We wasted no time in leaving Oklahoma. We simply found the road that led to the old Interstate 44, which would lead to Interstate 20, which would lead to Interstate 49 all the way south to the supposed island in question. Renee Island was the destination, a tiny splotch of land off the Atchafalaya Delta. Humid, muddy, flat, and without human contact, it had nothing all while having everything we needed.
No, I was not happy about it. I’d spent my entire life way up north where cold was normal and heat was met with a crooked eye, especially with deep-south humidity in the mix. I was not happy that my environment was going to change permanently. Even while coming to Oklahoma, I always assumed I would be heading back to Minnesota when we had found and warned Pauline. But this was relocation and it didn’t make me happy. That said, I truly feel I had no other choice but to be by myself forever and ever.
The interstate highways seemed to bear the weather of twenty years quite nicely. Cracks and some bumps and a few tree dodgings, but going slow the journey was relatively a breeze. We kept our map intact, relying on it very carefully for every little challenge in navigation. We had enough food—Gene ate actual food along the way and seemed to enjoy it—to keep us from dying. Water, too, was no issue. We occasionally stopped in empty cities and towns to look for gasoline, although what was in the tank and what we hauled with us in reserves would certainly take us to Renee Island.
Just the same as our trip down from Minnesota, we occasionally got marked by a few highwaymen looking to take our stuff and our lives. Nothing came of it. We were seasoned now, easily able to detect when such a situation like this would arise. One man on a motorcycle chased us for about ten miles before fatally crashing into a building on a sharp turn. Or I think he died, we didn’t check.
The difference between this trip and the one in August, and it was a vast difference, was the people. Yes, we were seeing people on the road, beside the road, near the road, in buildings, against trees, and anywhere a person might be able to stand or sit. Nobody hid because things were changing. The Ire, as it were, was loosening its hold on humanity. Our inclination was right. Incubation was over, time for the ‘disease’ to die. But it held on still, thus we saw people peppered throughout the land instead of masses welded together like pre-2030 days.
To say the least, this was the prime reason the relationship between Gene and I had grown so stale and almost hateful. The moment he saved me from the falling wall may have been the most astutely grand moment of my life. I was talking, in person, with another person again. It was a miracle. But now, with so many conversing, the miracle seemed more along the lines of natural flow, as in we weren’t special. Gene loved our bond. But our bond, as it turned out, was gradually becoming the normal bond between all humans.
We read reports on our cells of the change globally. Flegtide was not the thing that assassinated the Ire. Flegtide, in fact, may have delayed the human mind’s natural reaction to not kill by proximity. It was an astounding coincidence that Flegtide was released the same month the Ire began to dwindle. Absolutely astonishing timing. The Centralized Authority in Bern released a voice statement on our way down that none of us will soon forget. I listened to the statement, the speaking man’s German accent giving me a slight chuckle, in private while eating under an awning somewhere in the middle of Texas I believe.
Emergency ZLL-7-TRWWC-43-1 All Human Existence. 16 September, 2049. 10:30 GMT+1. We can now confirm that SPMS across the globe is swiftly losing hold on the human race. Reports have been surfacing for two full weeks of people interacting with other people with no signs of fatal hostility. Researchers are extremely confident based on this and recent tests on the brains of the recently deceased that SPMS has run its natural course. We must be extraordinarily up-front from the beginning that we have no reason whatsoever to believe this was due to the recently released drug Flegtide. Flegtide has been ruled out, and as such our warning against the drug is severe. Do not, under any circumstance, ingest and inject the drug Flegtide now or any moment in the future. Its effects have shown to work temporarily but its side effects are almost always fatal. Any surplus you possess should be burned immediately. While SPMS remains in lower stages of intensity for the time, some who still experience it might be tempted to use Flegtide. Rest assured that your symptoms, like all others’, will subside in time and you will be able to interact with other humans in the foreseeable future. It has been proven that a small percentage of individuals are experiencing stronger symptoms than normal, often leading to extreme acts of violence outside the bounds of typical SPMS grounds. Unfortunately for these people, there seems to be no hope for SPSM being lifted, and as such many of these people require being euthanized. We do not use the term euthanize lightly, especially with regards to our own species. However, brain examinations of people exhibiting these symptoms shows a starkly different manifest in makeup, thus ruling them out for the natural death of SPMS in them. This is a grand price to pay if we are to reassemble a society twenty years after it was stripped of us. It is worth the cost. We will be transmitting updates on the state of our conditions daily, no matter how much or how little has changed. Good luck to you all.
Wow. This was not a small thing. This was everything, for the most part, that we’d been wanting to hear since the Ire began. The game, just like in 2030, changed completely in an instant. We could be a society again. And yet, we continued on to Louisiana.
I never asked Gene if he had listened to the statement. I have little doubt that he didn’t—that cell was always in his hands along the trip, always looking for more information. Even so, I knew he would not want to talk about it. The final portion of the statement directly involved him and it was in no manner good news. He was the outcast, the one the CA was saying needed euthanized. I had a hard enough time trying to even think of the word euthanize when involving people, let alone a person who was the only one in my life anymore.
The drive the rest of the way to the island was nothing short of stunned silence and awkward nothings all throughout. The tension from the risk of either of us saying a word about Gene’s misfortune as told in the statement warranted the lack of conversation. But by now we were used to tension between us. I slept the majority of the way there.
I woke from my sleep in the early stages of the morning sun thanks to Gene’s halting of the car. I rose to see an ocean, a splendid view I’d not seen since my trip to the Bahamas in 2028. My breath was taken away mildly.
“Already here?” I asked Gene.
“Yes,” he sharply returned. “On foot from here.”
“Foot? There’s no road to Renee Island?”
“Wallace, Renee Island is remote in a collection of islands in a delta. What would be the purpose of living on an island with easy access via roads? Too many people could get in and the meaning of the island would be shot.”
Again, I had nothing to lose. I had nowhere else to go. I would sink down into the bottom of that barrel. With what little dignity I had left, if any. On foot we trekked across the beach in search of a small craft. I don’t know how he could tell which one was Renee Island, but Gene sort of had an internal compass to guide him there. He was determined to reach it, if only to remove himself from the world he had come to destroy. It was for this that Gene carried the largest bags containing cans of food and a surplus of cell batteries he’d found in Oklahoma.
“We’re never going to go back to the car again?” I asked.
“Maybe. If we need to power our cells, which may or may not be necessary.”
I knew the answer was yes after hearing his explanation. It was obvious he had private things in the trunk due to his insistence that all food cans were to be placed in the backseat. I very much did not want to know what he kept in that trunk, mainly because I knew based on our recent past.
We found a skiff with oars on its side, a well-crafted little boat that didn’t seem too bothered by the weather of twenty years. That was our transportation. We unloaded the bags and rowed off to the direction onl
y Gene knew. It was maybe ninety minutes-worth of arduous rowing until we found ourselves on the shore of the island Gene was certain went by the name Renee.
Gene immediately picked up the bags and set off in the direction of a lone hut toward the center of the tiny slice of water-bound land. No words, he just left. It felt almost like he didn’t want me to follow him, although I was certain this was not the case.
I sat my butt against the wall and looked at the palm trees surrounding me. They contained no food, no sustenance, and no reason. They were just there. It symbolized my life anymore. No point and no rhythm, with nobody really there to make myself care about anything really. This would be my life. A cow had it better than me, because at least they had food. No idea what I would do for food. No idea what I was doing at all.
~~~~
Chapter 30
Idle Minds
I heated a can of navy beans on a fire I built beside the hut. It would be my first meal in utter isolation, far more isolation than what I experienced in the development. Gene remained in the hut preparing a bed of palm leaves and the same blanket he’d been using since we left Minnesota.
The hut itself was more of a bunker, its gray cement walls more suitable for a shooting range than a makeshift house. It was large enough, with two little rooms off from the main room. The windows were still intact, as were the front and back wooden doors. It had kept the rain out for the most part. However, decades of neglect, possibly well before 2030, had sent crack after crack through the structure. It had a roof and that was the only issue at play here. No running water and no electricity meant we were literally back to caveman days in a building that somewhat resembled a cave.
More importantly, the fact that I lived in a hut, the same type of structure we were forced into in the months promptly following the Ire’s induction, meant I had regressed. I remember receiving messages from people in nearby huts wanting to talk with me, such as that Babblerook fellow. If I went through the list on my cell and went all the way back to that day, I could reach out to Babblerook. But alas, we had no service. Not on this island. Far more remote than any other place on the planet from my standpoint. Babblerook would remain a mystery.
But did he have to be a mystery? I pulled out my cell and let curiosity, nostalgia, and boredom all take me over. I went through my messages by date. It took five long minutes to finally reach the 2030 folder, and even more after that to find the request. There it was. J Babblerook, White Male from St. Cloud, 23 Years Old. What would happen if I found a signal and dialed that number? Would Babblerook answer? Would Babblerook be long dead, a victim of the suicide epidemic that swept the world that year and many following?
“What are you looking at?” Gene asked me suddenly as he sat on a rock across the little lawn from me.
I had nothing better to do than placate his now-unusual request for conversation. “Did you ever get requests back in the development that you just didn’t answer back?”
“Well, of course not, Wallace. I wanted all the friends I could get at that time. But I fell victim to one that wouldn’t answer me back.”
I knew where he was going with this.
“I tried for months to get him to return my request but he hesitated. Smarmy little shit and a player.”
“Okay, Gene.”
“He was probably off sulking over how much of a loser he’d become and how he needed to end his life.”
Gene smiled, but I knew there was some truth in his little jovial refrain.
“Maybe he still hurt from a previous disaster,” I said. “Maybe the guy didn’t want to get bowled over by a friendship that he would always try to stack up against his last one and it would never get that high, no matter how close it came. Maybe the guy didn’t trust you, Gene.”
That smile turned upside down in a hurry. He gazed at me. “I never meant to be anything but a good friend to you, Wallace.”
“Gene—”
“I’m not perfect by any means. I eat people and I think I may have forced you to eat people too in a subconscious kind of way. I begged you to come with me to Oklahoma, to uproot your life. But you know what? I would do it all again because you’re that important to me. You’re my best friend, Wallace Auker. You’ve stood by me when nobody ever had any reason to even look at me. I know you feel that way too.”
I could not argue with the man. He was right, and boy was he ever so goddamn right. Gene was my best friend not through default of being my only friend, but rather through the time I’d invested in him willingly. I cared about him more than I could imagine, and I didn’t even know it. It was a dagger through my heart, stomach, and balls all at once. It wasn’t fair, but that I knew.
“I do, Gene.” Like I was marrying him.
“Who was trying to contact you before I did back in the beginning?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I know it doesn’t matter, Wallace. But you’re obviously trying to go back in time to something you missed. I’ve seen it in your eyes. You’re looking for a piece you forgot or left out.”
Quite insightful for a monster. “Just some person from St. Cloud.”
I nearly said the name, on the tip of my tongue, before a giant gust of wind bulldozed both Gene and me from the rocks on which we sat. Another gale poured directly through us a few seconds later.
“What was that?” Gene said.
My ears suddenly got very heavy while my head instantly began to ache. “Pressure drop.”
“So?”
“Some storm coming through, Gene.”
“We’ve seen enough of those lately.”
“Probably bigger than that, my friend. This is an island on the Gulf of Mexico. Plenty of big storms out here. Big.”
“Certainly not a hurricane, Wallace.”
“Certainly possible, Gene. And that pressure drop, it wasn’t little. Unique. I think we may consider it some tropical thing.”
It was my turn to be right, and how right I was. I’m not too sure of the categorical strength of this storm, but it did not joke around. It would be perhaps one of the most terrifying 48-hour periods of my whole downtrodden life.
It started on the night of our arrival to Renee Island—timing was perfectly bad. The wind steadily increased from gusty to hold-on-to-the-trees bad to no-more-tree-to-hold-onto bad. We remained inside the hut once the rain began its toll on the island, most of it sideways. It felt and sounded like a train directly beneath the hut for three straight hours in the darkness of the early morning. Very frequent lightning was our only way of knowing exactly how horrible it was outside.
That little hut, it knew its stance. It didn’t give an inch. Not even a window was busted or cracked. Truly, this structure was built with the intent of withstanding deadly storms off the gulf. I bet it could survive a nuclear blast.
After the storm passed, we emerged from the concrete building unscathed and unchanged. Being so close to our own deaths should have meant we counted our blessings, saw things in a more positive light, and looked forward to happy things. Sadly, we were the same two friend-type things with no aim and no joy.
“What are you thinking?” Gene asked me as I once again heated up some beans for the both of us.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“Do you want to know what you hope I’m thinking or what I’m honestly thinking?”
“Hmm, how about both? Give me the fake Wallace answer and then the real one I know I’ll loathe.”
“I’m thinking I would like to find some food growing around, like on the trees that are still standing. A coconut, bananas.” I had no idea if those fruits actually grew in Louisiana, but it furthered the conversation. “I’m also thinking of trying to sleep tonight. Bugs and humidity, it’s not been easy.”
“I see. So, what are you really thinking?”
“Do you want know, Gene?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know, Wallace.”
I sighed. “I’m wondering why you haven’t
taken off to some place with people for feasting. I’m wondering how long before the urge built within you takes you for a ride into mania once again. I’m also wondering...” I paused.
“Yes?”
I was silent.
“Wondering what, Wallace?”
“If you heard the CA announcement last week.”
“Oh, indeed I did hear it.”
The tension rose to a towering level over both our petty lives. More than ever.
“And?” I said.
“I’m the dead rat,” Gene said. “I’m the horse that came up lame. Society is the veterinarian and the world is the track I’ll be put down on. My super-Ire is a condition this new un-Ired world wants gone. It’s in the stars. I’m not stupid, Wallace. I’m just angry.”
“And why are you not blowing up on the universe over this right now?”
“Because if I did that, there would be no one left to eat.” He joked, as told by the chuckle he let out. “Really, Wallace, I don’t have the energy to care. My sister was just murdered in an old fashion, pre-Ire, cold-blood kind of way. I have no home. I’m stuck with a person who can’t stand the ground I walk on. And believe it or not, I do not have pride in the fact that I am quite simply a cannibal now. I eat humans. I’m a cannibal.”
It was a night and day transition from angered man with confidence to whimpering bag of sorrow as Gene went to his knees then his side on the island dirt in a sad cry. He was just now realizing the full impact of admitting his cannibalism to himself. Stress overran his entire being.
“I’m a cannibal,” he softly said, tears running into his mouth amidst the statement. “Cannibal. Why? Why, Wallace? Why do I enjoy eating people? I am nothing more than a living zombie from the movies. I want to die.” He gradually repeated this phrase in lower and softer tones until he finally fell asleep.
I went to my bed of palm leaves in the hut and slept like a baby. Seeing him wallow in guilt and pain helped me, which I shouldn’t have liked but I did anyway. The hurricane, too, had wiped me of energy.
The Populace Page 18