The Old Man & the End of the World | Book 1 | Things Fall Apart

by Harrison, William Hale

  “First of all, Doctor Schooner, I was sorry to hear about Doctor Bradley. He was a good man, and worked hard for his country.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  “Doctor Rush, what’s the latest on this parasite? Are we getting anywhere at all on a cure, or at least a vaccine?”

  “There’s no progress whatsoever on a cure, I’m afraid. Other than certain people having a natural resistance, we haven’t found a way or stopping or even slowing the progress of the parasite once it enters the body. It seems that either you’re immune or you’re not. As far as a vaccine or some kind of deliverable immunity, we’re making baby steps.

  “Through DNA analysis, we’ve been trying to isolate some single gene or set of genes that correlate to immunity. So far we’ve been unable to locate any gene or configuration that correlates at one hundred percent, but we’ve identified twenty-seven configurations with at least a ninety-five percent correlation. We’re trying now to induce immunity through genetic modification by replicating each combination in volunteers who have siblings who have already contracted the disease, so as to minimize the possibility of a pre-existing resistance.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing has worked, sir. We’re still trying to unravel how this damn thing works, and this triploid DNA structure is giving us fits. We have unlimited access to the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge and Sierra at Lawrence Livermore and we still can’t crack it. It seems to have a way of… shifting… so that one time it assumes one configuration and the next time the same sample will indicate something else, which is impossible, but there it is. We’re also sharing all our data with China and their Sunway TaihuLight system and vice versa, but so far everyone is stumped. The bigger problem is, this thing is tearing through the population so quickly that even if we find a way to genetically engineer a fix, there’s no feasible way of getting it to a significant number of people in time.”

  “Thank you. Doctor Schooner, what can you tell me about the rate this thing is advancing?”

  “Mr. President, the percentage of the population worldwide which is apparently immune to the parasite seems to have leveled out at about three percent. In this country we’ve now had over twelve million primary and secondary infections, which is a bit under four percent. The rate of secondary infections is up, indicating that we are seeing less cooperation from the population in identifying people with symptoms. Worldwide, we estimate the rate of primary and secondary infections combined, at eighteen percent and climbing. Deaths associated with the parasite are estimated to have topped one and a quarter billion. Other diseases common to large upheavals and natural disasters, such as typhus and cholera, are also way up as social and political structures break down and infrastructure collapses.

  “Sir, we’ve been getting data from medical organizations around the world which have been running autopsies on people who have not died from the parasite. People who have died in car crashes, or of cancer, heart attacks, all that. They’ve been examining the target areas of the brain for early evidence of pre-symptomatic infection. They’ve been microsectioning—”

  “Microsectioning? What’s that?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. It’s a process where a tissue sample is sliced into microscopically thin segments so they can be scanned. Computers then look for the presence of spores, or the various types of parasitic cells. It’s the only way to find them reliably. This is being done in Japan, China, Europe, and the US.

  “I’m sorry to report that among all those sampled, the people who don’t show any sign of infection are holding at about three percent, meaning that essentially all of the world’s population has this parasite already, except for the naturally immune. And it’s only a matter of time, we believe, before every single person who carries it will turn.”

  “Does that hold true in this country as well?”

  “Yes sir. The numbers here match the rest of the world’s.”

  “So what you’re telling us is that, other than the immune, the whole world already has this?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir. It’s our projection that, barring a vaccine or a cure, by the end of next year the entire world’s population will be somewhere below 225,000,000 people, or less than a quarter of a billion. The population of the United States will be reduced to about 9 million. And those figures don’t reflect an upswing in disease and deaths due to starvation, exposure and violence. And the Infected. Once those factors are accounted for, we’re probably looking at half that. Or less.

  “Civilization as we know it will end. I know that sounds like a line out of an apocalyptic novel, but unfortunately, it’s accurate. In fact, cultures that are currently the most backward by Western standards will probably be the most resilient, at least early on. If you currently make your living fishing out of a dugout canoe or dragging a plow behind a water buffalo, your life isn’t going to change much. For people in the developed world, it’s going to be a nightmare.”

  “All right. Is there anything else you can tell us?”

  “No sir. We’ll keep pressing forward to find a cure or a treatment, but I’m not optimistic.”

  “Doctor Rush? Anything you’d like to add?”

  “Unfortunately, no, Mr. President. I concur with Dr Schooner.”

  “Okay, thank you both. Please keep me posted with any developments.” He terminated the call.

  A long silence hung in the room while the people gathered there contemplated what they had just heard. No one seemed to want to be the first to speak.

  Finally the president spoke. “Okay, here’s some thoughts. Number one, we don’t want to let this get out until it’s absolutely unavoidable. If people know for a certainty that the world is about to end, it’s going to get really ugly, really quickly. So that means closed mouths. Everything that’s been discussed here is now classified as top secret. Anyone who gets caught blabbing about this, and I mean anyone, is going to end up in a jail cell in a federal prison while the world goes to hell.

  “Number two, I want this crap about my administration being responsible for this parasite and hiding some secret cure to end, here and now.” He pointed to the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate.

  “That means I want statements from you two that are clear and unequivocal, and I want them repeated as many times as necessary. Get the word out to all your people that this bullshit will no longer be tolerated by you, period. Anyone gets out of line on this, I expect you to slap them down as hard as is necessary.”

  The Speaker glared indignantly, “Mr. President! What gives you the right—”

  “Oh for God’s sake, shut up!” the Senate Minority Leader snapped. “You’re worried about winning the next election? Well, there isn’t going to be a next election, probably not for years and maybe never.” He turned to the President and said, “You will have our full support, Mister President.”

  “Thank you. Now, three, at some point here we’re going to have to declare martial law. We’ve already got a national state of emergency, but we’re going to need more powers than that provides us if we want to keep control and not have the country spiral into chaos. I want to wait as long as we can for that. Put together a working group from the Justice Department and representatives from both parties to decide what triggers we need to look for so we’ll know when the moment is right.”

  “Mr. President?” The Secretary of the Navy leaned forward. The last two months had been difficult for her. She had lost her husband to the parasite, and lost her only daughter when a mob of thousands attacked the US embassy in Jakarta and burned it to the ground. “Sir, it’s my belief that we have to do what we can to help prepare the survivors somehow.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, how do you skin a deer? Make a fire? Filter water? Grow crops? There are a lot of skills we’ve lost that these people are going to need again if they’re going to survive.” The room sat quiet
as the enormity of the question sunk in. How do you save all the knowledge that man has acquired in 10,000 years of civilization?

  The following day, two men were ushered into the Oval Office. One was Arnie Dumas, a tall angular Mormon congressman from Utah. The other was Steven Reinhold, the junior senator from Idaho. The President came around from behind his desk and shook hands, and then offered them a seat. They waited until the President was seated and then sat on the broad sofa.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I asked the two of you here today.”

  The men looked at each other. “Not really, Mr. President,” Dumas said.

  “No?”

  Reinhold leaned forward. “We’re both preppers, and the world is about to go to hell. You want us to help prepare the nation for the crash landing.”

  The President nodded. “I’d say that about sums it up.”

  Dumas smiled. “Actually we’ve been hoping for this call for a while now. You know, sir, millions of words have been written about this scenario. Worldwide plague with a low survival rate, population of the US reduced to, what?” He looked at Reinhold. “Seven million?”

  Reinhold responded, “My people are thinking more like five by this time next year. Maybe less, depending on the severity of the winter and how many of the Infected can be eliminated before things go totally to hell.”

  “So what can we do to help the survivors make it through?” the President asked.

  “Start fortifying military bases as survival centers. Walls or heavy fencing, redoubts filled with supplies. Food, ammo, medical, the works. Transport as much fuel there as you can, and make sure it all has additives to preserve it. Send them all the survival literature you can get your hands on. We can tell you which are the good ones.”

  Dumas said, “Provide them with tools and seeds for farming, remembering that it’s harder than it sounds to find seeds that aren’t hybrids nowadays. Truck in livestock. Don’t leave it up to the bureaucracy to handle this. Get local contractors involved in building fences and barns with the promise that their families will be let in when it’s time.”

  “What about some kind of knowledge base for the future? How do you build a smelter, take out an appendix, all that?” The President stood up and went to the window. Outside on the street, protesters were carrying signs saying, “Give Us the Cure!” He shook his head. “Oh hell!” he said sadly. “We should have started this years ago, made sure there was some kind of repository.”

  “Mr. President, another thing. You need to make an appeal to the nation to keep vital services like food production and power generation going as long as possible. The longer we can stave off collapse, the more people are apt to make it through.”

  The following evening at 6:59 p.m., the President sat at his desk in the Oval Office. He was outwardly calm, his shoulders squared and his hands on the desk. A single TV camera crew prepared to send out a feed which would be broadcast on every network, every cable system, every streaming service, every radio station, all of them poised to transmit his words. There had been some protests about interrupting their programming by some of the more progressively oriented outlets which, even now, were taking an adversarial stand toward the White House, but their legal teams had quickly informed them that yes, the President did have the power in a state of emergency to compel them to do just that.

  As the second hand approached the 12, a producer counted down with his fingers and then pointed at the man behind the desk.

  “My fellow Americans,” he began, “This country and the world as a whole are now facing what is probably the greatest threat in the history of mankind. A world-wide plague, in the form of an infective parasite, now threatens humanity’s existence. Many people, most people, are likely to die in the months ahead. In the United States we’ve already lost twelve million people. The death toll throughout the world has now surpassed a billion, and there’s no break in sight. If anything, the rates of infection are going up.

  “Because of this plague, last week I declared a National State of Emergency. This allows, among other things, the use of the United States military within our borders to help combat this scourge, assist in the distribution of food and supplies, and deal with the ever-mounting problem of the disposal of those who have died.

  “We hope this crisis will not alter the way you live your daily lives. In fact, we hope that you will go about your routines as long as possible. Right now, as a nation we have to be focused on two things. Number one is getting us through this terrible epidemic with as little unnecessary suffering as possible. And our brightest scientists, and scientists in countries around the world, are striving around the clock to find a cure, or at least a vaccine, against this disease. Number two, however, is even more important, and that’s to give the people who survive this plague, and our country, the best chance of survival afterwards.

  “If you have children then you know, as a parent, a lot of what you do isn’t for yourself. It’s for your children. You try to do everything you can to prepare them to go off into the world, carrying your hopes and dreams on their shoulders, and become as successful as they can be. As a nation, we must think of the survivors as America’s children, and do everything we can to send them off into the world to succeed.

  “So if you work in agriculture and food processing, please keep doing your job and producing as much food as you can, so the people still living can be fed, and the excess stored for the future.

  “If you’re in manufacturing or retail, please continue to produce everything that might have value to the survivors, and make it available. Now that we’ve largely stopped receiving deliveries of goods from overseas, it’s all the more important that we all step up.

  “If you’re in the energy sector, let’s try to keep the lights on as long as possible. The entire country is depending on you.

  “If you’re in the media, please keep working. It’s more important than ever to keep people informed and keep them entertained.

  “And if you’re in an industry that no longer matters, get out and find a place where you can help! Vital businesses are losing workers every day.

  “So far, although there have been spot shortages, thanks to America’s brave and hard-working farm families and our great food processing and distribution companies, there continues to be groceries in the stores. In the next few weeks we’re going to be handing out ration cards and setting up food distribution centers in areas that are hardest hit.

  “We are also taking steps to support our banking industry. We are converting a number of long-term federal investment instruments to cash to ensure liquidity, so that people can deposit and withdraw money from their banks without fear.

  “We will be working with state and local governments to open and staff as many transition centers as are needed to handle all the people who become stricken by this parasite, and to dispose of remains in a humane and sanitary way.

  “We will be constructing survival centers all around the country where we’ll stock food and supplies, and store information that may be vital to survivors.

  “This is a time for Americans to come together in a spirit of cooperation and love for each other. And with God’s help, and each other’s, we can continue the great story of America. Thank you, and may God bless you, and may God bless the United States.”

  Inverness, Illinois

  July 12th

  The grown-ups sat around the table on the patio at Dan and Terry’s house while the kids scampered around the play set out in the yard. Jack and Anita were there, and along with Uncle Owen, Jack and Evan, plus the Whitehalls. Owen had shown up with a pack of thick T-bone steaks, which were currently sizzling on the grill.

  “T-bones!” Evan had exclaimed. “Where did you find these? I can’t believe it!” There’d been shortages in grocery stores around the country, especially in perishable goods, and the quality and variety had taken a nose dive. Power outages
, traffic snarls and disruptions in the delivery chain due to manpower problems had made it increasingly difficult to get fresh meat and produce, and the prices were through the roof on items like prime cuts of beef, assuming you could even find them,

  “Straight out of my freezer,” Owen said with a smile. He’d loaded up on steaks before there was any sign of a shortage. “Got them from a butcher in Elburn called Ream’s. Best meat around. You should try their bratwurst.”

  He’d been on the phone that morning with a friend and hunting buddy back in Telluride, a man named Jerry Pretty Weasel. Jerry was a full-blooded Crow, originally from the reservation in Montana. He’d moved to Telluride a decade before with his pretty young wife Tonya. He owned a successful shop where he repaired ATVs in the summer and snow mobiles in the winter. As far as the old man was concerned, he was a damn genius with motors and things mechanical. They’d done some hunting together over the years, mostly elk and mule deer.

  They exchanged news about the general deterioration of the state of things. Jerry asked him, “So, you comin’ back here sometime?”

  “I don’t know, amigo. My family is here and I want to stick around and take care of them. We’ve talked about coming out there, all of us, but they don’t want to leave. I guess they’re hoping this will all blow over.”

  “Not much chance of that, seems to me. History kind of repeating itself, only this time it ain’t just us Indians gettin’ it in the ass, it’s everybody.”

  Owen agreed. He said, “Hey, buddy, I want you to do me a favor, if you don’t mind. I don’t know how much longer you’re going to have power, but it isn’t going to last forever. You still have a key to my place, don’t you?”