The Lazarus Impact

by Todarello, Vincent

  “If it ever gets too crazy out there, will you come try to find me?” asks Apocalypta, Brandon’s long distance internet flirt from the message board.

  “Hell yea. I have the directions to your farm written down in five different places,” he responds with an added smiley face.

  Like him, she is 15 years old. Only her parents have a secured compound in the mid-west. They live like the end has already come to pass. Brandon is jealous of how well prepared they are. Fully energy independent, a greenhouse protected from the elements, scores of weapons, and a fully sustainable food supply. They even have a security perimeter. Apocalypta feels like a prisoner in her own home, but after years of conditioning she’s become accustomed to the lifestyle.

  “I hate to say it, but I hope this thing really happens so that one day maybe we can finally meet,” she writes. But before Brandon can return the sentiment, his bunker goes dark. A deep, sustained rumble shakes all around him. No lights, no internet, no nothing. Boxes of food fall from their shelves, his bean pyramid tumbles, and his stacks of comic books and porn magazines slide and flop to the ground. Oh shit...

  He feels around, trying to make his way to the hatch. God damn it. Why didn’t I install a flip switch for the generator? Stupid asshole. I need to get up there and start it up before anything happens. The generator itself is protected by cinderblock walls that he built around it, with a padlocked metal door on one side. The shed might be blown to shit, but at least the generator will be safe. He would also need to get his parents down there before the shit hits the fan. If a big enough meteor struck the earth close by, the whole house might be torn to shreds in just a few moments.

  He gets closer to what he thinks is the ladder up, but in his haste he haphazardly steps on a can of food that tipped to its side. His legs kick up from underneath himself. Those fucking beans! He slams to the floor, cracking his head on another fallen can. He slips into unconsciousness, never hearing the banging and yelling from the hatch above, never hearing the cries of his parents.

  CHAPTER 3

  He knew something big was up when the power flicked and the whole place went old school for a good half hour. Emergency backups, manual overrides, keys instead of buzzer buttons, the whole nine. When everything powered back up, Marcus heard the guards whispering about running generators and the national power grid failing. But there was more electricity in the air when the power was out than when it was on. He could sense the tension, the calculation, the energy from his fellow inmates. All it takes is a split second for a caged animal to find its way out.

  “How long those generators gonna last, mutha fucka?” Harley taunts the guards from three cells down, sparking a chain reaction of supportive screams and metallic banging throughout the entire cellblock. The prisoners are on edge, knowing they’re restricted to their cells until further notice. Marcus sits quietly on his bed, refusing to join in the commotion. He doesn’t mind the restriction so much. He likes being alone with his thoughts.

  “Roll!” yells a guard from two floors down. “Stand up and face front!”

  Where the fuck we gonna go? Marcus is more pissed about being disturbed than about being confined to his cell all day. He stands up and faces the bars of his cell, tuning out as the guard walks the row and calls out everyone’s names, awaiting their responses.

  “Better keep these doors fuckin’ locked, mutha fucka! There’s more of us than you, nigga!” Harley belts out again, rousing the others into a ruckus.

  “William Harley Davis,” says the guard. All falls quiet on the block.

  “Fuck you, nigga!” Harley responds.

  “Open 368!” the guard yells. The door pops open and the guard, along with two others, enter and beat Harley with their night sticks. Makeshift mirrors sparkle in the fluorescent overhead light along the row of bars in the cellblock, all trying to get a glimpse of the repercussions. Marcus stands still, resolute, unaffected.

  When the beating is done, the guard continues his walk of the row. “Marcus Johnson.” Marcus blinks from his haze of thought to see the capped guard standing before him, in front of his cell. He tips his head down and his eyes meet the guard’s. It’s Thompson. He and Marcus talk from time to time, and he keeps Marcus up to speed on sports. He’s one of the nicer guards, but Marcus knows not to cross him like Harley just did. Flecks of sprayed blood speckle Thompson’s face. Harley must’ve gotten it pretty bad this time.

  “Here sir,” he responds quietly from six and a half feet high.

  “If blue keeps it up they’ll be in the bowl this year,” Thompson says, winning a grin from Marcus in response before continuing on.

  At 285 pounds of solid bronze muscle, Marcus could have easily beaten the piss out of Thompson and the other scrawny white guards that put a beating on Harley. But he likes to think of himself as a reformed man, at least he wants to be. It’s tough to truly reform in a den of thieves and killers. He knows his crimes earned him true damnation, something beyond the earthly punishments that mere man can dole out. He feels remorse. He truly does. This prison is just a waiting room. He often says so among the few people he socializes with. If he had it all to do again, he would have done things differently.

  At 15, Marcus had already developed a customer base selling weed on the streets. It was small time, but it got the attention of some of the local dealers. He was a big dude, even at that age. The dealers saw him as an asset, a resource. Rather than make an example of him, if they even could, they rewarded him. He became an enforcer. A collector. A carrier. By 18, weed was long gone and he was on to more lucrative substances, and he had already killed. By his early 20s he was known by all the locals, and even a little bit beyond. Soon enough he was under police surveillance. But Marcus knew. One night he slipped away and stashed money, valuables, and even his truck in a rundown building outside the city that he bought with cash, using it like a storage unit. Then he paid a visit to the snitch and beat him to death. The police caught him after. That was the only crime they managed to pin on him, but it was enough to put him away for life.

  He often wonders if everything is still there in the building, or if some bum stumbled upon it. It’d be like winning the lottery. He doesn’t miss life on the outside so much, doesn’t long to see anyone. But he does miss his freedom. A man needs his space, his liberty. Most of all he misses his truck; an '86 pick-up, jacked up on four foot high monster truck tires. Under the hood is a fully worked 350 cubic inch engine. The thing screamed, and Marcus was so feared on the outside that he could leave it unlocked on the mean streets and no one would dare touch it.

  The rest of the night comes with a lot of hushed talk about what happened. Guesses mostly; a distant earthquake that knocked out power, a terrorist attack, a meteor, or even just a precautionary drill. Whatever it was, it whipped the population into a frenzy. Something serious is about to go down. If there’s riots, or worse, I’ll stay in my cell. I wanna do my time in peace, with the Lord. He knows he’ll never see freedom again, but he also knows that his punishment is justified. He feels he’s not fit for society if capable of such reckless disregard for life. Reformed or not, there’s no place for me out there.

  CHAPTER 4

  By mid morning Sheryl gets an emergency call on her cell phone from Debbie that the winds shifted and a plume of nasty debris wafted over the west part of town. A grey dust cloud lingers there while their kids are out playing football. She can barely hear anything with all the interference on the line.

  “What debris plume?” she asks as warning sirens start to reel up outside.

  “Do you live under a rock?” Debbie replies, promptly hanging up.

  “I don’t have time for your attitude, bitch,” she says to the dial tone.

  When the sirens stop she calls her husband. Voicemail again. “Who the hell works on Christmas and can’t answer the damn phone?” she asks herself aloud on the message she leaves. Between getting the kids ready, cleaning the dishes, sweeping up the dog hair, wrapping gifts, putting away the m
ess of toy crap the kids left in the den, and starting to prepare for Christmas dinner, she has no idea what’s been going on outside the house or out in the real world. If she did, she forgot, or she tuned it out, or she was too busy to let it sink in.

  The meteor thing? Her face contorts with incredulity. She tries to turn on the television to check the news but there’s no power. Then she realizes that she might have put the kids in danger by letting them leave the house earlier. “Sure, go out and play,” she told them when they asked, thankful to get them out of her hair for a few hours in the morning while she got everything ready. I love my boys, but I hate Christmas break.

  She grabs the keys to the minivan and steps outside. She sees the dark mass of debris looming over the distant horizon at the end of her street. The neighbors are scattered, running all over the place. Jim and Nancy scurry into their house with water, food, and bags of groceries. Paul and his family are leaving their house, getting into an SUV packed full with belongings. The new guy next door is sealing and boarding up his windows and doors.

  “You better get out of here, Sheryl!” Paul yells out as he rolls by slowly in front of her house. “Get your family and get out of here. That stuff is blowing this way!”

  Sheryl speeds off in the minivan, ignoring stop signs and dodging frantic traffic at every turn. The congestion infuriates her. Come on you fucks! It’s chaos, anarchy. The sirens blare again, and every kind of emergency vehicle races up and down Main Street in a panic. She crosses when it’s safe, blowing the red light. She zooms to the football field, where she sees that the debris has passed. It has blown onward, to the outskirts of town, leaving behind a dusting of soot on the ground in its wake. But more is on the way, much more. She can see it coming.

  “Get in!” she yells to her kids. Bobby Junior is ten, and Stephen just turned eight last Friday. They are everything to Sheryl. They give her the love and affection she needs, since her husband is never around. He’s married to his work more than me. Pathetic. I’m neglected, abandoned, and alone. But not when I’m with my boys. The boys love me... And they’re doubled over in a coughing bout. “Get in! There’s more of that dust coming!” They catch their breath and jump into the back of the minivan. “You guys okay?” she asks. There’s no reply. “BJ? Steve-O? Answer me. Are you guys okay?” Sheryl looks at them through the rearview mirror. They’re exhausted.

  “I can still taste it,” BJ says, his eyes rolling back in his head. Stephen begins to cough.

  Sheryl’s eyes bounce back and forth between them in the rearview, ignoring the road as she drives. Sirens and screamingly loud emergency vehicles fill her ears again. Blood spurts out from Stephen’s mouth. She turns her head to face him. “Steve-O, what’s the matter?” Her voice shakes.

  “Mom, look out!” BJ yells with everything left in him as they drive through the red light at the intersection of Main Street.

  An ambulance screeches its wheels. Smoke and brake dust spit up from the wheel wells as it broadsides Sheryl's minivan at a high speed. Both vehicles flip and tumble, and they eventually slide to a scraping stop.

  CHAPTER 5

  The coughing subsided somewhat, but Wolf still tastes that lingering smell in the back of his throat. His chest feels burned and tender on the inside, and his lungs are labored in breathing. He leaves the crew at the motel and checks himself into the nearest emergency room, which is minimally staffed on Christmas Day and only partially powered up by emergency generators. The staff recognizes me. They whisper to each other with star-lit eyes, and all the nurses blush at his gruff handsomeness.

  “I can see you, Mr. Camden,” a stout, dark curly haired doctor says. “I’m Dr. Vogel.” The two shake hands and walk down the hallway to a room. “My sons love your show, you know.”

  “Aye, thanks mate. I’ll sign them some autographs before I leave, eh?” Wolf says, removing his shirt.

  “That’d be great.” Dr. Vogel listens to Wolf’s breathing through the stethoscope, wincing in confusion. “Your breathing is normal, just slow,” he says.

  “I feel weak. I breathed in this smoke, or steam that came up from one of the small meteors. It had a strange smell, like burning plastic. I didn’t get much of it in me, but it managed to keep me coughing for a few hours. I can still taste it in the back of my throat.”

  “Could be the smell from the heated meteorite, whatever substances are in it might mimic those plastic smells. The symptoms, the coughing, could just be some irritation from whatever you breathed in,” Dr. Vogel says as he puts on a breather mask and some long rubber gloves.

  “What’s all that for?” Wolf asks. “Am I contagious?”

  “Doubt it. It’s just old habit. I used to do research at the CDC.”

  “Level with me, doc. I breathed in a bit of foreign substance and within half a day I feel like I’ve had emphysema for a decade,” Wolf pleads. “I’ve had almost every kind of exotic bug there is out there. Whatever is happening to me is aggressive.”

  “I won’t know anything until I run some tests, and some of the tests are going to take a while because I have to send them out to a lab, like for the blood work. I don’t even know if these labs are up and running, given the meteor impact. Most likely what you’ve got is just some smoke inhalation, like what a firefighter might deal with,” he says, muffled through the mask. “But better safe than sorry. We’ll run the whole gamut. I’ll draw some blood, you’ll pee in a cup. But first, a throat culture.”

  Wolf opens wide. Dr. Vogel swabs the back of his throat and rubs the cotton tip around a pink Petrie dish. Next he draws some blood into a test tube, and then Wolf fills up a cup of urine in the bathroom. Finally he hands Wolf a wide glass jar. “I need you to cough into this for me. Try to get some of that garbage up from your lungs. I don’t need wads of spit or anything, just some moisture that comes from deeper in the lung.”

  “Right,” Wolf says. He does as he was instructed.

  Dr. Vogel quickly seals the jar. “I’ll be back in a bit. Sit tight,” he says over his shoulder as he whisks out of the room with all of his samples.

  Wolf’s heart races from the forced coughing. He’s in top shape for a 40 year old and is well known for running a marathon every month since his 20s. But expending that small amount of energy to cough makes him feel like he just ran wind sprints in his rugby drills. He puts his shirt back on, lies back, and tries to calm himself. What the hell is happening to me? I wish we had more time to get further west last night, to my trusted doctors in LA.

  He had just crossed back over the police barricade when the big one hit. His crew stole him away in a speeding SUV outfitted with the latest weather chasing and sky mapping equipment. The roads were getting crowded when they made it to the air strip and their customized private jet. All the major airports in the northeast were already shut down, so anyone with a pilot’s license was trying to get airborne and far away before the FAA grounded everything else. It was fortunate they didn't fly into one of the main airports when they came to film the meteors. They drove the truck right into the cargo hold of the jet and took off within minutes, ignoring the line of other small biplanes trying to lift off on the runway ahead of them.

  They were only about 30 minutes out, heading west, when they were grounded. It was like 9/11 all over again; the sky was empty. The meteor shower kept raining down debris, and if even the smallest of rocks were to hit a plane in flight it could rip through the fuselage, change cabin pressure dramatically, and cause a crash. The nearest air strip with room for them to land was a small crop duster run, still just a few hours driving distance from the impact zone. There was barely enough room to come to a full stop. They rolled off the edge of the runway and into the tree line, damaging the landing gear and one of the wings, but all that mattered to Wolf was that they were on the other side of the meteor, upwind.

  Dr. Vogel returns to Wolf's room. “The culture will take some time if there's anything to grow, but I did see something strange under the microscope when I swabbed the
jar. This isn’t the best place to study this kind of thing. Come with me,” he says.

  Wolf follows the doctor through a maze of hallways to another room. Wolf steps inside and Dr. Vogel closes the door behind him, locking it from the outside. You’ve got to be joking. Wolf pounds on the door. His icy, dagger-like blue eyes pierce Dr. Vogel through the small, cross-hatched window at face level on the door.

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Vogel says. “Until I know more I’m going to have to contact the CDC and lock you down. There’s plenty of food and water in the back there; I just brought it in.”

  Wolf ignores the doctor, and tries to ram the door with his shoulder, but he soon becomes tired, drawn out. He sits down in the corner to catch his breath. “Fucking crazy Americans,” he utters between gasps. Right mad wankers.

  CHAPTER 6

  A headache wakes Brandon in the darkness. The back of his hair is wet. He touches it and knows right away. It’s blood. He remembers falling. On his hands and knees he crawls to where he put the flashlight and batteries. Stupidly, they are each still in their plastic packaging. He manages to find and open them. With the push of a button there is light. It’s eerily quiet in the shelter without his computer or electronics buzzing. He remembers he was about to go get his parents and bring them down. He runs over to the hatch, hurdling stacks of supplies, but when he gets to the top of the ladder he stops. Fallout.

  Brandon fishes around for the AM/FM radio and loads some batteries into it when he finds it. He spins the knobs slowly. Static. He finds that the reception is better the closer he is to the walls, and as he climbs up the ladder toward the surface. Finally he hears something; a dissonant but familiar tone. The emergency broadcast system. He turns up the volume so that the eerie and ominous sound fills the bunker. Suddenly it stops. There is nothing, and the silence is so loud it’s deafening. Dead air. The world has ended. He half smiles at the thought, but in the back of his head there is fear.