by Lynn Lamb
Steve Rolette stood, removed his jacket and smoothed his button-down shirt and tie with his hand. Steve’s hair was slicked back in an attractive way one might have seen in magazines in the past, and his deep voice filled the room when he spoke. “We would like to talk about the future of the Village - specifically, God’s plan for how He would like us to proceed.”
Thrown for a loop, I eyed my group, hoping to find someone with a clue as to where this was going.
“And how does God want us to precede, son?” Reverend John spoke patiently.
“Well, Reverend, some of us have been wondering when you were going to tell us that. Frankly, we feel like you’ve let us down. We have needed religious guidance since the Rapture, and you haven’t given us …”
“Rapture? And how did you come to the conclusion that the Last War was God’s doing, and specifically the Rapture?” Reverend John asked, now less patiently.
“What else could it be?” asked Robert O’Malley to my surprise. He had been one of our core group members from the start of our walkie-talkie communications while we were trapped in our homes, waiting for the bio-chemicals to clear the air.
“Exactly,” his wife, Tiffany, said. She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe we didn’t know that God had sent this all to us.
When it came to religion, I have always been one to dance to the beat of my own drum. And I have always been vocal, maybe too vocal, about things that made no sense to me.
“Why would God want to wipe everyone off the earth, including innocent children?” I asked defensively. “Why not just get rid of the bad people and leave the rest alone?”
Cory jumped up from his chair, nearly knocking it over. “Who are you to question God?” he pointed directly at me.
“What I think Laura is asking is, why do you think God did this to people who had never done anything wrong,” the Reverend said.
Unlike Cory, Steve kept his composure. “Certainly,” he said. “We are all sinners in need of faith – no one is truly innocent. Cory just has a deep faith that he is willing to fight for. Isn’t that what religion is about?”
Cory has a deep faith, ha! I thought. The only thing that jackass believes in is causing trouble. I started to wish that I had listened to Mark and Jackson about him instead of setting up a nice neat hearing where he got off with a slap on the wrist.
Before Reverend John had a chance to answer Steve’s question, Mr. Slick continued. “We believe, and by ‘we’ I mean those Villagers who are willing to stand up to this government you all have set up, that God was showing his anger at America’s growing decadence and depravity. Let’s face it; before He let His vengeance out on the morally corrupt, the government was completely out of control. They were getting behind everything He hates; homosexuality, abortion, marijuana. God got rid of them and those who would follow them, before they could do any more harm. But now, your governing body is jumping right back into the sin. We have watched you get behind those two women, Carrie and Samantha. You act as if they could really be married. Not in the eyes of God.”
Holy crap, these people have jumped completely off the rails.
I began to open my mouth, my mind fuming, when Mark grabbed my knee under the table and squeezed out an order to remain silent. This was something he did often, and I have always resented it.
Cory opened his ugly pie-hole again. “Yeah, God got sick of all the terrorist, towel-head Muslims being let in, and all of those fag-bag weddings. And now you all are starting it up again, and he is gonna come down pretty soon and wipe the rest of us out along with ya if we don’t do something fast about your government.”
I couldn’t keep it in, no matter how Mark’s eyes begged for me to keep quiet. As a Black Muslim man, Mark had faced more than his share of bigotry, and I wasn’t going to allow it now, not after everything that has happened. The world ended because of this kind of ignorance and hate.
“So, God wiped out all of those people to pay the U.S. back for being open minded and non-judgmental, and you all,” I stopped and swiped a look at each and every face in the gallery in incredulity, “all of you— believe He did that just to prove a point?”
I saw Mark’s head drop just slightly out of the corner of my eye. I sat and waited for anyone on my panel to speak. The Reverend stood and walked in front of the group of onlookers who seemed very unhappy at my outburst.
“I don’t believe that God did any such thing,” he began, not facing me. He addressed the crowd as I could imagine he addressed his congregation before the war. “Man was at fault for the horrendous destruction that happened during that short period of time in July, not God. God has given us free will. It was humankind who decided to do this to itself. It makes no sense that we would have a war that ended like this, but it was not God’s decision. It was ours.”
“Reverend John, thank you for your opinion,” said Rolette in his booming baritone voice. “But we just don’t see it that way. His children were led astray by Satan, and it was He - who has all power - who decided how and where the rapture would take place. Now, the remaining must serve Him by turning our backs on the sins of the past, the sins of the reigning government, so that we might find the new Garden of Eden and begin the world anew.”
Before I could ask if that would happen with or without clothing, the cast of “The Crucible” stood and exited the room in a somber precession, Bibles in hand.
“What the hell was that,” I asked as soon as they were out of earshot. “I mean, where did it come from? Why are they acting like total loons?”
Katie cleared her throat disapprovingly. “I think I know where this is coming from. We have survived the apocalypse when so few others did. Sometimes the mind needs to find logic where none exists. Religion has always been comforting. It’s sort of like the old saying ‘there are no dead atheists in foxholes.’ My concern is about the way they are coming together and manifesting their fear for the future and anger for what has happened in such an unhealthy way. What just happened was disturbingly cult-like.”
“Thank you, that’s exactly what I was thinking,” said Jill. “They are acting like they are about to drink the Kool-Aid or something.”
“The real question is what we are going to do about them,” Jackson said. “This is exactly how wars begin, and we are talking about some real fringe crazies that have popped up in our own community.”
Katie looked at him thoughtfully. “Yes, I do have concerns about their mental states. I have known some of these people professionally, before …” she drifted off, probably considering the ethics of doctor/patient confidentiality.
Reverend John took advantage of the silence. “In my studies of theology, I found that this type of religious questioning during times of war and famine is historically quite common.”
“So, what do we do now?” I asked. “If we try to put an end to it, they will call us the ‘deviant government,’ and if we do nothing, they might be able to suck in more Villagers.”
∞
We remained in deep discussion for another two hours and came up with nothing.
As I was walking back to the child care, which was taking place in the old hair salon since the Town Hall fire, Shelby ran to catch up to me.
“Hey, Laura, can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure thing, Shelby. What’s up?”
Shelby looked around uncertainly, as if she was hoping to find the words she was looking for buried deep in the snow.
“It’s okay, Shelby. Is it about Bailey? Is there something wrong?” I asked. I was starting to worry.
“No, yes, I mean. She’s doing really well for all that she has been through. It’s just, she was talking to me the other day, and she asked if she would ever be able to go back to her old house because it’s one of the few that is still empty.”
“Oh,” I said. I felt funny having anyone move into the empty house after Bailey watched her parents die there. I hadn’t thought that she might want to move back.
I sto
pped right there in a two-foot snow drift and gave Shelby a tight hug. At first she was stiff, but she finally just gave into it.
∞
I picked up Bailey from school, and we held hands and walked up the slick hill with her chatting the whole way. She seemed like any other eight year old, but I knew she wasn’t. She had seen more than any child should.
Still, she brightened my mood with her skipping and giggling as she told me about how Tommy O’Malley got into a big argument with Jesse Warner while they were making a snowman, and somehow it turned into a snowball fight, and Tommy ended up running and slipping in a big, freezing puddle and soaking his pants.
It was almost time for supper, so we were heading straight to Jill and Joseph’s house for a hot meal.
“Grandma Annie, can we help serve?” Bailey asked my mother when we got there. I wasn’t sure when she started to call her “grandma,” but I was really happy that they got along so well.
Ammie came over with a ladle and a steaming pot of some-kind-of-meat stew. Ammie and Bailey were becoming closer, too. I think that it was a good distraction for Ammie, who was becoming consumed with her medical and engineering studies.
I looked up to see the “cult” walking in together. It was bizarre how none of them talked and joked like everyone else. They went to a clump of chairs and set their Bibles down before they got in line for the stew and a small piece of bread. All eyes were on the group who had never acted like this together in public before, at least as far as I knew. It was surreal watching them.
Bailey and I got in place in order to serve, and Rolette was the first to make his way to us carrying a bowl and a spoon.
“So, I guess Cory is over at your place cleaning your kitchen,” he said. His voice was no longer so charming now that he didn’t have an audience of his groupies.
“I have no idea where he is, Steve,” I told him as I scooped a ladle full of the stew sloppily into his bowl. I felt bad as soon as I did it.
“Call me Steven,” he said as he walked away.
I looked at Bailey, and we both smothered a smile.
November 15
It had been four months – 123 days – since Monterey was hit by the enemy, and to my complete dismay, we had more to worry about than “God’s Warriors,” as Steve’s group asked to be called. Excuse me, Steven’s group.
It seems that a bacterial disease has taken a foothold in the Village. Doc Malcolm is calling it “The Sneaker Wave.” He believes it was dropped during the Last War and was triggered by the freezing temperatures we are trapped in now. It’s ironic that the only “Sneaker Waves” we have ever had to deal with were the waves at the beach that would sneak up on an unsuspecting person, usually tourists, and knock them off their feet and into the currents. Usually these were only slightly dangerous, mostly just embarrassing to the recipients.
It is hard for me to believe that the Last War had been so deviously planned. I guess if you are planning global devastation, you might as well do it thoroughly. So, some scientist must have been sitting in a laboratory somewhere on earth, playing out the scenario for the remote possibility of survivors. And some leader, somewhere on the same earth, made provisions to eradicate a completely helpless group of human beings.
I wonder if some day we will actually learn how this all came about. Just after the disaster hit us, I didn’t care very much about why, but now that we have found that the threat has not ended, I feel the need to know every detail.
The medical team checks us regularly for signs of radiation sickness and illnesses caused by environmental exposure. They have found a few people who have the early stages of lung and stomach cancers in our population. Thankfully, they caught them early enough to treat them in the hospital.
But the Sneaker Wave just snuck up on us and hit us like a wave. It is obviously highly contagious. We have twenty eight cases so far, and the Doc says that it has the potential of becoming a new plague.
I called the meeting between the medics and the Council. We gathered at the ballroom to discuss containment, resistance and finally a cure for the disease.
Three members of the Council have the disease now. Katie, Shelby and Adam were listening in on the walkies from the hospital. Doc Reilly was also listening in because she was needed at the hospital twenty-four-seven now.
When I heard that Shelby was ill, my mind went to my worse possible fear; that the kids were infected, that Bailey was infected.
“I would like to start by explaining the Sneaker Wave to the Council in a way in which it is understandable to laypeople.” Malcolm’s voice was stressed.
“First, this is environmentally contagious. We know that it was dormant somewhere in the environment, most likely it came down with the bombs that hit, so it is most contagious in the debris and rubble that surrounds us.” Malcolm stopped and cleared his throat as he tried to muffle a tremor in his voice.
Ammie walked around with face masks for everyone, and we all immediately put them on. By now, I could read Malcolm well, and I knew that this wasn’t a small outbreak of the flu; people were going to die unless we could find a cure immediately.
“We all need to wear these masks at all times, even when we are home with our families,” said Ammie. “Every hygiene precaution must be used at all times now. Hand washing, hand sanitizers and new bathroom precautions need to be put into effect.”
“Before we go jump to that, I would like Dr. Reilly to explain some of the details of the disease,” Malcolm interrupted. “She will try to explain it as simply as possible.”
We all had our masks on and were waiting to find out about the specifics of the disease that might take our lives. I held my breath and waited for the blows.
“Hello everyone,” said Dr. Reilly. “I wish I was talking to you under better circumstances. As Malcolm said, we have twenty-eight cases of the Sneaker Wave in the hospital, to date. The patients arrived with similar symptoms that we have identified as a man-made bacterium that is capable of staying dormant and is then released in freezing conditions.”
The tone and formality in Alexis’ voice told me that this was more than a warning.
“Is there a cure for this?” Bri asked. Her face was ashen. I know that she was very concerned about Adam. I got up and sat in the empty seat next to her. Her sister sat on the other side, looking equally as worried.
“I wish I could tell you there was,” replied Doctor Reilly. “Obviously, we don’t have the Center for Disease Control or the World Health Organization to help us. None of the medical people who survived have a background in research beyond medical school.
“Here is what we know,” her voice became very formal as she told us the grim facts. “Patients present with flu-like symptoms; however, it doesn’t end there. Vomiting and skin pustules form, in some, but not all, and there is a lung infection that presents like pneumonia. The chance of person-to- person infection through air borne pathogens is high, so every person in the Village must wear a mask. Also, the patients have all had high fevers, and swabs of their perspiration show traces of the bacteria.
“One major problem we are having is with antibiotics. Some of you might have heard about the problems before the war with the overuse of antibiotics. It seems that our chickens have come home to roost. The antibiotics are not having the effects we had hoped for. It’s still early, and so we might have some luck further into a course of antibiotics. That is what we are hoping for. It is still hard to tell.”
“We also have the problem of a pathogen that cannot just survive in cold weather, but it can survive suspended in the air for a relatively long time,” commented Malcolm. “That is why I am calling a complete moratorium on all public, in-person meetings.”
“Veda, and Joseph,” I said. “Please coordinate a full Village meeting on the walkies.”
“Thank you, Laura,” said Malcolm. “But this is just the beginning. We need to end all jobs done inside, such as office work, child care and all classes. Because we are at a complete disadva
ntage here with such a small amount of equipment for research, and so few people to do the work, it is going to be very difficult to eradicate. That’s why we can’t have close contact with each other. In fact, after this meeting, I recommend that everyone retreats to their homes.
“And that brings me to another part of the problem; the overcrowding in our homes since the fire. We need to break that up somehow. I know that we were saving some of the empty homes as places to conduct business, but it is really more important to get clusters of people separated.”
“While in our homes,” began Ammie, “we still need to be vigilant about cleanliness and physical contact. It is smart at this time, until we know more, that there is no sexual contact, including kissing.”
I shot a quick look at Mark, and I felt myself blush. He saw me and gave me a small, sly smile that only I could read. He was thinking about sex, as was his habit at inopportune times. I shot a quick glance around the room and saw Jackson staring at me. Had he seen the little telepathic interaction between Mark and me?
I refocused on Ammie, who had continued talking about the possibilities of what would happen if we continue to have indoor contact without masks and maybe even gloves.
“Now, we know that these things will help greatly in prevention; however, we need to maintain our health. I have been working with Charlotte, and we have been growing herbs in her greenhouse that have positive medicinal benefits. The aloe vera plants have been working on the skin lesions to soothe patients. We will also be harvesting some of the greenhouse herbs to create teas that will help with resistance, such as echinacea. It’s also important to keep morale up, especially now that people are going to be stuck inside again, so I am making a St. John’s Wort and lemon balm tea for mental health and wellness.”
A weak voice came over the walkie, and it dawned on me that it was Katie. I looked over at Malcolm and saw the sadness on his face as his wife spoke. “That is a great idea, Amanda. It is also important that people get exercise. If they can take walks, but not come into close proximity to others, that should help, too. As far as we can see, this is contracted person to person and when digging through the debris.”