Virus: The Day of Resurrection

by Sakyo Komatsu

  4. Antarctica

  “It sounds like it’s getting really bad,” murmured Tatsuno. He was in his own room—that is to say, in the tiny room containing only his bed and his desk—facing the wireless.

  “Did you get hold of any of your ham radio buddies this morning?” asked Yoshizumi from the doorway. Besides Yoshizumi, five other members of the wintering team were crowded into the tiny room, and all of them were leaning forward, eager for even the smallest tidbit of information about the horrible circumstances overtaking the northern hemisphere.

  “Yesterday, I got a ham operator in the Fiji Islands. But the signal was bad between here and Japan …” Tatsuno bit his lower lip and, looking almost as though he were in prayer, began to slowly turn the dial while continually transmitting a CQ sign.

  “JA7GK,” an accented, powerful voice suddenly answered. Everyone caught their breath for a moment, but then sighed in disappointment as they recognized the voice. It was the guy who went by the handle of “Ahab” over at Australia’s Mawson Station—right next door, as it were, to Showa Station. “Hello, JA7 George Kepler. Have you managed to get ahold of anyone?”

  ‘George Kepler’ was Tatsuno’s handle. “It’s no good,” he replied. “The signal’s bad, so there’s been nothing since yesterday. How about you?”

  “There was a doctor in Uganda at five-thirty this morning, but we could only talk for two minutes.” Ahab’s voice usually sounded as cheerful as a trumpet, but today it was mournful. “Things sound really bad out there. The doctor was wondering out loud if Central Africa might be completely wiped out by now. Not just the people either; the lions and the elephants too.”

  “So elephants can die of flu too, can they?”

  “Apparently, it’s not flu. Haven’t you heard, George Kepler? The flu’s going around, yes, but there’s another, unknown disease that’s going around with it. That’s what the doctor was saying, anyway.”

  “What else did the doctor say? How many have died?”

  “He said he didn’t know for sure. There hasn’t been any signal from Cairo Broadcasting in over ten days. Zanzibar’s gone silent too. This is just that doctor’s best guess, but he said that about half the population of the entire world may have already been laid out by this thing.”

  “Half?” Tatsuno said in a voice that was suddenly much higher pitched. “One and a half billion? What do you mean, ‘laid out’? Do you mean that they’ve caught it? Or that they’re—”

  “He told me that ‘half are probably dead.’ ” Ahab’s voice was cracking up and he sounded near to despair. “And he said that more than eighty percent of the people on this planet probably have it. Can you believe such a thing?”

  The people standing behind Tatsuno had gone pale. Not one of them uttered a word. Already, they had heard similar things again and again, but hearing it now, the shock was being rubbed all the more deeply into their bodies.

  “That doctor said he wasn’t long for this world either. And then finally his signal dropped off. He never said ‘over.’ He just said ‘adieu.’ Hey, listen …”

  Ahab hesitated for a moment, and suddenly a ham operator called Frankonei from France’s Dumont d’Urville Base broke in speaking his obnoxiously masterful English. “JA7GK, I’ve managed to listen in on a couple of amateur hams in Reims and Rio de Janeiro. Shall I read what they said to you?”

  “What did they say?”

  “The ham in Rio says, ‘It’s a mountain of corpses here, the power’s out, there are fires, crazed gangs are rampaging out of control, and the death toll keeps climbing. I estimate eight thousand survivors still in Rio. The residents of Brasilia have been wiped out, and the stink is so horrible I can hardly stand it. The sea is covered in bodies. The end of the world has come. Amen.’ Then the ham in Reims said, ‘Reims is burning, and the batteries will give out soon. I don’t see how I’ll be able to get any more. My wife committed suicide ten minutes ago. God has sent this disease to wipe out a sinful world. I can’t hear a thing here except the sound of the fires. Clear weather. Eloi, Eloi, lead us into your presence … Ah, confound it all! Wiped out by influenza! What a scornful way to destroy us! Amen.’ ”

  “Amen …” said Ahab. “George Kepler—did Japan’s public broadcasting ever come back on? At 1300 and 1500 hours, there was a little noise out of Sydney, but nothing since. “

  “We can raise Chōshi by way of their international telephone, but the signal fades in and out,” Tatsuno said. “Yesterday at 1400 hours, they spoke with our station’s radio station. They’re having trouble supplementing their power source, apparently. There are only eight people running things over there at present, and three of them just recently came down with fevers. There’s been nothing from them since then.”

  Neither Ahab nor Frankonei said anything for a moment. Beyond the crackle of white noise, they could hear the mad roar of a blizzard outside. But even the blizzard seemed about to die down.

  “Starting at 1710, Telstar 25 should enter an orbital position where we can communicate with her,” Ahab said simply. “All we can do is just pray that there’s a satellite broadcaster in some country somewhere that’s transmitting television signals. Over and out.”

  Ahab cut off his signal. Frankonei also withdrew. The five men who had their heads stuck into Tatsuno’s room left in ones or twos, until only Yoshizumi was left. Tatsuno still sat in front of the wireless, continuing to transmit his call sign.

  “Tatsuno,” Yoshizumi called. “You crying?”

  “So what if I am?” Tatsuno didn’t turn around, but his voice was unexpectedly fierce. “If I’m crying, what’s it to you?”

  With that, Tatsuno suddenly burst into tears in front of the wireless.

  “How can something this stupid even happen!” he said with a sob. “This is ridiculous … Japan destroyed in less than two months, and rest of the world is …”

  “Tatsuno,” Yoshizumi said, gently putting a hand on Tatsuno’s shoulder from behind. “Somebody’s calling you.”

  Tatsuno sat up straight with a gasp and looked at the speaker. Amid waves of hissing static, a voice that seemed to be calling out Tatsuno’s call sign could be faintly, oh-so-faintly discerned, though it was apt to be scrubbed out by the white noise and disappeared at times.

  “JA7GK … Hello, JA … K …”

  “Station QRZ?” Tatsuno queried, cranking up the transciever’s output all the way. “Hello, this is station JA7GK.”

  “JA7GK …” The faint voice sounded as if it were floating on waves that flowed in and ebbed back out again, but even so, it could be heard more distinctly than before. “Hello, JA7GK. This is JA6YF—”

  “That’s Kyushu,” Tatsuno shouted in a choked voice. “Hello, JA6YF, this is JA7GK. How’s your reception? Over.”

  “JA7GK, this is JA6YF. We are DXFB over here. How’s your DX over there? Over.” “DXFB” meant that reception was good.

  “This is JA7GK. We are DXFB as well,” Tatsuno said, suddenly choking up as big tears spilled down his face.

  “Hello, JA6YF—where in Kyushu are you broadcasting from? Over.”

  “This is JA6YF, we’re on Yakushima …” The voice vanished into a snowstorm of static, then returned moments later. “… Kyushu. The mainland … all regions silent. Hello, JA7GK, can you hear me? This is JA6YF … this is Japan’s last … JA7GK, where are you broadca … Over.”

  “This is JA7GK, the ham radio at Showa Station, Antarctica,” Tatsumi went on, not even trying to wipe his tears. “How are things on Yakushima and the mainland? Over.”

  “I don’t know about the mainland. There’s smoke on the horizon. It looks like Kyushu is burning. Hello, JA7GK, ninety percent of us on Yakushima Island are dead. Many via suicide. Most of the survivors are on the beach praying or something.” Suddenly, JA6YF coughed violently. It was pitiful how long the coughing spell went on.

  “7GK, hello … can you hear? Is Antarctica safe? If so, please call … hello …”

  “Who?” Tatsuno asked. “Who
? Who do you want me to call?”

  “Get a doctor … and tell the hams and at every station … call a doctor who speaks English … call for WA5PS … it just spoke … was requesting transmission. WA5PS is … scholar … Amer …”

  “Hello, JA6YF!” Tatsuno practically screamed. “What’s happening? I couldn’t catch that! Hello, this is JA7GK—”

  “Looks like this is it for me …” The voice of JA6YF—a man apparently well educated and young—had grown old and pained. “My heart is … WA5PS wants to tell you something. Well then, JA7GK, thanks for talking to me. This is JA6 …”

  Emanating from a faraway geographical point on a tiny volcanic island covered in tropical Japanese cedars—more than ninety degrees of longitude removed from Showa Station—came the sound of JA6YF, the last ham radio operator in Japan, sliding from his chair and falling to the floor. It made an unexpectedly clear thump, which leapt across more than ten thousand kilometers of sky and sea, arriving in Antarctic skies to burst at last from the speaker before Tatsuno.

  “JA6YF!” Tatsuno all but shrieked into the microphone. “Hello, JA6YF! Are you all right? Hello—”

  In a small, simply painted cottage on a slope not far from Yaku Harbor on Yakushima Island, a young man who had just breathed his last lay crumpled on the ground beside a handmade chair that had fallen over. A red light still blinked on top of the black box in front of him, and from the old-fashioned speakers placed on top of it, Tatsuno’s cries could be heard amid the hiss of static.

  “Hello! JA … F! Hello, please respond, J6YF …”

  Yet now there was no longer anyone left there to hear him. In the stifling heat of early summer on that southern island, a warm breeze wended its way through the thick cedar groves and into the cottage, where a young scorpion that had just shed its skin was crawling along the top of a desk. A single snake slithered slowly across the floor. The scorpion crawled over the hand of the fallen man, his fingers already so cool that the creature made no move at all to sting.

  “Shhh!” More than ten thousand kilometers to the south, amid the Antarctic midwinter, Tatsuno strained his ears as he listened for any response. “Come on, give me something …” he said.

  There was nothing but silence though and white noise.

  “I hear a bird singing,” Yoshizumi said.

  “Impossible!”

  “Try calling WA5PS,” Yoshizumi said. “Like JA6YF was saying. He said to get all the hams out there to try to get hold of him. Maybe WA5PS has something he wants to tell us.”

  “All right,” Tatsuno said with a nod once he had finally gotten hold of himself again. “Go get Torigai, would you? He can speak English.”

  Tatsuno began calling up his other ham buddies all across Antarctica.

  Professor Nakanishi, captain of the observation team, together with the core members of his research group, crammed into the designated radio station of the Japanese wintering team at Dome III of Showa Station, which housed the twenty-kilowatt wireless transmitter. Upon request from the leadership of the American, British, Soviet, and French wintering teams, an emergency meeting was being held over the wireless. Three years prior, installation of automatic relay stations at the Antarctic stations of every nation that had an exploration team present had begun, so that they would be able to communicate in real time. It was only during the summer of that year that this continental wireless phone network had at last been completed.

  The special relay center for the western hemisphere was run by the US Army Corp of Engineers communication division at McMurdo Station, while the eastern hemisphere’s relay was run alternately by the Soviet Union’s observation team at Mirny Station and Australia’s communications team at Davis Station.

  The soldierly—if slightly haughty—voice of the US commander-in-chief flowed from the speakers. “Everyone, may I have your attention?” he said. “This is James Conway, commander of the American stations. Are the leaders of each nation’s stations present?”

  Captain Nakanishi looked for a moment like he was about to say something into the microphone, but Shintani—who was in charge of the wireless station—motioned for him to keep silent. Broken occasionally by intrusions of static or of people calling out to one another in the background, a faint voice came through calling out a call-up code. “5000KC—Is this all right? It is? Hello, Queen Maud Land, Norway team, come in please. Adjusting …”

  “Admiral, please,” somebody whispered, and then Vice-Admiral Conway cleared his throat and began to speak. “To all of you who are in charge of your various nations’ Antarctic stations, I’ve called this emergency radio conference on my authority as representative of the nation in charge of the Multinational Antarctic Observation Teams’ Mutual Communication Council. The topics of this meeting are, of course, our homelands, and the disaster being caused by this epidemic disease that is sweeping across five continents.”

  “Adjustments for the eastern hemisphere complete,” an accented voice said, breaking in again. Mirny Station, apparently.

  “Forgive me, but would you mind if we did a roll call?” Admiral Conway said politely. “At this time, it seems that relays have been established between all of the various stations across Antarctica. Is Captain Barnes of Britain’s Shackleton Station present?”

  “Present,” Barnes replied in a curt, sportsman’s voice.

  “Is the overall head of the Soviet Union’s stations, Dr. Borodinov, present?”

  “In front of the microphone,” replied a voice with a terribly thick Slavic accent.

  One after another, he called them: Professor Blanchot of the Belgian team at Blade Station, Captain King of Davis Station for Australia, Major Blaine of New Zealand’s Scott Station, Professor Bjornsen of Norway’s Queen Maud Land Station, Dr. la Rochelle of France’s Dumont d’Urville Station, Lieutenant Lopez, representing Argentina on the Palmer Peninsula.

  “Everyone, the main purpose of calling this emergency conference is that at last night’s multinational station communications meeting, every team excepting Norway’s judged that official communications with their homelands have ceased. The teams from New Zealand and Japan are receiving intermittent, broken transmissions, but the cessation of even these is most likely only a matter of time. About four percent of broadcasting stations and communication facilities worldwide are still transmitting, but they don’t seem to have the wherewithal to answer calls from the South Pole. Even the amateur wireless operators are slowly disappearing. We can soon expect full radio silence.”

  “We’ve been abandoned at the South Pole,” said the British representative with a hint of irony in his voice.

  “No,” said the halting voice of the Soviet representative Borodinov, “Most likely, they have too much on their own hands to even think of us now. An awesome and terrible thing has happened to our country. Our premier and vice premier are both dead. Hard as it is to believe, the last transmission we received said that one hundred million have died. It’s insane. It’s impossible. Science, civilization, and the socialist system are as good as gone. Everything has been turned upside down and ruined. I do not know how many people of the fatherland still live. And even if some still live, who can say whether the nation can endure?”

  “It is as the Soviet representative has said,” Admiral Conway said, his tone solemn. “It’s beyond our ability to take in, but those are the terrible circumstances we face.”

  “The question of whether our countries can still continue to exist is a very serious issue,” said the icy voice of Dr. Blanchot, the Belgian representative. “Europe may continue to exist, but …”

  “Admiral Conway,” Dr. la Rochelle said. His voice was shaking with an anger that had no outlet. “France’s stations were the first to lose official communications with their homeland. That’s why we find all of this so exceptionally hard to believe. Do you have any hard, clear-cut information at your bases? What in the world has happened out there?”

  There was a brief silence.

  Static.

>   “What happened … is what all of the wintering teams already know has happened,” Admiral Conway said. “In March of this year, influenza broke out in central Asia, and—”

  “But, Admiral Conway! Everyone! Can you really believe that something as simple as influenza can kill off all three and a half billion human beings on this planet? And in the space of three months!”

  “About ten days ago,” said the Norwegian representative Professor Bjornsen, “we received a transmission stating that Oslo University’s Infectious Disease Research Center had announced the real culprit. It’s not just that new form of influenza; another completely unknown terminal disease has been spreading in parallel with it. That’s the real killer. At any rate, it’s quite an incredible disease. It destroyed the world’s disease prevention system before anyone could find it.”

  “What kind of disease? Is it plague?” a new voice cut in to ask.

  “Nothing so simple as that. It seems this has been brought on by an entirely new kind of contagion that has never appeared on Earth before.”

  “But even if that’s so, what contagion could possibly wipe out the entire human race in just three to six months?” la Rochelle asked.

  “You can say that because you don’t understand the power of microbes. When the conditions are right, microbes replicate with frightful intensity and do … frightful things.” said Dr. Borodinov. “A single drop of lactic acid bacteria, under the right conditions, will produce tons of lactic acid over the course of only one night. Just a teaspoon of the botulin toxin weaponized and deployed via missile could kill every human on Earth. And during a serious outbreak of a contagious disease, it won’t just be the disease that kills. Many things that are worse than the disease will happen in society.”

  “But what about us, here?” Dr. la Rochelle said.

  “We’re sealed in by ice. In other words, we’re quarantined from the rest of the world. We’re far away, and right now we’re in the middle of a polar winter. Nobody comes here, so nobody brings the germs. And most likely—or hopefully at least—this germ cannot thrive in such low temperatures.”