by C. Martens
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A wet cough, full of mucus, woke Chloe as she tried to suppress it. She realized immediately what it meant, and she made the connection of what her sore neck of the prior evening had foretold. She had to escape in order to protect the people she loved.
Rising quickly, she gathered her clothing from the corner where it had been thrown. The clothing was damp from the dew forming on the inside of the warm tent. Though she had intended to launder them, now they would have to do. There was no time to change into anything fresh. Carrying the bundle and grabbing her pack, she exited the tent as quietly as she could.
Chloe greeted the early morning air with enthusiasm, even though this day would bring heartache. Already she was determined to honor her relationship with Andy by remembering and appreciating the things they found so mutually enjoyable. Not a conscious thought, it was just part of her being. She shouldered the pack and strode purposefully toward the campsite lane.
A sudden hacking erupted from the tent behind her.
Chloe hesitated and listened intently.
The noise continued, just as her cough had. In the same way she had tried to stifle it, Andy made the effort as well. He was awake.
“Andy, baby, are you okay?” The question was senseless, but automatic.
“Chloe…DON’T COME IN.” Adamant, Andy ordered her as though he were in charge.
Chloe chuckled silently at that. Men always thought they were in charge.
“Too late, babe. I woke up coughing, too. We’re both infected.”
An animal moan sounded through the tent walls. Dropping her pack to the ground and hurrying back, Chloe reentered the tent. She knelt over Andy as he sat hunched over in his sleeping bag, sobbing. They embraced each other, sharing the comfort of their bodies as they cried for several minutes. The fear they had been damping down, sitting on it as though they could contain it along with the infection, rose to the surface of their reality. Dread burst forth like the vomit from an enraged volcano, long contained and suppressed. Realizing the hopelessness of their efforts and the cessation of their dreams, they allowed themselves to grieve, fiercely for the moment. Their sorrow was punctuated by short, violent bouts of wet coughing.
Suddenly Andy sat up straight. He gripped Chloe’s arms to her side as she knelt beside him.
“Just because we’re sick, doesn’t mean Emmett is.” Andy looked feverishly into Chloe’s wet eyes. “He could be okay. We have to protect him. If he’s well, we have to leave him behind.”
Understanding, leaving had been her first thought on waking already. That, and her intent to protect the man she loved. Rather, the men.
The tent that Emmett was using was several campsites over. He was uncomfortable setting up too close to the couple. There were too many noises in the night that embarrassed him. Especially considering that the noisy one was his sister. Truth be told, Chloe appreciated Emmett’s discretion as well.
Knowing Emmett would probably have wakened early but rolled over and drifted back into sleep, the two lovers padded lightly toward his tent. Both stopped occasionally as they checked the urges that might wake Chloe’s brother. The sounds emanating from the light fabric walls meant that he was sleeping as expected, and there was no evidence in his breathing of anything unusual. They retreated back to their campsite.
There they quickly discussed options. All led to them leaving in order to protect Emmett. Even if he was infected, the best they could do was leave now on the chance that he was untouched. They considered burning the tent where it was so they could leave quickly, but decided that they could break it down and pack it almost as fast as torching it. Besides, they had two months. The tent would be necessary. Everything packed into the Jeep, Andy sitting in the driver’s seat anxiously waiting, Chloe checked the site one last time.
Chloe had written a note. They had both decided that waiting for Emmett would be too tough. He would beg them to stay regardless of his own safety. She picked up a rock to weight it down to the top of the picnic table and hesitated. She felt terrible both emotionally and physically. Her head ached, and she felt the heaviness in her lungs growing into another bout of expectoration. Andy had said that the note might pass something on to Emmett. Anger suddenly engulfed her. This was not fair, and in Chloe’s world everything should be. Now she would not be able to tell Emmett why he was being left behind without jeopardizing him. She crumpled the note in a violent motion, and spinning, pitched the rock into the bushes.
“Hey, what’s up?” Emmett emerged through one of the holes in the hedge between camps. “You didn’t tell me we were leaving. I thought we…”
“STOP! Emmett, STOP! Stay where you are!” Chloe screamed in her anger, letting it surge. The emotion felt good.
Nothing was going right. Even their attempt to do the right thing was ending badly.
Chloe’s fury halted Emmett in his tracks. Not used to his sister being angry, he was not sure how to react.
“Oh, GOD, Emmett…We’re sick.” Chloe spelled it out. “I woke up coughing, and so did Andy. We’ve got it. And you can’t come with us. We have to leave, Emmett. We have to leave, and you can’t come with us.”
Surging forward, it was apparent that Emmett was going to ignore Chloe’s direction. The roar of a large weapon being fired took both by surprise, and Emmett halted once again. Andy stood behind Chloe by the Jeep.
“You can’t come, Emmett! It’s not happening.” Andy’s low, even voice conveyed the import of his intent. “If I have to put one in your leg, I’ll do it. And you know I can, Emmett.”
The two men had spent time together by now. All of them had proven that they could handle a pistol or rifle in a target setting, but Emmett knew that the bigger man could be lethal. He had seen Andy split a playing card at thirty yards more than once, never missing.
Desperation drives men to extreme action, and Emmett was no different. His sister, the only person of importance in his life that he would lay down his life for, was edging back toward the vehicle and making it obvious that they would leave. She was falling on her sword for him. Suddenly a tumbler clicked into place inside Emmett’s brain.
The normally shy kid that hid his inadequacies behind a know-it-all persona found his courage through fear. Not wanting to be left behind, Emmett made a threat of his own in an atypical way. He pulled the pistol from his coat pocket and shot a round into the rear tire of the Jeep.
The pair leaving was taken by surprise. This was not Emmett. The kid with the smoking weapon was surprised as well, but his face was hard. Having the out-of-character reaction was one thing, but he had actually hit what he had aimed at as well. Now he was not going to give up.
Air whistled from the puncture as the SUV settled.
“You have to give me a choice. You have to respect me enough to give me a choice.” Emmett hesitated and then continued, “and besides, there are other things you can do. You don’t have to leave me.”
Without warning his façade fractured, and Emmett’s face fell. With a low wail, he caved to his knees as though beaten. His arms relaxed at his sides as though they had no strength. The pistol lay weighting his open hand to the ground.
Joining her brother in the emotional rollercoaster she had been avoiding all morning, Chloe fairly spurted tears. She looked back at Andy, only a few feet away by now. His eyes were wet as well, and he knew they would not be going anywhere soon.
Chapter 12
Caged animals need care. Anyone involved in the sciences of either domestic or wild captive care understands that the animals are priority one.
With the best of intentions and expert advice, one of the plague instigators determined to save what could be saved. Even though his vast fortune had been provided by the human masses, he saw man as a burden…no, a plague…on the earth. But the animals that occurred naturally, and over time had been decimated by overpopulation resulting in habitat loss, were precious. In the last years of intentional disease development, the man’s fortune had been directed at s
aving as many animal kinds as he could. He rightly understood that a depopulated world would give the animals better odds.
Hiring the best available, under the pretenses of cloning extinct and soon to be extinct species, he offered dream jobs to educated idealists. They returned his vision in spades.
Facilities in all four corners of the country communicated with each other as they developed protocols for salvaging stored genetic materials and combining them with existing relatives. There had already been much success in bringing back now defunct strains. The passenger pigeon had already been released in great numbers. The well-funded program took what tissue could be used and the dodo walked the earth once more, as did the Tasmanian wolf and the recently extinct Saharan addax. The screwhorn antelope had died out, but had now been cloned less than ten years later using gnu as surrogate mothers. Mammoths and mastodons were clearly soon to be viable, and tantalizingly, Neanderthal. But while the two birds, the wolf, and the antelope were recently vanished and so acceptable in being a priority, the others did not make the cut. There were too many present day species that were recently extinct or threatened.
In Texas and not far away in Louisiana, huge ranches were acquired. While they maintained the façade of being agriculturally oriented, maintaining production, they were quietly converted to exotic animal care facilities. At great expense, they were meant to be only temporary. Designed to be elaborate training grounds, the wildlife managers would teach their charges how to be wild. Predators would learn how to kill and how to eat what they killed. But that would come later. In the meantime, herd animals dominated.
As time progressed, different genetic strains of critical importance were brought in, both by direct purchase and by offering assistance to under-budgeted zoos.
The environmental world could not help but notice and applaud the philanthropist that rose from the ranks of the predatory wealthy to be a beacon of light to his partners in crime.
There were detractors as well. The “Man First” movement screamed about the expense of saving animals that were clearly never intended to be allowed back into the wild. They considered any efforts wasted in bringing back any type of animal that could not adapt to the realities of the world as it was becoming. They deplored the effort and financial resources that could have been better used for mankind. Even as the krill, the single largest source of animal protein on the planet, were starting their second massive die-off, the Man First groups boycotted any businesses that were tied to environmental concerns.
What they did not know, nor did anyone not in the elite, was that the expense and effort literally made no difference. What good was money, when there would soon be no customers? What concern was there in effort when labor would soon be obsolete?
Several media outlets interviewed the leading scientists and caretakers. In the background, robots moved within the shots, doing all that was necessary. Used to primitive house mechanicals, no one thought to direct a question at a bot. They might have been surprised at the answers given.
As soon as the idea had been conceived, robots were planned to be mentored by experienced people. Arriving with all of the book knowledge available, the artificials listened and asked questions as necessary and surprised their human fellows with the speed at which they caught on. Sharing information and experience between themselves as though they were working together in the same space, their human creators noticed that isolated bots understood nuances that they had never been exposed to. The sharing between the artificial brains seemed perfect. The humans began to speak of it as a hive mentality.
Although visually similar, there were two types of automatons. Both man-shaped with two upper and two lower appendages, the greater number were assigned tasks in drudge work. Manual labor filled their days even though they shared the same brain capabilities as their more refined cousins. Those bots working closely with mentors were fewer and had hidden physical attributes that the lower caste mechanicals did not possess. Mentors were surprised when they needed another pair of hands, and the two armed bots they were working with suddenly split their upper limbs. Then, as soon as the necessity for the extra hands was finished, the two arms came together seamlessly and became one.
The artificial beings were all stamped with an unobtrusive designation on their left temple area. The people working closely with them quickly became comfortable with their charges, and referring to the capable machines by meaningless numbers and letters seemed inadequate. Besides, the designations did not flow off the tongue. A universal query was directed at the thirteen higher caste robots in particular. They were asked if they had a name. Even though none had been assigned one, they were prepared. The robots, Aides and Erebus, worked in the Washington State Genetic facility. In the New Jersey operation, Aidoneus and Kore performed their duties. Ananius and Loki, just north of Los Angeles, and Apollyon and Minos, in the southern tip of Florida, worked alongside their mentors. At the Louisiana ranch Cerberus and Orcus teamed up, and because of the size of the Texas operation, three bots, Charon, Osiris, and Viper fulfilled their functions.
Viper caused a stir when it announced its name. The young woman it was assigned to was superstitious. She “knocked on wood” often as she spoke, and the name made her uncomfortable. She suggested that she would be more comfortable calling the robot, “Bob,” as a nickname instead of the term it may have preferred. The bot accepted its mentor’s suggestion graciously. Some of the other mechanicals ran into the same routine with their handlers as well, although more because their names were difficult to pronounce. The same solution, nicknames, resolved the issues. The bots were accommodating. The big Dane that was working with Loki immediately recognized the significance of the name in history and Norse religion. He loved that he was working with a God, even in mechanical form.
The work progressed. Human scientists and handlers were required as part of their job to be available for foreign travel in order to acquire genetic materials and specimens, so all of them were required by company policy to be vaccinated thoroughly. They were unknowingly dosed with the antibodies for the Kansas plague. Considered valuable beyond their present capacities, they would be esteemed and useful additions in the new reality.
The first glitch in the plan appeared when the wealthy benefactor died suddenly. The man was not old or unhealthy, and he succumbed to an apparent cold. A minor illness had felled the man with the insider information. There was no will, there was no direction, and there were no contingencies. The sudden death sent a chill through the salvage operation. They all worried that the trustees likely to be assigned would be bean counters, unsympathetic to the established goals.
The decisions of people, government and the law in particular, grind slowly toward their conclusions. It would take time to choose people to administer the estate, and then years of decision making before the dispensation of assets began. Until then, funds were tied to programs already in operation. The top executive tier was made aware, and work went on.
Soon after the death of their boss, disturbing information surfaced. As several of the top scientists were involved throughout the genetic community, they were some of the first outside of law enforcement to know that there was a plague. A woman working closely with them from the CDC informed them of an intentionally released disease meant to decimate mankind. One of the scientists questioned how she knew the intent. It was as if she had inside information, and her superiors were notified. She was questioned, but the inquiry was terminated suddenly when she died during the process. The slight cold she had been nursing had gotten the better of her.
Soon there were other deaths, and as inside information was passed, they came to understand the situation more completely than did the public in general.
Not knowing they had been immunized, panic ensued. But unlike many panics to follow, it was a well-controlled event. After all, the animals needed to be cared for. All of the facilities maintained critical species, and their keepers took their jobs seriously. Few fled into hiding, preferring
instead to hunker down in place. They were familiar with sterile protocols and implemented and enforced them.
The scientists learned of the second plague. Because of their exposure to the man funding the project, those in the higher echelon began to dwell on their recent past and realized they had been afflicted with an illness soon after conferences with him. They also realized that many of those in their employ had taken sick days. At the time, it was considered just another of the many virulent minor illnesses that made the rounds in a crowded world. The top tier of scientists began to die, and then the deaths moved inexorably toward the lower paid positions.
By the time the third plague made an appearance, few in the ranks were even left to take notice.
As the plague events moved on outside of the extinction salvage effort, the media failed to cover the fact that the executors assigned to manage the monies involved were not doing their jobs. The first reason was that the executors had pressing concerns of their own, and the second was that there were no surviving scientists or handlers. Of the general population, the people attempting to save animal species led the charge into oblivion.
Before she died, Viper’s human partner discovered a list of the higher caste robots and their names and realized that Viper was the last one on the list. The list had thirteen names. She had difficulty sleeping that night for thinking about that. Number thirteen. It did not help that her head felt stuffy, and her nose was running.