by Caleb Adams
tHE last
virus
Diaries from the inhabitants of Sector 4 in the city of Ayla
Major Caleb Adams
The Last Virus Copyright © 2020 by Caleb Adams. All Rights Reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“hate is not for Humans” – Kenji Goto
James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Kayla Mueller, Marie Colvin, Hevrin Khalaf, Ruqia Hassan, Serena Shim, Charlie Hebdo, Kenji Goto, Theo van Gogh, and of course all the others
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: April 2020
ISBN-13 978-1-7334716-2-6
CONTENTS
The Assassin
The General and the Translator
The Nurse
The Lovers
The Jinn
Travis
Tunnel X
A Child is Born
Sean & Aidan
The Priest
Sylvia Plath
Gilly
Agnes Day
The Historian
Major Caleb Adams
The Assassin
12th Day of Rabi al-Awwal
I t is the twelfth day in the month of Rabi al-Awwal. It is necessary for us to follow this calendar. Our lives are dependent upon it. By their holidays we are most active. Those days that they pay homage, we give hell. Their God we know better than we know ours. It is necessary.
I am seventeen and I am an assassin. I have no family and I have disremembered my past. It is better for me this way. I am given my training and I am given my missions. Of the invasion, it was swift and came out of nowhere. It was like waking one day and suddenly finding the sun rising in the west. The man says empires they come and empires they fall. He says the last generation of an empire is the one that always suffers the most—paying the debts for all of the sins that have been accrued. He said the one we were born of is now in the annals of history. He said those pages have been turned, ripped and burned. He says it’s all become oral history now. He says that is why I should write down all I have seen and all I have known. The man is clever with the language. He didn’t say to write down all that I will see and all that I will know. The man understands I have no future.
We have been here in the freight tunnels for a little over two years now. Before that, we were nomads, sewer rats. Underneath the streets once ours, we ate and slept in their Caliphate filth. When we were found, as invariably we always were, we had to run from poisonous gas, automatic fire, and rocket-propelled grenades. And then before that, the man and I were hidden away in the cellar of his shoe store, rationing jarred and canned kosher food. Here in the freight tunnels, we have been the safest we have ever been. The reason is that the freight tunnels lie forty feet below the sewers. They have not realized we have descended into another ring of hell. The man says they will figure it out. There is no reason to believe he is wrong. Here though, at least we are organized. Here, at least we have assembled a resistance, assembled weapons, assembled some dignity. Here, at least we are able to kill. And that has made this a life now worth living.
There is a man I trust. He is the one I spoke of above. It’s difficult to trust anyone. That comes from being in the sewers. There they had informers who would walk among us. I never blamed them though, the informers, that is. Their families were held hostage above. What choice did they have? But they were also fools, as eventually they too were slaughtered.
The man, he talks of his God now and then. The man is a Jew. A prized possession in this world, worth a purse of a thousand gold coins to him that captures one. He says his people have always been persecuted. I admire that he is a Jew. Not because of his beliefs, but because of his resolve and fortitude. They are fighters, the Jews. They are a proud people. When they are caught, they do not renounce their faith. And for this, they are tortured to a great extent. If captured, I would say, “In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, He is the one God, the Everlasting refuge, who has not begotten, nor has been begotten, and equal to Him is not anyone.” I would say this or anything they wanted in order to spare me any more pain before death was to befall me.
I myself do not believe in God. The cross around my neck is more of a flag, like that of a country. Mass I attend to serve my body and not my soul. The cube of bread which impersonates a wafer I take only because it is food. The wine I drink only because it is from water. The son of our God some tell me will return. I think that if we do have a God and He is sending his son, then our God is a fool. His son should not come alone. What can one son do? Our God needs thousands of sons to defeat those above us. And all of those sons should bring ammunition and weapons. And with that, they should also bring food, batteries, and pillows for our heads. It is when I see this that I will believe.
There are cities and countries new, but these cities and countries are the same. What I once knew to be America is now Ummah. What I once knew to be Chicago is now Ayla. The man says it doesn’t matter. He says the only thing I need to know is how to roll them off of my tongue. The man is right. My life is now dependent on the Arabic that I have been taught.
“Be ready,” the man has said to me on more than one occasion, “this may last a thousand years.” I wonder what he means by a thousand years. What may exactly last? What is there that the world can return to? Does he foresee a future where we no longer live below ground? I do not see that. I do not see that even in his thousand years. I am only glad that we are no longer in the sewers. They are a fetid bouquet of the Caliphate’s waste. It is a stink that never leaves your tongue. You taste it when you awake. You taste it with the food you eat, and you taste it as you think. You can even taste it when you dream.
In the day I work as part of a bomb-making team. It is my first job. I have become quite proficient. I construct improvised explosive devices out of most anything that can detonate, maim, and kill. I take great pride in this work. It is tedious work that requires the utmost concentration. I have that kind of will and I have that kind of spirit. My second job is as a postman. That is what they call it. They send me out with a handler. He walks me around Ayla. We walk through their souks, we walk by their mosques. My Arabic is still something to be desired, but it is passable. To speak it properly I need to concentrate. I need to roughen my tongue as with sandpaper. When we are not gathering information, we are laying down those devices I have built.
The ones who have lived the longest on this earth are the weakest among us. This is because they fear the most. You cannot fear here. It would be debilitating and unconstructive. Death is something you have to accept. Not to accept as something that is inevitable but to accept as something that can be immediate. You must imagine that it can arrive while you are gathering thoughts for your next sentence. You must imagine it can interrupt you while you are eating that cube of bread. I imagine it all the time and hence I have no fear.
Those who have no future have religion. That is what the man has told me. This, he says, is how God recruits his followers. I asked him which God. He said all gods. He said they all work off of the same principle. I asked him that even after knowing this, why does he still believe in his God. “Because I have no future,” he replied.
27th Day of Rabi al-Awwal
This morning I was ordered to Souk #2. I was told to purc
hase a half kilogram of baklava from the old woman with two fingers on her left hand. When I was given the baklava, I was to kneel and remove my backpack. It is a simple ruse. We have done it many times before. One backpack we hide inside another. So, after sliding the smaller backpack under the folding table of the old woman, I am to place the baklava inside the larger one. I then stand, and I look no different than I did before.
We were then instructed to sit ourselves and our baklava on a bench across from Souk #2. When the man whom we were shown a picture of came by the stall, I was told to detonate the explosives. He came with his daughter. She was five or six. This I was not told. Of course I was not told. They should have had more faith in me. I was not moved by her presence. We all suffer here. We all die here. Age is of little relevance.
It happens so fast. Like lightning and thunder. There is a flash, and then there is a sound. There are body parts being spit out in all directions. There are people rushing toward the blast to assist. I removed the vest of explosives concealed under my burqa and set it inside the second backpack. Sixty seconds I counted. Then, I got off the bench and ran toward Souk #2, flailing my arms and screaming like I was supposed to. His legs were no longer there, and he was bleeding out. I wanted to uncover myself and spit on his face. His daughter was already dead. This is war. There are many casualties in war. It was not my fault she was born of such a wretched man. To hell with him, to hell with the Caliphate, and to hell now with the little girl.
I waited for the men to push me aside. They did and I fell, quickly removing the second backpack and leaving it on the ground amidst all the chaos and confusion. Another wave of men then came running up. What fools. Have they not learned? I hurried my steps, through the smokescreen, through the gathered crowd. I smiled. I could barely hear as the first blast had beaten so loudly on the drums of my ears. I reached into an inner pocket of my burqa and depressed the trigger of the second device. We were not far enough away from the explosives. I should have judged the distance better. The blast wave rudely pushed us in the back. My body flung forward. That’s all I remember.
I awoke in our infirmary. Only the man was there, sitting in a chair beside where I lay.
“My handler?” I asked.
“With heaven’s help, he brought you here.”
“May I see him?”
“When you die, you can look around for him.”
The man then pulled back the sheet that was covering my unclothed body and looked me over. Not a lecherous look as I have seen others give me, but the look of someone who wanted to make sure that I would live another day. The cover he threw back over me and began to leave. When he was near the exit, he nodded over to a stand right beside me. I turned my head. There he had left a stem of grapes for me. I was grateful, for the grapes, that is.
13th Day of Rabi al-Thani
“May I ask you a question?” I said.
“Yes, you may,” the man answered.
“Did you expect it?”
“Did I expect that one day I would know what it was like to be a feral dog living in tunnels below a city where I once dwelled quite comfortably?”
“That is not what I meant.”
“I know, child. I understood the question. You want to know whether or not I foresaw the complete collapse.”
“Yes, that is what I want to know,” I said.
“I imagined it no more than I imagined suddenly growing a new head upon my body. That is not to say I was ignorant of history. I did envision a time when our empire would be in rubble like all of the other empires had themselves become rubble. I imagined that two or three hundred years from now a schoolboy from another race, another nation, would be reading about our demise. I imagined that it would be somewhat similar to my teachings. The book that he held in his hands would be thick, but of it, only three or four pages would tell of our story. He would skim through this terse and distorted version, and then give his own summary of that summary. After that, it would leave his mind, and he would have forgotten all about us. That I imagined. What I did not imagine was the utter swiftness on which wings it arrived. That was a bird I’m sure none but the insane saw in their dreams. So, to answer your question, I did see a future demise based on my knowledge of how empires were succeeded. However, I did not foresee a catastrophic failure such as the one that took place.”
“Do you think there was anything that could have been done to prevent it?”
“No more than a mind could give you an answer to the equation infinity plus one.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Infinity plus one is infinity. That is the answer.”
“Today, child, that answer is correct. But tomorrow, it will be wrong,” the man replied.
“I still don’t understand.”
“Exactly. Our minds do not stretch that far yet. But I assure you, in time man’s mind will advance far enough to properly solve that equation. Just as it has already been understood that some infinities are larger than others. Infinity, my child, for the moment it is just a placeholder until a better mind arrives.”
“There must have been signs, though? There must have been some warnings?”
“Of course, there are always signs and warnings. Ask any historian.”
23rd Day of Rabi al-Thani
It is near the end of the month of Rabi al-Thani. I have a new handler. For the last few days we have been training for a mission. His Arabic is perfect, but he is weak with fear. I can see it in his eyes. They wander around too much. He is thinking of the ways he could die. One who searches his mind for death will surely find it. I told the man this. He said that is true. He said that even though I was being accompanied by the new handler, I should act like I am alone. He said one never follows a dead man in training.
We are being sent to the stadium. Once it was called Soldier Field. Once it was where we played our games and heard our music. Now it is where they hold their executions and spit their hatred to the attending masses. Tonight, it is to be the sight of a rally in which the imam is to speak. Yesterday we were shown a video of him. Oddly, the camera work was well done. I say oddly well done because most of the time what we film is grainy and wobbly. He is an obese man with a distended belly and a dirty beard. His spits and hisses like a snake when he shouts his venom. The finger that he points with is hooked, and its nail is yellow and long. The man told me he was born from one of the devil’s whores. The man said his own mother tried to kill him when he was in the womb. He said she cleansed her womb with drain cleaner, but he still would not die. He is old and he is ugly. He is a vile man with a predilection for young boys. His appetite for them is insatiable. When he is done with them, they are thrown into a dump outside the city.
In the video, the imam spoke for forty-two minutes. The crowd before him was like hungry lions. They would have ripped out the heart of their own mother and ate it if the imam had requested. We were played the video a total of eleven times. That night I recited to the man one passage from the imam that I thought he would find of interest.
“The prophet said, ‘The Resurrection will not take place until the Muslims fight the Christians and the Jews and kill all of them.’ Rejoice in it. Rejoice in Allah’s victory. The Muslims will seek to kill the Christians and Jews and they will hide. The prophet said, ‘The Christians and the Jews will hide behind rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: Oh servant of Allah, Oh Muslim, there is a Christian and a Jew behind me, come kill them!’ Why is there this malice, you ask? Because there are none who love the Christians and the Jews on the face of this earth. Not man, not rock, and not tree. Everything hates them. They destroy everything. They destroy the trees and they destroy the houses. Everything wants vengeance on the Christians and the Jews, on these pigs on the face of the earth. In our sewers, there are still some Christians and Jews. Seek them out and kill all of them. Bless the prophet and bless Allah.”
The man smiled. He said the imam should be careful what he wishes for. He said that without any Christians and
Jews there would be little left to hate. And then what would he preach.
We exited the freight tunnels and came up near what was once the Field Museum. There was still light left in the day so we had to wait a few minutes to let our eyes adjust. Being in the tunnels, we have adapted to the low light, and this makes it quite difficult for any of us to wander around in the sun. The stadium was still only half full when we entered it. These are the most dangerous of missions. The ones where you must stand among them for an indeterminate length of time. One misstep and you are surely dead, or worse, surely captured. I kept my head straight, turning to no one, not even to my new handler. We stopped in the middle for a moment to survey the layout. Beside me was a family. I was wearing an abaya this time, and the child beside me was pulling on it to get my attention. The child was male and therefore I could not risk reprimanding him. I handed him a piece of candy, and finally, he left me alone.
The rectangular opening of my niqab is a half-inch wider on each side. It cannot be discerned. It allows me to keep my head straight while sweeping my eyes about. I was looking around when I saw a scuffle take place just off to my immediate right. They took hold of a girl and took her to one of the execution posts. They stripped her naked and tied her hands behind her back and tied her body to that post. It was then I could see she was about my age. The crowd moved nearer to watch the beating. One of them produced a whip, a cord of black leather. Between her legs and her back, he alternated the lashes. The crowd was raucous in its delight so I could not hear her wail. One hundred and five lashes. That is what I counted.
When they were done, they ordered her father over to untie her and take her away. He did as instructed. She was not more than a few feet in front of him when he kicked her in the back and sent her to the ground. He was now standing over her. She lifted up a hand. He reached behind his back, pulled out a small-caliber gun, and shot her in the head. The crowd roared, and the father walked away with a look of smugness that set me on fire. I took a few steps in his direction. My new handler quickly grabbed my hand. I was thankful that he did so. Thankful because I would have kept walking until I had caught up to him and slit his throat. For those few steps I took, I scolded myself. I know better. Here, empathy is your own executioner. The imam never showed that day. Too drunk, I was later informed.