S U R V I V OR

2008 -2012 A.D.

by Medclinician

This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends,  this is the way the world ends
          Not with a bang but a whimper.   T.S. Eliot

Blinding flash of light - horizon to horizon - running - Jack's son Jonathan's hand in his.

 

"Run daddy, faster, faster," he yelled terrified.

 

"How far away?" Jack thought his mind racing.  He was too young to run very fast; almost two years old.  He reached down, scooping him up in his arms.

 

As he passed the bus station adults and children were standing, staring at the mushroom cloud in the distance. There was a big pit across the street where a building had been torn down. Several hundred yards away he could see a large hole leading into some kind of tunnel.

 

"Seconds," Jack thought.

 

He ran past the fencing around the pit and headed for the gaping mouth of a whole. His son was crying and shaking all over. He know how afraid Jack was.  As he ducked inside the opening he ground began to rumble. He struggled to see. Suddenly he felt a young boys fiercely grasp his shirt. He was a young black teenager and his sister looking lost and confused stumbled afer him as well.

 

"I have a pocket light," said the boy. Jonathan grew silent as the ground began to heavy drunkenly.

 

"Good," Jack took it and swept the passage with it until he saw what looked like a mine tunnel entance.  "To be buried alive or roasted he thought?"

 

Outside people seemed snap out of their shocked stuppor and began running to where they had seen Jack disappear.  Unseen to Jack a missile was heading east towards Greenbriar.  This was not that far away and it must have been a much smaller bomb . From the surrounding hills interceptor missiles erupted optically tracking the one headed for Louisberg.  Oddly the missile seemed it was being locked on target and started an evasion sequence. It was moving very fast and fortunately it was ten miles outside of town before its guidance system was scrambled  by military pulses.  The missile spun and spiraled like it was it had been caught in an invisible tornado and then it and its 5 megaton grouped warheads heat the ground and a glowing mushroom cloud erupted near Marsha Fork, West Virginia, about 20 miles from Jack.

 

The blast from the first explosion was a nasty higher megaton nuclear warhead near Louisberg,  but out of control missile which struck in Marsha Fork was much closer and in range to create a fire ball which would brush Veekly. Jack, his son and two  small group of children, huddled in the mine shaft the the river of fire swept the main street of the West Virginia small town. An elderly couple held each other, embracing, and the blast set their hair on fire, and turned their bodies to smoking ash. Children at a playyard like tiny human torches soon very painted effigies on a nearby brick wall as the shock wave leveled the courthouse, and shattered the Veeky monument on the courthouse lawn. 

 

"What is it, what is it," said Jonathan said clinging to his father, and the rest of the children formed a human blanket. A woman moved up and sat next to the children enfolding some in her arms, comforting them. 

 

"How on earth did you find me, Mandy" said Jack.

 

She was praying and did not answer. Two black children, a brother and sister began praying with them, and though the grounheaved like a rugged sea in savage storm it was too much for ancient wooden beams and several began to crack, splinter, and as the tunnel caved in Jack could hear Mandy whisper - 

 

"if only for the children God - please..."

 

Jack woke up, screaming, arms flailing against a none existence wall of rock and earth about to crush him and Mandy and the children in the dream.

 

                                                  *                                                   *                                                    *

 

It had been sometime since I had written in my journal. For weeks I lived in a twilight world between physical illness, pain, and confusion, and the incredible emptiness that was my life.  Both my wife and child had fled to "sanctuary" outside the city. A small place which I visited and my son looked up at me with unknowing eyes. I was a stranger now to him.  My wife lived in another world now, and I often thought of her as a grasshopper dancing in the sun unaware of the coming winter. Although she was not a happy grasshopper. She rarely laughed or smiled. She lived beneath the veil of poverty and the struggle of survival while I the dreamer wrote of the coming of the end of the world and struggled to maintain my sanity. 

Russia had invaded Georgia, and at one time Iran's submarines, carrying nuclear missiles, which of course the general public had no idea they even had, and had been sold to them for oil, had  targeted and were about to launch on  Tel Aviv.  I knew these were the last days spoken of in the Bible. The other day a Muslim had come to the lab. He could have been Osama himself, without the beard only much younger. He had kind brown eyes and needed help wrestling with the new operating system from Microsoft - Vista. His machine was not equipped for the challenge. He came and went briefly with his friend, and I thought, truly they have had no interest in me. 

The nightmares continued and I finally went to see a shrink. She sat in a big over padded chair and was very young, very pretty, and very calming.

"You must learn what you cannot change," she said.

I told her of the sea of days and nights, awakening, reaching over to hold or touch my now missing wife and child. The true almost Poe like desolation of human spirit and depression as I reached into empty air.  I spoke to my mother-in-law often on the phone of the general malaise and disease in the world. Of the loss of the natural affection for so many people for each other.  So many simply plodded through their lives, their spirits devoid of any real hope for the future, as the economy crept along, so many poor and struggling, loosing their homes, some homeless, and there was a mental institution somewhere in the state. The unbalanced in the military were on the 6th floor of  the local Veteran's hospital. I had only to finally crack and snap and there I would be . Pumped full of anti-depressants, my hands trembling from side effects, and none of them really making me happy.

So there I was  at 3 a.m., waking up from another dream of distant booms and wondering whether the radiation or the  viruses would come first. My shirt still soaked from a cold sweat and the nasty rumble of Listeria in my stomach. It was everywhere. MacDonald's, the Sub place, in the canned foods and the only real alternative to quiet my unhappy innards was to not eat at all. 

The phone rang.

"It's like a graveyard here," said Mandy.  

I found her voice soothing and something to fill the void of the forever time after midnight when the rest of the city did not sleep well.

"I can imagine," I said. I had worked in such places. The final elephant graveyards, where the old went for "extended care." This, of course, was the last bus stop before the mortuary.

"Full moon," she said. "I miss my kids."

It was strange. Mandy and I had similar worlds. Unhappy partings from those we loved, and those who in essence had left us for 'something else."

A window came up in my computer. Alert message as I tracked news and different sites.

"There are military from Russia moving into Poland. The Soviets has made a statement it will not sit idly by and wait until missiles were in place on its borders. Its generals, who rarely threatened, and usually invaded first and talked later, filled the somber window with a dubbed translated statement. We will not allow this."

Of course, we had stated that an attack on Poland would be an attack on the U.S. and basically a declaration of war.

The lab seemed to slowly spin around me and a lack of sleep and food had begun to wear away my clarity of mind and spirit.

"We must leave for the West coast," said Mandy.

Of course, this would be a huge mistake. We were now isolated in the high mountains against the madness that soon would consume the cities. And I was thinking, where would we go; San Jose, LA, Frisco, San Diego?

It was not yet time. I had cleaned up a badly rusted shotgun and checked my truly pathetic ammunition. I looked at a moderate store of food and preps, especially medical preps. I had a legal (a ton of old medicine from my life and probably not that good), but virtual pharmacy, with untaken antibiotics, and pills of every sort. I could probably endure at last 4 months of brutal Pandemic in a chemically altered state not feeling much pain and too dopey to care.

The Silence, I thought. I had written of this before. It is that unique state when someone leaves, abandons you, and after being together for years, your ears strain for the slightest sound of another human presence like some person in an isolation tank  desperately longing for any stimulation of any kind. The absence of my son's voice, and happy laugh and sometimes grating whines and cries and the voice of my wife, and just chatter between us about little things, what to eat for lunch or dinner , how to pay the bills. Who was sleeping with who in our small community. Touch.

As a child I was never touched except as an infant. My father was a jealous possessive man and also beat me. He beat me because he hated working for others, being "one of the sheep driving to work on the freeway." He later became very rich. And at 18 I turned on him with fiery eyes and a hatchet after a camping trip. He had run to get his gun, and the police had arrived. He had two 357 magnums, loaded pointed at his only beloved son who was about to enact some scene from some horror film. 18 years of abuse, bleeding, being called an idiot, stupid, loser, and at the same time most certainly not. The police did not arrest me. They looked at my father, friend of the chief of police and untouchable in his insanity which his own private arsenal. "Go for a walk son," one understanding policeman said. I bet he had been beat too. He knew. They left, but that was turning point in my life. He would never beat me again. 

He was gone now. He died before 2000. Some nights I dreamed of digging up his body and scattering his moldering worm filled corpse that lay buried beside my mother in pieces across the graveyard lawn. He lived and died a selfish, angry, and violent man. He read the bible a lot and went to church three times a week. I guess he never really got it and after my mother died, he hated God for letting her die.  I had told him once "you will pray for mom to survive and she will die.' Sometimes God says no. And praying for the dying, well it is an iffy situation. Eventually the answer will be no. 

"Jack,' said Mandy insistently. "Quit spacing out. I know you are. I can tell it."

I wondered about Mandy. She had come out of nowhere at a time when my life seemed falling apart. I was on the verge of so many great things in science. Things that would change history. Technologies and medical research that of course would probably never be allowed to happen. Because they would cure people. And other technologies would protect the country. And it would cost big medical companies hundreds of millions of dollars as people became well. Curing people was not a high priority item with the drug companies. It was their worst nightmare. 

But how does one protect a country that is decaying from within? "Know the things you cannot change, the wisdom to know the difference.'

My shrink's words echoed in my head.

"Bored, bored, bored," Mandy complained.

I told her very soon everything was about to change. We were on high military alert. And nothing would please the extremists more than a weakened America. Then they would strike. They had spread out across the U.S. like a hidden tide, coming across the incredibly porous Canadian and Mexican border.

"I have been keeping kind of an Avian Journal, " I told Mandy. "But I would rather just call it the Abyss. You know what the Abyss is?  I talked to one psychiatrist friend of mine who went through a gruesome parting with a woman who simply changed. Suddenly they were just 'wrong'. The War of the Roses.

I think it is the moment when your truly beloved looks at you and decides I don't care for this person anymore. I want freedom, and am trapped.

You cannot explain to them that it is not you that is the trap. It is life. And it only gets so good unless you are a movie star or very rich. And even then a lot of famous people kill themselves. 

"You need to get out of that place," said Mandy. "We need to escape."

I laughed. And very rarely since my world kinda blew up did I laugh. Its how love and children and things gone eclipse everything. I had to get back tract; to focus. "Escape from sanctuary. There are many mining tunnels here.  There is an entrance not far to a few. You can't go far back. They reek of methane and if you turn a corner and hit black damp, you die in seconds."

"There are caves," she said although the water is horribly polluted. "We would need to carry things and the generators and whatever. Any progress on that free energy thing?"

"We don't need it. Some friends in California have invented a green solar mesh. Nano stuff. We would have to put the collectors outside the cave. We would have a lot of energy. If I can modify some of the four wheelers here to use the solar, then we could make it across he country if it were not winter. That is after the nukes and plagues and if we could find a safe travel corridor. Hey, I wrote some poems. Really dark. One is called Dancing in the Ruins - one is called The Silence. It's not exactly my most cheerful writing of course I can never write when I am not depressed. 

"Okay, I am laying down in an empty bed next to a patient," said Mandy on the phone." - go for it- read them to me"

Okay here is the first one - its like part of the dreams - its so vivid - so real. It is called Dancing in the Ruins.

     Sun sets.  Winds howl through skeletons stained by moss and time
     Fingers reach upwards toward the stars, twisted steel and concrete sentinels surround a thousand dead,
     The city, dead, phantom shadow monoliths against a jet black sky
     Rats and hungry beetles stir beneath tumbled buildings, wait
     to sweep the streets, a Stygian oozing creeping river
     Sweeping over, shrouding bloated corpses whose dead unseeing eyes
     stare upward into the gleaming cold indifferent stars

     My fingers strum the light harp, I watch as crimson and blue echoes,
     Swirl through the desolate city, my thoughts unending fading memories
     Tonight she'll come once more to me, in the winds of dreams and fantasy

     She lies there still, yet I know she still can somehow hear me, feel
     I lift her lifeless body and hold it in my arms, I hear her voice neath a blood red moon
     Her name is Death, and her song despair,
     Yet I know longer feel or care,

                                  for we are dancing, dancing in the ruins

What is creepy about that one is that it is so totally possible," Jack said.  No one really gets it. How it will be after. After the "times of desolation". It is a good thing you are Christian Mandy. You understand."

"You'd be surprised how much," said Mandy. "Although I think I'll pass on playing the female role in your poem. I plan to survive. I am a Survivor you know. I must survive for my children.  They are so important to me."

"And the second poem.. now that one haunts me," I said. Because well.. when my mother died I had one of her old poems. She never really fit in this world. I read it at her funeral. She was a kind person, and the world eats kind people alive. They take, like psychic vampires and everyone has a plan, a place for you in their life, and when you don't fit anymore, when you are no longer useful, they toss you like a rag. 

"Not everyone is like that," said Mandy. "Sometimes you can find love, real love. Love that last forever."

 "Are you capable of that," I said. "Love that lasts forever."

"Yea, as long as a man is faithful to me, does not cheat on me. But I have to be his woman, his second most important thing in life to God. And then his children. I am very serious about that. I can care deeply about someone but if they betray me, truly betray me - I may forgive once or twice even.. but the third time.. that's it. "

"So, anyway.. here's the cheerer upper for today," I said.

    All is stone. All is darkness.
    No light. No sound. Within without me.
    Memories come of touching and fusion
    I hunger for the warmth of the Other inside
    Blackness, night, ashen light filters in
    All is silent. All is empty.
    No smile, no laughter, within, without me - Rivers run and silent pools
    I long for warmth, for love, heat of a human heart, like the sun
    A blazing dawn, golden sunbeams
    There are no feelings. There are no tears.
    I cannot weep, for all is silent. All is empty.
    There is no hope, no joy, no dreams. Where you and I lay wrapped,
    in each other, dreams of love, endless nights of blue satin - but now
    In this dungeon, far below the ground, I wait for you, your touch
    There is no light. There is no sound - within without me
    All is stone. All is darkness.

"That is how you feel about you wife, huh. I will tell you something Jack. Its like be careful what you wish for. Be careful what you write. It can come true. Accept she is gone. When women decide, finally decide to leave a man. All that was cute, or special, or wonderful turns to dust. When it is over it is over."

"You know, its like this Mandy," I said. There is this space between us all. So many couples and lovers think they are close but they don't even know each other. They live in separate worlds, their marriages crumble, their relationships fall apart, and then they go on to separate lives. They are not happy lives. Unless I guess they find someone else. Who cares. But then it happens again. What killed it before, will kill it again and they will find themselves making the same mistakes, with the same kind of guy over and over. Nothing chills my soul as someone who says "I just don't care." 

"Well, your a real burst of sunshine tonight," said Mandy. "I care. I am your friend. And I tell you, help us survive this, make a better life for us both, and we will not be as you dismally sink into self pity and struggle to be a survivor, we will be survivors. Together. 

I looked at the horizon. It was almost dawn and we had been talking for a long time. A storm is coming. A real hurricane was ripping through Florida as we talked. The world had become a much more unsafe unfriendly place.

Memories of childhood and something wicked comes this way.

"When it happens," said Mandy it will be a cold slap in the face of the world. A wake up call. Then life for many will end, and without the structure of society, a new one will arise. It will be scary."

"Nite my friend," I said.

"Nite Jack. You call me if you need me. I am here for you and don't forget. I am ready in heartbeat to make the change, certainly there is more than this for me. But we need money to escape this trap. And then I will work with you to build whatever you and to achieve the most you can."

Click.  

 

                                                                                    >> 2 <<

 

                                                                             Darkness, Darkness

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Then once more- the silence. I turned on the fan, and hoped I could get back to bed before sunrise. Tomorrow what  would happen? Would I be awakened by a distant boom or booms as the what we feared for decades finally became reality.  There would be no apologies. There would be small groups of armed men and then the Pandemic or Pandemics would hit. In waves. It would be the 3rd wave, the third Pandemic which would bring most of humankind to their knees.

No doubt some would end their lives or have them ended. Some by disease, some by others. More than a third of the world would die from Pandemics and a third from the nuclear radiation and blasts. The remnant would survive, and would not be terribly concerned with other countries until they could become strong enough to start fighting again. 

I thought of the singular happiness of just having someone in your bed, in your arms, face resting on your chest, soft warm breathing and the most basic need of all, beyond food, and shelter, and that which could enable you to withstand anything. Love. Unconditional real love. I knew she was out somewhere. I wish a miracle would happen and time would just go backwards and my wife and child would be laying at my side. My throat tightened, my eyes burned with do want to shed tears. It hurt. It hurt really deep. 

I prayed that night before I headed to my empty room in an empty building, with empty streets, and the jet black starry sky watching in cold indifference. My brother had said - reach out and find God - you need him - you must keep your faith.

The Silence. Well, even graveyards are not silent for me really. As I have walked the paths alone past midnight I have felt the stirring beneath my feet, and the echoes of voices and confused spirits who will not ever accept that they are dead. Are they?

Around the world it was daytime and generals were huddled in a war room. Missile systems were checked and chatter flew encoded to nuclear submarines which moved closer to the Gulf and to the U.S. There would be a period of activity, of explosions, and disease, and then a silence so deafening it would reduce the world to a whimper which would nearly still every beating heart.

>> 3 <<

Dreams of the 12^th Imam

________________________________________________________________________

Young Madhi, only five years old, looked at the body of his father as he solemnly kneeled in respect. His father was no ordinary Muslim He was Hasan al Askari. The Great Imam, direct blood descendant of the true prophet Mohammed. The year was 941 A.D. The day January 1 and as his uncle Jafar ibn Ali stepped forward to lead the prayer, Madhi pushed him back away from his father.

"Move aside, uncle; only an Imam can lead the funeral prayer of an Imam," Madhi said. He arose and knelt before his father’s body then lowered him self face down and began to pray. After a moment of prayer, the image of the child wavered and then he disappeared.

“He has gone to Gyaybat, and thus he shall be until the last days, when he shall return to face the last great battle in the end of days,” said his Uncle.

In was April 16, 2006 and the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disappeared for several hours. He was having a khalvat (tête-à-tête) with the Hidden Imam, the 12th and last of the imams of Shiism who traveled to another plane of existence had returned. The tent was filled with light and when Mahmoud exited he proclaimed that in truth he had spoken to Madhi, and it had been ordained that he begin the clash of nations, the final Apocalypse, which would which would led against the United States, the infidel,  for a final victory.

Years later Mahmoud stood before a sea of faces. His face set in determination and deep thought.

“It is said we are weak,” me said with a strong voice. “But we are not. We have over four times the fighting forces of the Western power that soon will strike our bunkers with nuclear weapons and set up the great conflagration. Then shall it be as the prophets have foretold. And the most powerful is the most hated that would engage us in this fight, as we call for Jihad among our Muslim brothers.

For truly, I spoke to Madhi only in spirit, but by the will of Allah, his servant has arisen in the United States and he known by those who shall arise from the Cave of Darkness, as

فإن مغامرة – the Pilot.  And from that world of the infidel shall as within their own prophecies come light from horizon to horizon.

                                    *                                  *                                  *

The Pilot awakened in his tent at the campsite at Yosemite. In the early morning he found a place near a river whose surface was like crystal and bowed toward Mecca and prayed.

The dream had come to him, and once he knew his purpose and destiny he had separated himself from other Muslims at the Mosque. He did not bare the dark skin of his Muslim brothers. He was pale skinned and had blue eyes. For it is say, to be hidden as he had been before, was not to be seen or known as the others. He told no one of his destiny.

He had never known a woman, and he had studied intently the Pillars of Wisdom and was grounded in heart and mind.

The time would be soon when the country would be as a sheep with a shepherd, a lamb without a flock, ravaged by disease, pestilence, and most of all, weak and vulnerable. There were the nine in place, just as there had been centuries before. And they spoke and met in dreams, never in the flesh. They had no ties to this nation where they lived.

He would be on duty at the airlines soon after a three day rest in Las Vegas. Ashan and three others would launch the plane and destroy the hotel. This would be the great diversion. And as the low altitude communications satellite a losat-X launched on seemly low security test, its cargo, the fusion bomb, using an innately secret technology would provide the weapon for a series of sub EMP detonations.

Within less than twelve hours, coast to coast, and 1/3 into Mexico and Canada would be plunged in powerless chaos. The mechanism, disguised at traditional nanotechnology, he would set off remotely and splice into satellite feed for a spectacular series of photos that would forever illuminate in history the Cave of Darkness.

He had never, seen, known, or talked to the cells that had integrated the circuits or inserted the explosive device.  He and the Great War would escalate as Russia would be blamed be easily planted data in to the biometric database. The greed for information would be the fall of the Western World.

He drove his truck to the pilot parking area near the airport. Once he had disembarked in New York, he would head north across the Canadian border to finally connect with a flight to take him back to Iran. They called him Pilot, even as a nickname and the irony made him smile.

He was to the radar of the American like a stealth jet or a Russian plasma stream craft, invisible.

He knew who he was and soon the world would know as well. Only then, it would be too late.

                                    *                                  *                                  *