Birth of an Age

by James Beauseigneur

  South of As-Mubarraz, Saudi Arabia

  The sound of air passing through regulators was entirely drowned out by the swirling blades of the UN helicopter as it hovered a few hundred yards from a camp of eighty to a hundred Bedouin tribesmen a few miles south of the helicopter’s destination of As-Mubarraz, Saudi Arabia. Inside the helicopter, a team of four men and two women plus the helicopter’s pilot and copilot studied the actions of the tribesmen, while cameras recorded the event and transmitted the pictures via satellite to an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean. Thirty two hours had passed since all communications with Baghdad had been lost and ten hours since Riyadh had gone silent. According to satellite data, a rapidly-growing circle of death, inside of which no human life remained, extended from Yazd, Iran, in the east, 1,050 miles to Mahattat Al-Qatranah, Jordan, in the west; from Nachicevan, Azerbajdzanska, in the north, 920 miles to Al-Hulwah, Saudi Arabia, in the south. As-Mubarraz, 82 miles below the southernmost edge of the circle, thus far appeared to be unaffected, and the Bedouin camp was the first sign of human life the team had spotted this close to the periphery of the circle.

  The preponderance of evidence about the circle of death indicated the presence of some incredibly fast-acting, 100 percent virulent, rapidly-dispersing biological or chemical agent. There were, however, two facts that conflicted with that thesis. The first was that whatever the killing agent was, it traveled in all directions at approximately the same speed and was therefore unaffected by air currents, as would have been the case with any known nuclear, biological, or chemical agent. The second chink in the thesis was the macabre video report that had come from World News Network in Riyadh.

  For protection, each member of the helicopter’s crew and research team wore an entirely self-contained nuclear/biological/chemical suit that provided protection against any infiltrant larger than .002 microns. Gas masks were used until the helicopter came to within twenty kilometers of the city, after which point respiration was provided by individual tanks of compressed air. Communications were by means of short-range radio transmitters and receivers built into their masks and hoods. Anything said by a member of the team would be heard by the other members and transmitted back to the carrier in the Indian Ocean.

  There was no indication of anything unusual when the helicopter reached the southern edge of the city. The residents were going about their daily lives. Hovering about 150 feet above the ground, the six cameras mounted below recorded everything they encountered, providing a complete panoramic view from the chopper’s belly. Inside, the team members scanned the vicinity for anything that seemed unusual, but found nothing. The team leader, Colonel Terry Crystal, leaned through the doorway from the cargo bay to the helicopter’s cockpit and signaled the pilot to proceed northward, stopping at each of the predetermined coordinates for subsequent inspection.

  The helicopter was a flying laboratory with equipment on board to provide immediate analysis of environmental data and the retrieval and collection of samples for further analysis on their return to their base in Qal’at Bishna. At each of the stops made over the city, air samples were taken for immediate analysis, but so far nothing unusual had been found.

  Arriving at the northern edge of the city, the helicopter slowed again, hovering while the team repeated its routine. If nothing was found, the itinerary would take them next to Al-Hulwah, a location within the known radius of the circle of death, where satellite scanners indicated no human life remained. The air sample from the city’s northern border indicated the presence of no contaminants, and there appeared to be no indication of anything out of the ordinary on the ground. Colonel Crystal checked with each member of his team and then, leaning back into the cockpit, motioned to the pilot to continue.

  The pilot was about to carry out Crystal’s order when the copilot thought he noticed something. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to something on the ground.

  Crystal and the pilot looked where the copilot was pointing. “It’s just a woman doing her laundry,” Crystal said.

  “No, look closer,” the copilot insisted.

  Colonel Crystal picked up his binoculars and stepped into the cockpit for a better view. “What is that?” he gasped, still holding the binoculars. His response drew the attention of the rest of the team in the helicopter’s bay. As the members of the team looked on in horror, a woman in her mid-twenties held a baby by its feet while its head dangled, submerged beneath the water of her washtub.

  “There’s something else!” someone said, pointing about a hundred yards from the woman. Shifting their attention, they watched as a man with a pitchfork ran up behind another man and drove the instrument through his body and out his chest.

  “Quick! The woman!” someone else yelled, drawing their attention back to the previous scene, where a man with a rifle was approaching. A second later, at point-blank range the man put the rifle to the woman’s chest and pulled the trigger, releasing a burst of automatic fire.

  “Get us out of range!” Colonel Crystal ordered.

  “Hang on!” the pilot yelled as he pulled the chopper sharply up and to the left to take cover behind one of the city’s taller buildings. He did so just in time, as the man turned and started shooting at them.

  “Look! Over there!” one of the female team members called.

  “And there!” someone else said.

  It quickly became apparent that there were more than enough atrocities to keep them all busy; no one needed to point them out. Even from a distance of hundreds of feet in the air, the carnage was sickening to watch. The madness spread below them at incredible speed.

  “Are we getting all this on camera?” Crystal asked.

  “Yes sir,” came the answer from the team member monitoring the cameras.

  Despite the grotesque horror on the ground, the attention of all three men in the cockpit was fixed on it, unable to accept such mindless butchery. For a moment no one spoke.

  “Sir,” the pilot said finally, “If your people have their samples, I think we ought to get out of here. Right now we’re a sitting duck for anyone with—” The pilot’s sentence was cut short by a flashing light on the instrument panel, followed by a sudden shift in the helicopter’s weight distribution. “Someone’s opened the bay door!” he shouted.

  Crystal turned on his heel and rushed back into the helicopter’s bay. What he saw there defied logical explanation. The bay door was indeed open as the pilot’s instruments had indicated, and the research team was gone.

  After waiting a moment but hearing no word from Colonel Crystal, the pilot decided to have a look for himself. “Take over,” he told his copilot. “I’m going back to see what’s going on.”

  The same scene greeted him as had met Crystal. The door was open and no one was there — not even the Colonel. “No one’s back here!” he reported in stunned disbelief to his copilot. “It looks like they’ve all jumped!”

  It didn’t take much to realize that whatever was affecting the people on the ground had now struck the research team. “Let’s get out of here, skipper,” the copilot answered.

  “Roger that!” he replied. Behind him there was a flash of movement and someone lunged from behind some equipment. Hit by the man’s full weight, the pilot flew through the open doorway of the helicopter, along with his attacker. Tumbling toward his certain death, he saw who had tackled him. It was Colonel Crystal.

  “Get back to base!” the pilot yelled as loud as he could, hoping that he was still within range for radio contact with his copilot — it was imperative that the data gathered by the team be delivered. Two seconds later the pilot and Crystal were dead.

  Inside the helicopter, the copilot was already making good the pilot’s last order. Moving south as quickly as the chopper would take him, he retreated back the way they had come. Everywhere below him the killing progressed with amazing speed. The cameras were still rolling, capturing the details of the bloodshed and sending them back to a stunned analysis team in the Indian Ocean. Then un
expectedly, the copilot caught the smell of something like rotten eggs or burning sulfur.

  The dark legions of the Euphrates River hadn’t yet reached the Bedouin encampment south of the city. Looking up from feeding his father’s camels, a teenage boy watched with great interest the return of the helicopter that had passed overhead about half an hour earlier. Curiously, it flew straight toward them and, upon reaching the camp, hovered there, frightening the animals and bringing everyone out of their tents. For a moment nothing happened, and then suddenly hundreds of gallons of fuel were dumped from the tanks, vaporizing in the blast of the chopper’s blades. It seemed as though a fine rain was falling, but the rain burned their eyes, causing the Bedouin to take shelter in their tents, which absorbed the spray. With a quarter of its fuel remaining, the helicopter abruptly shot skyward until, at a thousand feet, the copilot changed course and took the craft into a power dive, driving the exploding bird directly into the heart of the Bedouin camp and turning the entire landscape into a spectacular blazing inferno.

  * * * * *

  Dashed line depicts spread as of end of second day. Solid line depicts end of third day.

  By the end of the second day there was not a person left alive within a thousand miles of the Euphrates River, and the murderous madness was continuing to spread, reaching as far west as central Egypt, as far east as Afghanistan, as far north as Volgograd, Russia, and as far south as Yemen. Five hundred million men, women, and children had been killed, and there was no sign of abatement. Twenty-four hours later, the circle of death reached Timessa, Libya and the heel of the boot of Italy in the west; Tajikistan in the east; almost to Moscow in the north; and the Gulf of Aden in the south. Eight hundred million people lay brutally butchered; the entire populations of Iraq, Iran, Turkmenistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Cyprus, the U.A.E., Qatar, Oman, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Greece, and Bulgaria, as well as most of Romania, Ukraine, Yemen and Afghanistan were dead.

  There was one exception: Not one person within the borders of Israel had been killed.

  Chapter 15

  Avatar Dawn

  New York

  Drawn curtains barred the light of the afternoon sun, reflecting the dark mood that permeated the room. Inside the stately chamber, under faint artificial light, silent guards stood vigil over the flag-draped, sealed coffin of the fallen leader. Hobbling on crutches because of the injury sustained after the assassination, Decker stood beside the coffin in bitter grief and disbelief, tears flowing freely. After a few moments he moved away and sat alone in silence on the dais, from which he would later deliver Christopher’s eulogy.

  One by one the darkly clad dignitaries began to arrive for the solemn occasion of laying one of their own to rest. Most were ambassadors and other government officials whom Decker knew from his years at the UN, but there were also others; many, associates of Robert Milner — business leaders, authors, college professors, actors, producers, religious leaders, people of influence from all walks of life. Soon the number grew and a line formed, stretching out into the hall as each of the mourners waited to pass by the coffin, pausing to offer their last respects.

  It wasn’t as it had been for Jon Hansen, where hundreds of thousands waited in line for hours. Within the UN, Christopher was extremely popular, but except for Italy, which he had represented, his popularity didn’t extend to the general population. Most people knew him as one of the ten primary members of the Security Council, and they knew that he probably would have become secretary-general, so there was wide-spread grief at his assassination, but it wasn’t the sense of personal loss that had accompanied the death of Hansen.

  Secretary Milner had taken responsibility for Christopher’s body and had handled all of the arrangements for the funeral and the burial. Decker was relieved that he had taken that burden. He was a little surprised and annoyed, however, by the number of reporters and cameras Milner had allowed at the service. Most of the major networks and news organizations were represented, but so too were many smaller operations.

  With the incredible number of deaths in the east and the general panic that was spreading across the rest of the world, it seemed incomprehensible that this much attention would be given to the funeral of one man. But the media tends to cover news that is most convenient, even when the world may be falling apart elsewhere, and all of the major media had offices in New York. There were professional and amateur reporters on the periphery of the horrific events in the east. Their terrifying videos blanketed the Internet and the story dominated the headlines. But such videos were few in number and always brief and confusing because all who were close enough to cover the story soon became its victims. And there were few who, knowing they were about to die, had the composure to record the event.

  Perhaps the sense of business-almost-as-usual that filled the room was due to a human inability to comprehend the magnitude of what was taking place on the other side of the world. Perhaps it was because it was on the other side of the world. John and Cohen had said that one third of the population would be killed, and that quota would certainly be met long before it reached the Americas. Or perhaps it was just that after so much death and destruction, the beleaguered planet was beginning to accept cataclysm as the norm.

  Decker was as aware as anyone of the mayhem in the east, but after all the suffering and death he had seen in his life, he now felt incurably numb to it all. As long as Christopher was alive, most of that suffering might serve some purpose: the “birth pains of the New Age,” as Milner and Christopher had called it. But with Christopher’s death, none of it made sense any more.

  Time after time Decker retraced the events in his mind. He couldn’t absolve himself of guilt for being the one who had given Tom Donafin the access and opportunity to commit his heinous crime. When the connection between Decker and Tom had been made by UN security after the assassination, Decker was questioned. The news media were quick to jump on the story. There was no one who seriously thought Decker had any intentional involvement in what had happened, but with so little else known about the assassin, Decker’s connection had become an angle that security and the media insisted on exploring in every detail. Decker and Tom had been friends, classmates, worked for the same magazine, and later both had been taken hostage and held for three years in Lebanon. The irony that Decker had been responsible for freeing Tom Donafin from his bonds in Lebanon and that now Donafin had assassinated Christopher, whom Decker had raised as his own son, was considered and reflected upon ad nauseam. Had it been known that it was Christopher who had actually freed Decker in the first place, the discussions of irony would have gone on even longer.

  Later, after UN Security searched Gerard Poupardin’s apartment, and it became apparent from the many fouled and defaced news clippings and photographs that Poupardin’s original target had been Christopher, there was at last something else for the media to talk about. A number of commentators, perhaps motivated in part out of sympathy for Decker, argued that if Tom had not shot Christopher, then Poupardin certainly would have. “Still,” they would conclude, “it was ironic . . .”

  So the “official” verdict of the media was that Decker had acted innocently. That was also the preliminary conclusion reached by UN Security. Yet he couldn’t help blaming himself.

  Adding to his misery, Decker struggled with the grief he felt for Tom. The vision of Tom’s violent death wasn’t an easy one to forget. Still, he felt a deep sense of guilt at the very thought that he could lament the death of Christopher’s murderer. He had mulled over Tom’s last words time and again. “He was going to leave me,” Tom had said. Did it really mean something, or was it just the raving of a lunatic? And what did Tom’s note mean about being the Avenger of Blood? Whatever it was, it was clearly connected to Tom’s association with John, Cohen, and the Koum Damah Patar. Decker was certain they were the ones who had caused this. Somehow they had driven Tom to do it because they knew that Christopher was the one force that stood in their way.
Their time was running out. If Christopher had lived and become secretary-general, he certainly would have ended their reign of terror. Now all was lost because of him.

  “It was my fault,” he said under his breath. He never let himself get too far from that thought. His feeling of guilt, his suffering, even the pain of his twisted knee were his punishment, though they were far from adequate for his self-supposed crime.

  In the breast pocket of his jacket, Decker had put a brochure from a nearby life completion center. He had always found “life completion” to be a ridiculous euphemism for suicide, but when the brochure had come in his mail two days earlier, sent by some aggressive marketing manager who had read of his situation, he had kept it. It wasn’t the first time he had received such an “offer” — they were a standard item in email spam and were sometimes sent out in bulk mail — but this was the first time he had received a targeted mailer. Life completion services were big business. The successful marketers scoured local news sources for likely clientele — those who had recently lost a loved one, divorced, failed in a business, filed for bankruptcy, and the like. Actually, considering the circumstances, Decker was surprised to have received only one. The letter had offered consolation at “this difficult time” and had generously offered their services, should he require them.

  Decker still had a few matters to put straight, but soon after the funeral he planned to quietly slip away to the center’s facility — not that he believed the letter claiming that the people at the center really cared about his suffering. It was simply the most convenient location and he imagined it far less painful than hanging himself and far more considerate of others than jumping from the top of a building. Decker had read that most people considering suicide felt a great sense of relief once they had decided on their course. He felt none of that.