There had been hospitals, places of healing, that took care of the sick, but soon they ran out of everything, including eventually running out of the will to care, amid the hopeless reality of no meds, no water, no electricity, and no expectation that it would get any better. Then came the ravagers. There were people looting very early – the same day the crash was announced – stealing the very TVs that were announcing the devastation, and they took smart stuff and stupid. There were people who stole hundreds of gallons of milk, thousands of hundred dollar bills, tons of fresh meat, thousands of rounds of ammo – often for guns they didn’t own – and canned goods began to disappear as quickly as anyone could carry them. In the more liberal cities, there were nearly no guns to be had, so almost anyone who already had a gun became something of a tiny, local tyrant. Street gangs in Chicago became the ruling class because they outnumbered the police and there would soon be no justice systems to drive their punishment, or even apprehension.
Some remembered, just a few years before, how people would fight – I mean sometimes with fists – over the last 62” TV discounted by 45% for Black Friday. Now, they were actually killing for supplies like canned goods, and bottled water of any brand, flavor, or size. Though some semblance of order remains in the major capitals, every nation on the planet had come to near ruin because there is almost no leadership, no extant commercial substructure, and no fiduciary management or banking of any kind. It has all long since fallen to rubbish, and people who used to be powerful – those not murdered for supposedly bringing all of this on the rest of them – well, they became the wandering lost, devoid of hearth and home. They soon realized that they could only hope to get scraps from those whom they were said to have betrayed. It really didn’t matter to most people that these people hadn’t actually betrayed anyone; they just became someone to blame. Eventually, they even began eating the scraps that used to be their neighbors corpses, or worse yet, their own family.
The least affected for the greatest amount of time were the aboriginals who lived off the land, raised sheep and goats, and lived in tribal communities where family – the whole family – was the primary focus and the world as a whole was a distant third. In some of these communities, neighbors still meant something to one another. Self was always on the list.
The police were among the first to get attacked; not all of them, but many, ‘til some of them became the very tyrants they had sworn to foil. Millions of cop families got into their cars and trucks, filled all the spaces not taken by people, with supplies, staples, guns, and ammo, heading for the hills, so to speak. Those people, the ones who knew how to hunt, took in hand their means by which to do so, and left. Some stayed around hunting the people, taking their goods, their supplies, and some fools even took their money; as if that was of any use any more. I suppose they were just thinking about a future day when money might be useful again. But most know now, that this is not very likely. And those who were late getting the news paid the price.
There were Wal-Mart trucks arriving at their stores, having listened to recordings on their way, only to find the world was a suck hole. They listened to their CD’s and MP3’s because, traveling over long distances, it becomes tiring changing the radio station every hundred miles, searching for your tunes. So, they may have noticed odd traffic patterns, but didn’t make a connection, and when they arrived at the stores, some of them, most of them, were attacked for their load. Imagine pulling in back of a store, turning into position to back up to the docs, but suddenly being swamped by a swarm of people, jumping on your cab, smashing your windows, throwing you from the truck! This was very early.
Long since then, there have been rumblings and rumors of growing nationalization in Europe, but on this side of the pond there is no usable internet, no radio, no TV, and in most places, barely any electricity. It is a power supply thing that, unless your town produces it, it just ain’t there. There are no shipping routes across the seas, no air traffic to speak of, and mail hasn’t existed since that day. No, in America, at least in the middle, there is no knowledge of the world as a whole, and the world doesn’t care about this place either.
Year four was devastating. Early on, those who were on ships thought that they would be safer than many others, because they were somewhat isolated, and the sea could provide most of their needs. They could, theoretically, put into port somewhere and get their other needs met. But ports became hostile and living at sea became their permanent solution. What they hadn’t counted on was the extreme and sudden contamination of the seawater, killing off almost everything, leaving a mass of floating stench on the seas, over most of the globe. The disease that would follow left hundreds of thousands of vessels devoid of any form of life. Adrift, most sea faring vessels – those far out in the wild ocean – would be tossed and lost in the next storm that would come by. The disease soon spread to the shores as well, and airborne, it flowed farther inland. Organizations like the CDC tried to do something about it, but their resources ran out, just like everyone else’s.
America used to matter, to almost everyone, in almost every arena. But now? Not so much. Sometimes people in the “flyover States” look up and see something overhead, leaving a streak across the sky, they know it has nothing to do with them, and they go about their business . . . keep on walking . . . keep on existing . . . keep on . . . Nothing to see here!
What Americans, especially those in the middle-lands don’t know, is that, in Europe there has been a building up of a single enterprise that began as a matter of who controlled resources. But it has escalated into a matter of who controls that part of the world. The Islamists grew up in the three plus years since the worst day, killing and bludgeoning, beating and maiming, burning and enslaving, to where they now have absolute control of the third world reality which had once been Europe, and what it has now become.
The Ayatollah Someassholla claimed to be the final imam – the thirteenth some said – for whom they had all been waiting. He issued a fatwa on everyone that opposed Islam in any way, killing millions at the barrel of the gun, on bayonets, at the end of ropes, by fire, and in some cases by having them run down in the street and beaten. Beheadings would have been news, but there was no news, other than whatever the neighbors shared from their day. There was no TV or internet over there either, but they did have radio – at least the mullahs and imams had radio – and they kept communications to their own minimums, tracking down any other broadcasters and killing them, confiscating their equipment for their own use.
Since they had the only means of communication en masse, the Islamists took advantage of the lack of opposition voices, and began rewriting history. They took a page from Goebbels’ playbook, finding the most outrageous lies of the previous century, hammering them into the heads of the public until very few could remember the truth, and even fewer would point out the lies. A man could die that way, and many had, just for speaking out. Saying, “That’s not the way I remember it,” could get a person killed. And it wasn’t even that there were so many of them as to be insurmountable, but that they were so ruthless, hateful, demanding, and exacting in punishment for any that disobeyed the iron will. And they were not measured in their sense of justice; stealing a sandwich would cost a hand and a woman who would injure her Islamic rapist would be executed.
To be frank, they made the Nazis of the previous century seem like pansies. These guys didn’t even need tanks, rolling into town, decimating an entire populace by just kicking in doors late at night, running through the house slitting throats, leaving bleeding and broken people, and always the children sobbing through the night, being taken to a nearby home in the morning . . . if they were blessed. If they were not blessed . . . well, they were taken to Islam, to be raped and sodomized, beaten into submission, subjugated into conversion, or, failing conversion, they would be killed after all of that.
It had become even more of the terrible plague on the world it had always been, but now, spreading like a virus from Britain to Austral
ia. There had been some forays to the shores of America, but when it was discovered that a certain flag over a ship meant attack, it didn’t take much for people to mount a resistance, if only in pocketed areas, if only by handguns and rifles, and if only because their families were in danger. It was enough to make arrival on these shores tenuous at best.
The American solution, once the harshness of the danger was finally realized, was to either hunt down, or run off everyone who visited a mosque or madrassa, burning it to the ground. Still, even that left pockets of danger in the land. The pockets were small, and their communications with one another was almost impossible, but they were a thorn in the side of Americans, even though there was no more America to hate.
The advantage was, from an American point of view, the Muslim horde, having destroyed all means of creating munitions for the large guns on board, they only had those shells left behind by the previous occupants, and that wasn’t enough to wage war. The awesome ships that they had taken, as pirates are want to do, were only well armored protection for travelers, almost unusable as weapons. The polity that used to protect them under the President was greatly weakened; his power was severely marginalized.
Unbeknownst to the Americans – again, a loosely used term – the lessons had been learned from those impossible landings in the north. The Muslim soon modified their attack plans to include peaceful landings, laden with supplies for the locals, off-loading with a few thousand men, only to kill everyone within a mile of the ports and docks of Rio de Janeiro to Cartagena. From there they set ashore another few thousand, and another, and another, ‘til they had a force big enough to own a city and they did many times.
At the same time, and in the same way, they invaded Buenos Aires, backed up by brothers from Cordoba, and once Argentina was theirs, they strolled through Mendoza then over the mountains and descended upon Santiago. Chile was theirs soon – if not in full – in function. The same model gave them Caracas and they met the forces of the eastern campaign in Cartagena, but when they got to Panama City, it failed because PC had long been a fortified city. There were myriad weapons left behind, under lock and key that would be violated.
Panama had been a military stronghold because the US had kept it protected for so long, though some would claim that America had enslaved it. But when the stewardship was transferred back to Panama, they kept it safe in much the same way. The government of Panama had been overthrown, and the military, destroyed by desertion and revolution, left the everyday supply of weapons literally to the jungles. The secured weapons were still there, including the munitions for the large weapons mounted on the bulwarks, at the entrances and along the canal. So, because of the arms left behind, and because none of it is that hard to figure out, there is a banana republic, run by guerillas, protecting North America from the burgeoning horde. And they successfully stand their post, even if they don’t know they have a post, entirely out of self-interest. After all, being a supposed Catholic territory, the Muslim would kill them as infidels, regardless of what brand of infidelity they practice, or don’t.
Soon Belize would fall, along with Tampico and Acapulco, along with most of the west coast cities, all the way to San Francisco. Californians didn’t provide much resistance because, as a culture, because it had become their nature to get what they wanted by complaining, lawsuits, protests, and public challenges of that ilk. Islam didn’t care about courts, customs, culture, and complaints. When the culture of complaint conflicted with the cadre of homicidal hallelujah, murder ensued on a massive scale. There were over 80,000 protesters that had come to fight Islam in San Diego, using signs and verbal invectives. Over 60,000 died that day, surrounded by bayonets and a hail of gun fire, followed by several hundred grenades, launched by slings into a crowd of terrified people, running like crazed little animals, dying en mass. The local imam later bragged that over two million rounds of ammo were used that day, “And we are ready to do it again, and again, as Allah demands.”
Mark had been to several of the cities, before that day and after. Since the sky died, he has been to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, Raleigh, and Savannah, along the coast, in the early months of the desolation. And in every city he traveled, each about a week after the previous, there was more and more scavenging, scurrying, and suffering. As the weeks passed, the supplies began to run low, grocery stores began to burn, malls went down in flames and dust, car dealers were looted, robbed, knocked down by force, and city shops that used to serve their neighbors discovered that they didn’t have any neighbors anymore. This was true in Atlanta, Columbus, Mobile, New Orleans, and everywhere else he traveled. He began sticking to the “fly over” states, since they had a better class of people.
Another of the problems that began in the fourth year was that of the failing cement around the world. Because of a conflict with the arrivals, there had been a detonation of fuel cylinders, resulting in a form of pollution never even considered. When the Two were resurrected, the ships arrived for a momentary stop, and one of the defense systems that had been taken over by some mullahs fired off a panic sortie at one of the ships. The fuel cylinders burst, detonating a quarter of the fuel on board, but distributing the rest across the sky. It quickly seemed to diffuse into the atmosphere, but the effects would not be perceived for a while. At first, it seemed benign. The effect was that all of the cement and concrete of a certain vintage began to age at an accelerated rate, much of it beginning to crumble within thirty days.
In the third decade of the millennium, there was a Congressional decree that all concrete used in road construction and flooring in towers had to meet certain formulaic specifications. This formula included specific polymers, which combined with the typical recipe, bound the product into a tighter compound, and it paid a certain premium back to a number of Congressmen and Senators, hence the decree. But when exposed to the most minute samples of the fuel the polymers failed. The fuel converted the polymers into a gel, with a corrosive element, which converted more of the polymers by desiccation. It was not one of those situations where the effect was limited because the chemical causing it was used up. No, it was the effect of the fuel converting the polymers into something that was deleterious to the connecting polymers. It was a never ending chain of corrosion.
There were bridges that fell and buildings that slowly collapsed. We say, “slowly,” because the signs of stress and weakness became visible to almost everyone, so the buildings, bridges, and everything else showing signs, were condemned, emptied, and boarded up. The homeless and the helpless began using them for shelter, but soon enough, that came to an end. There were several incidents of buildings or overpasses being used as shelters, and the structures finally reaching the point where their integrity surrendered to their weight, dropping suddenly on the occupants. News spread and enough people believed it, so the collapses later would have no accompanying loses.
Many of the highway flyovers, which had been around long before, had been resurfaced with the new mix, or the ramps leading to the older fly over had been replaced, making them useless for a while. There were some which, having been built during that timeframe, fell from the sky, often onto the other elements of road which had stood otherwise, surrendering to the impacts from above. There were some places that were relatively untouched, but others where the roads became a nightmare.
For a while Mark had tried to find his way in the east central states, only to discover that from Harlan County, Kentucky to the west most corner of Tennessee, anyplace outside of the cities that is, the rednecks and the hillbillies had taken over just about everything. Their shine and meth culture was vast and formidable, controlling everything and everyone. And if you didn’t fit in, as one would say, “If you ain’t one of us, an’ if you don’t b’long . . . well, you best get yo carpet-baggin’ ass up outta he’uh!”
Mark looked into industrial cities like Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Detroit, Cleveland, and the like, only to discover that the electricity had gone out for good, that their
industry didn’t exist any longer, and that the scavenge and scurry was in full force there as well. There were a few graceful weeks each summer, shuffling about the farm belt, trading his labor for room and board, a little fuel, but not much more. The supply of labor was great, but the crops were not as vast as they once were, and the reality is that there really wasn’t anything else in which to trade. Money was done. He discovered that his poker playing skills would help him acquire an extra ammo stash as he went though, and that was prime currency in this new age.
Mark tells Rita and the gang that he knows a place where they can have a life until this is over. With just a little description and explanation of how he knows, mostly in very vague terms, the whole camp agrees that this haven of his will be their goal. There, according to Mark anyway, they can hunt and fish, grow some simple crops, far from the madding crowds . . . for now. They’re going to meet a friend of his.
Mark remembers what happened, even though he and the rest of the world wants to put it out of memory, still . . . memory remains. He understands, partly because he had been a close friend of hers, he had served with her in the Afghan conflicts, and served again with her in New York, trying to save the world, after her ugliest season, and before she disappeared. He remembered her telling him what had happened, what had led up to those moments for her, what she learned from the highest levels of information; and how an ancient news man told her everything that had led up to that day for everyone, as well as who she had been, and who she had become. It was a long, arduous journey; even though the final leg only took a few days . . . it was a lifetime.
Six Months Before it All
If you prick us, do we not bleed? . . . And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?[3]
The Warriors' Ends- Soldiers of the Apocalypse Page 4