A. R. Shaw's Apocalyptic Sampler: Stories of hope when humanity is at its worst

by A. R. Shaw

  A. R. Shaw’s Apocalyptic Sampler

  Stories of hope when humanity is at its worst

  A. R. Shaw

  Apocalyptic Ventures, LLC

  Copyright © 2021 by A. R. Shaw

  Registration Number: TX 8-465-244

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Introduction

  Some said that China’s intent to develop the H5N1 virus merely came about as an attempt to culture a vaccine, knowing the nation’s dense population would be at catastrophic risk if attacked by such a virus. Others said that China’s motives had always been sinister, and that they had developed a weaponized form of the virus. In the end it didn’t matter what the intentions had been; having tinkered with Pandora’s box, and without safeguards in place, they had unleashed it. And not only on their own people; it spread like wildfire across the globe, exterminating more than six billion souls. The million or so who were still alive were somehow immune, but they were carriers. As for the virus itself, it became known simply as the China Pandemic.

  1

  A Fate Worse than Death

  Shivering in the pounding Pacific Northwest rain, Hyun-Ok needed to see for herself what threat the grim man in the distance posed. She’d heard him yelling before, followed by a gunshot blast and then a terrible scream. Having already counted him an unsuitable candidate to offer her the aid she needed, she had to be certain he wasn’t an immediate threat to her and her son.

  With a death grip on the bed of the parked black pickup truck behind which she had taken refuge, Hyun-Ok gasped in horror as the crazed man powered up a small, worn backhoe. He scooped his victim up with the bucket, then spilled him, still alive and screaming, into a massive fire he had kept burning all day in a Dumpster.

  She slinked away, her broken sobs bringing on a coughing fit from her own infected lungs. The agonized screams finally stopped, and Hyun-Ok grieved in silence for the unlucky man’s soul as sparks flew skyward. She must escape this part of town! The grim man, Campos, had posted no trespassing signs, and his actions told her he meant it.

  She was her son’s only hope, and there was little time left to ensure his future. The disease weakened Hyun-Ok more each day, and she knew she would soon die. She could not leave her five-year-old to fend for himself with the likes of Campos around. Her days of scouting had told her there was only one person left to consider; the search had already taken up too much valuable time and energy, and Bang had to be in caring hands soon.

  The one she was thinking of had one more to bury anyway. She might as well spend what little time she had left with her son.

  Hyun-Ok recovered from her coughing fit as best she could and continued her journey home. She would need to make the trip in silence through the forested night, hidden from the few remaining people. Since coming to the realization that Bang showed no signs of the virus she had been venturing out like this, into the dark, every night.

  One by one those around her had died off as she cared for them, Bang always at her side. Her elderly mother had been the first to go, followed closely by her father. Shortly after that, her husband, though he desperately clung to life, not willing to abandon his wife and son.

  Covered in the sweat of fever, and her words rasping, Hyun-Ok had assured him his son would be fine and urged him into a peaceful beyond. “I will be with you soon, my love,” she’d told him with tears streaming down her face. As weak as she was at the time, the tears had surprised her.

  The endearment, and the true meaning of her words, had sparked something in her dying husband. His eyes darted from Hyun-Ok to Bang, who was standing at the bedside. In brutal agony, he drew himself up to gaze at his son’s face. “He must not be left alone and defenseless in this world gone mad!”

  Hyun-Ok tried to comfort her husband with words, pushing him gently back toward the mattress, and she revealed her plan to safeguard their son. Her husband held them both close, praying aloud to an unhearing god that he could draw them with him as he slipped away.

  That was just a week ago, and that night, after Bang drifted off to sleep, Hyun-Ok had gone out canvassing for the few remaining survivors in the neighborhood. Cloaked in black and defying the many dangers, she spied on the others and assessed them based on instinct alone. She estimated six hundred had originally occupied this immediate area in the Seattle suburb of Issaquah, and with only a 2 percent survival rate there should be twelve survivors—now known to be carriers. Of those she had only found seven.

  Tonight she immediately discounted the first person she came across, two streets over, as being too elderly to be the guardian of a child of five. This lady only had a year left in her, if that. Hyun-Ok’s boy needed someone younger to carry him through life, at least into his teens.

  The man she found next made her uncomfortable. She observed him decidedly grieving for his lost family, sitting out in a lawn chair in the night, yelling obscenities. He taunted and waited for the starving dogs, now gone wild, to smell him out. He shot at them, but it seemed to her that he was only trying to provoke an attack. She could sense his massive sorrow and knew his intentions were suicide by mauling if he could manage it. If not, he would likely soon take his own life. Sadly, she suspected that happened a lot with survivors.

  Hyun-Ok crossed the highway unseen and found a scantily clad woman picking apples from a tree in a vacant lot. She knew the woman would attract the wrong kind of attention and wouldn’t be a good choice for her son’s welfare.

  The man she had finally chosen seemed the only one capable of being her son’s guardian. Not only that, but something about him—either the way he carried his tall frame or the thoughtful dignity with which he buried his loved ones—assured Hyun-Ok that the neighbor named Graham would prove himself the best guardian. She knew that she could trust him with her boy. Knowing that as soon as Graham’s father passed away he’d have no more to bury, she could take her boy to him going on her own journey into death. One more day, she thought. But before then, I need to write to him about Bang.

  With a sad smile, she stepped through the maze of parked vehicles, listening attentively to all sounds and alert for any dangers. She glanced back at the glow in the distance one last time. The last remaining obstacle would be to make Graham understand that he needed the boy as much as the boy needed him. She knew that would be the greatest challenge. She had to convince him of that or her son would be doomed.

  2

  Digging Graves

  The frail man reached out to his son. Through tears, Graham gently grasped his father’s shaking hands as he lay dying. He knew it was the closest they had ever been.

  Graham reaffirmed that he would go on as they had planned, that he would always keep the rifle beside him. Through drowning coughs his father reminded Graham that taking his own life was not part of Go
d’s plan; it would only ensure a soulless wandering in the afterlife and would prevent him from ever again joining his departed family.

  Having seen the signs so many times before, Graham knew the end was drawing near. He became desperate, knowing that the difference this time would be him standing alone without a soul known to him. His father’s wheezing came in shorter gasps, his eyes drew quiet, and his face sank into itself. Graham went from the desperation of losing his father to praying for mercy and a quicker end; he could take no more of this torment. Just like all the others, one by one, they all died in anguish.

  Graham could not understand why he still lived. He had watched helplessly as his wife Nelly had died, taking their unborn child with her. Then his dear mother left him, followed by his sister and four-year-old niece. And now his father.

  “What will I do without you?” he asked.

  “Do what I have taught you, Graham. Make good decisions along the way, and don’t regret anything. You’ll do fine. Always know that I’m proud of you.”

  Graham wiped spittle from his father’s lips and clutched his hand.

  When death finally came, his father assumed a peaceful demeanor and said for the last time, “I love you, son.”

  Exhausted from the night’s endless vigil, Graham rubbed his face. Tears of frustration, fear, and loss streamed down through his light brown whiskers. He had not shaved since way back when things were normal, and he did not care if he ever shaved again. Food, and even the very air he needed to breathe, had lost all importance. He could only wonder how he could possibly go on without his father’s strength and guidance.

  With his last racking sob, Graham took a deep breath. “Buck up,” his father would have said sternly. And that’s what he decided to do. He was now the father of the clan, and he continued as if there was a family to lead.

  There was only the one last grave, though this one would be the hardest to dig. Such little consolation would have to do at this moment. Everyone he’d ever known was now gone: all of his family, friends, and acquaintances. From the lowliest beggar to the wealthiest tycoon, no class had gone untouched; even the president had died. This was an equal opportunity pandemic; no one could be accused of racism or class warfare.

  With only the blue shadowy morning light peering in on them, Graham reached over to close the blue-veined eyes of the man he loved and admired.

  “Good-bye, Dad,” he whispered, kissing him on the forehead. He wrapped the edges of the white bedsheet slowly around his father’s body; it was a skill he had learned through repetition. Then he left the room, walking lightly so as not to disturb the peace.

  His father had asked Graham to leave space in the middle of the other four graves in his mother’s prized rhododendron garden. On one side lay his mother and Nelly, and on the other his sister and niece. His father had wanted it that way so he could “safeguard the ladies.” Graham had known that his dad, always the gentleman, would hold out to the very last, until after the ladies had gone.

  In October the soft loamy ground would still shovel easily, though it would freeze soon enough. The autumn rains were often misty, but this morning it rained as if it meant it. The digging would have to wait.

  Graham dreaded this final act almost as much as when he’d buried his beloved Nelly. He slumped down in his father’s living room chair and sobbed uncontrollably. “Where do I go from here?” he yelled, grabbing his water glass and flinging it across the room, where it crashed against the wall.

  But he already had his answer; his father had already made him commit to certain plans. Graham remembered this but asked aloud, “What for?” He continued to sob, frustrated by the lack of answers.

  He left the bedroom, walking to the dining room window to peer out into his mother’s garden. He saw the fading leaves of the rhododendrons, and the memory of their spring flowers made him wish he could somehow share his grief with Nelly.

  After the pandemic had started, he and his wife had fled to his parents’ isolated home from the chaos that had come to Seattle. With Nelly’s teaching job suspended due to futile quarantine efforts and Graham’s job as a math professor gone, it only made sense to get the hell out of their apartment in the city. The decision became final when shots rang out one night, waking him from his sleep and causing him to clutch his pregnant wife securely against him. The next day they learned their neighbors had been murdered for their food supply. Fearing that he and Nelly were next, he packed the car and they left.

  As humanity died off, people turned on one another. Fresh food was at a premium, and even preserved foods were running short. The immune preyed on the living; they desperately searched for dwindling food supplies because the grocery stores were no longer being stocked. To make things worse, counties had implemented quarantine roadblocks in an ill-fated attempt to lock infected populations out, thus making residents prisoners within their own communities.

  Even though Graham had been raised by a Marine Corps father, he staunchly believed in gun control. He blamed easy access to guns for the various school shooting tragedies and railed against the ongoing wars fought abroad. These views had been furthered in the liberal-minded schools and universities he’d attended and subsequently taught in.

  Having grown up in the Northwest, Graham embraced its culture and ideals, unlike his mother and father, who had kept their worldly views to themselves. They had never taken sides publicly nor tried to push their own views on their children. They had wanted Graham to become his own man in their troubled world.

  Though Graham’s dad had insisted that he learn to hunt at a very early age, Graham had never owned a gun of his own. His father often tried to convince him to have a pistol with him for protection, especially since he was married and lived in what his dad thought a dangerous neighborhood. Graham had always refused, and had even tried to convince his father that those were the old ways of thinking and that every situation could be reasoned out peacefully.

  His father, of course, doubted this based on his own experience. While he worried about his son’s attitude, through the years the older man’s subtle teachings provided Graham with the skills he needed to survive. He wanted the boy to be prepared regardless of personal ideals or political affiliation. They spent a lot of time in the wilderness. Even at their family cabin, where all manner of survival skills were keenly disguised as camping or hunting lore, he tricked his son into learning.

  They would sometimes arrive at the old cabin that had been retrofitted over the years with running water and electricity to find both unavailable. Graham’s father would then show him how to set up solar panels for power and how to sterilize the nearby lake water. He also taught him how to hunt and cook outdoors over a wood fire. Graham now realized how clever the man had been in those early days to teach him so well.

  Before it all came apart, Graham and Nelly had been happy and enjoyed healthy lives; they had just celebrated their second year of marriage. She was a planner and a list maker and, not surprisingly, had their futures all mapped out.

  Graham usually arrived home first and got dinner ready for them. On one particular day, Nelly had been down with a cold, so he’d planned to make her favorite knockoff of a soup they both enjoyed from a local Italian restaurant, the one with sausage and kale. He was startled that evening when he found her home from work early, balled up and crying on their bed. She was not one for weeping fits, so he knew something terrible must have happened to her as bent down to comfort her. She resisted, and sat up to face him. “I’m pregnant!” she blurted out through tears.

  “You’re what?” he asked, stunned.

  “I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby, and it’s way too early. It’s not part of the plan. Now I won’t be able to get my masters degree.”

  He pulled her toward him, even though she struggled and kissed her swollen red lips. “You’re so silly, Nelly. We’re going to have a baby! It’ll all work out. I love you!”

  But nothing did work out. Soon later the pandemic came, and
it took Nelly and their unborn child.

  Now that he was all alone, Graham wondered how many in the neighborhood were still alive and how many would, as his father had warned, have “evil intent.”

  The pelting rain had dwindled to a light mist. Graham retrieved his slicker and shovel from the garage, and his rifle from beside the door. A rifle: it felt as natural to him now as carrying his keys. Anytime he ventured outside he had it slung over his shoulder; indoors it was always within arm’s reach. “At all times,” his father had insisted.

  Graham knew it was time. His throat tightened as he tried to suppress more tears. Out among the rhododendrons he leaned the rifle within reach against the garden shed. The wind picked up as he stood and listened. He and his father had made a practice of this early on; the act of listening had become one of the rituals of survival. The silence should be filled with familiar sounds, and the total absence of them could mean trouble. There were very few familiar sounds now.

  No distant train could be heard, no planes overhead. No lawnmowers, or cars’ squealing belts, or the ever-present roar of Interstate 90 passing through town. Neighborhood chatter and children at play were now only past memories, but they were the sounds that Graham missed.

  What he did hear was often met with the natural instinct of fight or flight: the howling of a dog (or was it a wolf?); the noise of dogs fighting over prey, as fear-inducing as any distant gunshot; the occasional scream, though in recent days these had become less frequent. This was what Graham chose to distract himself with while bending over the soaked loam next to the mounded grave of his mother; the ruminations of a world gone silent.

  As sweat dripped from his nose he heaved each shovelful with vengeance, using the activity to release some of his anger. He continued to toss shovel after shovel of dirt, ignoring the pain in his back and shoulders.