They ate and imbibed lazily. Christy finally asked, “Are we going to go skinny dipping?”
Jack looked at her with his pale blue eyes and said, “What do you think I brought you here for?”
As Jack was finishing the last of his strawberries, he relayed the sentiment, “This was one fine meal.” He had noticed that he savored every bite way more than he would have a mere two months ago. And something about the sentiment gave him a déjà vu moment, so he shared, “I just had a déjà vu kind of thing, but not for myself per se, it just connected a lot of dots that mean nothing.”
Christy got interested, “I love a good dot story.”
Jack smiled, “Well, the day David Ho died—and I need to sidebar for a second and say that feels like a million years ago, but I digress—that day there was a guy on the White House lawn. He was holding a sign that was alluding to the movie, Soylent Green.”
“I don’t know that movie.”
Jack edified, “I saw it when I was at Davis; someone had brought it up in a food shortage conversation, so I found it online and watched it. It was about the world running out of food and the people were fed these squares called Soylent. There were varying colors, but it turned out the green ones were recycled people. So I observed the guy’s sign on the White House lawn and it said, ‘I saw Soylent Green, and I will not eat people.’”
Christy was intrigued, “So how does this fit in with your déjà vu?”
“Well, in the movie, the lead cop works with a researcher. They are like father and son, and both had a meal like we just did, and when they finished they felt like we just did, overly happy to eat such a simple meal. The elder man, played by Edward G. Robinson in his last role, took that as a sign it was time to leave this world, and although I have no desire to leave this world, the strange feeling of knowing that sadness firsthand caused my déjà vu of sorts.”
They laughed it off thanks to the wine, and as they were finishing the bottle off, they got into a conversation about food places they would miss the most. The food industry had changed overnight, and the first places to disappear were the specialty places like KFC, of course. Christy never ate there, but she did eat at El Pollo Loco three to four times a week, and that was the hardest thing for her. Jack said the hardest for him was no Tony Roma’s, because there he could go any way he wanted with pork, beef, chicken, or even seafood.
They were both amazed that three fast food restaurants actually had stayed in business, but of course all three had ties to the turkey industry previously. In the President’s “Gouging Proclamation,” any business or corporation caught pushing out old vendors to take exorbitant prices from new ones would be guilty of gouging.
McDonald’s was not one of the ones with those connections, and as a result, they lost over seventy-five percent of their worldwide franchises in the span of four weeks. Their infrastructure was not set up to lose all the meats they offered on the menu and stay viable. With shortages and rationing of many of the foods they served, there just wasn’t time to sit for three weeks with no income and then come back when people were settling into this new reality and actually leaving their houses again. He did note that several of McDonald’s restaurants were serving fries, salads, and cokes, and those managed to keep their doors open.
After sixty years of fast food wars, the winners in America were finally Del Taco, Long John Silver’s, Hardy’s/Carl’s Jr., and Boston Market. Everyone else was gone within a month, with just a few straggling flagship stores and headquarters left in each of the major players. Much to Christy’s chagrin, the people who had been prospering through these times were the organic people; she just found them all to be so pedantic.
Regionalism had spawned a new movement of restaurants that were the storefront for a small group of farmers. A direct symbiotic relationship had sprung up where distributors were cut out and the food went from field to restaurant. Just last week Jack saw a new kind of community going up in the valley. They were building a giant squared neighborhood with the growing region in the middle of the houses.
Jack was interested, but until things stabilized out years from now, three hour waits were going to be the norm for anything food related, and Jack wished he were a field inspector, as those guys were bound to pick up some great perks. Then Jack realized there was another word for perks, and that was graft.
Jack and Christy had yet to endure a food line, but his family had. While he was at work, his mother was secretly waiting in the checkout lines for hours at the grocery store while shopping for the family. She said it was a different world out there. People were basically buying the store out, so that when they got shipments in, it was like a bargain store, they just brought the pallets out mid-store and before they even hit the shelves, crowds were carrying off the goods. Even the twenty-four hour stores were closing periodically just so the staff would be able to stock the shelves once a day.
Christy then brought up the deal killer to this conversation, as she informed him that Krispy Kreme donuts had gone out of business. He didn’t know that until she had told him, and once she did, that was it for the, “Let’s bum each other out talking about food game.”
Jack soon forgot about his malaise as she stood up on the flat top rock, stretched and asked, “If we undress, how will we walk around barefoot? Knowing his woman like the back of his hand, Jack produced some nylon-meshed river walking shoes, size seven and said, “These might help.”
Jack had little hope that his skinny-dipping idea would gain traction with the reticent Christy, and was more than surprised when she stood, looked around, and disrobed. Jack was sitting whilst she did this, and the way the backdrop of the redwood boughs enhanced her already perfect looks, he believed he was married to an actual Goddess. When she sat back down on the towel and put her shoes on naked, he had never seen anything sexier in any men’s magazine he had ever perused.
She carefully climbed down the rock. It was a mere four well-jutted outcrops to do so, and she skillfully did so with grace, and again, nothing he had ever witnessed in his life was sexier. He was scrambling to get out of his clothes when he heard her scream, and unlike her, his naked grace was not so skillful and he severely scratched his upper right thigh on the rock as he made his quickened decent in response to her scream.
He landed hard on his feet and they stung as he skipped the last footing opportunity before the ground. She had gone around to where the clearing was, but was back in his arms as soon as he started to move toward the small clearing that led to the pool. She had a panicked look as she said, “I saw a snake.”
Jack went around her and sure enough, there was a five-foot California King snake in the clearing, but upon seeing Jack, it decided that it had enough human encounters for one day and started to make its way post haste into a blackberry bramble. Jack was faster though and got him by the tail, hoisting him upward, and then wrapping the serpent around his forearm.
He turned and gave her a look of admonishment, “If you would have paid attention that day two years ago when I caught one on the trail and explained all about them, you’d know they are non-poisonous.”
Christy looked at him and said, “Either that snake is off of your arm in the next thirty seconds, or I am going to go put my clothes back on.” Park Ranger Jack was done with nature immediately upon that proclamation and he shed the reptile with an impressive quickness.
The two of them waded in and played around in the warm bathwater of the pool. Soon Christy squealed, “I found the vent, I can feel the water coming through, Jack!”
Her enthusiasm was contagious and soon Jack had his foot competing with hers for ownership of the percolating vent. That led to wrestling, then making out, and finally lovemaking. Jack had daydreamed about this moment for the last many months. He had desperately missed her, and as it appeared from her enthusiasm, she missed him as well.
Their lovemaking could not have been more sublime, and as they lay drying out on the big rock like two lizards, Jack knew that if he died
right now, he would die a happy man. Even though the rock was uncomfortable, Christy was softly snoring in no time, but not before Jack had made her laugh when he stated that, “This rock is as hard as a rock.”
He couldn’t sleep; there was a very sharp jut poking some part of him in every position he tried, so he opted to swing around and enjoy nature. He made sure to leave his right arm back and holding her, lest she roll over off the rock accidently in her sleep. The spring was doing its thing; it was bringing life to the mountain, but for how much longer, Jack wondered?
This was the third year of drought, and he easily spotted its effect on the spring. Christy had not been here last year, but he had, and the water had been much higher then, as indicated by the high water marks all around them.
Like mankind did not have enough to worry about, now there is no more fresh water.
Jack was about to wake her for the trip home, but he became mesmerized by watching a blue jay do its thing. It was after a lizard, and the poor thing only had a single rock to try to hide around. With expert precision the bird outmaneuvered him on the round and round and grabbed the little guy, only the jay got his tail, which broke off. One second later, the jay’s meal had scampered under a cluster of rocks all the wiser about blue jays.
Then Jack saw it. A bumblebee?! The official reports had all the hive living bees to be dead, but they hadn’t come to a conclusion about the burrowing ones; the hope was that some survived. Jack pulled out his phone from the backpack, keeping a careful eye that Christy stay put and took a thirty-second video of the far side of the pond. It was a place he had missed before (probably because he could not take his eyes off of Christy), a place that held a burrowing bee colony. There were black little insects with yellow patches and they were the most wonderful things Jack had ever seen. But with no signal out here, he would have to wait to send the video to his boss and Nathan Pierce, his new friend at Synanto.
Even though he was in the private sector, Nathan was the foremost expert on bees and had given Jack the most open look at his company that anyone outside the company had ever gotten. Jack had firmly given up on Synanto as the culprit.
Christy softly snorted, then moved the wrong way, so he righted her toward him and was reaching to wake her when he had an epiphany of sorts. It was something he suspected all along, but his trip out here confirmed it. This place was in harmony. Nothing here was out of balance, so whoever was doing this was aiming it at mankind as a whole, there was no longer any doubt. Only the things linked to man’s food chain were disappearing, and only the ones man had domesticated seemed to be in distress. This was a huge moment for Jack, because he was more resolute to find the culprit than ever.
Then it kind of hit him, maybe they weren’t so far off the trail after all. Someone had done this and they had to have a motive, so what was it? What was the motive for someone ruining everything? Some sort of chaos experiment; but then what would be left? Then it occurred to him, not if you had Noah’s Ark in the form of the DNA of every animal on the planet.
Jack had a thought. He was going to see which corporation held the largest and most remote headquarters, because he was going to stop looking at countries. He actually now believed that some James Bondish type of villain was doing this, who knows, maybe some kind of over the top environmentalist with a God complex.
Jack wasn’t just kind of sure anymore, he was one hundred percent positive that whoever was doing this was also sitting back and watching it. They would also want to be in an isolated place with the ability to be self-contained for a long period of time. There really could be no other answer and Jack was more determined than ever to find out who it was.
He woke Christy and showed her the bees after she cleared the fog out of her head. She took a video on her phone for her Facebook and they left their special place. They both stopped at the clearing and gazed in contentment at a place they could call theirs now.
* * *
Harshal and Oleg departed first. Karen was right on the fence on which way to go, but in the end she did not say goodbye to either. As far as she was concerned, two very small minded and foolish men were going back to a place full of their kind.
Afterward they had to do some handy work, as the second Soyuz capsule was underneath the ISS, and in order to launch it, they had to invert the Space Station. Karen had a few minutes to think, and of course in that few minutes, she had regret. She was no longer just the harbinger of death, she was stepping into the actual role of taking a life personally and it hung on her. She knew it was too late, though, as there was no way to just add another body into the Soyuz, the math was done, their timeframe set.
They had received word from Kazakhstan that due to world events, there would be no second chance at this for the foreseeable future. Like it or not, there was no backing out for Anatoly. She imagined their last moments were going to be something she had loathed previously, but now was accepting, a final Spacewalk.
Commander Zardonov embraced Anatoly, as a respected countryman should, with a firm hug and a look of admiration. He understood why he had made the decisions he’d made and did not judge his comrade. Simultaneously, Karen and Julien were saying goodbye and it was a lot more heartfelt than Karen was ready for. On Earth she had looked for the equivalent of these two her whole life and would have happily taken either. Of course, her destiny was never to be lucky, in love or otherwise, so following her fate it had to be that she met both of them at the same time. Worse, they had been close friends beforehand.
They hugged and Julien sank the knife in a little deeper into her heart by saying, “I loved you.”
She knew what he meant, that he was in love with her, not that he had stopped. She knew that he meant that if it weren’t for Anatoly, it would be he that would be staying with her to die. She looked at him sincerely, “Me too, Julien.”
She said it with a straight face and conviction because that was how she truly felt, like he would have been a good man for her.
She went to shake Commander Zardonov’s hand, but he would have none of that, he bear hugged her as if she were his favorite person in the world. With tears in her eyes, they bade them farewell. It took several minutes for the Soyuz to detach, but when it did, it had the resounding effect of stark isolation. Even though theoretically there was no going back days ago, the detaching capsule made it final.
The Soyuz had to drift a ways out before it fired its thrusters, lest it damage the ISS. Once it did that, the thrusters came to life and the last bastion of humanity blazed away, its burning fossil fuels making a flowery spectacle as it left their horizon.
Karen had vowed to herself that if this man had the temerity to actually give up his life in the most romantic move that mankind had ever witnessed, then she would never allow that man to catch her melancholy, not after all he’d sacrificed for her. Of course, Anatoly made it easy for her, for as soon as they righted the ISS, he let her in on a secret; he had almost no underwear left. He finagled what he could off the departing members, but they too were getting low, so he declared that he would be going naked most of the time.
They followed the plight of the two Soyuz capsules until they heard confirmation that all the astronauts were safe and accounted for, and then they did the thing they had discussed previously—and that was to cut off all communication back with Earth.
Anatoly was hoping that his parents got his exact meaning in his final communication, as they had already had the heartfelt goodbye conversation before he went up. He was counting on the fact that they would not try to have a last talk, knowing that if he wanted that, he would have requested it or simply called.
They shut their communications off at 1634 hours, CDT, on 24 Sept 2015.
Then like two teenagers new to sex, they made love in every conceivable place on the ISS, with Karen now freely able to show Anatoly the advantages of dating a former gymnast in Space.
Afterward, the old Anatoly reappeared and jocularity resounded throughout the station. They both even
tually got hungry and went to the service module, this time it was cheese in the pita, not honey and peanut butter. Being a gentleman, Anatoly was serving her, of course, and Karen got a real laugh at his nakedness, as she had never seen floating genitalia before. He caught her staring, looked down and the two of them had a great laugh—a laugh that was absorbed by the expanse of Space.
* * *
The highway access, both east and west, to Cabazon, California, was completely cut off by a task force of Federal agents from numerous agencies, but at a distance, as they were not the hammers, they were the anvils. The hammers were flying in low out of the east, and they meant business. The attack group consisted of six Bell AH-1 SuperCobras, all of which were heavily armed and not looking to warn.
The outlaws had taken over the entire town, but they had chosen to remain in large groups, with the hierarchy opting to occupy the top three floors of the monolithic casino building. Three of the gunships broke off to their attack points and three of them remained at the casino. As the first light broke on the horizon, the Hellfire missiles began to leave their racks. Before the missiles hit one by one, the pilot’s thermal imaging saw a lot of movement on the top floors, but as the missiles climbed the building, its materials all became a maelstrom of glass, metal, and fire moving many times the speed of sound.
Before anyone could make a move that got them more than a couple of feet, they too were vaporized and became part of the pandemonium, their evaporated bodies exploded out into the open desert air like a fireworks finale.
Simultaneously, their departed squad members attacked the designated strategic attack points with a explanation point, inflicting major casualties on the still rousing criminals. Soon, much like a disturbed anthill, the occupiers were riding out of town as quickly as they possibly could, trying desperately to get away. Like angry wasps, the Cobras did not let up; using every weapon in their arsenal, they were stinging the outlaws until they were driven out of Cabazon and right into the waiting hands of the FBI/ATF Division—who unfortunately for the bikers, were not taking prisoners at this time.
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