June 21, 2094—Sunny Slope, Idaho
“Shift, get Marilyn! It’s time!” Anta called out through the back door of the small farmhouse in which they had made their home.
Shift was in the garden, pulling weeds. Over the past three months, he had repaired fences, built a small barn, planted a garden, and learned how to tend chickens, at least well enough that he wouldn’t kill them accidentally. This new life was a lot of work, but he was happy.
“What? Now? It’s too early!” Shift called back.
“Just get her please. Everything will be fine.”
20 minutes later, Marilyn and every other person in the small community of Sunny Slope had arrived at Shift and Anta’s home. A baby was going to be born. He was coming early. Each person there, especially Anta, was nervous and afraid. But they were also excited. This was the moment they had been waiting for.
Although others had become romantically involved over the past few months, nobody had dared to conceive a child. Today, or soon, they would know whether human life would continue. Within hours, they hoped, they would know their fate.
“Please back up,” Marilyn said.
“Yeah, seriously people. Don’t you have any respect for Anta’s privacy?” Street added, glaring at the small crowd crushing each other in the doorway of the bedroom.
“Uh, Street, you too buddy,” Shift said carefully. “You should probably leave the room too.”
“Oh, yeah, I guess so. Sorry Mayor. Sorry Anta.”
“No problem, Street,” Anta said, smiling.
“I’ll be right out here, on crowd control. Nobody will bother you until you say so.”
“Thanks dude,” Shift said. “And stop calling me Mayor.”
“I’ll stop calling you that after I beat you in the next election,” Street replied, smiling.
Four and a half hours later, the silence in the small farmhouse was broken by the healthy wail of a baby boy, muffled by the heavy wooden door separating the two rooms. The group erupted, many of its members jumping to their feet and heading toward the bedroom door. It wasn’t as if they didn’t understand the privacy issue. The excitement and anxiety was just too great.
Street blocked the door. “Don’t get any closer,” he growled.
They backed away, but the voices didn’t die down for a while. 25 minutes later, the bedroom door opened and Marilyn stepped out, closing the door quietly behind her.
All voices quieted. The room was silent.
“He is healthy, for now,” Marilyn said, “but John and Angel will now take his blood over to the lab for analysis.”
“We should know within the hour,” John said as he walked toward the front door holding a small vile filled with the blood of the new infant. Angel followed.
Even though John had tested the baby’s blood several times before he was born, everybody knew that this was different. All prior tests monitored the baby’s continued fight against the deficient E-rase produced by Toronto which Anta had received via a small cut in her finger during that first battle with the Skins. The baby was easily winning that fight, just as Anta had.
Now, however, the baby had breathed air. They knew, from testing done just two weeks earlier, that AE was still floating around in the air at Sunny Slope, and, they supposed, everywhere else too. Now that the baby had taken that contaminated air into its lungs, and thus, into its bloodstream, they could test the blood to see if Dr. Shevchuk’s vaccine, injected months earlier, was able to fight AE and win. If so, testing would continue for several more months just to be sure.
Over the next 52 minutes, only whispers were heard in the living room of the small farmhouse. The people gathered there had each stood, at varying times, and left the room to get fresh air, only to return to await the results that John had promised nearly an hour earlier. Even though only ten people occupied the small living room, the air was stuffy and claustrophobic.
Finally, 59 minutes after they had left, John and Angel returned to their anxious friends. Street knocked on the bedroom door and called to Marilyn. She opened the door to allow Shift and Anta to hear the conversation.
The air was silent and still. The humidity in the small living room was suffocating. Even with the air conditioner running on high, sweat trickled down faces and backs. Time moved very slowly as John unfolded the piece of paper he was holding. A fly landed on the sheet of paper and he absently brushed it aside with his hand.
Hasani clasped Neirioui’s hand tightly. Jon and Suvan, sitting across the room, also held hands. Angel stood, walked over next to Street by the bedroom door, and wrapped her arms around his wide waist. Mike couldn’t stop his knees from shaking.
Anta, lying in the bed in the adjacent room, held her new baby, Yurgi, against her breast as Shift smoothed down her disheveled hair. Not since that wonderful day, over 13 months earlier, when Dr. Yurgi Shevchuk had announced the successful creation of a vaccine, had they been this nervous and excited.
“Hey,” John began, not quite as eloquently as Dr. Shevchuk had begun so long ago, “we have the results.” John’s face was a mask. His emotions, whatever they were, were not visible—just the way he had planned it.
A few seconds later, John continued, “we have a healthy, wonderful baby! The vaccine is fighting AE just as we had hoped!” Then he smiled, that contagious smile that everyone loved.
Just as many of them had done over a year earlier in that lonely bunker near Boston, the group celebrated. Street provided high fives and butt slaps to most everyone in the group. Shift leaned over to Anta and kissed her lips. His tears fell onto Anta’s cheeks, mixed with hers, and then dripped onto the forehead of baby Yurgi.
At the back of the room, hidden behind several others who were celebrating the glorious news, Marcus typed into his watch: “It worked. The baby will live.” Then he touched the “send” icon.
September 20, 2094—Shift
Baby Yurgi is three months old. His health is fine. Our family is happy. Our people are happy. We have food, water, health and safety. While loved ones are missed horribly, each of us finds peace in knowing that we are a part of the epic story of the continuation of human life on Earth.
Yurgi won’t be alone either. He will have a cousin. Neirioui is pregnant. Hasani, my new brother, is thrilled. We all are.
Life may be hard, but only as hard as it has been over the past few months. We’re still working on maintenance issues with electrical power, home heating and other technologies. We don’t know how long the Net will continue working, but there are tons of books online and we are downloading and printing everything we think we will need in the future. There is still a question about how other newborns will respond to AE. Anta’s case was a little unique. It’s hoped that, unlike baby Yurgi, whose mother’s blood had been contaminated, future children will be born immune as a result of the inoculations of their mothers. If not, however, we may need to reproduce the vaccine for future generations.
We will continue to rebuild. People will again populate the Earth, but it will be a slow process. At least we know, finally, that life will continue.
June 21, 2095—Sunny Slope, Idaho
“Happy Birthday dear Yurgi. Happy Birthday to you!”
Sitting on his mother’s lap at a picnic table on the deck in the backyard of the Bader’s small home, little Yurgi Bader bent over his chocolate cake and blew hard, just like his mom had shown him earlier that morning. The lone candle shifted in the soft breeze and went out.
“You did it!” Anta said, squeezing her son tenderly. A happy smile lit his small, one-year-old face as everyone around the table clapped and cheered.
“Happy Birthday son,” Shift said, bending down to kiss him on the forehead.
Anta and her husband, Shift, had cried tears of joy 12 months earlier, the day Dr. John Silitzer and Dr. Angel Robertson walked into the front room of Shift and Anta’s new home with the test results of their newborn son’s blood. The others had cried with them. Life would continue.
Since
then, two other children had been born, immune to the effects of AE, and were now each as healthy as the last. Neirioui Safar and Hasani Chalthoum had a beautiful little girl 10 months after Yurgi was born, followed a week later by another girl to Mr. Threet “Street” Kimball and Angel Robertson.
Now, the group had 18.
While birthday cake was cut and passed around, Yurgi hopped off his mother’s lap and wandered over to a shady spot on the deck where his future playmates, Sami Chalthoum and Echo Robertson, lay side-by-side in a small portable crib. They were no fun. Moments later, Yurgi wobbled away on unsteady legs to chase the chickens who had carelessly sauntered into the yard again.
The day was beautiful. In fact, life was beautiful. Though the devastating effects of AE were still felt and seen everywhere they went, new life had revealed itself again during the group’s second spring in Sunny Slope. The cattle and other animals, shipped by train across the country over a year earlier, had thrived on the grassy hillsides.
A few baby animals had been born again this spring, immune, just like Echo and Sami. There had been no need to inoculate the new arrivals.
Pigs lazed about, enjoying the warmth of the sun on their pink skin after the previous night’s thunderstorm; and chickens produced eggs in abundance. The copious fruit trees of Sunny Slope continued to produce more than enough for the small group’s needs.
“Yurgi! Do you want some cake?” Anta called from the small porch.
“Yes!” he squealed. He stood slowly and tottered back from where he had sat down to pay with a dandelion.
“Shift,” Street began as he pulled his friend away from the group, “It’s time we went down to Brazil.”
“Yeah, it probably is,” Shift replied. “Anta has dreaded this, but I don’t see how we can keep putting it off.”
Six days earlier, the computer in Mike Petrovsky’s lab had registered noises—static mostly—coming from somewhere in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Mike spent hours slowing down and speeding up the recording, trying to hear any sound beyond the static. Finally, he heard one word: “Idaho.” After numerous failed attempts to speak with anyone by whom that word may have been uttered, and reviewing scratchy and unreliable feeds from USCAN, Shift decided they would need to investigate in person.
Mike had not been able to pinpoint the exact location from which the word had emanated, nor had he been able to determine who, or what, had said the word. But the noise had come from somewhere near the center of the city.
Mayor Shift Bader kept a large quantity of the original doses of E-rase, the vaccine that had ensured this small group’s survival, under lock and key in a safe room at his home. For the past four years, nobody but Anta, Shift and his friend, Dr. John Silitzer, had access to the safe room. They didn’t know whether they would ever need the vaccine again, but if they did, it was available. The vaccine had been in the cooled safe room, untouched, for over a year, save for monthly testing to ensure its continued potency; but if, or when they went to Brazil, they would take the vaccine with them.
Now, despite some trepidation about leaving the group, Street was getting restless. He finally gathered the nerve to speak to Shift about it, while Anta was busy with her guests.
“If you go, who do you want to go with you?” Shift asked.
“That’s easy,” Street replied. “You and Jon.”
“Jon? You think Steve, or Suvan, would actually sanction that?”
“Hey, he’s his own man, right? He’s not a kid anymore, and I trust him with my life. So, yeah, that’s who I want to go.”
Jon was definitely not a kid anymore. At 17 years old, Jon Porter stood an imposing six foot three inches in height and weighed nearly 210 pounds. His strength had grown tremendously as he farmed the land around Sunny Slope. And he was not afraid. Of all the adults in the group, Jon had been the only one in favor of conducting long-range searches for human survivors after their arrival in Sunny Slope. When they first arrived in Sunny Slope, at just 15 years old, he had pushed the group to go looking for survivors on several occasions. And he, along with Neirioui and Suvan Safar, were the only people known to be naturally immune to AE.
Now, he carried a lot of weight, both politically and physically. His opinions mattered. And the people loved him. But Suvan Safar loved him most. And Jon loved her back; at least, he thought it was love.
“If you can convince Steve, and Suvan, to let Jon go, then I can probably convince Anta to let me go. But you, my friend, may have the most difficult time. Angel is one tough mother. So, good luck with that.”
Street laughed. He loved his wife. And she was one tough mother, as of two months earlier. Even though Echo was born healthy, the birth nearly took Angel’s life. Dr. Marilyn Swenson believed that any other person would have succumbed to the loss of blood that Angel suffered in those first few hours after Echo’s birth. But not Angel. She had a daughter to raise, and a man to love, for the first time in her life. She was not going to let that come to an abrupt end; especially not after surviving AE, the Skins and a trip to the moon.
Angel’s intensity and fire continued to push her to greatness. Her home was the finest in the community; and her garden was thriving beyond expectations. She even had Mr. Threet “Street” Kimball wearing clothing other than tank-tops and jeans. She was respected in the small community and loved for her passion. And Street adored her. She was the mother he never had, the friend he’d always wanted, the lover he’d dreamed about, and the mother of his child. Above all, that was the thing that mattered most. Echo was a beautiful girl, just like her mother, and Street was wrapped around her finger.
But Street knew he would have no difficulty convincing Angel that it was time to go. He and Angel had spent the last three nights discussing this very topic. Her fascination with the effects of AE so many years ago had worn off. She wanted Street to go. She would miss him, but she was smart enough to know that they had a responsibility to find anyone still living and help the human race survive. But Shift didn’t know that.
“Okay boss, I’ll work on Angel, and I’ll talk to Jon. You go do your job and get Anta to agree. It’s time to go.”
“Alright, but I’ll wait until the party’s over to talk to her, if that’s okay with you. I’d like a piece of cake.”
“Sure boss,” Street laughed.
Shift smiled as he walked over to Yurgi who was sitting in a high chair at the table, frosting all over his little face. He held his hands out when Yurgi turned to look at him. Yurgi smiled and giggled when he saw his daddy. The future looked bright. It was a new world—one full of promise and hope.
July 16, 2095—Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
“Is everything ready?” Shift asked. Lilly, sitting next to him in the cockpit of the small plane, turned her head to look at Shift.
“Yes. Ten seconds to lift off. Will you tell the folks back there to make sure they’re buckled?”
Shift leaned back and twisted his head so he could see the eight other people in the rear of the plane. “Buckle up everyone. We’re out of here in a few seconds.”
Lilly pushed the throttle forward. The plane was old, and still ran on fuel, but she had figured out how to pilot the craft. As she moved the plane out onto the runway at the Carlos Jobim International Airport, past large ships and smaller jets that had been sitting idle for more than five years, a tear formed in the corner of her eye. She absentmindedly wiped it away with the back of her hand and then pushed the throttle all the way forward.
The airport sat on the western edge of a small island in Guanabara Bay. While the exterior of the buildings on the grounds appeared well-preserved, the tarmac at the large airport was rutted and cracking. Roots from Guapeba trees and other plants had spread across and under the tarmac in several places, causing upheavals in the once-flat airstrip. Prior to their flight, the small group had walked the runway and cleared the plants and roots that crossed the path their plane would take, but it was still precarious. They had marveled at the damage which had occurred over a
mere two years of disuse.
The small plane lurched once, twice, and then began a swift acceleration. It bumped over cracks and gouges in the concrete runway, but finally left the ground. Shift exhaled, releasing the breath which he had involuntarily been holding.
“Whoa,” Shift groaned from the co-pilot seat as the plane began a steep ascent from the hot tarmac. He wasn’t serving any function sitting in front with Lilly, but the plane only held 10 people, including a pilot and co-pilot. He had eagerly volunteered to sit up front with Lilly. Now, as the ground began to drop away, his stomach tightened and he had to close his eyes. He had never flown on a plane this small.
“I’m going to keep it low so I can follow landmarks,” Lilly said. “Probably only 400 or 500 meters off the ground. I don’t know any other way to get us to Idaho.”
“That’s fine with me,” Shift replied, holding his stomach.
Less than 10 minutes into the flight, Street called up from the back. “Do you guys hear that noise? Is that the plane?”
All talking ceased as people strained to hear what Street had heard. Lilly checked her gauges. Everything looked fine there. Several people looked out the windows. The sound seemed to be coming from outside the plane.
“Oh crap,” Jon said moments later. “Is that Franconi’s ship?”
“Shite,” Nic called out, looking in the direction Jon was pointing. “He’s headed straight for us.”
“Evasive maneuvers Lilly,” Shift said. “If that’s even possible in this thing.”
“I’ll try to . . .”
Lilly’s words were cut off as a loud explosion rocked the rear of the plane. The plane dropped instantly, nose down, toward the ground. It began to spin as the left wing separated from the main body of the ship.
“Hold on to something!” Lilly yelled as she attempted to level out the plane before impact with the ground.
Within moments, the ship crashed through the dense upper canopy of the Tinguá Biological Reserve north of Rio de Janeiro. As it broke through sinewy vines stretching between Murumuru palms and other large trees, pieces of the plane severed off, leaving a trail of debris 250 meters into the undergrowth. Fire engulfed the rear of the small plane as it finally came to rest in a small clearing.
Tomorrow We Rise Page 30