Black Parade

by Jacqueline Druga

  “Daniel,” his voice grew close and he stood beside me. “Perhaps an early death would be best.”

  “How can you say that?” I asked with desperation. “This is your son. Your family. Your granddaughter.”

  “Exactly.”

  I tilted my head, conveying through a look for my father to explain more.

  He did. “Daniel, have you witnessed the final moment of someone dying of this virus?”

  I shook my head.

  “It is not pretty. It is not peaceful. It is violent,” my father explained. “It is obvious that the person suffers greatly. Their body shakes and expels. It is a death I would not wish on my worst enemy, let alone my eldest son.”

  I closed my eyes.

  My father continued, “Mrs. Matthews is not killing people, Daniel. She is sparing them the agony. I need you to know that. These people will pass on anyhow. But do they deserve to pass on so painfully?”

  “Who are we to play God?” I asked. “How do we know they won’t turn around at the last minute?”

  “You are right. We do not. And these decisions and choices that we make right now, we will answer for when we leave this earth. But we make them out of compassion, my son, not out of malice.”

  I nodded.

  “Please do not condemn Mrs. Matthews or myself. We just do not want to see the people suffering if we can spare them. If we can have them leave peacefully, we will do all we can.” He laid his hand on me. “Your brother has felt your presence long enough. You are needed with the others.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t. I can’t.”

  “You must.”

  “Why?” I said. “Father, I didn’t ask for this. I don’t want to help anymore.”

  “You may not have asked, but you are being asked.”

  I looked at him curiously.

  “Daniel, we are not sick. You and I have been spared of this illness. We have an obligation.”

  “I don’t have an obligation to anyone but myself.”

  “Do you really believe that?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well I do not. I believe we the healthy are responsible and must help those who are sick. Helping the sick is our way of showing our gratitude.”

  “Gratitude? Gratitude for what?” I snapped with anger. "Gratitude for being spared to watch all those we love die? To watch the world end?”

  “No, gratitude for being special enough to be chosen to keep this world alive.”

  I had no response.

  My father placed his lips to the back of my head and whispered. “You are special, Daniel. Come.”

  I felt and heard him leave. I stayed there in the silence, with my brother for a bit longer. Then after allowing my father’s words to sink in and affect me, I bid my farewell to my brother and fulfilled my obligation.

  3.

  Finalizing

  Slowly the communication with others trickled away and people began to die faster and faster.

  On June 2nd, two days after we arrived, we lost the bulk of the sick. Over fifteen hundred in one day.

  Fifteen hundred.

  It was the day before, when my father knew we’d be hit big with a massive wave of death that he made the executive decision to move the bodies to one area and burn them all together.

  Spec. Dewey and Bentley found a backhoe and spent the entire night of June 1st digging a hole. We put the bodies in there.

  Rather, we dumped them there.

  It was California. It was hot. The smell was unbearable. Smoke, smoldering flesh.

  There were so many people hitting the death phase of the virus at one time that we couldn’t keep up with the mercy killing.

  At one point I found myself running. Running away from the suffering, the screaming and the pain.

  I think our little aid station lasted longer than most. From what we heard on last radio call, most were in their final moments.

  We went from Sunday to the last person dying on June 4th.

  Five days.

  However, the last two days were nothing. A few people hanging on. That was it. We were able to give them the complete attention and care they deserved.

  My brother’s wife was the first to pass on quietly, then their daughter. Sam held on for the longest.

  I was there when he passed. It was almost as if he were waiting for me.

  At the end he, like my mother, had one last lucid moment before he slipped away and left us.

  My entire family was gone.

  At the slowing point, just before the last person passed away, I swore my father was going to break. How could he not? He had just lost his wife and his son.

  He told me that he looked at me. That was how he kept going. In a world where people lost everyone, he still had me.

  I started to view it the same way.

  Bentley made contact with the Captain that was gathering people.

  The plans had changed. That was on June 2nd, when his last sick person died.

  Instead of north, they were heading south. Thinking ahead, the Captain said, to the colder months. He had other reasons as well for the location. At the time, I didn’t pay much attention. Bentley got the meeting place and informed him that the seven of us would be there as soon as we were done.

  We were instructed to bring supplies. Once there, what all we needed would be determined, but we were still supposed to bring supplies.

  Bentley and I made the supply run. There wasn’t much left to do at the church.

  There were seven of us left. My father and Mrs. Matthews handled the few remaining sick.

  Bill Owens, that was his name, worked with Spec. Dewey on the bodies. The seventh guy, Ralph, really didn’t do much the last two days.

  No. Wait. He slipped into a depression.

  Bentley and I asked him to join us but he declined. Spec. Dewey asked if he wanted to help with the bodies. He declined. Asking him wasn’t real smart on Dewey’s part. I mean, the man was depressed over all the death. Loading bodies into a pile wasn’t going to take his mind off things. It could only make it worse.

  Let me recount.

  We arrived at the church on May 31st. And the next day things got bad, really bad. On June 2nd, most of the people died.

  Bentley and I made the supply run on June 3rd, and by the fourth day it was done. Over. At four forty-five pm, the last person passed away. My God, it went fast.

  In a way it was a blessing though. I don’t think I could have handled all that death and sickness for much longer.

  We made plans to pack up, burn the last of the bodies and leave for the meeting place the next day.

  The day of the last death my father and I returned to our home. We buried my mother and collected belongings that could never be replaced.

  On the morning of June 5th we all woke up, some before others. All of us were suffering from a sore throat and cough. My father said it was from all the smoke. That was also the morning we couldn’t find Ralph. We were scheduled to leave early, but we couldn’t find him.

  Finally Bentley did.

  While adding the last of the gasoline to the dying flames of the burning bodies, he saw Ralph. Ralph had flung himself into the pit sometime the night before.

  It was time to go. Time to move on and meet up with the Captain and his gang.

  We had two trucks loaded and everyone was ready to go.

  Everyone but me.

  I don’t know why, but I had an urge to stay behind and look.

  I wanted to look for survivors, friends that I had and that girl I had liked.

  “Daniel, now is not the time to be separated,” my father said. “You must come with us.”

  “I will, Father, but I need a day or two. I will be there in a day or two.”

  “Then I’ll stay with you. I’ll make this trip with you.”

  I shook my head. “No, go with the others. I’ll be there. I promise.”

  Mrs. Matthews convinced him I would be fine and it was something I needed to do. Bentle
y wanted to come with me. But I wanted him to escort my father. I felt better knowing that he and Dewey were their protection.

  I would be fine. I knew it. I just had to search. I had to see the finality for myself.

  Besides what if there was a person all alone? They wouldn’t know about the meet or that there were others?

  Even more than helping the sick, I felt compelled to find and help those who were alive.

  My father, Bentley and the others left just before ten am. They’d arrive at their destination by nightfall.

  I had Bill’s pickup truck, some food and an M-4 slung over my shoulder. No radio, no means of communication with them, just a wing and a prayer with no course of direction.

  I stared my quest that day. Honestly, I did feel like Charlton Heston in the Omega Man. I saw no one, absolutely no one … that first day.

  I had promised my father I would arrive at the meeting place in two days.

  It took me a week to get there.

  Like a puzzle I had to finish, I didn’t stop until I felt my job was complete.

  Once I found the first survivor, instinctively I knew there had to be more. They were more than likely spread out, but there had to be more, so I continued.

  I was glad I did.

  In the course of that one week on the route to the meeting place, I had to replace my means of transportation and get more supplies.

  I had found twenty-three people. Nine of which were children. Children not even old enough to care for themselves. Six of them were under the age of five.

  I brought my group to the meeting place, but I realized I couldn’t stay.

  If there were twenty-three people, there had to be many more. And I only happened across them through the areas I searched on my way to the meeting place. What about the places I didn’t search?

  After resting, I geared up to go. Only this time, I accepted the offer from Bentley. He would go with me.

  My father didn’t question me. He understood and was proud.

  I had found my calling. My post-plague life mission.

  We fell into a routine that we never thought twice about. Bentley and I would fan out, search, find and return. After resting and situating survivors, we’d do it all again. Over and over.

  We searched until we felt we couldn’t search anymore.

  We never stopped.

  That first six months after the plague, before winter hit, we had found three hundred survivors.

  It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to be a community again.

  To move on. To rebuild.

  That was our focus.

  The continuance of mankind.

  Mankind.

  A mere species on the brink of extinction. We were doing our part to see that wasn’t going to happen.

  Most people believed that if the world was going to end, it would be God’s doing. I always believed God never really had a time or date when he was going to do it. He knew man well and knew man would take care of that deed for Him.

  Or nature would do it.

  Nature has a way of eradicating things. Mankind being one of them.

  Eight billion people in the world. Almost 330 million in the United States alone.

  In the course of one week the plague had decimated 99.9% of those in the United States. Less than four million remained.

  Violence took nearly a third of those healthy people in the chaos and pandemonium following the virus.

  Within the next couple of week’s poor sanitation, water poisoning and starvation claimed even more lives.

  In the next few years, disease, hunger and savagery took even more.

  It was estimated by the greatest theorists and mathematicians that five years post plague out of the four million fortunate enough to be immune, possibly only one million or less remained.

  One million people in a big country.

  It was a big empty country.

  Finding Utopia

  4.

  Gray’s Mountain

  Admittedly, when I first heard that the three men putting together the ‘meet’ were military men I was apprehensive. Not that I wouldn’t join them, but I thought for sure it would be some militia or some tightly run boot camp.

  I was wrong.

  They picked the location not for military strategy, but for survival.

  South, so it was warmer in the winter. A nearby lake for fresh water fishing, and the small town with all of about two dozen homes, was at the foot of a mountain range, perfect for hunting.

  We would always have fresh meat.

  These guys were outdoors-men and marksmen like you wouldn’t believe.

  They taught me how to shoot, which would be necessary if I was going to be going out and finding survivors.

  There was one thing I had a hard time finding.

  Women.

  For some reason there weren’t many.

  We all believed that the virus favored the male gender.

  Several of us had a family member who survived.

  The community was run by Captain Thomas Gray, who from day one was just known as Gray. He was a no nonsense man who had spent his life in the service.

  He was a true survivalist who was always thinking ahead.

  When I first arrived at the camp I didn’t know what to make of him. He was quiet and seemed to observe a lot. He carried a pistol on him at all times and stayed in uniform.

  I didn’t understand that.

  At first.

  After my day of rest, he spoke to me telling me how cool, yes, he used the word cool, how cool it was that I found people. I told him of my intentions to find more, and he welcomed that idea.

  “Then before you go out there, let me or my men train you,” he said.

  I didn’t understand why and he explained that the first couple of weeks everything was going to be fine, but the longer people were out there starving, the worse it would get. He cited some post apocalyptic movie they showed him in the service.

  In fact, he wanted to train every able-bodied man, woman and child to fend for themselves. He had a bad feeling about what would become of our world and those who weren’t resourceful enough to survive without violence.

  I had a quick two day training, with a promise that I’d do more when I returned.

  Having more faith in the human race, I still had to put stock into what he said.

  I was always aware.

  Before Bentley and I left, Gray called me to his little office slash home and asked if Bentley and I could scavenge up bottled water.

  “There’s a stream,” he said, “We can boil that water for drinking, but it’s not plentiful or sufficient in the long run if we pick up more survivors.”

  I rather chuckled at that notion, mentioning the huge fresh water lake.

  He chuckled in return. “That would be great to pipe the water from, in fact I'm pretty sure they were already piping it from there. But until we figure out how to get a good filtering system, we need bottled water.”

  “I have no problem picking up water. But …if you think the water from the lake is piped through, what’s wrong with the filtering system it has?” I asked.

  “Danny, it needs electricity to run. Haven’t you noticed, there’s no electricity?”

  Of course, I noticed. I nodded. “Turn it on.”

  “If we could, don’t you think we would have?”

  I didn’t. I laughed at myself and the thoughts I had. “Gray, I honestly didn’t think you guys wanted electricity. I thought it was a rustic thing. Back to basics.”

  “Back to basics is great, but electricity would be better. For the water. For heat. For keeping the meat cool.”

  “So basically, if you had electricity, it would solve some problems.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s it?” I shrugged. “Piece of cake.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Gray, I’m your man. I’m an electrical engineer. Though I like to say I’m a fix it guy. Ask my dad, he’ll tell you there’s nothin
g I can’t fix. If I can’t, I just build another.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You can put the electricity on?”

  “Just need to locate the main power grid, get that up and running again, and shut off everything but to this area. It may not be marked well, or in a way I’d understand, but I can do it. It’ll be easy. Gray, the only reason there’s no power is because everyone manning the station got sick or left. No one was there to monitor it. If it’s not updated, it shuts down. It’s a matter of getting it back up.”

  “How long will it take?” he asked. “Days? Weeks?”

  I bobbed my head. “Once I locate the main power source, understand the grids, and see where the power pipes to here …. Eight to ten hours steady working. There may be some problems, but nothing I can’t fix. Dude, I know electricity well. I’ve wired half the new buildings in downtown Los Angeles.”

  You would have thought Gray was a kid with a new toy. He clapped his hands together, chuckled, and then squealed a scream of delight.

  I laughed. “It’s only electricity.”

  “It’s water. It’s meat that won’t go bad. It’s so fucking cool that you can do this.”

  I shrugged. “When do you want me to do it?”

  “Whenever is convenient for you.”

  “I really want to get out there and look for people.” I paused to think. “Tell you what, Bentley and I have Los Angeles and San Diego slated for this trip. We’ll be back in one week. How about you find the power station, and I’ll do it when I get back?”

  We sealed the deal with a handshake.

  I left the next morning with Bentley for a survivor search.

  Let me tell you, when I said I’d be back in a week, I truly underestimated how big Los Angeles was. It took us a week just to get through the city.

  But I promised Gray I’d be back and I was. San Diego would have to wait for the next trip.

  Back to L.A.

  It was bad.

  I often thought as we went through the city, that I could only imagine New York. I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near New York, especially since that was the starting place of it all.