The Dystopian Diaries

by K. W. Callahan

  Mr. Whitmore’s trial date is currently slated for January 21st, at which point the defendant will be allowed to present a defense on the said charges to a jury of his peers.

  An attorney will be provided to Mr. Whitmore to assist him in his defense even though he has admitted to his crimes under the guise of “self-defense.”

  Due to the conditions under which the post-flu justice system now operates, Mr. Whitmore’s mental status will have no bearing on the outcome of the jury’s determination regarding guilt or innocence.

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  January 22nd

  Mills County court document (copy)

  Yesterday’s proceedings regarding Mr. Whitmore’s charges of murder resulted in a unanimous verdict of “guilty” by the jury. The verdict took less than half an hour to reach. The judge sentenced Mr. Whitmore to death by firing squad tomorrow, January 23rd.

  Appealing a conviction is no longer an option. The resources for such proceedings just aren’t available. And while the sentence might seem harsh considering Mr. Whitmore’s mental state, and when compared to the pre-flu judicial standards regarding the mentally impaired, in the current post-flu environment, there aren’t resources – human or economic – to house, care for, or treat people suffering from such conditions. The remaining populace can hardly feed itself at this point. And there are no longer the medications or treatments available for the mentally impaired. But people like Mr. Whitmore and others like him, can’t be allowed to remain free due to the dangers they pose to others.

  Therefore, a quick and merciful death is considered appropriate under the circumstances.

  Mr. Whitmore has requested to be buried on the property where he formerly resided in his cabin, a request that can be met. Mr. Whitmore was asked if there were any words other than his name and dates of birth and death that he’d like etched into the wooden headstone a local man will create for him. In response, Mr. Whitmore wrote these words from a copy of Thoreau’s “Walden”:

  “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”

  Mr. Whitmore has refused to be parted from this book, and has read frequently from it throughout his incarceration and subsequent trial. He has requested that he be buried with the book, a request that will also be granted.

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  January 23rd

  Mills County court document (copy)

  As of 9:03 a.m. on the date of January 23rd, first year post-flu, Nathan William Whitmore has been executed by firing squad. His body was transported to his cabin at 113 Wilkes Road for burial.

  Mr. Whitmore’s remaining property and possessions have been distributed to the county, and more precisely, the town of Mills Creek for communal support of the town’s remaining residents.

  As of this date, and with execution of the guilty verdict against Mr. Whitmore, the County of Mills has officially closed the case regarding the disappearance of Kevin and Sally Monroe.

  K.W. CALLAHAN

  THE DYSTOPIAN DIARIES

  BOOK 5: PARADISE LOST

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Text and image copyright © 2019 K.W. Callahan

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Callahan, K.W.

  The Dystopian Diaries – Book 5: Paradise Lost / K.W. Callahan

  ISBN: 9781710286892

  BOOKS BY K.W. CALLAHAN

  THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: DOWNFALL

  THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: QUEST

  THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: DESCENT

  THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: FORSAKEN

  THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: ASCENSION

  AFTERMATH: PARTS I-III

  THE M.O.D. FILES: THE CASE OF THE GUEST WHO STAYED OVER

  THE M.O.D. FILES: THE CASE OF THE LINEN PRESSED GUEST

  PALOS HEIGHTS

  PANDEMIC DIARY: SHELTER IN PLACE

  PANDEMIC DIARY: FLEE ON FOOT

  PANDEMIC DIARY: PANDEMIC PIONEERS

  THE FIFTH PHASE: BOOKS 1-5

  THE LAST BASTION: BOOKS 1-5

  THE DYSTOPIAN DIARIES: BOOKS 1-5

  THE DYSTOPIAN DIARIES

  BOOK 5: PARADISE LOST

  August 24th

  3:43 p.m.

  We’ve been coming to Cocoa Beach for years. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a waterspout. It’s really cool! And I’m watching it in real time as I’m writing, which makes it even cooler!

  I’d say the tornado-like funnel cloud formed about a mile off shore just a few minutes ago. I’m sitting on our condo’s balcony, enjoying a cocktail and relaxing as one of Florida’s afternoon thunderstorms rolls its way into the area as they so often do. Most of the storms here come from the Gulf Coast side and pass over us, headed out to sea. Today however, the storm is coming in off the Atlantic. The clouds have darkened the typically azure blue of the Sunshine State’s sky. Down the beach, I can see a hazy curtain formed by falling sheets of rain, but no rain has yet to fall here.

  The water spout’s funnel cloud has moved closer now. Earlier it was to our south a bit, wobbling around like a toddler just learning to walk. Its funnel wasn’t well defined, and it was kind of bent at its middle. But now it seems to have straightened itself and is moving with some purpose toward shore. This could be interesting. It’s kind of cool, but I really don’t want it to hit the condo. I’ve seen footage like this on television, and even though these things look relatively harmless, they can be quite destructive.

  The wind is starting to pick up, and now it’s beginning to rain. People are starting to flee the beach. This is always a comical time. I love watching beachgoers’ frantic antics when a storm comes. It’s like an old-fashioned comedy reel or something – people running, stumbling, losing flip-flops, dropping towels, throwing stuff into coolers haphazardly, hauling beach bags and rolling carts full of every sort of item imaginable. Half-clothed and often dripping wet, they make the mad dash back to their vehicles. Sometimes they make it before the storm hits. Most of the time, they don’t. The wind whips them. The rain pelts them. Adults are yelling. Kids are laughing, crying, screaming, asking to be picked up and carried. It’s a smorgasbord for the senses and impossible to take in every essence of ridiculousness.

  Oh, here we go! There’s a family of at least ten all trying to walk up the thin beach access trail that leads to the parking lot at once. One guy just tripped and fell into the beach grapes in the dunes lining the access trail. A woman in front of him got her beach wagon hung up in the staked rope that divides dunes from trail (since you’re not supposed to walk in or on the dunes). Behind her, two kids just dropped a cooler they were carrying, spilling an array of canned beers and sodas into the sand. Now they’re trying to dust them off as they pick them up. Their mother or aunt or someone is berating them, telling them not to worry about the sand, just to hurry up and put them in the cooler.

  Oh boy, here comes the rain. It’s really coming down now. This is GREAT! More yelling, shouting, calling of instructions from those below. They’ve abandoned the wagon and are making a bee-line for their massive van with New York plates.

  People are so crazy. They come to the beach to swim and get wet, yet when it rains, they can’t get back to the dry security of their vehicles fast enough.

  YES! The wind just caught a big umbrella that one of the men was carrying, opened it up, and then ripped it out of his hands. It’s gone sailing off into the dunes about 100 feet from guy. He’s just standing there, dumfounded, obviously trying to decide if it’s worth going after. Oh! Problem solved! He’s jumped over the dune barrier rope and is running through the weeds, sea oats, and oh man, a knee-high cactus he just nailed. Didn’t slow him down much, though. Fifty feet to go. J
ust lost his ball cap to another gust of wind. Now he’s got it back. Thirty feet…almost there…twenty…ten…annnnd the wind just caught the umbrella and shot it another fifty feet from him. Now he is looking up at the sky. And now he’s given up and is headed back to the van.

  Everyone else in the clan has clustered around the van parked in the beach access lot. I’ve moved to the side of our balcony that overlooks the parking lot for a better view as I write. They’re throwing stuff in the back of the van, in the side of the van, on top off the van – all dripping wet and sandy. What a show! That van is going to become one wet, hot, stinky mess real fast (if it wasn’t already) with all those bodies crammed inside it.

  Okay, I’m going to leave the Griswolds to their antics down there and see how the water spout is doing. I can sit down, relax, and enjoy the rest of my cocktail while doing that.

  Wow! The water spout is bigger now, and it’s moved farther south. Good, it won’t hit us. It looks like it’s closer to downtown Cocoa Beach. Whoa! The wind is really kicking up! It’s gusting down the beach as the storm rolls inland.

  There goes the water spout. It looks like it kind of broke down as it hit shore. It’s dissipating. Now it’s gone altogether. But the storm rolls on. It’s REALLY raining now! The rain is coming down in sheets. I can hardly see past the shoreline as I look out toward the ocean. The wind has shifted direction somewhat and is coming in gusts up the beach from the south.

  I love these storms! They really break up what is otherwise a couple weeks filled with little excitement other than figuring out what to have for dinner or what cocktails to make for happy hour.

  Elizabeth and AJ have just joined me on the balcony to watch the rest of the storm.

  4:09 p.m.

  Well that didn’t take long. The storm has pretty much passed. That’s one of these afternoon thunderstorms for you – fast, furious, and then it’s on its way. Just enough to rattle everyone’s cage, cool things down for a few minutes, and saturate everything with a good soaking.

  Wait…what are those? There are things bobbing in the ocean just down the shore from us to the south. I can’t tell what they are, but it looks like they’re floating this way. They must be some sort of debris from the storm, but I can’t tell what.

  AJ has the binoculars out and is trying to get a better view.

  4:21 p.m.

  The bobbing objects are big, blue, plastic barrel trash cans, the types they use closer to downtown around the bars and restaurants. There are three of them. They must have blown into the ocean during the storm. They are bobbing along with the current, riding the waves probably about 50 to 150 feet off shore. They look like they have taken on water as they are riding low in the surf. AJ wants to go out and drag them to shore, but I’m not letting him. It’s not that I don’t want to help clean up the ocean, but the waves are still pretty big after the storm, and those barrels, if they are indeed partially filled with water, can be extremely heavy. If one got picked up by a wave and heaved toward a person at just the right moment, it could really knock them on their ass. I don’t need AJ (or ME for that matter) getting hurt down here and having to be taken to some out-of-network hospital where we’ll be charged an arm and a leg for services.

  Okay, I have more to write, but I’m tired after our long drive down, so that’s all for now folks. We need to go to the store tonight and load up on food for the week since there is hardly anything in the fridge.

  August 25th

  9:09 p.m.

  AJ and Elizabeth are finishing breakfast before getting ready to head out to the beach so I have a few minutes. I didn’t write more yesterday because we had to hit the store, and then work on dinner.

  I have re-assumed my position out on our fourth-floor, wrap-around balcony that overlooks both the beach on its ocean-facing side and the beach access parking lot on our north-facing side.

  Our particular condo (which we purchased almost seven years ago as a vacation home) sits on the northeast corner of a horseshoe-shaped condo building of about 40 individual units. The front portion of the condo building faces the ocean. Its two arms stretch back toward the condo’s parking lot that borders the north-flowing lanes of A1A. Inside these two arms sits a nice-size swimming pool. At the far end of these arms, before you reach the condo building’s parking lot, is the condo clubhouse. It’s a space in which many of the residents meet each evening at around five for happy hour, a time in which we socialize, play games, eat snacks, and enjoy libations.

  Our family tries to make it down here at least once or twice a year, especially during the summer months. We typically plan our summer trip for the end of June so that we’re here for the 4th of July celebration the condo holds each year. There’s a pot-luck barbecue and then we get a permit to have a big bonfire on the beach.

  This year, we were waylaid in our plans because our own condo building back home in Chicago was undergoing a roof replacement during which time we were also having the central air conditioning replaced. We almost thought we weren’t going to make it down, but the roof work was finished early, so we figured we could squeeze in a couple weeks before AJ (our twelve-year-old son) has to be back to school at the start of September.

  So we left Chicago early on the morning of the 22nd. It took us about ten hours to make it down to North Carolina where we stopped for the evening. We had packed our tent and outdoor gear so that we could camp overnight. We found a campground on Mt. Pisgah just outside Asheville. AJ loved it. It was nice, but I have to say, I’m getting a little old for sleeping on an air mattress. Waking up with aches and pains is one thing, having to drive another nine hours after the fact is something else altogether. But the camping was fun. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. We tossed around the football. And AJ and I did some night scouting with our flashlights.

  The next morning, before we left, we took a brief tour around downtown Asheville. Elizabeth said that next year, she’d like to stop at the Biltmore Estate and maybe stay there overnight. After sleeping on the ground, I readily agreed with her. Elizabeth and I visited the estate on a long-weekend trip shortly after we were married and before AJ was born. I think that AJ is old enough to appreciate seeing George Vanderbilt’s massive home and surrounding grounds. And of course Elizabeth reminded me about the winery and wine tasting.

  We arrived to Cocoa Beach yesterday afternoon. I had just gotten our luggage inside and settled in with my celebratory “arrival” cocktail when the storm hit, inspiring me to write my first journal entry.

  I’ve decided to document our stay here for several reasons. Since we come down here so often, many of the trips just sort of blend together over time. I therefore wanted to get some personal thoughts and observations down to kind of make this trip a little different. I wanted to set it aside from the happy monotony that blends our trips here into one fun concoction, similar to many of the libations we enjoy at the beach. Plus, we’ve ingratiated ourselves into this community so well that I want to document our relationships with the regular residents here. We’ve grown so close to them over the years that many of them almost feel like family. Honestly, we probably have more friends down here than we do back home in Chicago. Spending multiple weeks here each summer gives us the time to feel as though we live here, but at the same time not take our situation for granted. Plus, I think that documenting our stay could become a nice tradition. I can continue my journal entries with each progressive trip. It could be a fun way for us to look back on (and maybe even for FUTURE generations to look back on) to see how things “used to be” here.

  We get so fixated with taking pictures, but there’s something about the written word that helps us remember exactly what we were experiencing at that particular moment. Pictures are great, don’t get me wrong, but I want to remember some of the finer details of our trips, and I just find that we don’t always get that through photos. A picture is worth 1000 words until it’s not. And there are things that I can capture with my memories and experiences that I can’t capture on cam
era or video. Sure, pictures are a heck of a lot easier to accumulate. But then again, they can be fleeting. I lost a bunch of pictures from previous years’ stays when I lost my phone last year. I was left kicking myself for not having downloaded them from my phone earlier. It also made me wish that I had a written record to accompany those photos and memorialize the memories we’d made during previous visits when AJ was younger.

  This year, we’re cutting our trip a little short. We usually shoot for three weeks, but this year it’s only looking like it’s going to be two. We have to be home for AJ to start school at the beginning of September. We’ve already burned two valuable days on the drive down, so we have to maximize the ones we have left. And we plan to do just that, with plenty of fun, sun, resting, relaxing, swimming, grilling, and chilling. Oh, and don’t forget drinking.

  Uh oh, I hear AJ calling. This is our first full day of fun and sun on the beach, and Mom and Boy need someone to haul all their junk out there. I’m just kidding. I admit – I LOVE it! Few things feel better than when Dad is needed.

  1:14 p.m.