overwhelmed me and I fell asleep. I hoped that the architect and the colonel would pick up my slack.
The next morning, I woke up numb and with a bitter taste in my mouth. The cloud-filled sky cast down a gray, oppressive atmosphere. The others were still sleeping in the rags that you could barely call sleeping bags. The Colonel snored back into the remnants of his campaign gear. Military education had made its presence felt, when in regards to the old colonel. Although he was almost sixty-five years old, the virus had avoided him like he was the plague instead. Perhaps the virus had been too frightened by the arrogance and demeanour of the old officer. I must admit, however, that the old officer was one of the most lucid minds I had encountered in my life. His decisions had always been based on sound scientific and military arguments and had often taken us out of trouble. He and the math teacher had helped us enormously over the past few months. Now that he had lost his whole family, the colonel was not interested in anything anymore. He''d had had a drinking problem as a young man, but he was an atypical drinker. He only drank when he felt his nerves were about to leave him. He just wanted to escape from the miserable reality and nothing more, so he was in charge of the booze. The last bottle of moonshine we had drunk the night before, myself, the doctor and the pharmacist. The Colonel was the only one of us who did not want to see the ruins of the capital that had been rampaged by the virus. He had nothing to do with the capital city and his former home anymore.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Slowly, the other bipeds started to wake up. With the help of the architect I lit up the fire again. The ladies heated up the last three liters of the so-called tea. It was nothing but a cloudy boil of chamomile, mint and linden flowers. But it was something hot that helped us survive the sharp cold of the winter. I drank the shlop quietly. The surgeon cracked appart the last packet of dry biscuits. Each of us had two biscuits. The damn things were so tough you could beat nails in wood with them. They were still better than nothing.
We decided that myself, a student and the architect would form one of the capital-city exploration teams and the surgeon, the pharmacist and the other student would form the other team. We planned to enter the capital through different points, then meet up in front of the royal palace. Then, if everything was quiet, both of the teams would come back and retrieve the others. Everyone understood what to do. What was worse is that we had all started scratching our heads for a while now. Last time we had washed had been on the day when we had found the intact villa, on our way to the capital city. Back then, taking advantage of the fact that the three bathrooms of the villa were still in one piece, we had all taken turns bathing. Us men had carried dozens of buckets of water from the well to the bathtubs. Of course, we had washed with cold water, because we had no way to heat the water. The soap scraps had all gone up in smoke right then and there. No one had commented that the water had been cold and somewhat improper. It was enough that we could have finally washed in a bathtub. Even then, the girls had managed to wash a few of the so-called shirts. They were just discolored rags over which we had put on other rags called sweaters or jackets. But it had been a while since we had left the villa, and now we were all scratching ourselves like we were on fire. The two furries were also scratching in unison with us, although it seems that the fleas had also been destroyed by the rebel virus. Othello was tactically grooming himself in the arms of the math teacher. They had become best of friends in the last three months. The teacher had always parted with a piece of his food rations, to appease the critter. The french bulldog Obelix was enjoying the love of the girls, who were carrying him in turns inside of their backpacks.
We finally left the woods and headed for the capital, all the six members of the two teams. One team was supposed to enter the city through the south entrance and the other through the north. If we maintained a decent pace, in the evening we would be back at the woods camp. After three hours of walking, we decided to separate from the other team and went on our own way. The architect and the student took to the north. After another hour of walking, we reached the surface subway line, which connected the international airport with the central station. Basically, this subway line enters the capital through the south gate of the city. We only had to follow the subway, and in a maximum of two hours, we could be at the center of the capital. So I set off again along the subway rail. After half an hour''s walk, I encountered the first abandoned subway car. There were five wagons burned, filled with dead bodies that had expired for months. I climbed into one of the wagons, curious to see what was left. Here lay the bodies of the people who had tried to escape from the city, driven by the second wave of the pandemic caused by the killer virus. They had hoped that when they arrived at the airport, they could catch a bus that might take them to other quieter or safer areas. There were still traces of facemasks, hazmats and backpacks all over the place. All of the backpacks were empty, signs that the passengers on the subway had been killed by the struggles for survival. The surviving hordes of human locusts had emptied and plundered everything in their path. I was saddened when I found a wallet chock-full of credit cards on a bench. Probably the biped card holder had transferred all his money to the cards in the hope that they would not be stolen. He had only been an idiotic biped. Where the hell would he find an ATM to get the money off the cards anymore? What value would paper money have anyway? None, most likely. But people have always been greedy and over-cautious. What made me extremely happy was the discovery that I made by opening a backpack that had been stealthily stashed inside a trash can. Inside the backpack we found some canned meat and fish, as well as three packets of salted biscuits, weighing one kilogram each. We now had enough to eat for the next two days. How these treasures had gone untouched, I cannot explain, but never forget that miracles can happen. It is true that when the first robberies had started in the capital, myself, my daughter and my mother-in-law had promptly left the capital to avoid the obvious incoming disaster.
We climbed down from the wagons, and continued towards downtown. After another hour of walking, we entered the city proper. The scenes on display were a nightmare. We saw dead people everywhere, cars, trucks and buses burnt and destroyed. Many biped corpses had traces of bullets, a sign that they had been shot by the army. The government had driven the army into the streets immediately after the second wave of deaths caused by the mutated virus had broken out. The idea of ??maintaining order had been at the forefront of the endeavour, but soon, the surviving bipeds had developed a grudge against the encircling army and had rioted. The robberies and murders had begun. The curfew had been established and the army had been allowed to fire without prior warning. Hundreds of bipeds had escaped the virus, but had been killed by the army instead. Of course, the military did not fare very well either, being stoned, molotoved, or axed to death by the angry mob. After a week, the curfew didn''t scare anyone. The powerful rioteers had robbed, raped or killed as they had pleased. A more terrible urban war had started than the one produced by the virus. The bipeds had gone crazy. The most intelligent of the bunch had left the capital waaay before the second wave of the pandemic had broken out. But these were only a few hundred. And even then, the vast majority of them had been wiped out by the second wave of sickness or by the hordes of bipeds who had escaped the two killer waves of the virus and were trying to survive at any cost. What was most frightening, was the gloomy air that filled the capital. With the exception of a few dozen sunbeams cracking through the clouds, it seemed that every trace of life had disappeared from the city.
I quickly realized that there was no major danger, and that we could go back to the forest camp on the edge of the capital and bring the other nine bipeds back with us. So we returned on the same path to the rendezvous point. After four hours, we were back in the woods. After us, the other reconnaissance team arrived ten minutes later. And they had discovered the same deserted and desolate city landscape just like us. At the edge of the forest, the remaining bipeds were very happy. They had forgotten about the hunger and the cold as soon as they had seen us return. The zeppelin had managed to get the colonel''s military walkie-talkie radio station to work. Our luck was that the station was very modern, and could be fed by solar energy, received via the solar panels attached to the fattie¡¯s backpack. Although we had been exasperated all throughout our journey by his silly stories about migrating to other planets, it was now proven that his solar panels were indeed life savers. The problem with solar power was that the gloomy weather of December and the clouds of lead did not let the sun''s rays reach us much, so no juice. It seems that the sun did not love the Earth anymore. But that was the last thing that mattered. It¡®s a boon that now we had a functional means of communication. Sooner or later, the sun would rise again and we would be able to communicate with other bipeds, if someone was still alive on the planet.
We decided to spend the night in the woods again. We were too tired to go back to the city, and it was already late. The colonel shared the canned goods and the biscuits found in the subway in even parts. We were all relatively satisfied. The repair of the handheld station had restored our hope. We still had a chance to get in touch with the world. We lay exhausted inside the so-called sleeping bags. Nobody said anything. Obelix snored contentedly inside his backpack, in my daughter''s arms. He had received his share of canned meat. Othello twisted his tail around the math teacher''s arms. Did we return to normal? You can say yes, because the behavior of the two furries was the best evidence to this regard.
Next morning, we all left for the capital city. The sky was just as leaden, so the radio station was of no use to us yet. After three hours, we were already in front of the royal-palace square. We sat on some stone benches from the square, in front of the palace. I was somewhat happy to have made it here, a rare thing to occur during the last eight months. Suddenly, from one of the side bushes jumped up a ginger cat, which began giving us an inquisitive look. I was surprised to see another living thing inside the city. The wicked Othello suddenly jumped from the teacher''s arms and walked toward her. Within a minute, they both had sniffed and had ¡°liked¡± eachother, then had gone to ¡°work¡±. The zeppelin, being his usual numbskull, began producing special sound effects, as if they were extracted from the soundtrack of a XXX rated movie while Othello was being "dedicated to his work¡±. Obelix looked at the two entwined felines mercilessly, but he didn''t move either. The tomcat stared at him with a knowing look, almost saying: "Stay quiet, friend, soon you will find yourself a partner as well, and you will enjoy it so". It was clear, after almost a year, that life had returned to its rightful cycle, one cat booty call at a time.
Chapter 1: Christmas is coming
The Time of the Virus
1 year ago:
The weather has warmed considerably in recent days. It is an atypical winter, with neither frost, nor snow. And when you think that Christmas is coming in three days from now, you know there is no chance for a ¡°white¡± celebration to occur. But if I think about it, the last four winters were all bereft of snow. It seems that even nature has gone crazy and is in a hurry, pushing for an early spring. Where are the old snows of yore? They seemed to remain in the fairy tales of childhood. The greenhouse effect has warmed up the planet. The pollution produced by industrialization has created the greenhouse effect, which in turn has heated up the Earth. This vicious circle will ¡°transform¡± or better said, ¡°destroy¡± the planet, and with it, all of the bipeds that inhabit the surface. If the pollution will increase at the same rate as before, in five decades we will all vanish. So the disappearance of winters with frost and snow is the least inconvenience for now.
Othello sleeps like a baby in his basket, not giving a rat¡¯s ass about missing snow or anything related. Who is Othello? He''s a tuxedo tomcat, with which my daughter tossed into my arms this summer. The furry moocher does nothing all day long. He eats, sleeps and climbs upon everywhere. I think in a previous life, he must have been an alpinist and had teamed up with Sir Edmund Hillary to reach Everest. All day long he climbs on doors and cabinets all over the house. He is nothing but naughty kitty that has no prohibitions. I had stopped getting tired of arguing and punishing him a while ago, since nothing seemed to get through that thick furry skull of his. I left him to his own devices. What I enjoy to see is that he gets along soo ¡°very well¡± with Obelix, the French bulldog mockery-of-a-hound that my daughter had brought to me two years ago, to the small apartment of only eighty square meters that myself, my daughter and my mother-in-law occupy. My wife died two years ago, from galloping cancer. So, paradoxically, at this particular time we have more ¡°tenants¡± at the moment. The two furries make enough of a racket to count as much as five bipeds, so silence has become an illusion in our small apartment.
The old year is nearing its end. It hasn''t been a great year. Loneliness had begun to grind at me. After my wife''s death, I was quite sad for several months. I can''t say I loved her too much, but we had lived together for over twenty-six years. I had a relatively calm and uneventful life. The only ¡°big event¡± in our life had been the arrival of my daughter, twenty-seven years ago. It was the only ¡°notable¡± thing to happen in our common, average life. You will say that I am cynical. I may be a little cynical, but our lives have gone linear, like the lives of millions of other couples on earth besides our own. What was initially a stormy love turned into friendship, then into understanding and then endurance. Many may not understand these feelings, but it is the truth, and even if they do, they may not get it right. Today''s humanity tends towards absolutes. Absolute and eternal love is proclaimed by all bipeds. Nothing is more false and hypocritical. There is absolutely nothing ¡°absolute¡± in this world. From Einstein with Love: ¡°Everything is relative¡±. Love is relative, hatred is relative, friendship is relative, work has become relative, but a sadder fact is that thinking has become relative or more often non-existent for the human species as well. What is NOT relative at all, is life and death. However, it seems that life without thinking is as monotonous or rather as non-existent as death itself. I didn''t say it, Ren¨¨ Descartes said it almost four hundred years ago. "Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum", Descartes'' quote from the famous book "Discourse on Method" ("Discourse on the Rightly Conducting One''s Reason of Seeking Truth in the Science"). If you don¡¯t use your head you might as well be dead. But the bipeds in the third millennium have little doubt, and almost everyone has certainties. That''s why they seem to have stopped thinking. Everything comes in ready made packages. The bipeds only need to heat the up food portions in the microwave, and voila: ready made food. Nobody cuts the wood, and nobody lights up the fire in the heartplace anymore. No one cooks food anymore, or makes homemade bread. Everything is bought as semi-prepared items ready from the supermarket. The dishes are never washed again. Why? Because some of the few clever bipeds have invented the dishwasher. You will say that I am ¡°retro¡±, and that I am against the progress of humanity. But I dare ask you, what progress? All of these "inventions" were created to make it easier for humanity to live, and for the bipeds to save time. But why save so much time? To do WHAT with the remaining time? Procrastinate some more watching cat videos on Youtube?You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Everything evolved from the desire for ¡°faster, better, stronger and more¡±. But is it truly BETTER for us? Always "BEST" has been the enemy ¡°GOOD¡±. And from here, the biped invasion of the world from the last century has begun to cascade, because the overwhelming majority of the bipeds have no idea what to do with the spare excess time they have left. Today we get from point A to point B a hundred ways faster than a century ago. The best example in this regard is the flight above the oceans across the whole planet with supersonic planes. Today you can go around the earth in a maximum of twenty-four hours, and not in eighty days as Jules Verne dreamed. And this is due to the bipeds that invented and developed jet airplanes over the course of the century of speed. And when I think of the brilliant little Saint Exup¨¦ry, the father of the Little Prince, as he died piloting a war plane, I get sad. Was it the speed at which he imagined the Little Prince was traveling among asteroids and planets that had blinded the brilliant Saint Exup¨¦ry? It seems that not only idiot bipeds have fallen prey to the ¡°speed high¡±, but also intelligent and visionary ones.
Let''s go faster to get to where? And then do what? I bet no brilliant inventor asked these questions. Why? Because no inventor of the ¡°century of speed¡± has flirted with philosophy. In the best case, they were interested in the laws of physics and mathematics. These laws became well understood, because otherwise they would not have remained in human history due to the masterpieces created with their aid. But they did nothing but destroy the primal practical sense and thinking of the generations that followed. When you have everything ready-to-go, you do not put your brain to work. And the neurons, which have succumbed to laziness anyway, have now become mostly useless.
And for me, the evolution of science and technology has lately become a nuisance. That''s ever since I started writing. When I first started writing my first book, I wrote it ¡°classic style¡±, with the pen on paper. It took me more than a year. Then I discovered the laptop, which has helped me tremendously. What I wrote by hand a year ago, I transcribed on my laptop in less than three weeks, and I made the grammar corrections extremely fast on the laptop. It''s just that I still have to think, because a laptop that composes instead of the writer has yet to be invented. But it''s still something. For one like me, who can only see with only one eye, the laptop is a blessing. You will tell me that John Milton, the author of "Lost Paradise", also suffered from a detachment of the retina. I will never claim to be compared to the titan of English literature, the parent of the notion of the "commonwealth", because the only thing I have in common with Milton is the gradual loss of eyesight. But I hope to still be able to see with my remaining eye for a few more years, and finish some more books. Hope dies, as always, last.
It seems that even for someone technologically inept like myself, some inventions are quite beneficial, and I must acknowledge them as so. There are few among the bipeds who, when alone, have nothing else to do but to start writing again after a break of almost two years. After my wife''s death, I started writing again as a way to distract myself from the sorrow. I don''t know why I hadn¡¯t done so before, because nobody had stopped me. I had had enough time. It''s just that I hadn''t been alone. It seems that loneliness had induced a beneficial effect upon me. If I think of Henrik Ibsen''s words, "the strongest man is the one who stands alone", then loneliness had given me power. The paradox is that I never was, nor did I ever desire to be a strong man. I was, and remain still, a normal average dude. My few friends say that I am kind of weird, and that I always say things not meant to be said. That would be accurate, but I liked to call things by their name, with all the risks involved. The point is that, until now, I have not had much to suffer because of it. It''s just that everyone is afraid of my sharp tongue for whatever reason. In some way I could say I have been blessed by my lack of power, because even some meager power corrupts, with total power corrupting absolutely. Perhaps only Robespierre, the famous father of the French Revolution, was incorruptible, as he found himself one head shorter under the trimmer.
The funny thing is that the last feline pe(s)t of the family, the one who died more than a year ago and was replaced by the ¡°best climber¡± Othello, had been called Robespierre for almost fifteen years. And I could tell you that it was an extremely corruptible furry that you could bribe with a piece of fish to sit on his back paws for five minutes. Once again, Terrence was right, because his quote, adapted to this case, would sound like this: ¡°Non licet Iovis quod licet feles¡±. Translated into English, the quote would sound like this: ¡°What is permissible for Jupiter is not permissible for a cat¡±. Although in my opinion, if I think of ancient Egypt, cats have appeared in human history long before Jupiter. But let''s leave history and return to the present.
Chapter 2: The Supermarket
Today I have to go to the supermarket and perform the last of the shopping ¡°rituals¡± for Christmas and New Year''s Eve. For decades, humanity has been going crazy. Bipeds buy pointless stuff, like fish drink water during this period. Why do they do this? I do not know. For many of them, the religious component of the X-mas holiday means nothing anymore. They have no idea about the birth of Jay-C, or the Resurrection of the Whatshisface, mistaking the stable scene for another advertisement product placement. ¡°Buy now and get 3 mages for free - with additional gifts in the package! (Donkeys not included).¡± For them, these are only calendar dates in which they do not go to work, a time when they stay at home, drink, eat, (Beep) and rest. The other stuff doesn''t matter anymore. Religion has long ceased to count for anything in the bipedal life, which might not be that bad of a thing in the end. Humanity has fundamentally drifted away from religion during the last century, mostly because of science. I mean, when you begin to study Math and Physics, the odds of a jolly old man God with a long beard sitting up in the sky and watching you masturbate with disapproving eyes suddenly becomes ridiculous, but I am not the right person to judge anyone¡¯s beliefs. Today, Christmas and Easter have become purely commercial holidays, a great opportunity for the big supermarket chains to make big bucks. And bipeds are the most excited. You will say that humanity has ¡°upgraded¡±. Here you are perfectly right, because nothing is how it was, or in the way that it was before. Everything has changed and is still changing with great speed, but not necessarily for the better in the long run.
I left the two furries in their baskets. They were exhausted after so many fights. Obelix had come to our home before the great ¡°alpinist¡± Othello. From here sprang the struggle for territory and for supremacy between the two pe(s)ts. Like all dogs, Obelix is ??an idiot and a beggar of a dog. My daughter had made a bad choice when she had brought him to the apartment. He is by no means a smart critter. In fact, French bulldogs do not overflow with intelligence in general. They are funny, but stupid. The arrival of the ¡°enemy¡± Othello had put him in great difficulty. He had lost the sole right to the armchairs, sofas and beds in the apartment. Othello, as a self respecting tomcat, put the barker in his place from the very beginning. With two well-aimed paws, he had executed the pooch from day one, scratching him to blood. Like all cats, Othello has a very well developed sense of ownership. The French barker is not being paid much attention to. It is below the dignity of his ¡°proper stray cat ancestry¡± to cohabit with a trembling, barking jelly, but he makes do. The fight for existence and especially for the ¡°pole position¡±, is fierce in the furries world too.
I finally got to the supermarket. I just couldn''t find a shopping cart. The supermarket has become a new kind of Holy Pilgrimage Site for the Christians, where all the savings of the bipeds are buried. Every day thousands of bipeds come to ¡°worship¡± at these establishments. They all sing praise and offer financial sacrifices to the gods of commerce. Hermes has become more revered today than Jay-C. But not to forget, Hermes was also considered in Greek mythology as the god of thieves. May I deduce from this that bipeds that run these places are a bunch of scoundrels? Sure, but that''s another discussion.
A lot of bipeds almost step over eachother. They rashly buy everything and throw all of the products in their baskets. It looks like it¡¯s the end of the world. It¡¯s as if the planet will disappear during the next few days. The bipeds seem to have gone crazy. They have no sense of measure. This situation is yet another proof of the rapid ¡°evolution¡± of the human species. They buy a lot of useless stuff, and after the holidays they throw it in the garbage bins without measure or thought. It seems that the supermarket has become a ¡°horn of abundance¡± powered by credit cards. After so many centuries of famine and epidemics, the beginning of the third millennium has become a symbol of waste. A few years of hunger and drought would teach civilization not to waste so much anymore. However, it seems that the vast majority of bipeds do not grasp the concept of ¡°wasting resources¡±. And even those that do get it, care too little about it.
Fifty years ago, during my childhood, I had never dreamed that a thing like the supermarket could even exist. I had lived until I was almost seven years old in my grandparents'' house. My parents, both teachers, came to see me once a week during Saturday and Sunday. Only during summer did we go together to the sea or the mountainside. For almost seven years, I was the only grandson in the grandparents'' house. At the age of five, I was stealing eggs from the hens'' nest and going with my two older cousins ??to the village shop, where in exchange for the eggs I received ice cream, candies or chocolate. The seller didn''t necessarily need the money. The eggs were ¡°strong currency¡± back then. No one then knew about the ¡°daily exchange rate¡±, the ¡°stock market quotations of oil and the various metals¡± so essential to humanity. I had endured the worst period of communism. And yet, for us children, life seemed beautiful. How many times had Rex, the dog of the household, taken a punishment for being the main suspect for the disappearance of the eggs? I had been careful to break an egg in his cot so that he could take the blame for it. One day, the trick didn''t work anymore. My grandfather found us dead drunk, myself and my older cousins, ??in front of the village shop. I had stolen fifteen eggs, and in exchange for them, my older cousins had received from the seller a half-a-liter bottle of chocolate liqueur. It was so sweet and good that I had no idea when we got drunk. I just know that I woke up the next day with a severe headache. Grandpa, in order to scare me, threatened to cut my hand off with the wood axe if he caught me stealing eggs again. Anyway, my aunt, my mother''s sister, was now watching me like a hawk. So goodbye ice cream, candy and chocolate. And so my ¡°honest customer¡± experience of the village shop ended. At that time I did not even dream of the notion of a supermarket or a mall.
Now, I have a hard time walking among the bipeds during the shopping fever. In front of me, four young people take four chocolates from a shelf. They break them down tactically and start eating them. I watch in amazement how after two minutes, one of the younger folks throws inside a garbage can the wrapping of the chocolates already eaten. After that, without being disturbed by anyone, he ¡°pours¡± two handfuls of almond kernels into one of the pockets of his coat. This is plain daylight robbery! A veritable heist I say! Those almonds were veritable gold! Although several pairs of eyes had seen the bipedal juniors as they threw away the wrappings of the chocolates and filled their pockets with almond kernels, no one said anything. It was the ¡°holy¡± solidarity of the powerless bipedal buyers, in the face of the scams perpetuated for years by the supermarkets. It''s actually the most handy way for the bipedal buyers to take revenge on the greed of the supermarkets. And you may say, that for how big the conglomerates that own these supermarkets are, two handfuls of almond kernels and a few chocolates won¡¯t damage the turnover of a supermarket that much, right? Here you may be right. It is the same as in the old logical paradox of the ancient Greeks. You take a grain of wheat from a pile of wheat, and a whole bunch of wheat grains will still remain in the pile. We are on the other hand, looking at the ¡°ancestral solidarity¡± of the buyers in front of the greed and thievery of the merchants. What do those who do not have enough guts to pig themselves off the shelves most likely say to the gesture of eating unpaid chocolate and almonds from the supermarket? ¡°If I can''t do that, at least these other dudes will do it and teach these crooked traders a thing or two!¡±. But if even a tenth of the buyers would eat and drink ¡°for free¡± at the supermarket, the merchants would go bankrupt. Or they would improve their surveillance systems and give the delinquent customers to the police in a much harsher way. Although I doubt that in the third millennium, there¡¯s any merciless judge who would toss the bipeds into ¡°the cooler¡± for a bite of chocolate. There remains only a ¡°guerrilla warfare¡± of the shoplifting bipeds against the greed of modern merchants. I bet that the absence of said chocolates and almond kernels from the sales inventory at the end will just get labeled from the supermarket as perishables. Still, I did not condone nor accept their behavior, since it was just a plain mindless ¡°redneck rampage¡±, they did not even bother to do it stealthily.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
I managed to put everything that had been desired by my mother-in-law from my list, aka ¡°big mama¡± as my daughter calls her, after only a couple of minutes. It was not a big deal, since everything was at the reach of a hand, but considering that I had a cart full of things for the holidays, everything I bought now cost a little extra. Like all ¡°respectable¡± older bipeds, even ¡°big mama¡± was no exception to the splurging mentality during the holidays. It was not enough for her, what had already already been stashed away in the pantry. I do understand her though. When you are almost eighty years old and do not know if you are going to make it to your next Christmas, it is understandable not to hold back. Finally, after almost an hour, I left the supermarket but not before picking a few goodies for the two furries as well. The greedy Obelix always eats the food from sweet Othello¡¯s bowl. I hope he won¡¯t start to meow from all of that cat food he ate so far.
The visit to the supermarket had proved to me once again that bipeds became irrational given the context to manifest so. That is, if they had ever been rational to begin with, and not some socially-constructed and directed automatons. The vast majority of them live only to eat and drink, and not the other way around, eat and drink to live for another day like the rest of the animals. The current consumer society is the main culprit for the existence of the supermarkets and malls. Beginning with the fifties of the twentieth century, all of the neighborhood shops gradually disappeared. In their place, the first supermarkets had appeared. Everything had been done with the idea of ??saving time and money. In these new ¡°cornucopias¡± you could buy faster and cheaper. The quality of the goods did not matter anymore. Everything was just a great illusion, because in front of such an offer which no neighborhood individual shop could afford to counter, the Yankee, British, German, French or Italian client could not resist. They were coming to buy only eggs, but somehow they would wake up in front of the cash register full of vegetables, candy, juices or other wonders in the shopping basket. And instead of paying a dollar, a pound, a franc or a brand, they were paying the wrong extra amount. In their naivety, the bipeds considered the idea as a ¡°masterpiece of commerce¡±. By that time, almost half of the purchases made were being thrown away after a week, because they had expired or had rotted away. You couldn''t eat like an elephant, even though the bipeds had already invented the fridge and freezer to prolong the agony of the poor vegetables for a while longer, before getting sacrificed to the altar of the soup gods. From hunters, shepherds and farmers, bipeds have only become consumers. Steadily, the supermarket network spread all across North America and Western Europe. Even the stern Germans had finally abdicated in front of this new version of the ¡°horn of abundance¡±. Since then, generations of bipeds have become the slaves of the supermarket networks. Not to mention about the days when certain products, often unnecessary, have a discount! You will laugh with tears as you will see dozens of Eastern European bipeds standing in line for hours at an end, just for three low-priced pans, while smashing and beating eachother to reach one place further in the waiting queue. Even though they already have at home, each one of them, at least five or six different other pans. But I could somehow understand these Eastern European bipeds. After more than seven decades of communism, they were just like the Russians themselves. They may have only seen Western supermarkets on television until the fall of communism in the 1990s. That''s why they have an excuse, they had been traumatised in their infancy by the lack of ¡°everything¡± that the communist regime had brought on. But the bipeds in the ¡°civilized¡± parts of Europe and North America have no excuse for their imbecility.
Little by little, supermarkets have become part of the urban landscape of the civilized world. Neighborhood shops, boots, tailoring, ladies'' stocking workshops, dressers, as well as other workshops very useful for bipeds, have all disappeared. No more than fifty years after the first supermarkets appeared, the first malls appeared on the ground. And this is also due to the ¡°evolution¡± of the human species. The malls are nothing more than a concentration of shops similar to a small town. Here you can buy pretty much everything you need, usually just useless things that you DON¡¯T actually need but still look pretty, and you can also eat lunch or dinner at a fast food restaurant or watch a movie at a modern cinema. That''s because, along with the neighborhood shops, the neighborhood or drive-in cinemas have all disappeared in the meantime. The nowadays biped, poor or rich, spends half the weekend again with his wife, children, puppy, hamster and parrot and whatever other pe(s)t critter, all touring the mall. He forgot how to hunt, fish, grow animals for eating, nor can he farm even a beanstalk to save his own life if he had to. But he has ¡°evolved¡±, they say, when you can buy everything ready. Shoes, shirts, socks, refrigerators, TVs, washing machines, irons, they are all no longer repaired. They are used for as long as they are in the warranty period (which is in fact a general guideline for how long that product will last before breaking) and then they are thrown away. If such products lasted for more than a few years and were easy to repair, then millions of Chinese would have died of hunger, because they would no longer have to produce new ones on a constant basis. And look at how the big corporations line their pockets with money made on the backs of the poor and abused little asian workers. And the malls and supermarkets are thriving as a result.
During the Christmas and Easter holidays, the supermarkets and malls are crowded more than ever. Traditions have been lost and all the bipeds roam these commercial establishments, symbols of the civilization of the third millennium, without goal or purpose, attracted to the colorful displays of the shelves like moths to a flame. No one makes homemade sardines, beef, steak or cake. The ¡°respectable¡± biped nowadays just buys these products, whose preparation in our grandparents'' homes had so much delighted our childhood period. All current culinary preparations taste like rubber, cement or rust, but it doesn''t matter anymore. The world has changed, ¡°welcome to the age of food-in-a-tube¡±. Those nearing the sixty years of age like myself have become ¡°vicious and outdated old fossils¡± that refuse to ¡°get on with the times¡±. Many of us are forced to go to the supermarket or mall out of necessity or inertia. It seems that our world is gradually changing, but I highly doubt it is in a positive way.
Chapter 3: X-mas Eve
Finally, ¡®twas the night before X-mas, and not a creature was stirring, not even the silly tomcat or the French bulldog. I was camping for Santa behind the X-mas tree with a sledgehammer. I¡¯ll eventually catch that old red suited white bearded bastard someday, mark my words! Give him a piece of my mind/sledge for those coals in my shoes when I was 7!
Joke aside, tomorrow is Christmas. My daughter and big mama sat down at the Christmas table. In the corner of the living room, towards the window, I had installed a Christmas tree. I don''t know how long it will last this year, because Othello, the best mountain climber tomcat, has already scaled the thing twice to its peak, and was ready to tear it down. Due to his mountaineering attempts, he was exiled during the winter holidays to my room, where he lies fuming on the heat radiator. Obelix was initially very pleased that he had become the master of the living room. Yet a few hours later I found him barking sadly at the door of my room. The disappearance of the landscape climber had made him sad. He had no companions for thefts, fights and other misfortunes. The two furries seem to be the reincarnation of the most famous mobsters. All day long, I have to keep my eyes on the two tables in the kitchen and on the refrigerator. God forbid that I leave something edible on the table, because in the next second it ¡°magically¡± disappears. I think the two furries were Houdini''s students in a previous life. And they had been good and studious students as well. Othello, the mountaineer, climbs quickly on the tables and throws the ¡°pray¡± down to the buldog with the speed of light, which he finds interesting. I laughed so hard when I found inside the washing machine among the shirts three biscuits and a dried sausage. In my opinion, this was the work of the bulldog, whom I had found a few times poking around in the basin of the washing machine between the shirts and the socks. Since then, no one starts the washing machine without first checking if one of the two furries is not asleep in it.
Two weeks ago, the hellion of Othello had jumped out of the kitchen window. Nothing bad had happened to him, because my apartment is on the 2nd floor, and the distance to the ground is only five meters, enough for a feline to ¡°buffer¡± the falling damage by itself when plummeting. My mother-in-law saw him after half an hour, clashing with the barber''s tomcats downstairs. The hairdresser, Elias, otherwise an extremely intelligent and kind man, owns three puffed up Persian beasts, that had been brought to him by his son from the middle east. The three prize-winning beasts roam around the neighborhood all day long. Lately, all of the small birds seem to have disappeared from the area. And this is mainly because of the three brigands, who are nothing more than serial killers.
Young Othello fought like a lion with the three murderous furry criminals and managed to keep them at bay. When she saw him through the window, my mother-in-law was about to have a heart attack. She quickly sent my daughter downstairs to retrieve the bumbling dusky beast as soon as possible. Eventually the ¡°heroic¡± Othello was recovered and brought back to his home address. He had no major wounds. He only had a few scratches and tufts of fur missing. However, my daughter immediately took him to the veterinarian office for a closer examination. Poor Othello, once placed in the cage, he was screaming like a Christian in the pit of lions. Obelix, like any revolutionary French bulldog, barked with glee at the misfortune of his ¡°enemy¡±. Both furries have long known that once they are put in ¡°the cage¡±, the end of the trip is to the vet office. Now, the French was avenged. Although the three tomcats were his supreme enemies, he would have kissed them right now and had given them his food for a week. And that was only because they had taken out his nemesis, the sweet-couch-spot occupier, away from the circuit. But the diagnostics did not match the French barker¡¯s expectations. After only an hour, the ¡°enemy¡± returned home to my daughter. He had not required too many ¡°repairs¡±. He had just been disinfected with sanitary alcohol and had received a few antibiotic pills, which were to be administered by me and my daughter for the next few days. Obelix had been amazed at the tomcat''s return in such a quick manner to their ¡°conjugal¡± home. The dreams of the French barker to master the apartment for an unlimited time, had gone up in smoke. There were now in the same ¡°gut-wrenching¡± fights for the control of the armchairs and the sofa in the living room. But this is most often the case in the bipedal world as well. The counting of the money at home does not match the coin pouch at the fair. The two furries were going to ¡°divide¡± the apartment further into a tense atmosphere. Ever since then, we were all keeping our eyes on the meowing pest, who was trying to escape away from home whenever an opportunity arose.
And with the good and the bad, we arrived on X-mas eve. But it is no longer the Christmas of my childhood. Things have changed, places have changed, people have changed. There are no carolers anymore, all traditions and customs associated with that sort of wandering long gone. It is true that I have been staying in the Capital City for almost thirty years, but the same thing happens inside the villages as well. People have ¡°evolved¡±, with Youtube and Patreon replacing the carolers. In three decades, the villagers have stepped up from the plough and the horse, to the computer and the internet. The young and the able-bodied adults have moved from the East to the West, where they are paid much better for the same amount of time. In the villages, only the elders remain, for whom the traditions do not mean much anymore. The carols are for them only a wave of sadness, that reminds them of the different times from their childhood.
As a sign of supreme goodwill from the behalf of big mama, the mountaineer was released from my room, to the great ¡°happiness¡± of the French barker. He is nothing else but an extra competitor for the Christmas goodies. After midnight, us three bipeds began eating. The Christmas table was full of dishes cooked by my daughter and big mama. The two furries moved beneath the table, waiting for some unexpected goodies to accidentally drop. Enchanted by the delicacies on the table, the mountain climber forgot about the Christmas tree and rubbed himself like a respectable beggar by our feet. The French barker was playing second fiddle, by glancing at us with his googly eyes. In the end, neither I nor my daughter could endure it any more, so we made portions for the two furries, much to the chagrin of big mama, who is a scrooge incarnate. Only then did we manage to get rid of them. I finished my meal after about an hour. I filled myself a glass with Cinzano on ice, then retreated to my room. Othello followed me. He was swollen like a bagpipe and immediately took over my bed, where he settled down like a rock. You must remember that cats always own, and never lend. In the eyes of the alpinist tomcat, we were all slaves and he was the master.
In the living room, Obelix the French bulldog had taken over the couch and was snoring like a tractor. And for him as well as for us bipeds, Christmas had come. But did the two furries even understand what Christmas was? I highly doubted that. They are nothing but two furry moochers who take advantage of our kindness and generosity.
I retreated back to my desk and opened my laptop. Since the death of my wife, I have canceled my cable contract. Classic Television has become outdated in my opinion. It is much more convenient and easy to watch news, movies or music on your computer. It gets rid of the useless ads that put your patience to the test, at least for the subscription based services, plus you can select which fragment of the program you want to watch. There is a lot to do with this state-of-the-art technology. For more than a year, I have been reading on the laptop all the news from the international press. And they also lie or are partial, but not to the extent of the local press. You can''t compare the New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or Corriere della Sera to any other newspaper in the world. Freedom of expression has reached its peak in the civilized world. No newspaper of the size of the aforementioned allows itself to give unverified news. If they lie or try to influence the reader, then I do it in a very elegant and refined way. Sadly, today the tabloid press reigns supreme. The ¡°newspapers¡± are full of nudes and commercials with fine linen. That''s why I prefer to read the press on my laptop.
So far, nothing catches my eyes. Santa Claus¡¯s presence reigns supreme on every newspaper¡¯s headline, and in his wake, commerce thrives. And in the Americas and in Western Europe, it is the same as everywhere. In the name of Santa Claus, P¨¨re No?l, Babbo Natale or Weihnachtsmann, the bipeds of the civilized world put their hands inside of their pockets up to their elbows then buy all of the nonsense from the shops like remotely controlled drones.
As I scroll through the news, I spot an interesting article. In China, there is an epidemic caused by an unknown virus. It has recently emerged, and the Chinese are not coping all that well. This is truly a special ¡°gift¡±, in the Santa Claus spirit of the season. I guess the old red jolly bearded bastard decided to upgrade from coal-in-shoes to biological-bomb-in-shoes. This would be something we could use to miss after the previous SARS and EBOLA outbreaks. A new epidemic that will put the planet on the line is bound to show up any day now. Let''s hope it''s just a storm in a glass of water, like the rest have been. Anyway, the Chinese don''t say much. The regime of communist dictatorship that governs China does not allow too many things to transpire to the media. The fact that something happened, however insignificant they might play it off, it still means it''s bad. We''ll see what will happen next. I put on the fourth Symphony on my laptop, and I went to bed.
Mendelssohn Bartholdy''s music is fantastic. I listen to it in stupor, thinking of an Italian summer landscape. Othello rolls under the blanket next to me. It seems that the critter also likes the Italian Symphony. Although I do not think that his brave and independent cat brain can understand music that much, yet who knows? Nowadays anything is possible. The researchers found that certain musical scores stimulate the lactation in cows. It would not surprise me that after two or three hours of classical music, Othello and the barber''s tomcats might become even better hunters for sparrows and turtles. Music also has sometimes unexpected results in mammalian behavior. Slowly, I fell asleep. Othello, who is usually a night-person, also fell asleep beside me under the blanket, anesthetized by the chords of Mendelssohn Bartholdy''s symphony.
Next day, I got up at ten. It was the first day of Christmas. Othello was no longer with me. From the living room, I could hear the annoying barks of Obelix. When he racks up the noise, the bulldog barks like he''s plugged into an amplifier. It seems that he had some grudge to share with the tux meower. I left the room and headed for the kitchen. Here, my mother-in-law washes the dishes leftover from Christmas Eve. My daughter''s coffee was waiting on the table. My mother-in-law has quit drinking coffee a long time ago. She claims to be a cardiac and that coffee causes her to palpitate. That may be so, and since she used to be a dentist, hence a medical practitioner, I won¡¯t argue against her judgment. She knows what she knows, and trying to convince her otherwise would be a waste of time. I poured a few drops of Martell into my cup of coffee, which in the meantime had cooled down. I always liked hot coffee, but not tongue-scalding. Is how I can enjoy it better, savor the taste instead of feeling my tongue burn. I have to admit that my daughter knows how to make a great cup of coffee. Although I admit that I was never a pretentious guy in terms of coffee, since I usually drink instant-ness coffee, it¡¯s good to see that at least someone in the household knows how to brew a decent pot of coffee. I admit that I am a comfortably numb biped, not to mention lazy, who does not have the patience to keep the coffee pot away from burning or over-spilling due to oversight.
While I was drinking my coffee, the lovable Othello appeared like a missile into the kitchen, followed like a shadow by Obelix the bulldog. In order to escape the pursuit, the feline jumped on one of the tables, much to the chagrin of big mama. In the following seconds, she picked up a broom and began to smack the two delinquent felons without any discrimination. I intervened in their defense and earned myself a broom smack over my right hand. God save you from the wrath of the great hag, for she is a very fierce woman. I put the two furries in different rooms, so the scandal ended with a drowned note. I took my coffee to my room, settled comfortably in the armchair in front of the desk, and opened my laptop again.
I finished my coffee by reading from the laptop the latest news in the world. All quiet on the western front. It seems that poor Erich Maria Remarque had been right. The Western world is busy with the Christmas holiday, Santa Claus and gifts. The Soviet bear hibernates in the Kremlin. Only the yellow Chinese virus appears to be a threat. For the moment I have no problems. China is far away from Europe. And my country is the last place where a virus, even if lethal, would like to come to. In my country, not even the virus would work properly. Even a virus has its pride. What¡¯s there to kill here? Only some idiotic, greedy and lazy bipeds? Like any respectable virus, it prefers the developed countries of the planet. That''s why I''m not surprised that he chose China. China''s economy is extremely powerful and the Chinese are already overpopulated. This is a reputable delinquent virus that knows where to install itself, this new one. I wouldn''t be surprised if the virus will cross the ocean and attack the lil¡¯ Yankees next. The bipeds have grown exponentially as of late. A killer virus would be welcome, trim down some of the population, give the leftover population some more air to breathe. The resources of the planet are decreasing, and the number of idiotic bipeds keeps increasing rapidly instead. Uncle Sam is glaring knives at the Bolsheviks of Mao and Aunty Europe is fidgeting from the sidelines. The Soviet bear is in constant lethargy and no longer poses a serious threat to the bipeds of the planet, it¡¯s fortune being the huge resources of gas and oil that Mother Russia has under its soil. Only in this way can Europe maintain the fa?ade of respect seemingly deserved by itself, by doing nothing. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The clown Othello had managed to escape from the room where I had banished him. He is a great expert at escaping from locked rooms. He has learnt to jump on the door-knobs and open any closed doors that may stand in his way. He entered my room and set himself on my bed. From my daughter''s room, Obelix continues to bark like a numbskull. He hates loneliness and as any average dog, loves the presence of a crowd. Therefore, I brought him along in the room as well and sat him down next to Othello. The pooch cesed his barking at a moment''s notice and installed himself next to the tawny tomcat. I could not believe it when I saw both of the critters falling asleep only after 5-minutes, leaning on each other like they were the best of friends. This pets'' solidarity leaves me thinking. It seems that they have at least learned something from their conflict with big mama. I just hope that they won''t use their newfound powers of solidarity to gang up against me.
I''m searching on my laptop for the latest news about the epidemic from China. Bummer, It seems that excretory matter is hitting the fan over there. Apparently several announcements have already been released, detailing the first cases of the pandemic, which seem to be caused by this new virus called CORVID-119. I can already tell that everything is much worse than it''s being depicted, because the Communist dictatorship regime from China would not allow anything to get leaked to the Press in such a way that they would get bad publicity out of it.
Even so, the Chinese have made public the first few cases of this new strand of ¡°species interloper¡± virus. Seems that there is indeed something serious going on over there. I have lived under the shadow of the Communist regime for almost 30 years inside my own country, so I know first-hand that no self-respecting communist leader would allow themselves to be pictured in any bad light, which might lead to the destabilisation of the entire regime. It''s because of this reason that most of the information that is coming from China makes me ponder deeply.
But the bipeds from Auntie Europe and from the United States just keep on shopping, keep worshipping Santa Claus and the Christmas celebration. They have no idea about the apparition of a new killer virus which might disturb their peace. It is the usual indolence that is so typical to the civilised world which permeates the crowds. Myself, not being a person who subscribes to the crowd mentality, I decided to contact my good friend from Beijing, Wu Li. We met 5 years ago at Biarritz in France, when I was visiting with my wife and my daughter the Museum of the Sea, housed by the famous art Deco building on the shore of the Atlantic. My pal Wu Li had come together with his family, composed of his wife and his two twin daughters, at that time still high school students.
Wu is the son of some big shot leader from China, which had been forced by the ¡°Cultural Revolution¡± to live like a wildling in a cave for almost two years during his youth, alongside with all of his family. He began to tell me about the times from his childhood when he and his brothers were forced to do their homeworks under the light of a candle, because electricity was too intermittent. Those had been hard times for the entirety of China. Still, the high intellectual capacity of Old Man Wu, had made his father an extremely important leader in the Communist hierarchy of Beijing, which in turn had allowed little Wu and his brothers to finish their high school and university studies without a hitch. Wu had gone to medical school, and had become one of the most famous Chinese people who specialised in microbiology. He had married a female colleague from his university, which was now a cardiologist, and had two daughters with her, which are now medical students themselves, following in their parents footsteps. We had spent a week together on that holiday 5 years ago. Wu and his wife were very good speakers of English and French, which had amazed me, given where they were coming from. I only learned later that his speech had been polished during his 2 year stagiary period in France.
Wu is an atypical Chinaman, with many occidental tendencies. He cannot stand the Communist regime that rules his country, but is aware that without the extremely important position that his father occupied, he could not have become such a renowned researcher. He enjoys red wine and Martell cognac, just as much as a serving of foie gras with pears. He likes living it large and is a brilliant mind. He doesn''t give two dimes about the current occidental society, just as much as he doesn¡¯t give a rat''s ass about the Communist regime from his own country. Of course he is big about nationalism, just like most of the intellectual Chinese people, and when he gets drunk he could eat the Japanese alive between toast bread. Besides that, he is just a well educated guy with a lot of common sense and a fantastic intelligence.
Wu¡¯s wife Linlin is a mignonne Chinese woman, still looking pretty at her 50 years of age. Like most Chinese women, she is very shy and polite. The whole time we had been on holiday, she had been abusing the shops together with my wife, daughter and her two twins. From what I could gather, the ¡°Cultural Revolution¡± had hit her hard as well. At the moment, Linlin is one of the most appreciated cardiologists in Beijing and an extremely doting mother to her two twins.
While the ladies were strolling through the shops and were draining our wallets, me and Dr. Wu were sitting under a huge umbrella of a bistro from the Atlantic Promenade, planning our conquest of the world with the glass of Martell in hand, and a croissant in mouth. Gazing our eyes full of curiosity and nostalgia upon the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, which were barely a hundred meters away from us, we began to talk about China. I learned a lot from my Chinese pal during that time. Wu began to describe to me how China had reached the ¡°pole position¡± within the world''s economy, and what compromises had been done under the surface. From our discussions I now knew much more about China than what I used to understand before, only by relying on reading.
In the end, I decided to send an email to my friend Wu. I was hoping that he would reply soon. Because of the timezone difference, it usually takes him a few hours to reply back. I think he will reply as soon as he will see my message. I left towards the kitchen to grab myself a cup of coffee. The two furries were still dozing on the bed. Both of them could not have cared less about Christmas or the Chinese virus. In the kitchen, my mother-in-law had finished washing the dishes. She was now in her room and she was listening to the Christmas Concerto of the National Philharmonic. For her, the Christmas concert of the National Philharmonic, as well as the New Year''s show of the Philharmonic from Vienna are sacred. In the meanwhile, my daughter had left to meet up with her boyfriend in the city. She is 27 years old and is a lawyer. She is a very smart girl, but sometimes she is very full of herself. Even though she graduated at the top of her class, she doesn''t give any regard to her own profession. He says that lawyers are most of the time greedy or scam their clients, even though they are a necessary evil. I generally agree with her way of thinking. God forbid that you wind up in the clutches of the justice system inside of my country, because you will not get away unscathed from the whole experience.
I poured myself half a glass of Martell and then I returned to my room. The two furry creatures are asleep on top of each other on the bed. I sat myself comfortably at my desk, laptop in hand. I could see that my buddy Wu had already replied to my email. He was already awake and both himself and his wife were packing up to leave for Wuhan, the spot where the first patients infected with CORVID-119 had shown up. Wu told me that the situation was dire and that both of them had been sent to Wuhan to join a team of big shot specialists, him in microbiology and her in cardiology. They have been sent there to unravel the structure of the virus, discover the methods of transmission and the lethal effects that might occur when humans got infected. There had already been a few hundred deaths, with most of the victims being old people which were already suffering from heart issues or diabetes. Wu was extremely frantic about the whole situation which made me weary, because he was usually such a relaxed kind of a guy about everything. His medical recommendations had got me thinking. He told me to wash my hands as often as possible, wear a face mask and keep my distance away from other people. He told me to get it out of my head that this was a China-only problem, because the infection had probably already spread to the insides of Europe and America and was already a ticking bomb, just waiting to explode. He told me that he will message me again once he got to Wuhan and got a hands-on experience with the whole ordeal. I replied back thanking him for taking his time to give me advice about my safety, and told him that I will be waiting to hear more news from his side of the globe. I closed my laptop and continued savouring my Martell. Seems like the whole thing was truly terrible, and that a new year full of disasters was waiting for us ahead. Even so, I had not paid too much heed to the warnings of my friend Wu at the time. You could never trust these damn Chinese doctors with anything. Still, I had to acknowledge the millennial wisdom that had accumulated throughout the ages inside of their country, which was above the comprehension ability of most bipeds from Europe or America. What had me worried was the distraught way in which Wu had replied to me. He is not the kind of guy that panics easily, yet everything he had told me seemed to have a very serious connotation. I washed my cognac glass in the kitchen, then cut a thin slice of Roquefort cheese on a small platter for myself. I had visited 5 years ago the South of France, and I had insisted at the time to visit the Roquefort-sur-Soulzon village, the birthplace of the famous cheese. During that time I had crossed the Millau Viaduct, which is rightfully considered the most spectacular bridge in the entire Europe. I had to admit that the famous cheese which has been made out of raw sheep milk for centuries, is indeed delicious. Combined with a shot of Martell, it leaves inside the mouth a fantastic sensation. The French cuisine has been an elitist institution for centuries, where preparing food has become a veritable science and combining tastes is an art in of itself. Only the barker Obelix does not have any discernment when it comes to what food he is receiving. Him and his meowing ¡°enemy¡± accept anything given to them, as long as it¡¯s meat or fish.
I came back to my room, sat myself in my armchair, then reopened my laptop. Among the few emails I had received in my inbox, I found a few season''s greetings from my good friend Alfie and his wife Cheryl, two old friends of mine from Boston. Alfie owns a few dentist offices in Boston, and his wife Cheryl is a painter. Alfie is older than me by four years, and has stopped practicing dentistry for a couple of years. They live together comfortably in a residential area of Boston city, near Charles river. The usual seasonal banter aside, Alfie sends me a few words about the epidemic in China, which sets me thinking. Is everybody going crazy? I mean I could understand Wu worrying, because he is right in the middle of the whole crisis, but why is a yank worrying about something from across the world, which might not even affect him in any way. I tell Alfie that I do not have that much info about the whole Wuhan situation, but that I will message him back if I find something more. After wishing him and his family good fortune, I log off.
Alfred and Cheryl I had met 6 years ago during a holiday when I had visited Crete. They are a typical Jewish American family with a lot of practical sense. They are both very well read, which is slightly atypical for the common yank. Alfie has some mad piano skills and a vast musical culture. Our common tastes in music and the love for Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Schubert and Gustav Mahler had gotten us very close. The couple frequents the opera and Carnegie Hall concerts. Cheryl was the one to encourage my daughter to follow up on her passion for painting, which got her to enlist herself at the University of Arts and pursue a second degree despite her age. Those things do not matter that much for a lazy ass levantine troll like myself, even though I used to invest a lot in art albums. Art-wise, I always stuck with my first love, the impressionists and the fauvists. Contemporary art is too wonky for my tastes. The fact that even Alfie, a rather pragmatic American, is scared by the Chinese virus, had me unsettled.
Chapter 4: New year comes
The six days between Christmas and New Year''s Eve went by in the blink of an eye. I went outside only a few more times, just to get some minor shopping done. The second day after Christmas, my daughter left with her boyfriend to the mountainside and I was left inside the house with only the presence of my mother-in-law to loom over me. At least I had a company of my two pe(s)ts to compensate. Seemingly animated by the spirit of Christmas, the two critters had stopped trying to murder each other, at least for the time being. In all honesty, they did not have much to fight about, since everything they could ever want was being delivered right in front of their noses. They had plenty of food to accommodate both of them, and the couch and the chairs inside the living room had plenty of real estate for both of their asses. My little pal Othello had given up his attempts at climbing up inside the Christmas tree, because he was so stuffed with food that he looked almost like a bloated up balloon, making him barely able to walk. Caught by the whole New year''s season happenings, I had forgotten to check my email inbox on my laptop. The existence of the virus and the probability of an epidemic had been parked somewhere inside the dark recesses of my brain and had been temporarily ignored. China was too far away from Eastern Europe for me to begin to worry about what may happen. What I had not accounted for was the general globalisation and most of its "benefits".
I was very surprised, as you might imagine, when I opened my laptop and I saw the large series of messages that had come from Wu and from Alfie. I poured myself a glass of Cinzano with ice, then I installed myself in my armchair and began to read the newly received messages. Wu was terrified. In the last 3 days in Wuhan more than 500 people had already died. It seems that the Chinese government had failed to comprehend the true scope of the new pandemic. Wu told me that the Chinese press had barely mentioned at the beginning of December the possibility that there might be an unknown virus, and after the first victims had begun to crop up, there had been total silence from the press. Wu has sent me a mathematical model that had been developed by two of his mathematician fellows, which showed that the mortality was going to increase at an exponential rate, and that if things were going to propagate at the same rate they had been going so far, about half a million Chinese were scheduled to die within the next month. I was stunned about what I had found out, because Wu was not the kind of guy to get alarmed for no reason. He was a man of science, perfectly aware of the reality that was showcasing before his eyes. This got the thoughts inside my head boiling even further, because the press inside of my country had barely spoken about the outbreak in China as well. Everybody was sweeping a seemingly big problem under the rug like it was nothing.
I began to search on my laptop for news articles that might have shown up in the occidental press about the pandemic. I found a few of them, but none of them had the imperative or grave attitude that was required for such an outbreak. They were considered to be just another general set of news, dumped in the corner of a newspaper and then forgotten. After that, I began to read the messages from Alfie. Ever the conspiracy theorist, the jewish yank was even more panicked about the outbreak than Wu was, saying that the Illuminati had conjured up a new plague to wipe us all out from the face of the Earth. Of course, he said that about every major global fuckup, everytime something went wrong, that it sort of became a joke among us friends. Toast fell butter side down on the floor? The Illuminati did it, of course! Still, his finely tuned business senses had warned him that something was wrong, but I ignored his cynicism as one of his usual rants at the time. Little did I know how prophetic his words would be in the future. The Yank had found out from God-knows-where a lot of details about the new Chinese virus and about the imminent spread of said virus across the entire planet. I could understand Wu for being in a panic, because he was right inside the eye of the storm, but Alfie had nothing to do with the entire hubbub. Still, my general inertia as well as the onset of laziness that had been brought upon the household by the holiday break had made me ignore the warning signs, which were coming from both of my friends. I thought that Alfie was being his usual self and was transforming a mosquito into a dragon for no reason. Still, somewhere inside the back of my mind there was a little midget that was screaming his heart out "hey something is wrong around here". So I began to write a message on my laptop to my daughter, detailing what I had spoken with both of my friends, and telling her to take precautions and avoid close contact with other people if she could do so. I was aware that she was going to laugh into my face about the whole thing, yet I still felt that I had to do my duty as a father.
After that, I closed my laptop and went inside the living room. Here, big mama was listening undisturbed to the "Imperial" by Beethoven. The two fur balls were sleeping on top of each other on the couch. I set down in one of the odd chairs and I began to tell the old lady about what I had found out from my foreign friends. The old hag listened to me carefully and then only smiled. She told me that she had read something similar in one of the papers, but that she had not paid much attention to those news. She told me that she is much too old to give a rat''s ass about anything like that, and that all of us have to die from something sooner or later. Her fatalist outlook amused me. Partially I was agreeing with her because it is true, us bipeds have to die for one reason or another. The ¡°optimistic¡± attitude of my mother-in-law made me pay less attention to what I had found out from Wu and Alfie.
New year''s Eve went by without a hitch. I spent the day inside my house alongside my two furballs and big mama. On the TV there was not much to be seen, the same absurd programs of variety being showcased on all channels. The TV channels were competing in mediocrity. Most True actors and entertainers had vanished from the entertainment landscape a long time ago, and the ones that still remained respected themselves well enough to not lower themselves to such pathetic standards that were being catered by the TV channels. Why can''t there be someone to match Charlie Chaplin, Benny Hill, Mack Sennett, The Keystone Cops or Monty Python anymore? In fact, Benny Hill has been showcased during the holidays so many times that I already knew by heart most of the gags, yet the show still managed to elicit laughter from my family. I just could not find myself to be able to appreciate the dry humor of the millennial generation that had been created after the old giants of comedy had perished. I''m not one to judge harshly, but today''s theater and cinema are so radically different to what used to pass as entertainment during my childhood, that they might as well be two different things altogether. True heavyweights of the industry have become fewer and fewer, replaced by teen showoffs or stone faced beauties that can''t act to save their own lives. The intrinsic artistic value of the works has dropped, leaving only the flashy bits to bedazzle the culturally uninformed audience. The deadly moment of silence or the icy stare between two actors has been replaced by gloriously-costly visual effects and gratuitous amounts of explosions. But that''s because the customer base has changed as well, and if there is one thing that entertainment nowadays knows how to do properly, is cater to the masses.
January rolled over and I began to resume my usual schedule, so I totally forgot to check the messages from Alfie and Wu. I only got around to look over the message list after 3 weeks. I had not been in a hurry to reply to them either, since I had already sent them the usual ¡°season''s greetings¡± emails, emojis included.
My daughter returned on the 8''th of January from the mountainside. She was scheduled to resume her work the next day. Even myself, a person who usually works from home, since I¡¯m a writer who does not have a ¡°fixed¡± schedule, was working hard on my new novel. My latest book had been published a few weeks before Christmas, so feeling less pressured by deadlines I decided to go out and visit some of my favourite bookshops. You may say ¡°why bother, buy the book online¡±, but I feel that classic ¡°paper¡± books still have a large charm of their own that just cannot be replaced by the digital media. That, or I¡¯m ¡°an old fossil stuck to hardcovers¡± that cannot keep up with the times, like my daughter says. In one of my favourite haunts which is a mix of library and vinyl music shop, I found a rare and unspoiled edition of ¡°Sgt. Pepper''s Lonely Hearts Club¡± album from the Beatles. This thing had come out in 1967 and was one of the masterpieces from the Beatles. Back at home I had more than three hundred vinyl records of differently assorted quality music, as well some rare findings of leftover communist propaganda records, which played back nowadays were hilarious to listen to. My daughter always teased me, calling my pickup unit a ¡°gramophone¡±, because it was quite an old, albeit functional model. After five hours of ¡°hitting the town¡±, I arrived back home. I took a shower, and I noticed that my hair was growing a little bit too long for my liking. I could still remember the sergeant from my army days yelling at us new recruits back then: ¡°if your hair can be grabbed by someone else, you left it too long, go shave it all off¡±. Of course, that meant all of us youngsters were shiny-bald most of the time, but we did not mind. I went out the door, and decided to see my barber Elias, my neighbor one floor below me, the guy which I had employed to do my ¡°makeovers¡± for the last thirty years or so ever since I had married my wife and had moved into our current home. Elias was a special guy, who had lived life to the full. He has been a sailor in his youth, and has seen most of the world. His barber ¡°side job¡± from his sailing days had turned into a full-time job, once he had retired his sea-legs and had married the lass living in the apartment under mine. He was a smart guy and you could talk about anything with the dude, because he had ¡°seen it all¡± during his travel days. What bonded us even more was our love for all things furry, especially cats. He was the owner of the three ferocious persan brigands that had ganged up on Othello, and were decimating the local bird fauna. We had spent many evenings with a glass of Martell in hand, just talking about the misadventures of our furries. Due to his ¡°turkish barbershop¡± hot towel shaving and hair cutting methods, I had never had to go to any public barbershop to get myself mutilated over there.
When I rang the bell on his door, I heard rushed footsteps, and then his wife opened the door for me in a hurry. She looked dizzy, and her eyes were red. Seeing me, she burst into tears again, and then delivered a brick-of-a-news to my soul. Apparently, Elias had died about two weeks ago. I was stunned at the new information, and was having a hard time processing it all. I mean, just a month ago, we had been joking together, talking about taking the cats to the vet next year. His wife invited me inside, and I sat down in an armchair and listened to what had happened.
Elias¡¯ wife told me that they had spent Christmas over at some relatives at the countryside, among friends and family. After Christmas, Elias had come down with a fever and was having trouble breathing. After three days, seeing that he was getting worse, they had rushed him to a hospital, and he had been placed in the intensive therapy ward, under an artificial respirator. He had stayed like that until a couple of weeks after new years, when he had expired under the watch of the doctors, which had been helpless to aid him in any way. Aggressive viral pneumonia, with fluid buildup in the lungs, they had called it. He had been buried on top of his parents, and I had not even known about the funeral.
I was absolutely overwhelmed by the news. Elias had been the type of guy that could be run over by a tank and he would just come out from under the tracks, dust himself off and say that it was nothing. As far as I could remember, he had never been sick with anything. I tried to console the grieving widow as much as I could, but words had very little meaning at that point. I climbed back the stairs to my own apartment, then filled myself with the largest glass of Martell that I could find. I was still having a hard time running the new information through my processor, and it was not compiling right. I went into my room, then put on Schubert¡¯s Serenade. Every time I felt sad, music would soothe my wounded heart, and pull me out of my melancholy. At that particular point in time I had not associated the two events with eachother, the death of Elias and the new Wuhan virus. It was only ten days later that the whole thing clicked into place inside my mind, when I had analysed Elias¡¯ symptoms and had found them matching the symptom descriptions that had been sent to me by my pal Wu.
For the rest of the world, life was continuing linearly. After the whole winter holidays shop-then-get-fat spree, nothing major would happen in the life of the bipeds until Easter came around, when the malls and supermarkets would be taken over by the ravenous crowds of mindless shoppers, to fill their bellies with garbage products once again. I was stepping out of the house almost daily, and I had forgotten to check on my pals Wu and Alfie. Silence had fallen on our ¡°communication spree¡±. Well, since I was alternating my time spent between going out and writing, I had spared little time to check my Inbox.
The turning point came on the 31¡¯st of January, when something strange happened. I remember the day well, because it was the starting point of the entire ordeal my family would go through over the course of the next year. Climbing down from my apartment, I passed by the barber¡¯s door. The door had been propped open, and there was a crowd of people inside. Wondering what could have happened again, I stuck my head inside, and was welcomed by the site of a coffin, then by Elias¡¯s daughter-in-law along with his son, both garbed in funeral attire. The son told me that his mother, Elias¡¯ wife, had also recently passed away, and that they were on their way to deliver the coffin to the chapel. I knew that it was impolite to ask, but I had this nagging feeling gnawing at my brain in the back of my mind, so I inquired the two about what had happened to Elias¡¯ wife. They told me that it hadn''t been any heart attack or stroke or anything the like, but that she had died in the same way that Elias had died, due to pneumonia. She had come down with a fever, bad coughing and shortness of breath, and the guys at the hospital had been similarly helpless to aid her in any way. I sent the junior my condolences on the behalf of my family and I promised him that I would come at the wake, later in the evening, at the chapel.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
What I had found out from Elias¡¯ son had sent the cogs and wheels inside my head spinning. Comparing the symptoms of the two recently-deceased, which had been strikingly similar with the descriptions of the plague in Wuhan that I had received from Wu, it was very likely that it might have been the same disease. I decided to delay going into town and headed back home. All of the horrid descriptions of the sickness that I had received from Wu were parsing through my mind. The coincidence of a sickness having the exact same symptoms in more than one individual and ending in the same way was minimal. Plus, I was usually quite a cynical guy who never believed in ¡°coincidence¡±.
Pouring myself another glass of Martell to ¡°lube the mind gears¡±, I retreated to my room, sat on my armchair then began to abuse the laptop. Othello, being his entitled-kind-of-bastard usual self, lept into my arms and demanded that he be scratched. Obelix, not wanting to be outdone by the tomcat, was squirming between my legs. I was in no mood for the both of them, so I swiftly banished them to the living room, where I told my mother-in-law that I was going to write for the next few hours, so she should keep an eye on the pe(s)ts. I then told big mama about the death of the barber¡¯s wife, and asked her to come along with me during the evening to the chapel. She told me that she would most undoubtedly attend the wake, since the dead woman had been her hairdresser for more than forty years, and they had been quite close. The two furries remained ¡°exiled¡± to the living room, and I returned to my room. I began browsing the net about all of the recent pandemics like S.A.R.S. and EBOLA. The symptoms were matching S.A.R.S. by a lot, but I was wondering how the hell could S.A.R.S. have shown up inside of my country, especially inside Elias¡¯s family. I mean, they hadn¡¯t been eating bats or other critters that might have hosted the virus like the Chinese do. Something did not match up. After 3 hours, I had upgraded my virology knowledge by a lot. I had laid down the information I had known inside a table on a paper sheet, similar to a schematic. Yet, I could still not draw any pertinent conclusions. What I was missing was the source of the infection that had contaminated Elias and his wife. I had seen that EBOLA had spread as far as Texas when it had been rampant, but this was back in 2014, a long time ago. But neither Elias nor his wife had even left the country. Everything was a puzzle with missing pieces. It had already grown dark outside. The two furries were making a racket inside of the living room, since they had been left there alone-and-ignored for quite a while. I closed my laptop then I unleashed the beasts from their confinement. Both of them hungrily ran to the kitchen to their bowls and demanded tribute. After stuffing his face, the pooch demanded his ¡°out¡± time. I put on my raincoat and my shoes, then I dragged the pooch out to the nearby park, which was only a few hundred meters away from my home. Othello had been enchanted by his dinner, and Obelix swiftly dragged me out of the apartment, knowing that there was no snow outside to impede our stroll. We wandered about in the park for almost an hour, a lot more than the usual quarter of an hour trip that he needed for deploying his strategic fertilizer package. In truth, I was just gathering my thoughts and time had just flown by without me noticing. Stuff wasn¡¯t sticking well together inside my mindscape. I returned back home to my family. Obelix, being relieved of his internal pressure, began to harass poor Othello once again, and was trying to snag a dried meat piece from the tomcat¡¯s mouth. Funny thing is that the meat piece was proving to be quite resilient, and both were tugging at the thing from opposite sides while spinning all over the place and trashing the landscape with their tug of war. My daughter and big mama were getting ready for the funeral wake, and were already adorned in black. I swiftly changed my clothes to a more sombre color as well, then we all departed towards the chapel. On the way, I bought some flowers and then we boarded a cab to get to the cemetery.
In under a quarter of an hour, we were in front of the chapel. Around the coffin there was a mass of persons, mostly relatives of the two recently-departed, sharing tales about the old couple. After a half an hour of listening in, I went outside to light myself a smoke at the designated smoking area. Four more men were already there, one of which looked identical to Elias. I found out from them that both the barber and his brother had spent Christmass together and that there had been several friends invited to the gathering as well. I asked the brother if any of the guests had been foreigners, or people that had come from the outside countries back home for the holidays. He told me that one friend of the family, a sailor, had attended the party alongside Elias. The sailor was a resident in the Capital City, and had come back only a few days before Christmas from a trip to China. Well, that got my bells ringing out loud again.
The old sailor had not shown up at Elias¡¯ funeral, nor at his wife¡¯s. He had vanished without a trace, and nobody had heard anything from him ever since Christmas. I asked Elias¡¯ brother if he remembered the sailor¡¯s name, or the ship he worked on. The guy looked strangely at me, but answered anyway. The sailor had shown them pictures of the ship and of the places he had visited, when they had been together. All four smoking men looked strangely at me when I took out my smartphone and I began noting down the details I had just received. I thanked them for the info, then I went back into the chapel. Now things were starting to make sense a little bit. The sailor had most likely been the infection vector, and had transmitted it to Elias and his wife. After a few more minutes, I excused myself after giving the relatives one more round of condolences, then left the chapel. As I was leaving, my daughter and my mother-in-law were giving me the stink eye, but I did not feel like explaining to them what I had on my mind.
As soon as I got to my apartment, I sat myself down in my armchair and began to frantically abuse the laptop. I searched for information pertaining to the ship that had been mentioned by Elias¡¯ brother, and its itinerary. I did not find anything, since there was no real reason the search engine would give a shit about some random commercial ship. I thought of going about the whole thing from another perspective, so I decided to call one of my old friends, which was a well known surgeon and former head of the Ministry of Health, so he had some pull in the system. I had known the guy for decades, so he had not questioned my intent when I begged him to look for the sailor. I asked him to check with most known hospitals and see if any of them had received the sailor as a patient, and what had happened to him, telling him that the sailor was a friend that I had not seen if a few years, that we had gotten in touch again during this Christmas, but that he had vanished off the face of the Earth only a few days later and I was getting worried. I told him that he had most likely admitted himself to a hospital, but I had no idea which. My surgeon friend agreed to ask around, albeit a little troubled by my unusual request since it was bordering a gray area of the law to do so. I gave him the name of my sailor ¡°friend¡±, and he promised that he¡¯ll have his secretary make a few phone calls tomorrow morning. I also left him a general description of the sailor and his age, just in case he had been brought to the hospital unconscious and they had not been able to tell who he was. Something was telling me that the sailor wasn¡¯t around in this world anymore. It was obvious now that the sailor had brought the killer virus with himself from somewhere abroad, and had spread it into Elias¡¯ family at the gathering. I¡¯m not some Hercule Poirot, but I still have a decent intuition when it comes to things like these.
I was sitting on pins and needles for the whole morning until I received news from my surgeon friend. All throughout the morning I had vacuumed the net for all of the info about S.A.R.S. and EBOLA, browsing over many wiki articles and youtube videos, to figure out how this new virus might be working its magic. In the occidental press more and more articles were popping up related to the virus. At least the guys outside had the decency to not tuck their heads in the sand like an ostrich and pretend nothing was wrong, which was the general attitude prevalent in my country. The horrible mathematical model ¡°prophecies¡± I had received from Wu had turned out to be quite accurate, yet would pale in comparison to the disaster which would come only a few months later.
I did not manage to get much sleep that night. Too many bad thoughts were churning inside of my head. I would not usually panic over a virus outbreak half a world away, but the problem was that it was NOT halfway across the world anymore, it was right in my backyard. I had been in touch with both Elias and his wife during the time when they had been infected, not to mention their relatives. There was a possibility that I was now a carrier, and the worst thing I could think of was that I had given the virus to my family members, pets included. Speaking of the two furries, they were giving me a wide look as I was making my coffee. They had been strangely tempered with their antics, like they almost understood the importance of the event. As morning came, I took out little Obelix for his morning stroll in the park. The winter air was helping to clear my mind, as the dog was ¡°marking¡± every stump he could find in his path. Again, we spent more than an hour walking around the park, much to the satisfaction of the barker, who seemed undaunted by the presence of any other larger dogs than himself. In the end, we got back home, and I decided on a whim to whip off a chain of smoked sausages I had lying around, as a makeshift breakfast. After the sausages had been thoroughly fried and their aroma had filled the whole house, I shared one of them with Obelix. He was giving me an incredulous look, almost asking me ¡°For me? Are you sure? Are you OK man? You are usually a cheapskate, so how come you want to sausage me? Should I call a lawyer and have you write your will?¡±. Considering the events that would follow, he had almost been right. After breakfast, I went and took a shower to wash off the sweat from the night before, then I resumed my abuse of the laptop for the next few hours.
Mid-day had come, so I called my surgeon buddy once again. Helpful as ever, he had indeed asked around about the sailor, and had found out that the dude had been admitted to a section of the Hospital for Tropical Diseases. Sadly, the sailor had died around January the third, right after New Year¡¯s. Nobody had come to check on him, and he had died due to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, so the doctors had decided to send the body off for cremation, to minimise the risk of infecting other people with whatever had killed him, since they had no idea what the actual disease had been. The surgeon gave me the number of the Chief of Staff at the Tropical Disease Hospital, in case I wanted more details, letting the doctor know that I was an old acquaintance. I thanked the surgeon profoundly, telling him that I owe him a bottle of Cinzano. Laughing, he told me to bring along my latest novel signed with a dedicated autograph as well.
After ten minutes, I called the Chief of Staff from the Tropical Disease Hospital. I introduced myself, and then asked him to spare me a few minutes for a meeting, so I might discuss the issues pertaining to the sailor. He told me that he could see me tomorrow at about the same hour, when the clinic was less crowded and we could take our time to talk. I thanked him for giving me his time, and agreed to meet up. After that, I took some time to message Wu, and tell him about what had happened, detailing the three recently deceased persons. I was confirming my doubts, and filling the gaps in my knowledge. He told me that the symptoms of the deceased had been spot on with the Wuhan virus, and that I should maybe think about alerting the authorities, to prevent a further spread of the virus. After the conversation ended, I laid down in my bed and slept like a baby.
Next day, big mama woke me up right before the hour of the scheduled meeting. I shaved, showered and then I grabbed a bottle of Martell from my ¡°secret stash¡± to offer as tribute. While I was looking inside the box containing my stash of booze, the two critters were frolicking all over the carpet in the living room, leaving hair everywhere. After picking a copy of my latest novel and writing a dedication for the Chief of Staff, I left the apartment and headed for the Tropical Hospital under the questioning gaze of my mother-in-law, who had to know everything. I had often told her that she should have joined the CIA or the KGB.
As soon as I got to the streetside, I climbed into a cab and I headed for the Tropical Disease Hospital, all the way on the other side of the city. I reached the Hospital right at the appointed time which fit me just fine, since I was not the kind of guy that liked waiting in front of closed doors for no reason. I climbed the main stairs, then a guard asked me for my I.D. and the reason for my visit. Since the whole place was a Hospital for weird and usually highly-contagious diseases, they had more strict rules about who came in and out of the place. The guard told me that the Chief of Staff was waiting for me, and pointed me to the direction of his office which was on the second floor. I was forced to wear a sterilised overcoat and shoe mufflers, then I was led to the Chief by a nurse. The guy welcomed me warmly, and told me to sit down wherever I liked. In turn, I offered him my latest novel, and the bottle of Martell, which he gladly took and even opened on the spot, so he could pour the both of us some shots. It seems he was also a fan of the brand, so we began to discuss my sailor trouble over a glass of Martell cognac. I told him about the whole barber-sailor conundrum, and about my fears that came attached with the whole thing. I also told him about my friend Wu and his predictions. He was seriously pondering the implications of what I was telling and did not dismiss me as some worrywart. He asked me to keep a calm mind about the whole situation, even though he did agree with what Wu had described. In under five minutes, he had asked for a nurse to search for the sailor¡¯s admittance files, so we were staring at the contents. Everything was getting confirmed, and we were both amazed at the findings. I asked the Chief if there was any sort of test available at hand that might confirm or deny the presence of the virus, especially since I had been in contact with several ¡°suspicious¡± persons. He told me that it was impossible to get at that particular time in the country, since it had barely been made available even in China, and that it would take quite some time before testing would become ¡°a thing¡± in my country. He understood very well what the whole problem was about, and the risks involved, but had no way of helping me. He did ask me to give him Wu¡¯s mail address though, so that they might exchange professional advice. Of course, I got them in contact immediately. Upon my departure, the Chief told me to call him back immediately if any symptoms show up, and promised me that as soon as the first batch of tests arrived, I would have top priority, since I was one of the first persons to report the problem. After one hour of discussions and one empty bottle of Martell, I took another taxi and headed home.
Chapter 5: Bad Mojo
Once I got home, I went straight into the shower. A good Scottish hot-cold-hot shower was the best thing to prop me up. Also, plain old soap apparently tends to burst the virus¡¯ protein sheathe/outer layer, so it made for a good and cheap way to disinfect myself. After I got out of the shower, I went to the kitchen and arranged myself some chow. The booze I had drank with the Chief of Staff at the hospital had made me hungry. Of course, the instant they had smelled food, the two furries were all over me, begging for treats. I tossed them some chunks, then I threw them out of my room, banishing them back to the living. I was in no mood for them. Big mama and my daughter were already dozing off in their places. I took the tray back to the kitchen, then got under the covers of my bed. I fell asleep immediately, as the whole stress and running around from the last few days finally sunk in. It sucked to be old, even at a meager sixty.
Throughout the night, I had a terrible nightmare. I was being parachuted from a plane alongside fifteen other people, men and women, all without faces and incapable of speaking. In my dreamstate, I knew somehow that we were a commando group that was supposed to scout ahead a metropolis that has come under a bio-chemical assault. Our mission was to find any and all survivors, then take them back to an evacuation point near the shoreline. The whole point was to find as many ¡°samples¡± from the survivors as possible, so they might be researched by the microbiologists to find a cure for the plague. The biochemical assault had been deployed barely one day ago, but had already wiped out most of the population within the city.
My team was proceeding through a parking lot in the middle of the town. We were all proficient at sign language, so we did not need to speak to coordinate. The trees, flowers and most of the landscape did not look fazed at all by the biochemical assault. After going through the empty parking lot, we reached the main parliament building of that country, a huge towering monstrosity that had likely been built by some maniac dictator, with more ego then common sense, one of those people that thinks the world revolves around them. In the adjacent park attached to the huge building, we spotted large masses of dead people, who had died right where they had stood. Bodies of children on overturned bikes or roller blades, bodies of grandpas and grandmas with papers in hand or lying dead on chess tables, their coffee cups still filled with liquid nearby. What brought me to tears were the bodies of two twins inside a stroller, with the mother still death-gripping the handle even where she lay prone against the wheels. I saw bodies of dogs and even a cat or two all over the lawn. I found even a french bulldog attached with a leash to the hand of a young lady, strangely similar to Obelix. As we went past the park and into the building, more and more dead bodies in diplomatic suits could be found. We spent like what it seemed an eternity inside the building and had yet to find any survivor. We decided in the same mute way with hand signs to head to the heart of the city, on two old jeeps that we swiftly ¡°acquired¡± from the garage of the huge building. Even though they were two old clunkers, bereft of any of the ¡°smart¡± gadgets from nowadays, the cars still worked just fine. Even the gas tanks were full. As we went past the shops in the old city center, we were being forced to zig zag through crashed cars and over sidewalks filled with dead bodies everywhere.
Only bodies of humans, cats, dogs, or even rats could be seen everywhere. Strangely, the outbreak had only killed ¡°mammals¡±, but had left birdkind intact. The crows and even the odd pigeon or two were crowding over the fresh bodies, pecking away at the flesh, sometimes running away with an eyeball in their beaks away from the rest like it was some sort of candy treat. In one place, they were tearing apart the dead body of a tuxedo cat, which was strangely similar to Othello. ¡°The horrors of war¡± series of paintings by Francisco Goya seemed like innocent selfies compared to the scenes before me.
Once we got to the city center, we got off from the cars and began exploring again. Everywhere, only the bodies and the feasting of the birds could be found. We reached the intersection of two large boulevards. To the right side there was a large building with neoclassical architecture sporting a large sign which spelled ¡°University of¡±, with the rest of the letters crumbled to pieces. The front steps of the building were littered with young students. At each of the corners of the intersections there were signs spelling out ¡°SUBWAY¡±, with stairs leading down to the underpass of a metro station. The passage was littered with colored posters announcing a wide variety of upcoming shows or festivals, all which now would never see the light of day. The metropolis was now empty, save for the crows and vultures and other minor assorted birds feasting on the fresh carcasses. Never had I seen so many birds in one place. The lack of human movement had given them courage. I was getting anxious that they might decide on a whim to attack our group and we¡¯d wind up like in Alfred Hitchcock¡¯s movie ¡°The Birds¡±, a suprarealist masterpiece. Our entire group climbed down into the subway station, hoping that maybe some survivors had made it by hiding into the tunnels. As soon as I jumped on the railway to follow my fellow squad members, I heard an ear shattering honking from behind, then two huge headlights hit my eyes, blinding me. That was all just a split second before I felt the impact¡
I woke up in the middle of the night sweating bullets. The ¡°impact¡±, of course, had been Othello¡¯s cheeky little ass, who had been playing midnight mountain climber like most self respecting nocturnal felines and had fallen right on top of my head from the closet nearby. I was still in my bed, and everything had been just a terrible nightmare. I got out of my bed before tossing away the guilty cat, then stepped into the living room. The two furries did not even bother to look my way. In the living, big mama was snoring like a chainsaw, and her laptop was still playing Ceaikovski Number One Concerto for piano and orchestra. Nowadays, instead of forgetting the TV on, the old had ¡°upgraded¡± to leaving the laptop on, before falling asleep. I checked on my daughter, only to see her sleeping profoundly, I headed to the kitchen. I sat down and felt the rush of blood in my ears. I had never been through such a horrible nightmare before. In fact, I had not had a nightmare for years, and even those had been mild ones, like running from a donut man with a cleaver that was chasing me and getting nowhere, feeling the floor slipping under me. Typical stuff, realy. Yet now, the dream had been filled with large amounts of detail, an entire city displayed before my mind¡¯s eyes like inside a cinema or a game, and filled with horrors beyond belief. What the hell was going on with me. I always amused myself at the expense of those foolish enough to deem any sort of a dreaming experience as ¡°prophetic¡±, since I generally believed that dreams are just ¡°brain farts¡± that the cerebrum comes up with while trying to sort through the day¡¯s ¡°folders¡± containing relevant or irrelevant memories. Still, the nightmare had been quite vivid, and I also found myself being able to recall the whole thing in great detail, contrary to the usual vague sensations that dreams left me with. Had my brain circuits gone haywire? I blamed it all on the series of events that had plagued me during last month, which had resulted in a lot of stuff getting jumbled up together inside of my head. I was assuming that the resulting mix had been the nightmare, otherwise I had no idea where that thing could have cropped up from. I stared at the pendulum clock in the hallway. It was three and a half AM, but I felt that sleep had left me for the moment. Therefore, I poured myself a glass of Cinzano on ice, then I went back to my room to abuse the laptop some more. I began to write back to Wu, telling him all about the death of Elias and his wife alongside with the sailor. I also took some time to contact Alfie, and share with him my macabre story. I wasn¡¯t expecting much from Alfie, solution wise, but I still cherished his input. Wu was the one that could clear my mind, because my brain was jumbling up in a messy fashion all of the recently received info. After browsing for a while, I closed my laptop around five AM, then I reluctantly went back to sleep.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
Next day, I woke up after lunch. Luckily, the rest of my sleep had been dreamless, so I wasn''t feeling that tired. From the living room, I could hear the raging barks of Obelix. Apparently, the pooch had a bone to pick with Othello again, and they were ravaging the landscape while chasing eachother. I ran over them even as they fought for the rights over the ¡°main seat¡± inside of the couch. Big mama was watching them with an amused look from the sidelines. I went into the kitchen and brewed myself some instant-coffee. At that point in time, it was the only thing that I desired. I lit myself a smoke, even though I rarely participated in that vice anymore. Slowly, I was dragging myself back to reality. I knew that the nightmare had only been only an outburst of my subconscious mind, which had been burdened with a lot of info related to possible global pandemics. The brain is what I call a ¡°narration engine¡±, which tends to make up stories out of everything and anything, because it¡¯s a good method of storing interconnected information. Even so, I had to give props to my brain for the realism factor, 10/10 would watch again, if it hadn''t been so daaaamn scary. Paradoxically, nothing that I had dreamt about was that far removed from reality. It might have been a horror movie, but in the event of some bio-terrorist attack, it would have been pretty close to that. I was going bonkers from all of my detective attempts and global pandemic anxiety. I had to calm myself and take it slower. ¡°Chill the f**k out¡±, as my daughter would say. I brought the now-empty coffee cup to the kitchen, washed it, then returned to my room and laptop. Even though I tried to unwind, curiosity was still pulling me to read the latest news. As soon as I opened my laptop, I noticed that Wu had sent me a long message again.
In the message, he was confirming in broad terms my fears and my hypothesis, and that only served to fuel my unrest. He also wrote that the situation over there was getting worse than they had predicted, with almost 20000 deaths already. Even though most of the victims had been old people over 70, which already had underlying health problems like diabetes, hypertension, were overweight or had other assortments of long term chronic diseases, the death rate had become way over the usual norm, all things considered. The weak had been culled first, mother nature not knowing any mercy. To her, we were still just another animal, and not some great and brilliant human mind, like all bipeds seem to wrongfully think of themselves. Wu had even been forced to write from another address, a foreign embassy one that bypassed the ¡°great wall of China¡±, since all of the local communication avenues were being draconically monitored. Wu said that all three people that I had written about had mostly likely died because of his kind of virus. The incubation period, as well as the general symptomatology matched perfectly to the pattern they were facing over there. He told me to try and find a way to test myself and confirm whether I was a carrier of the virus or not, especially since I had been in close contact with the deceased. He told me that I should also test my daughter, mother in law, and even the Chief of the Tropical Diseases Clinic that I had seen, as well as anyone else that I could think of that might have come in contact with myself. He told me that there was no actual medication that would be even remotely effective, since this was a viral infection and not a bacteria-based one, so common antibiotics would do more harm than good, and viruses can¡¯t be killed by medicine alone, only by one¡¯s own body can the infection be beaten. Of course, boosting the body¡¯s fighting power with a proper diet, smart lifestyle, and extra protective measures against further adjacent infections helps by a huge margin. He told me that the best ¡°medicine¡±, if I was already sick, seemed to be Chloroquine, which had been used for hundreds of years to combat malaria. Why exactly that worked, he did not specify, but I took his word for it. He also told me that I should, for the foreseeable future, ¡°stay the f**k inside of the house and not contaminate other people with my presence¡±. I was shaken for a while after I read the message. Reality was slowly creeping towards my nightmare. I wrote back a few words of encouragement to my buddy Wu, then I turned off my laptop. I remained like that in my armchair for a while, pondering my options. I had to admit it, but a lot of dark thoughts were dancing inside of my brain to a macabre waltz of impending doom. I had never been afraid in my whole life of a fight, but I feared deeply stuff like this, which you were absolutely helpless to fight against with either brawn or wisdom. It¡¯s not like I could punch the virus to death or scam it with well forged documents, to get out of my body. I picked up the phone and called Mariah, the lady who had been my family doctor for more than twenty years. She was an especially skilled doctor, and possessed a generally open mind that understood stuff from the get-go without me having to ¡°draw her a picture¡±. I asked her to keep a ¡°slot¡± open for me later in her schedule, and that I would be coming over. After that, I showed my daughter the messages from Wu, and my endeavours to find out the cause of death of the three recent victims. I told her that I was heading over to Mariah, to pick up a prescription for some of the medication Wu had told me about. I asked my daughter to come along with me. A few minutes later, we both got dressed and took off. We made a beeline for the first pharmacy, then bought ourselves a few boxes full of medical face masks and latex gloves. After both of us put on our masks, we both felt like we were about to pull off some sort of a bank heist, and everyone in the street was looking in a weird way at us. Few folk had seen people walking around with face masks at that point in time, since the virus had barely reached the country and was not a major problem yet, so they were unconsciously avoiding us. We both climbed into a cab, and headed for Mariah¡¯s medical office.
Chapter 6: Doctor Hurt
Once we got to Mariah¡¯s office, she welcomed us both with open arms and her usual cheery attitude.
-How are both of you darlings? Getting ready for the plague? I hope you bought life insurance!
-Har har, laugh all you want, but once you¡¯ll see what this is all about, you''ll know I¡¯m right. Here, have a gander of what¡¯s written over here. I know you comprehend English well enough to understand this.
I propped up my laptop in her face and left her to read my correspondence with Wu. I then told her about the death of Elias and his wife, who had also been her patients, and that of the sailor. Noticing that they had all died due to similar causes, Mariah quickly understood what this was all about, so she quickly handed us the prescriptions for the recommended medicine. She told us bluntly that we should keep our distance, just in case we had been infected for real. The situation in China had become somewhat dire, but I was hoping it would not develop in the same way in my country as well. What I was especially concerned for was the life of my daughter. I was not that much bothered by the prospect of my own demise, not to mention that of the old hag big mama, who had eroded my nerves for thirty years, since both of us had lived a decently fulfilled existence so far, but my daughter had her whole life ahead of her.
On our way back, we took a cab and headed to the closest pharmacy. After reading the prescriptions and seeing us both with face masks, the pharmacist lady began fidgeting. I assumed that she also knew something about the virus.
-Chill out, lady. So far, we have no symptoms, but it¡¯s better to be safe, than sorry. Having the pills at hand is a smart thing to do.
-Did you return from China or any other part of the globe recently? Or have you come in contact with anyone else that came from there ever since?
The evil midget inside my brain was urging me to cough in her direction just to scare her some more. I slapped the little bastard aside.
-No, we have not left the country nor have we been in contact with anybody foreign. We just want to take all the caution necessary, just in case something does happen.
Hearing my answer, she stopped being so panicky, took my prescription, then came back from the end of the store with a bundle of colorful medicine and a stack of about ten boxes of surgical masks and latex gloves each. After splitting the load with my daughter, we both headed home.
When we stepped inside the apartment, we stumbled upon a huge racket. Cornered by the French revolutionary barker, the tuxedo cat had jumped high on the stove, while two of the ¡°eyes¡± were still on fire. As a result, Othello had fried the end of his tail, and the whole house was stinking of burnt cat fur and singed flesh. The poor meower was softly licking his tail while sporting a pained grimace on his face, and Obelix was gazing down on him with a victorious smirk from the top of the couch.
At the insistence of my family, I shoved the silly cat inside one of those plastic carriers he hated so much, then I rushed him to the vet¡¯s office. I made it there with barely one hour before closing time, and I was lucky that there was no queue. Funny enough, even the vet was sporting a face mask, and I could bet we all looked to the cat like aliens did to the abduction victims, before the usual anal probing took place. The vet cleaned his wound and shaved off the singed hair, put some anti-burn medical ointment on it, then bandaged it firmly. In the end, she also mounted around his neck one of those plastic cornet-things that disallowed him from scratching his tail or removing the bandage. Sure enough, the mountain climber really looked like a satellite dish now, ready to summon his alien overlords at any given moment. The vet told me to come back within three days for a bandage change, then passed me a bunch of pills and ointments that I was supposed to stuff down the throat of the recently-charred pest. On my way back, I was forced to keep the satellite-cat in one hand and the carrier in the other, since he did not fit inside anymore. Add the face mask to the mix, and I looked like someone recently escaped from the circus. Good thing that the vet office was close to home.
During the first night after finding out that I might be a carrier of the China virus, nothing happened. It was only during the second and third day that stuff began to happen. I woke up with a fever, and I was getting the shivers even though the temperature inside the house was quite warm. A dry, sore throat and a nasty cough were also cropping up from time to time. Sure enough, the signs were all there. I grabbed the phone, then called the Chief of the Tropical Disease Hospital.
-Greetings, Doc! Apparently, what I was afraid of has happened. I¡¯m fever-ish with 39 degrees Celsius, and I have a hacking cough in my throat. I think I¡¯m screwed!
-Greek, chill. Don¡¯t panic or make a big deal out of it for no reason. Take the pills Wu recommended for you, some vitamins, eat some chicken soup for the soul, then continue writing. Keep your mind away from the whole stupid virus. I already read your book, so I¡¯m looking forward to the second part. You¡¯re not allowed to die before completing it!
-Should I try the chloroquine too? Wu said it worked on some of the cases.
-If you have any, sure, give it a try. Even If you won¡¯t get rid of the virus, you will sure as hell get rid of any malaria within you. Anyway, it does seem to do SOMETHING positive to the patients, which is better then zero. Anyway, just hit the sack and keep writing.
-Aren¡¯t you afraid, Doc? Wu tells me that the pool lil¡¯ Chinamen are dying in batches over there. Did you receive the testing kits yet?
-Nope, it¡¯s going to take a while before those get here. And if I were to be affraid of any random common cold, I would have not become the Chief of Staff at a f*****g PLAGUE HOSPITAL. I''m tougher than the Gibraltar Rock. Everybody is pissing their pants nowadays over this Chinese virus, I swear, everybody¡¯s gone crazy.
-Well, at least don¡¯t say that you have not been forewarned, after you come crawling back to me while bawling your eyes that you got infected too. Anyway, did you get in touch with pal Wu?
-Yeah, I just sent him an email. Don¡¯t take the whole virus that seriously! Even though you got infected, that¡¯s only because of an odd circumstance. How many people do you think will run into a SICK sailor coming from China, out of the whole country? You¡¯re the exception, not the rule. The virus is probably much too ¡°bourgeois¡± to lower itself and infect the meager lowlifes from our country.
-Whatever, Doc, your call.
I hung up the phone, took some of the pills with a sip of hot tea that had been prepared by my daughter, then I picked up the laptop and wrote back to Wu. I told him about my symptoms, and my general state of health. He was obviously worried about my wellbeing, but he had no way to help, except for some more medical advice which I took in spades. After Wu, I wrote to Alfie. I told him about the three dead victims, and about my wonky state of existence. After half an hour of writing, my head was already killing me and my mood to do anything had plummeted to zero. It freaking sucks being sick! I felt woozy and sleepy, so I decided to just take some shuteye, and leave my body to do its thing.
I woke up later from a bitter cough. I had slept for about three hours. When I tried to climb down from bed, I felt like my legs were made out of jello. I quickly climbed back inside my fortress of pillows and covers, then called for my daughter. I was still getting the shivers, even though I was burning up at the same time. It just shows how messed up the organism can become when exposed to unknown pathogens, making me feel like I was out in a blizzard, when in fact I was burning hot enough to dry towels on my skin.
-How are you feeling, daughter? Any coughing? Fever? Myself, I¡¯m feeling cold all over the place.
-I saw. When I came earlier into the room, you were shivering like jello, so I tossed some extra blankets over you. I made you some hot turkey and dumplings soup. Want a bowl?
-Thank you, young female spawn of mine. Please, go grab me a serving and a big spoon. I just love dumpling poultry soups. Also, what¡¯s going to happen to the mountain climbing cat? He¡¯s scheduled for a bandage change in two days from now, but I don¡¯t think I can make it.
-I¡¯ll take him over when it¡¯s time, don¡¯t fret about it. I already shoved today¡¯s antibiotic medicine down his gullet. Grandma helped to hold him still, because he was thrashing about like a feral beast. He¡¯s freakin¡¯ hilarious with that cornet thing around his head. For now, he¡¯s locked in my room, because Obelix keeps poking at him.
-Thanks, missy, I hope to be back on my feet as soon as possible.
My daughter brought me an oversized bowl of freshly made hot soup with dumplings. I ate the whole thing, but my whole system was still upset. The shivering and the whole cold sensation was annoying the hell out of me, especially since I knew that it was a ¡°fake¡± sensation. In gamer terms, my stamina ¡°bar¡± felt drained and I was not regenerating any back. Big mama and my daughter had made a list full of fruits and veggies that help increase immunity, and were planning to force feed them to me like I was some foie gras goose.
When they left for the shops to get the stuff, I remained locked in the house with only both of the furries, which were competing again at destroying the order of the house. Taking advantage of the cat''s medical problem and the cornet that had been placed around his neck, the pooch was managing to catch up to poor Othello very easily now, and was administering a decent ammount of corporal punishment to the tuxedo victim. Since I wasn''t able to come down out of bed and stop them, the pooch did whatever he pleased, cherishing his time at a vengeance. Whater. Damn the pets. I was still hoping that my sickness was just some common cold and not the fierce virus, since I did not feel the shortness of breath symptom yet, which meant my lungs were still in decent shape.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
And just like that, ten days of me lying in bed like a sack of potatoes passed in the blink of an eye. I would love to regale you with the stories of my internal struggle, and how my heroic metabolism, after a series of defeats, rallied back the troops and charged fiercely into the ranks of the viral invader, cutting a swathe of death and destruction across the virion army, but the truth is that the only thing I did was to do nothing, because I only felt like shit throughout the whole period. The shivers and the sensation of languidness passed away, but I still had a nasty cough and a fever, albeit of a lesser degree. I was now able to abuse the laptop once again, which was wonderful. I kept in touch on a daily basis with my friend Wu. He told me that I had passed the critical stage, where the danger was at its peak, but still urged me to take the test as soon as possible. Taking his advice, I called again the Chief of Staff from the Tropical Disease Hospital. It was only after many attempts that I managed to get through to him, the line proving to be quite busy. I assumed he was getting a lot more calls nowadays, since more and more cases were being discovered, even in my country.
-Hello, Doc! I¡¯m calling to ask about those viral tests. Did they arrive yet? I really need to have myself, my daughter and big mama tested. Payment is not an issue.
-Bzzt, ERROR! This is not about the money, greek! It¡¯s about the f***ing slow ass system and the retards that were supposed to acquire them from China and ship them over here. Leave anything in the hands of the State and it¡¯s going to take ages for them to get anything done because everything gets buried in bureaucracy. I¡¯m told that the tests will arrive only three days from now. Today''s monday, so call me back on thursday. If the thing arrives as promised, I''ll schedule you and your whole family for a friday morning appointment. Also, assuming that you DID catch the virus, I¡¯m prohibiting you to go out of the house. Seriously. Stay the f**k inside, or I¡¯ll come over and break your legs!
-Hah! Thanks Doc. I¡¯m not worried about me, I''m troubled that my daughter and mother-in-law might have caught this dam bug off of me. I don''t want to have them on my conscience.
-Bleh, your worries are unfounded. Call me back thursday evening. Here, write down my private number, since this office phone has been ringing non stop as of late, and the line is choked.
While the doctor¡¯s optimism was a little bit over the top, I had to give it to the guy. He was an extremely smart and professional kind of a dude. I hoped deeply inside that he was right, and I was panicking for no reason. Whatever, ¡°que sera, sera¡±. It was a long time till friday.
Othello had been released from the confines of the cornet and his mummy-tail had been unwrapped. The burn had transformed into only minor surface wounds, and they had healed almost completely. It was now his turn to camp out and execute the barker at every corner. The bulldog was now full of claw marks and was squeeling like a medieval torture victim quite a few times every day. Othello sure knew how to hold a grudge. Now it was the pooch¡¯s turn to be on the receiving end. The semi-permanent quarrel between the two was amusing me. It was a piece of much welcomed ¡°normality¡±, if you could call it that. Slowly, Thursday evening arrived. By then, I was feeling alot better, even though not still 100%. I called the Chief once more, and he answered me much more rapidly this time.
-Evenin¡¯ Doc. How are the kits doing? Have they arrived yet?
-Yeah, hold your horses, we got them about two hours ago. I have not even read the whole manual for them yet! Can you all come tomorrow morning at 10? Someone will wait for you at the main entrance and take you to my office. I¡¯ll have a nurse take samples. One kindley out of you should be enough for a sample, greek!
-Amusing as usual, Doc. We¡¯ll be there at 10. Thanks a lot, I owe you one. You¡¯re a great guy!
Sure enough, that was one less thing to worry about. From what I could gather from the global press, the situation seemed to be picking up all across the civilised world. Sadly, Alfie and Cheryl had also told me that they had flu-like symptoms, and were staying cooped up inside of their homes as well. I told them what medication I had taken, and were quite amused at the Quinine part. Wu had become strangely silent, but I knew he was going to be alright, he was a tough frontline ¡°soldier¡± in the fight against the virus. I was hoping that his family was safe too. Still, I had two days or more for the results of my test to come back, since the first batch of tests had not been those instant kind-of test kits.
Sure enough though, the ever enterprising minds of the scumbags from my country had come with a ¡°brilliant¡± idea again, and the news were exploding head lines everywhere about how a group had sold expired pregnancy kits and had passed them off as virus tests, peddling them for an absurd amount of money.
Next day at 10''o clock, we found ourselves in the office of the Chief of Staff at the Tropical Diseases Hospital. The doctor had kept his word and had reserved a few test kits for me and my family. I gifted a box of cuban cigars to him, since he had mentioned he liked them much. He thanked me for the gift, and after getting swabbed by a nurse for samples, he told me that the results will arrive two days from now. After that we left for home. Big mama had become a lot more pessimistic as of late, and she had stopped displaying that air of indifference. In about an hour we arrived back home. Immediately I grabbed my laptop and I began to write a new message for Wu, from which I had not heard a peep in over a week. While I was searching through my inbox, I was also stunned to find a message from Cheryl, who began telling me that she had admitted Alfie to the hospital the night before. The poor guy could barely breathe anymore, and because he was already suffering from hypertension, he was also having unwanted heart palpitations. I was sincerely hoping that he would just get better, but I also did not put it beside him to just croak and leave poor Cheryl alone in the world.
The two days of waiting for the test results passed in the blink of an eye. The atmosphere inside the house was quite tense and everybody was sitting on pins and needles. Even the two villainous furballs were aware that something important was happening, because the entire morning they had behaved in a surprisingly placid way. At about one PM I received a phone call on my mobile, with the Chief of Staff on the other end of the line.
-Good day to you, doctor, we were waiting for news from your side of the fence. What do the tests say?
-I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Greek, but you and your whole family have already been infected with the troublesome virus. On the other hand, it seems that you have already been through the whole ordeal and are already ¡°clean¡±, with only traces of the antibodies that have killed the virus in your system. I will run a second test for you only, during Tuesday morning, and I''m certain that it will come out negative. I wrote you a prescription and I¡¯ll pick up the medicine from my pharmacy. The pills are going to be for your daughter and for your mother-in-law. I even put that chloroquine thingy that apparently aided you on the list. Give me your exact address and I''ll come and drop the medicine off. All of you are disallowed from stepping out of the house anymore. I cannot in good conscience, now that I know for certain that all three of you have the virus, to allow you to spread it to anyone else, willing or unwilling. Since nobody else but me and the guys at the lab know of your results, let''s not over-complicate things, so just stay put at home. I do not want to have to fill 3 more extra beds over here for no real reason, leave those spots for the people that develop actual problematic symptoms. Can you handle the treatment of your girls? If you have any questions related to the pills, just ask.
-Well, what about yourself? Don¡¯t you count as an outside contact?
-Sure, you¡¯re right, but if you gave me the virus sometime during those two weeks we were in contact, then I¡¯m screwed anyway. Plus, at least I know what to do if I get infected, so I¡¯m not like the rest of the population.
-Thanks a lot for taking the time, Doc, I¡¯ll pay you back tenfold!
-Cut the chatter, and go take care of the girls. For now, don¡¯t tell them anything. If they ask, tell them it¡¯s just a new strand of the old common flu, and that they should stay inside and not infect other people from work.
I hung up the phone. I was feeling rage against my helplessness again. Still, if I was capable of beating the disease even at my age and not-that-stelar of a base health, I don¡¯t see why my daughter would fare any worse. As far as the old hag was concerned, well...it was a coin toss. But all throughout her life, big mamna had proven to be quite a resilient type of a creature. Whatever ¡°deities¡± were playing with this Earth, if any, I knew they would keep her alive, only just to spite me. Alas, hope dies last, in the form of a fat lady having a heart attack while singing her last song. I forcibly muscled my face into a pleasant grin, then went to tell the girls the news.
-We¡¯re ok, big mama. You shall live to 100 and continue to annoy me forever. It¡¯s only a stronger seasonal flu, but we all have it. The Chief is going to come over, and drop off some medicine. He says we should all stay inside for now.
-Meh, better to prevent sickness than to have to treat it, I always said. Your Chief of Staff friend is a nice man for coming to deliver those.
-True that, old fart.
-Cut it out you two! You old fossils are going to wind up like sponges If you keep poking holes into eachother!
I began to play with the two furry critters, just so I could distract myself from all of the dark thought brewing inside of me. All I wanted to do is to make sure my daughter would be alright. Finally, after a while, the doorbell rang. The doctor had come as promised. I opened the door, and signaled him to not spill the beans.
-Come in, Doc, make yourself at home. I got you a little something that you might enjoy.
-I¡¯m not going to stay long. The situation back at the office is getting more and more dire. I don¡¯t know what we¡¯re going to do, we don¡¯t have enough beds for a full outbreak, if it comes to that. At least you folk got away from being admitted, for now.
The doctor went inside the living room together with me, and got a ¡°welcome¡± series of growls and barks out of Obelix, who can¡¯t stand strangers. Othello had ¡°installed¡± himself inside the arms of my daughter, and was acting dead. Big mama brought some appetizers from the kitchen, playing the polite host. There were a few slices of bread with Roquefort cheese and onions on top. Nobody could resist the allure of such a treat, tomcat included. Therefore, as soon as the goodies arrived in the room, the tuxedo pilferer had immediately rebooted, and was now struggling out of my daughter''s hands to reach the platter. My daughter began to pick him up so she could lock him in the other room, but the doctor told her to pass him the cat, since he had a critter like that of his own.
-Let me see that furry little thief, young lady! I got one of these back at home, and they steal everything in sight.
-Umm...are you sure? He¡¯ll scratch you. He does not like strangers that much.
-Hah, it¡¯s all about how you approach them. Here, let me have him.
Sure enough, the daughter passed him over, but the Doctor began to bait the cat with a thimble of Roquefort, and got him to behave if he wanted to get the treat. In ten minutes, the Doc and the cat were best friends. That got us to forget about the virus for a while. Impressed by the doctor¡¯s beast taming skills, I filled a couple of crystal glasses with Martell, for me and the Chief. After chatting for a while, and having him tell me how I should treat the girls in case they got symptoms, he left to get back to his office, even though he was already outside of the working hours. Apparently, the paperwork was cumbersome enough to require putting in extra hours to solve. I was staring at another empty bottle of Martell as he left, but it had been worthed. I went to sleep a little unsettled that night, but I hoped that tomorrow would be a better day.
Chapter 7: Contamination
The departure of the Doctor got me back to reality. I had to banish the shade of death from my mind. What hit me the hardest was the fact that my daughter had gotten involved. After she had arrived into my life 27 years ago, more or less accidentally, I still found her to be my life¡¯s greatest achievement as of yet. Sure, you can write books and build monuments, but you cannot create LIFE! Nothing else mattered to me more than her. Especially after my wife had passed away, my entire life had taken on a different twist, with my entire schedule being dragged on onto an unexplored path, so I had to make sure that my daughter got the best of it. I hoped that she would be strong enough to overcome the virus just as I had done, even at my 60 years of age, with her youth providing a good enough buffer for the disease to not flare up into the lethal territory. She had been a professional swimmer for almost 10 years when younger, so she was a pretty tough cookie, especially with the virus targeting the lungs and everything. This, of course, did not avail my uncertainties. Still I did not want it to show on my face. Yeey...all happy and smiles...Ok, too much, she¡¯ll notice if you are cringing like an idiot, I slapped myself.
I proceeded to the kitchen, and then I began to scour the pantry, creating an inventory of all of the edible items already available. The Chief of Staff had already told me that the pandemic is going to hit our country as well, and that it is going to hit it hard, since our infrastructure was crap compared to the western countries. Food shortages would most certainly show up, especially with everybody being forced to stay cooped up inside of their own homes for extended periods of time. I agreed with the Chief, and knew in my heart that the next months would be a ¡°war of attrition¡± between shoppers, that would raid and pillage all of the available supermarkets for non-perishables. I made a general calculation in my mind as to how much food we would need to have around in the pantry to survive with only the items inside for the next half of the year. I stayed up all night calculating water intake, water cooking needs, how much rice, flower or pasta, salt, sugar or cooking oil we would need, how well some of the more volatile stuff could be preserved by ¡°canning¡± or ¡°pickling¡± them into sauces, and how well would potatoes or onions hold over time, since they would begin to sprout ¡°eyes¡± or ¡°shoots¡± after a few months if left alone. Already canned goods might be a good investment, but I had to check which of the stuff would last, since most canned goods nowadays are not made with the ¡°war philosophy¡± of having it last for a few years inside a warehouse. Money was not a problem, but having money when not enough supplies are available would be pointless, so I had to make haste with my purchases. I readied myself for some back ache, since I knew I would be hauling to the pantry quite a few dozens of Kilograms of goods in the near future.
I opened my mail, and saw Wu had messaged me again. Besides the usual ¡°death by the hundreds¡± that was going on every day, his wife had also caught the virus, and was already in quarantine. She had the cough, and could barely breathe anymore. I told him that we were all in the same bucket, since the Chief of Staff had come by and had delivered our test results. I told him about Elias and his wife as well, but also pointed out to him that if an old fart like myself was able to beat the sickness, then other, healthier people should be able to overcome the problem much easier. I also told him that my daughter and my mother in law seemed to have the virus, but were not displaying any symptoms as of yet. He told me that not all of the people who get the virus develop symptoms, and that a large portion of the infected just shrug it off like it¡¯s nothing, with barely a dripping nose to show for it. He said that the virus was more akin to a multiplier of already existing problems, rather than a threat in by itself. If you did not have pre-existing issues, then your body would fight off the infection much more rapidly and efficiently, since all of the ¡°war resources¡± would be directed to combating this singular problem, instead of being stretched all over the chains of chronical problems that the victims usually had. I wished him and his family good luck, and that they may overcome this tribulation.
After that, I went and perused through the headlines of the foreign press. Life in Italy had become terrible, because the whole situation over there was following in the footsteps of China, and sometimes even surpassing it. The little macarony-munchers were dying by the hundreds each day as well. I had visited Italy quite a few times during my life, and I always thought to myself that even with all its splendor, today¡¯s Italy is only a pale shadow of the mighty Empire that it used to be during the Roman conquests. With the exception of the northern region, the rest of the country was ¡°below European standards¡± from an economical point of view. Italy, being the second country in the world with the most aged population after japan, was bearing the whole brunt of the virus, since the plague¡¯s favorite ¡°pray¡± seemed to be the weakened old folk.
The most ¡°amusing¡± thing though, if you could call it that, was that the north of the country had been the most infected, even though it was the most economically developed. It showed that good transportation routes, airplane flights and airports or other means of transit were now working against the population, and had become veritable vectors of disease multiplication. Since Italy had slightly more contracts with China than the rest of the EU, the little yellow folk had probably brought along with them a few unknown ¡°viral investments¡± besides the financial ones. For the little Italians, I foresaw hard times ahead.
Of course, the virus had hopped borders and had jumped to Spain and France. I was convinced that it was only a matter of waiting a few more days, and the world would become fully contaminated. This even reminded me of a plague simulator game app that I had played on my smartphone, where the purpose was to kill off the entire world, and how fast diseases tend to spread around in civilised countries. Nowadays, in a fully globalised world, there wasn''t any viable way to live in isolation anymore. Still, some countries were going to be much better at handling this virus issue than others, because the treatment and care of the sick patients depended a lot on the quality of the healthcare infrastructure in said countries. For example, Germany had a lot more pulmonary respirators readily available than the rest of the world, for those that went into Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. It was also the reason that I knew that my country was going to be totally crap at treating anyone, because our healthcare system was barely standing up on its legs even before the killer virus came to burden it down.
Wu had told me that the new virus was related to the old S.A.R.S. and that a similar strand had been found in bats and pangolins. If you don¡¯t know what that is, it¡¯s an anteater-like critter with scales all over, which looks like it has escaped from a Pokemon game. It feeds on termites, and it¡¯s the only mammal known with keratin plating. It also does not help that it¡¯s considered a delicacy by the locals, being sold to the rich folk that could afford it, since it¡¯s a critically endangered species. My general bet was that the virus had hopped species from the little Chinamen eating critters that they should have kept their mouths away from.
But blaming bats or pangolins for my family¡¯s situation was pointless. I had to find some way to save my daughter, and if possible, even my mother-in-law. In the morning, I printed out a list of ¡°stuff to buy¡± that I had made the previous evening, and then proceeded to the closest supermarket. People in my country did not seem to be affected by the virus situation as of yet, so there was no significant mass of people crowding the shelves. Our government was walking around blindly, and had no idea what it was doing. I hauled all of the stuff I wanted into an overfilled shopping cart, then I paid the teller. I had not found even ten percent of the stuff I wanted from the list. Therefore, I repeated ¡°Operation Cart Overload¡± three more times, at three different supermarkets. I had filled the carts with only ¡°basic¡± ingredients and preserved vegetables and canned meat.
After I drove back home, my daughter was looking unsure at me, seeing as I was hauling loads of stuff from the back of my trunk to the insides of the pantry. I had even been forced to put some of the larger stuff like the water bottles inside of the balcony.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
-What in blue blazes happened to you, dad? Did the virus fry some of your circuits? What the hell is all of this stuff? I swear on Gandalf¡¯s white beard, you and everyone at work has gone crazy, all that you think or talk about is the god damn virus. Did you also join the ¡°end of the world¡± cult?
-Dear Daughter, I have no idea if the end is near, but it¡¯s better to be safe than sorry. You¡¯ll see how all of the stores are going to become barren in the next few weeks.
-What-eeever! Did you at least have the decency to buy something for the furry bastards as well? Or is the end of the world not scheduled to come for them?
-I bought enough cans for them to last for a whole friggin year! As long as they remain healthy, food won¡¯t be an issue.
Around the evening time, my daughter had begun to cough. It was a dry cough, which had left her throat parched. By the next day, she had developed a fever, and was also getting the shivers, so I was standing beside her bed and changing the wet towels I was using to lower her fever. Big mama had caught on immediately what the issue was all about, since she was a retired medical staff. Luckily, she knew how to keep her mouth shut. The day after that, I called Mariah, our family doctor.
-God damnit Greek! Even my son, ¡°The Zeppelin¡± as you call him, has the fever and the cough! I don¡¯t know what to do with him, he¡¯s been bedridden for three days now.
-Don¡¯t worry about it. Even my daughter has come down with the same thing, and is currently in bed. I had the same bug and I got over it without any problem. It¡¯s just some ordinary flu. Is why I called. Write me a prescription for what you think might be the best medicine for the situation. I¡¯ll drop by later this evening by your place and pick it up.
-Sure, but come to my house, not at the office. I just got a notice today, banning me from going to work during this plague because I¡¯m over 65 years old. I¡¯m afraid for the health of my son. We¡¯ll be waiting for you this evening.
-I¡¯ll drop by, don¡¯t worry.
What I was afraid of, had mostly happened. I had, willing or not, contaminated other people, and they were weighing down on my soul. I tried to count the number of people that I had come in contact with, and the number came up quite high. Besides the two that had already died, there was the Chief of Staff from the Tropical Disease Hospital and his guard and nurse, the ladies from the pharmacy, the clerks from all of the shops and supermarkets, and my family doctor. Any of them could have gotten the disease and passed it on further. As far as the Chief of Staff was concerned, I wasn¡¯t that deeply concerned, since the dude knew what the risks were when he had signed up for the job of fighting unknown weird bacterias or viruses. But the others were innocent victims.
I was hoping that being in remission, I was much less likely to infect other people. I had taken care to wear a face mask and some leather gloves that made me look like an assassin everywhere I went, so I would not leave a trail of my diseased gunk on all the items I touched. I had even washed my ¡°cash¡± stack of money with soap ,since they were made of plastic, which had elicited a hearty laugh out of my daughter, which saw me ¡°laundering the profits¡± like a mobster. I was trying to detach myself inside of my mind from the people who were not close to me, because I was a little bit of a misanthrope. I now knew all of the theoretical data about this killer virus, and I had understood that the fight against it was going to take a long time.
Yet, when it came to Mariah and my former student, ¡°The Zeppelin¡±, the feeling was different. I had known both of them for too long of a time, over twenty five years, so I could not ignore their suffering. I had been a very good friend with her now-departed husband, a very talented engineer that could fix anything you could toss at him. He had died twelve years ago, strangely, to a respiratory failure as well. His son and prodigal English student of mine, ¡°The Zeppelin¡± as I like to call him due to his overflowing layers of blubber, was a general time waster and major nerd, a couch potato that spent all of his time on intellectual pursuits rather then moving his ass anywhere. But just like his old man, he was quite adept at tinkering with electronical stuff, and a major computer geek. He was my to-go man when it came to upgrading or installing new stuff on my computers, or whenever I wanted to purchase a new technological item. Since we had been close for many years, I was quite worried about his infection.
I left towards Mariah¡¯s place. I took a cab, since it was much quicker to get from place to place using professionals, and I hated driving anyway. The traffic was a nightmare all over the capital city, so I favored the cab for jobs like these. Only my daughter was hogging my SUV. I also had a large combo van that I had purchased for vacations, but it was parked at the countryside, near my hillside mansion. The ¡°chalet¡± I had built near the forest that I had inherited from my grandparents. I had come into the possession of the forest after the communist regime had died, and all the stuff they had confiscated had been given back to their rightful owners. The chalet was my ¡°soul retreat¡±, where I went each summer to get away from the noise and pollution of the city. At the chalet, I could focus on writing my novels without anyone disturbing me, which worked wonders for my word count output rate. After half an hour in the cab, I arrived at Mariah¡¯s place, where she opened the door to welcome me.
-Get inside, you Greek! And take your shoes off! Go wash your hands! And keep your face mask on. Do you want a glass of Martell? I know you like that stuff. I¡¯m so fucking tired after listening to all of those idiots at the office blabbing on about their problems. Every hypochondriac suddenly has the virus, and knows better than the doctors how to treat himself. Of course, because he read it online. My son keeps on telling me to retire for years now, and I don¡¯t know why the hell I do not listen to him anymore. I¡¯ve been practicing medicine for forty years and I¡¯ve never seen such a craze!
-Ok, sure, but how¡¯s the Zeppelin doing?
-He¡¯s in his room, as usual. He¡¯s being a bed potato at this moment, and keeps whining that he¡¯s missing his favorite anime.
-Can I go see him?
-Sure, suit yourself, but you know what to expect¡
-Damnit lady, fuck the virus, let me see your son!
I stepped inside the Zeppelin¡¯s Man-Cave, and I found him lying inertly in his huge-ass bed. For him, it was only a ¡°regular¡± sized bed, if you were to ignore his 150 kilos of copious blubber.
-Greetings there, Hindenburg. What¡¯s wrong with you? Did you get hit by the Monsoon and your ovaries caught a cold? You said you were stronger then the Gibraltar Rock, but I see you are as strong as a jellyfish bone. I had bigger expectations from you!
-Ah! Sensei! No fair! I got the plague from Mom, most certainly! I have not even left the house in the last three months, there¡¯s no other way I could have contacted this shit except through her. I have no idea why she¡¯s unphased. I¡¯m burning up 39 C, and this cough is killing me! This is the work of the Illuminati for sure! They want to dispose of all of us from Anonymous! The aliens have helped them engineer the virus for sure!
-You¡¯re still going on about that nonsense, you failed sumo wrestler? I thought you would come down to earth more once you got sick, but I see the disease had only aggravated your numbskullery. I¡¯m afraid we might have to put you down soon, if you don¡¯t recover. You¡¯ve been obsessing over conspiracy theories and aliens ever since I¡¯ve known you, outside of poking at tech gadgets. You have not grown up a bit!
-Yes, yes, it¡¯s good that you¡¯re mature enough for all of us, Greek. You¡¯re too cynical for even a little bit of fantasy to pass you by. I have no idea why people still buy your crappy books!
In order to avoid a new clash of ¡°ideologies¡± with the Zeppelin, I left to talk with Mariah in the living room. She wasn''t looking to rosy herself either, but I attributed the whole thing to her work overload. She was doing a full round everyday at her office, and had to put up with a lot of stupid people every day. I admired her for her mental resilience. If I had been in her position, I would have probably gone Postal on their arses a long time ago. I stayed for another half an hour trading insides about treatment methods with Mariah, picked up my prescription, said my farewells and hot condolences to the Zeppelin, then went home. I had a tough night ahead of me.
Chapter 8: Divergence
Somewhere in a hospital of infectious diseases from Italy.
Dora was dying. She knew that much. With every breath she took, drawn inside her of her chest with much effort, she felt that she was getting less and less oxygen. Her vision was getting blurry and the thoughts inside her head were moving like walking through the insides of a swamp. Dora could do nothing else but curse the world, the Saints and the Gods, to curse her own fate which had brought her down to this despicable level. In all of the 15 years that she had been around in this world, she had never had any luck. Ever since she had been born, everything had gone wrong for her. Her mother, a notorious harlot, had contracted AIDS from a client, and then had gotten pregnant with her. Therefore Dora had been born right from the start infected with the HIV virus. Of course the moment that her mother had found out that the child had HIV, she had abandoned little Dora in the warm embrace of the state orphanage system. While she had grown up, little Dora had been pushed around and abused, not to mention ostracized by all of the other children, which all treated her like she had the bubonic plague.
Raised in a place and inside a society that was way too stupid to understand how HIV worked, she had always been kept at a distance by everyone around her. Nobody cared about little Dora, and her disappearance would most likely not even get noticed by anybody. The worst blow to her life had arrived about 1 year ago, when after being taken to the hospital while feeling sick, the doctors had told her that she had developed cancer somewhere inside of her body and that it had metastasized already. Of course the whole appearance of the cancer had been facilitated by the already existing presence of the HIV virus, and it seemed that her fate had already been decided the moment she had been born. Of course, an even more ¡°hilarious¡± event had come at the beginning of this month, when about half of the entire orphanage had come down with this new disease that everybody was yelling about in all of the papers and news outlets. At the current moment, Dora already had AIDS, cancer, the new coronavirus and a bundle of other joyous afflictions that she had caught while inside the infectious disease hospital, after her immune system had plummeted to near zero.
Usually all of these things put together would result in the rapid death of the victim, which was exactly what was happening right at that moment, except that the despair, the helplessness and the sheer fury of the girl against this planet and nature itself had created the ideal context for a small ¡°miracle¡± to happen inside one of her cancerous cells. The cell, which had no idea what type of cell it was anymore because of the damaged DNA, had been infected by a bunch of the viruses which were running freely through the girl¡¯s bloodstream, all who had hooked themselves to the wall of the cell and were trying to copy their own genetic material using the already defective protein sequencing ¡°factory¡± meant for copying DNA from inside of the host cell. The pure DNA copying factory was absolutely confused by all of the signals it was receiving, and had no idea what to do anymore, therefore it decided to take all of the available genomes that were near it and squeezed them all together, creating a whole new strand of DNA, a new fresh and updated mutation of the old coronavirus, which now included a drastic immunodeficiency syndrome and an increased infectivity rate. The moment that the new virus stand had burst out of the cancerous cell and into the bloodstream of poor Dora, the Fate of the entire planet had become sealed.
The next day, Dora had expired. During her last waking moments in this world, she thought that she saw a light come over to her and embracing her warmly, with a voice seemingly whispering in her ear:
Congratulations! For enduring throughout a whole life filled with miseries and suffering, Your soul has leveled up!
New achievement unlocked: [I have become death, destroyer of worlds] for killing more than 6 billion people with the virus that has been developed inside of yourself.
The doctors had found next morning the stiff body of Dora, which was sporting a huge grin on her face forever stuck like that in Rigor Mortis.
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The first two evenings at the bedside of my daughter had been terrible. Her fever was not going down and her coughing was getting worse. She was slightly delirious and she was thinking that she was seeing her mother. Also she was quoting lines from SpongeBob. I kept changing wet towels from her forehead, which she kept drying up with her fever. At least, she still had an appetite. The two nights had gone by like a bad dream. I had stayed permanently glued to the side of her bed.
The only time that I had been forced to leave was when I had to take Obelix out for his ¡°evacuation¡± time, for about a quarter of an hour. I would sleep for only three or four hours, taking turns with big mama to watch over my daughter. From the third night onwards, I began to get used to the whole situation. I was starting to look at this whole pandemic thing with different eyes. 40 years ago, there had been a great movie called ¡°All the President''s Men¡±, which referred to the Watergate scandal. From inside of the movie I had remembered the saying: ¡°follow the money, and see where it leads you¡±. Began to wonder who had the most to gain out of this whole coronavirus debacle. I was inclined to believe that even the virus itself may not have come around by sheer accident. There was a lot of debatable evidence around the internet that was pointing towards the little Chinese and their attempts at playing around with viruses. A few years ago China had simulated a conflict in which their own army had been pinned against the army of the United States, and they had come to the conclusion that they would lose the conflict. Of course, the CCP would never admit to such a thing. After that, a lot of ¡°shady¡± projects had begun to show up, with one of them being viral research at, guess where, Wuhan, exactly where the pandemic had started from. Whether the virus had been released on purpose, or it had gotten out of the laboratory by sheer stupidity, it still made no difference. A few months before the virus had exploded, there had been a collaboration between the Americans, the Chinese and the French, which had as main subject for debate the hypothetical occurance of a lethal virus, and how the world would react to it. One of the richest men in the world, ¡°Citizen Gain¡±, had been seemingly obsessed by the whole idea of a deadly virus. At first glance it seems that the ¡°Citizen¡± had nothing to earn from the plague, and that he only showed a scientific interest in the subject. But by looking at the stocks of his ¡°minor¡± pharmaceutical side company, he was making a profit head over heels. The company''s spokespersons had declared that they were already in the position of a vaccine against the coronavirus, while the rest of the world was still trying to figure out what the hell this new virus was all about. It now looked like the ¡°Citizen¡± was not so disinterested in the financial aspect of the whole thing anymore.
China might have been also targeted by outside sources. Considering that the only two mega powers in the world were now the United States and China, since the ¡°Russian Bear¡± had fallen into torpor, and ¡°Auntie Europe¡± was too cowardly to take any sides, a strange picture was beginning to unravel itself inside of my mind. Everybody wanted to keep Europe out of the picture, because having it lean on one side or the other would risk the balance of power around the world. Having the EU ally itself with China was something that the United States could not afford. Germany had been pushing for a while now the idea of a joint army of the entire European Union, which could ignore NATO altogether. That had been too much for Uncle Sam. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Another suspicious occurrence that had come to my attention had been the subtle death of Dr. Lee Whenliang. He had been a Chinese eye doctor from Wuhan, and had been the first person to warn the world about the existence of this virus, somewhere around the 30th of December. The Chinese police had instantly arrested him and had told him to shut the hell up and stop spreading alarmist rumours. Also ¡°coincidentally¡±, the doctor had died from Corvid-119 on the 7th of February. He had been only slightly over 30 and in full health, so everything was fishy as hell. Still, out of this whole virus affair, only China stood to lose something.
Maybe I was beginning to take after Aplhie and the Zeppelin and I was seeing conspiracy theories at every corner, but no major event in the last century has occurred ¡°accidentally¡± on this blue planet. I still had no idea whether the virus had been cooked up, or it had occurred accidentally in nature, but the results spoke for themselves. But as it was most commonly often in the last three decades, telling the blunt truth about anything that was not deemed ¡°politically correct¡± would garner you much hate mail. Nowadays, it was all about the ¡°ballet¡±. Everybody was dancing around everybody, like some drunken flamingoes from a musical animation clip.
I felt amused by the idea of viral interspecies transmission based on the pangolin. The Chinese had been eating those poor scaled critters for years now, and none of them had come down with any sort of pandemic. It was probably just another cloud of smoke, meant to hide the true source of the virus. For now, everything was made out of assumptions, and I would have loved to exchange my ideas with my friend Wu, but given his station, any straight answers that he might have given me could have compromised his social and professional position. I knew that I would not be getting any answers from that side.
Painfully, the first ten days of my daughter''s ordeal had gone by. To my surprise, even though the test has come out positive in the case of big mama, she was still seemingly completely healthy. I guess being a doctor for all of those years might have boosted her internal immunity to a higher degree than that of the common people. She seemed to be asymptomatic. In my case, I was feeling a whole lot better. I was definitely out of the dangerous phase of the disease. My daughter was also improving. She was coughing much more rarely, and the chills and shivers had gone away. The happiest were the two furries, who had been forgotten by everybody and were doing whatever the hell they pleased.
After the week when my daughter had fallen ill, Mariah and the Zeppelin had followed in her footsteps. They had both gotten quarantined at the Tropical Diseases Hospital, due to the good relations that I had with the Chief of Staff over there. They had been given a decent amount of special attention, since the clinic had not yet been overrun with too many patients. It was a new clinic, much more modern and comfortable than all of the communist hospitals from my country, where you would risk dying by having even a meager appendicitis. It also helped by a lot that Mariah was a doctor, so she received much more attention than the regular patients.
I had no idea what was happening with my pal Wu anymore. He had stopped answering my emails for almost a week now, and not even the Chief of Staff was able to get in contact with him. He was either extremely busy or the Chinese leaders had cut off all of his means of communication with the exterior. The whole situation was boiling at a Planetary level. The virus had spread all throughout Europe, with Italy being the worst affected. Having one of the most aged population in the world, Italy became a veritable haven for the virus, which was churning out dead victims by the hundreds every day. Like any Latin based people, the old macaroni-munchers were not used to being alone at all. They would have all of their morning coffees together, or frequented the neighbouring bistros and cafeterias near their homes by the dozens.
They had known each other for many years, and they were practically living like a family. This formal socialisation had facilitated the spread of the virus at a rapid rate. Paradoxically, the most victims had occurred in the north of Italy, which was the most developed, and the least had occurred in the south, which was still archaic. The pandemic had also spread to France and Spain, with the latter proving to be almost as hard hit as Italy had been. If things kept going at the same rate, there was a chance that Spain might overtake Italy. The healthcare system of most of these western European countries was much more developed than the one inside of my country, yet many people were still dying by the hundreds. Funny enough, the virus had begun to blow up in scale even inside of the United States. Was this truly a runaway virus after all? Fortunately, if you could call it that, most of the victims were the old and the sick, people that would have died because of their afflictions a little bit later anyway.
Maybe this virus had been created with the specific purpose to get rid of the pensionaries. It is a known fact that old people have become much more numerous in the latest decades. The mass of the geezers was now a burden for the social insurance systems, all over the world. Maybe this was a rather insidious method balancing the scales, but it was extremely efficient. I know it sounds quite cynical but it''s rather true. There''s almost 8 billion bipeds on this blue planet right now, and we have no idea for how long Mother Earth is going to stand and accept our existence on her surface. The virus was only dumping away some of the ballast. You might get upset at the idea of me calling your recently departed Grandma or Grandpa as ballast, but nature does not think in human terms. Nature only sees living animals or dead animals, which still includes us humans. The fact that the majority of people who were dying had been over 70 years of age was warming up the hearts of all of the economists from the developed western states. The death of the old folk was balancing the pension budget in most of the countries. If the pandemic kept up its current rate of spreading, in about three months we would witness the demise of a large amount of old people, which would free up a whole lot of money from the pension funds. The pandemic was ¡°solving¡± some of the insurmountable financial problems for the politicians. This somewhat gave credit to the idea of an intentional release of the virus, because it was extremely efficient at doing its ¡°job¡±.
The social situation was deteriorating rapidly inside of my country. The bipeds, alarmed by the evolution of the global situation, had swarmed towards the supermarkets. A lot of fake news were pointing out towards the end of the world. The governing party was once again displaying it''s full political incompetence. The outburst of the pandemic had caught our national healthcare system with its pants down, lacking any sort of resources to cope with the flow. There were no disinfectants, surgical masks, medical shoes or hazmat suits anywhere. Even worse was the fact that most of the infectious disease sections of all hospitals did not have enough respirator apparatuses. Since most of the deaths occurred because of respiratory insufficiency, the mechanical ventilators were very useful in the fight against the virus. Still, the country had very few of those because they were usually meant for postoperative tre.atment, and not for handling diseased patients over a long period of time. In my country, if you wound up in a comatose state and needed a respirator to keep functioning, you might as well have called yourself dead already. The entire Healthcare system had been ground to pieces by three decades of absolutely incompetent and corrupt leadership, with no foresight whatsoever. Not even the blackest bolshevik period had possessed so many idiotic examples of incompetent politicians. Most of them were barely at functional literacy, but on the other hand they were quite swift when it came to filling their own pockets. Out of the whole population of the country, millions of people had chosen to leave the state and head towards the West, to greener pastures and better job opportunities. Practically, the smartest and the most capable of work among the younger people had already departed the country, leaving the insides of the borders to be filled with only aged and decrepit fossils or incompetents with very little aptitude, brain or qualifications. Of course there were also exceptions. The older doctors, professors or engineers that had chosen to remain behind inside of the country, were very skilled but very few in number. They had no way to cope on with the disasters brought about by the incompetence of the corrupt political class, which kept being voted in its position by the majority of the voting imbeciles, which would sell out their vote for a meager bag of sugar, flour, or bundle of salami. Democracy had given the power of voting to a majority made out of illiterates and easy to manipulable people, which had resulted in the crash of the entire infrastructure.
Chapter 9: Supplies and Madness
After almost two weeks of illness, my daughter had recovered. The symptoms were all gone. We all decided to take the test one more time and it had come back negative. The only one that had not been affected at all had been big mama, since she had swam through the entire disease period without as much as giving off a cough. During my daughter''s sickness period she had cooked, washed and cleaned like nothing had ever happened. Her general optimism had kept the both of us floating and strong. The two furry pe(s)ts had kept on fighting over the ownership of the sofa and of the couches inside of the living room. As far as they were concerned, the mortal virus had never existed.
At about the beginning of April, both me and my daughter had managed to shrug off the sickness. We were quite happy to have gotten rid of the damn thing, because the pandemic had already produced tens of thousands of dead within Italy and Spain. Everything was going bonkers. My country had declared a state of emergency, and the police and the army were patrolling on the streets. Nobody was coming out of their houses without a good reason. The old folk, who were the most sensitive to the coronavirus, had been banned from going out except for between the hours 11 and 13, and only to re-supply themselves. Most economic activities had been halted. More than a million unemployed had suddenly popped up out of nowhere. The smaller shops had been closed. Only the supermarkets and the pharmacies were thriving. Anyone that was caught walking around for no reason would be given a large fine.
What got me most unsettled was an emergency message I received from Wu, at about the end of March. He was literally screaming at me since all of the message had been written in BOLD CAPS UNDERLINE. He told me that the Chinese virus had mutated, and now there was a new and much more dangerous Italian version of the damn thing, which was almost totally lethal. Somehow, nature had upgraded it¡¯s murder tool, and Wu told me that millions are going to die soon, that the spanish flu is going to look like a joke in comparison. He told me to immediately get out of the city, and as far away from other people as possible, then try and wait it out, because shit was going to get very dire, very fast. He told me to grab as many supplies as I possibly could before the rest of the world caught up with the news. He told me straight that humanity was going to go to shit, and to prepare myself for what will come. The survival rate for the new virus was somewhere below 2%, which basically meant that out of 100 healthy people, only 2 would make it out, if they got lucky, and he also pointed out that the entire Europe was probably already infested, since the damn thing was rather slow to incubate, taking more that two weeks to actually manifest.
That did indeed smell like a real apocalypse scenario! The fighting for survival that was going to occur among the ones not infected, was going to put the last nail into humanity¡¯s coffin. If the first version of the virus had spread so far and fast, and this new strand was like ten times more infectious, then we were looking at a world-wide crisis of never-before-seen proportions. I instantly showed my daughter Wu¡¯s message and his predictions. After seeing that, she agreed that it was a good idea to have the chalet as a well-supplied retreat point.
Starting immediately, I took out my SUV out of the garage, went to the closest bank and cashed in all of my savings, then proceeded to buy a second truckload of supplies for survival. After the first day, we would head out every day to a different supermarket and we would grab all non perishable items like cans, dried veggies, pasta, batteries and fuel that we could get our hands on. After purchasing, we would haul them to the chalet, which was about two hundred kilometers away from the capital, in a hilly/mountainside forested region, where the peeks met the plains. After that, we would return home and wait for the next day¡¯s haul. In about a week, we had accumulated a few hundred kilos of non-perishables in the chalet basement, as well as a few hundred gallons of fuel-canisters, safely tucked away inside a cement well, to prevent any accidents from happening. The rooms had been half-filled with wooden logs for cooking and heating, since I owned the timber rights to my forest patch, and I had plenty to spare. The fuel was necessary for the upkeep of the gas-powered generator, which provided the electricity for the chalet. If I rationed the fuel properly, I was looking at about a half year¡¯s worth of power. I had also bought a few hundred boxes of matches, lighter fuel, and even a couple of flint and tinder fire starters.
I was planning to ¡°camp out¡± the disease with my daughter and mother-in-law, since the chalet was located in a decently remote location, at about 20 kilometers away from the closest village near the foot of the mountain. The silence and serenity of my ancestral forest had been the main reason why I had built the chalet there in the first place, around 25 years ago, as it had been my ¡°soul retreat¡± and veritable ¡°man-cave¡± that I could relax in. I could write in peace and not be disturbed by anybody for days at a time. I would usually spend about half a year there during the ¡°warm¡± season there, then bounce back to the house in the city for the winter times. I had learned while staying at the chalet how to cope up with a minimalist lifestyle, by barely using an economic lightbulb each night, to save on the fuel expenses, doing my laundry in the nearby river, and making food over a wood-powered iron stove. Even though the whole experience was quite proximate to 1800 autumn tech, I appreciated the lack of temptations that the civilized world tended to throw in my way. I was glad I had done so, because I was certain that all of those ¡°minimalist skills¡± would come in handy soon.
After we bought everything we could think of that was remotely labeled as ¡°necessary for survival¡±, we were still looking at barely six months¡¯ worth of supplies. Even though I was usually a very cautious guy, I knew that these supplies would mean jack squat in the following madness.
We kept stuffing the chalet with supplies during the next few days. After I had received the ominous mail from Wu, I had decided to pull out of cold storage my old hunting rifles, and also check on my bullet count. I had about four different types of hunting armaments, but they were the types that you hunted duck or rabbits with, not bipeds. Each had about 200 bullets, since the state did not really allow people to stockpile that shit around here. It had been a veritable pain in the ass to get my shooting license in the first place, since guns are a general no-no in my country. Here, we usually just stab eachother with ornamental ninja swords, rather than shoot eachother like the more ¡°modern¡± western world.
At first glance it might seem like 200 bullets each was a decently high amount, but on the other hand I knew that I was a crap shot, and also blind in one eye so my depth perception was whacked. If shit really hit the fan, my few ¡°boomsticks¡± would mean very little in front of an angry mob. Not to mention the fact that if everything really went to shit, stealing weapons from the army would become a normal occurrence. I just hoped that I would not wind up in the ¡°pray¡± category of survivors.
What I was the most grateful for, was that my daughter had beaten the virus. On the last day before leaving, we had taken the virus tests again and had come out negative. We were both somewhat ready to face the incoming crisis. As far as big mama was concerned, she had not even flinched. It was quite amazing to see her like that, considering that most of the victims had been old people so far. The two furries were the happiest, since they had been promptly transmigrated to the chalet right during the first excursion over there. I had dumped them in the chalet¡¯s yard, and had left them to their own devices. They had their own swing door that they could use to come and go, and plenty of dry food to last them for days, even if we were away for some time. We had felt that the two furry moochers would become a boon for our sanity, if we had to stay away from humanity for more than six months.
The second wave of the virus, the one Wu had been panicked about, had begun making victims during the middle of April in other parts of the world. It was not known who patient Zero had been, but the new strand of the disease had started somewhere in the north of Italy, from inside Contagious Diseases Hospital that had already been overflowing with patients. After about two weeks since the appearance of patient Zero, all of the doctors inside that hospital had displayed an acute form of the symptoms similar to those of the coronavirus, except that none of them had seemed to be getting any better. Of course, the authorities had been way too slow to realise that the mutation of the virus had occurred, which had allowed a large mass of people to become infested with the new mutant virus, because they had come in contact with the doctors at the hospital or with the personnel that took care of the maintenance of the entire adjacent system. The spread of the new virus had cascaded, with everybody that had been infested carrying the new stand further and further away, without having any idea how drastically they were going to impact the whole planet. Even though many areas had already been quarantined because of the old Corvid-119, the main transportation avenues were still functional. The slow incubation period of almost two weeks had allowed the mutant virus to infiltrate itself into all of the maintenance systems of humanity.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.
It¡¯s surprising how intertwined all of the systems created by humanity are, from transportation, fuel, water and food, as well as how dependent on those systems all of the urban areas are, relying on remotely delivered supplies for almost everything.
A driver making the supply rounds for food at the Italian Hospital where the disease had first started, had been infested because of the doctors. After that, he had brought the disease to his transport headquarters, infecting the rest of the drivers there. Those drivers had taken off in all possible directions, delivering their own cargo, and by doing so they had infected all of the inns and gas stations along their paths. As service hubs, those in turn had infested the local normal citizenry, making it snowball until a large swathe of the population was now already sick.
The first country to be really affected had of course been Italy. At the end of may, seeing that people were dying in droves and nobody was actually healing the symptoms anymore, the Italian authorities had been forced to establish the highest emergency state that they had available, which allowed the army to open fire upon anyone attempting to leave the quarantine zones. Everybody had suddenly become stuck inside of their homes, but since every form of transportation had been shut off, then the external supplies were not coming anymore as well.
This of course led to the desperation and rage of all of the people who were stuck inside, which now had no way to get any food or living necessities. The fact that people inside the quarantine zones were dying constantly did not help either. Entire swathes of houses or even entire blocks had been cut off, because everybody inside had perished from the sickness. Disposing of the bodies had become a huge problem. Anyone that would get anywhere near a recently dead victim would almost certainly get infected as well. In the end, every corpse had been abandoned inside of their homes, and left there to rot. The survivors had migrated to different places, and paranoia was running rampant. Nobody was getting anywhere near anybody else, and everyone looked suspicious. A mere cough, and you could wind up banished from the ¡°safe zones¡±. Nobody was taking any risks, but that did not help one bit, because the food was running out. Trying to run away from the quarantine zones would get you shot. Some indeed had tried, and the army had promptly opened fire. The army had blocked off any major traffic ways, and had cordoned-off virtual ¡°bubbles¡± around any center where the disease had been found. All major avenues and highways now either had tanks or humvees parked side to side across the streets, to block any runaway cars, and barricades full of barbed wire had been constructed. The authorities had foolishly decided that if they could not control the death rate of the virus, then the least they could do was to stop the spread by making all of the humans remain where they were, even if it meant for entire neighborhoods dying off. This, of course, did not pan out that well in reality. The despair caused by seeing everyone around you die from sickness, the lack of resources and the constant presence of the military had driven some groups to desperate acts. After tossing a few boulders at a patrolling army unit, some dudes made a run for it. After the soldiers chased them into an alley, they found themselves surrounded by a larger group. Battered with rocks, molotovs and axes, the soldiers had barely managed to fire off a single shot. After the rioting group took the soldier¡¯s uniforms and weapons, they had infiltrated the army campside, and had begun to sabotage the compounds. They had of course, been caught. But by infiltrating the army, they had also spread the virus to said army.
Now, even the troops were coming down with the disease. Suspicion was running rampant among the soldiers as well, and paranoyed and stupid soldiers armed with heavy guns makes for a very dangerous and volatile concoction. It was no wonder everything blew up.
Soon, everywhere you could see there were groups of survivors vs army, army vs army, and survivors vs survivors. Everyone was out for themselves, trying to get as far away from the diseased zones as possible. Of course, this only led to the further spread of the virus. Seeing that the army wasn¡¯t doing shit to protect them, and would rather shoot first then lend a hand, everybody had taken their fate in their own hands and had begun to raid and pillage and and all supply centers they could find. Ramming jeeps through the storefronts of supply depots, stealing away from supermarkets cartloads of foods, and then running away as fast as possible before the army could arrive and shoot, the bipeds were now causing chaos everywhere. The quarantine zones had broken, and the virus was spreading everywhere.
The same scene began to replay itself all across the world, albeit with a delay of about two weeks, which coincided with the incubation time. The occidental televisions were competing at broadcasting each and every horror that was occurring as much as they could. The concept of censure and that of ¡°politically correct¡± had gone down the toilet. Rules like ¡°not being allowed to show dead bodies¡± that the televisions had respected for so many years were now impossible to uphold. How could you even broadcast something without including bodies, when the dead were freaking EVERYWHERE! What would have usually been counted as an exceptional ¡°yellow headlines¡± story, was now commonplace at every corner. What could the reporters do? Put the camera to the ground and pretend that it¡¯s not happening? No, the vivid gore was raging across the web! The armies had almost given up at containing the rage of the populace. In the end, the troops were also made up out of humans, they could get scared, sick, intimidated, paranoid, and confused, so everything went to pieces. The disease had spread all across Europe, and in the latest news it had even reached across the oceans into the Americas and Australia.
I had not heard anything from Wu or Alfie at all. They had probably been caught in the madness and had died, or were somewhere that could not be reached by technology anymore. Each one of us now had to take care of ourselves from now on.
Slowly, the madness also arrived in my country. The moment that I had seen on the local News that even inside of my country people had begun to pillage the shopfronts, I had decided that it was time to get the hell away from the city. I knew that I had to get out of the urban areas as soon as possible, before the army began to block them off.
Even though my daughter was protesting and squealing at me that I¡¯m crazy, and that she refuses to come along with me and big mama to the chalet without her boyfriend, when the next morning came up, I literally grabbed her like a sack of potatoes while she struggled and then I tossed her inside the back of the SUV, then locked the doors. Big mama had been much more cooperative, and had already taken the shotgun seat of the car.
After I had stuffed the car with the last of the necessities and supplies that had remained around the house during the night before, there was barely any space inside of it. Even my daughter was sitting on some canned fish, pork and beef. I left the city swiftly, using as many side-streets as possible, to avoid the eyes of any armed forces that might attempt to stop me.
It proved in the end that I had been quite inspired with my getaway, as the next day after my departure, the highest emergency state had been declared in my country as well, and all roads had been blocked off. My countrymen were now also being ¡°guarded¡± with the Kalashnikov by the army.
After about three hours of travel time, I had reached the chalet. I had gone past the nearby village, which was 20 Km. away, and the village had seemed peaceful as always. The villagers had no fucking clue about what was comming, and were just going about with their lives. The village had seemingly avoided getting infected so far, because it was so remote and everything sucked so much inside of it that nobody wanted to come nor go away from it at all. The peasants would just hear the news, then shrug it off like it wasn¡¯t their concern, because it did not affect them in any way yet. The fact that the local bipeds were much more calm than the rest of the world had relaxed me a little bit.
Once we had reached the chalet, it had taken about half a day for us to unpack the car and install ourselves inside the house proper. My daughter kept squealing at me, demanding that I hand over the keys to the car, so that she might go and ¡°rescue¡± her boyfriend. Honestly, at that exact point in time, I did not care even a bit about Mr. Boyfriend, or as everybody called him, Brick, because he was as dense as a brick at times. In all honesty, no father will ever totally accept a daughter¡¯s life partner, no matter how handsome or smart he may be, because it feels like he¡¯s stealing something away. At least, that¡¯s what Mr.Freud said.
Therefore, I Ignored her pleas, even though she kept arguing with me that he was necessary ¡°to perpetuate the species¡±.