Counterattack
Page 9
Kell Loughlin hid inside a low cabinet in the university’s botanical lab, his body folded impossibly small, the door locked from the inside by manually forcing the latch in place that took a key to open from the outside.
Looters banged and cursed, knocked things over and rifled through drawers, making a mess that Kell would dutifully clean up later, at night. An exclamation of discovery dismayed him. Someone had found his hidden food. He groaned inwardly, terrified to make any noise that could give him away.
The looters went at the lab with renewed vigor, hoping to find more food, one even trying to open the cabinet he hid in.
“We’ll come back for that later with a pry bar,” a gruff voice said and Kell thought his days of hiding out in the lab were numbered. Perhaps this was even his last day.
The vending machines on campus had emptied out quickly once the bombing began, but as a PhD candidate in botanical science, he knew food grew in the labs and that he could grow more. He felt a bit like a mad scientist, puttering around his lab alone, talking to his plants and himself, trying to convince himself that he could grow enough to survive.
But desperate looters had found their way to the university and eventually to his lab. They had systematically torn every building apart and had found every scrap of food and every ounce of medicine remaining. They’d moved on without discovering him, and he thought he might be left alone, until they came back this second time. He heard them destroying everything. His equipment. His kerosene heat lamps. The pots and troughs he’d constructed during the dark days and nights of loneliness and fear.
His new life’s work.
He couldn’t stop them. He couldn’t do anything but hide in a cabinet and hope they’d leave.
The next morning Kell walked across an empty university courtyard with a backpack containing a few of his belongings, a little water, and no food. He felt safer in the daylight, although he might actually have been safer sneaking out at night. He didn’t know how to sneak, though. He was a botanist.
A flyer lying on the ground caught his attention, but he decided to ignore it and move on. He didn’t want to know about some student dance or activity from a bygone age, an age whose innocence and tenure ended just a few short months before when aliens landed on the Earth, then attacked it for an unknown reason.
Earth’s innocence ended when meteors struck Dublin, killing millions. Its innocence ended when those with guns and knives and sticks and sufficient justification for their heinous actions took what they wanted, and those without weapons, those who were afraid or still possessed a sense of morality, fled the cities in search of safety and food in the country.
Its innocence ended when the apocalypse came not by zombies or even by alien attacks, but by the horrible things man did to man.
The Irish seemed particularly adept at committing atrocities, and Kell had stumbled upon a few victims in the university dormitories. It was a sight he never wanted to remember but couldn’t help seeing every time he closed his eyes. It haunted his dreams at night and plagued his thoughts during the day.
He saw another flyer and the words ‘The Ambassador’ piqued his curiosity. A new, now defunct, band? Kell enjoyed Irish rock and had tried to stay up with the scene in the local community. Galway wasn’t Dublin, but if he’d been in Dublin, he’d probably be dead. So perhaps the tradeoff of having to listen to tiny, completely unknown bands had been worth it. Going to Galway to school had saved his life. At least temporarily.
Kell picked up the flyer and the paper felt thick, almost crude, in his hands. Like it had been made by children or amateur newspaper recyclers. He read it.
The atomic war between the United States of America and Russia has doomed our world. Joy. Figures those two would unleash their weapons on each other. As if stones falling from the sky wasn’t enough. Radioactive clouds have killed most of the population of China and will cross the Pacific and destroy most of North America. The devastation caused by the Hrwang’s defense against our world’s attacks is also not insignificant.
The death of Dublin not insignificant! The author’s euphemism would have made Jonathan Swift proud.
But together, we can save Humanity. It sounded like a World War Two pitch to buy war bonds. We can save what is important. Humanity’s artistic skills, Humanity’s creativity, Humanity’s science. Together, we can create a peaceful world and a peaceful society. Kell wondered aloud what the author had been smoking in his pipe. Together we can create a new Future. The capital ‘F’ made Kell think of the false promises of communism for some reason.
The Hrwang have located a planet suited for colonization by humans. They have given us transport vessels that will convey us there just as they brought the Hrwang to Earth. The journey will be long, at least five years, “Ay, there’s the rub,” Kell growled, but we will sleep the entire time, just as our Hrwang benefactors did when they traveled from their world. Some form of hibernation. Theoretically possible. The aliens must have figured out a way to do it safely and cheaply.
A long list of requirements followed. Educators, professors, skilled engineers and technicians, computer programmers, scientists, key military and government personnel. Everyone had to be young and of childbearing age with the exception of a few individuals with skill sets of exceptional value to the colony. Other skills included farmers.
The possibility of hope reared its ugly head in Kell’s mind. He was a botanist, which was about as close as you could get to a farmer scientist, unless you actually were an agricultural scientist. He could snag the PhD certificate off the wall of his thesis adviser’s office if he needed to prove he had a PhD. He could talk enough botany to convince anyone that he was already a scientist.
He was definitely still of child bearing age.
He thought about the downside and couldn’t come up with one. If gangs didn’t get him and do to him what they’d done to those poor kids in the dormitory, he’d end up starving to death. Even if he found shelter and food, all of humanity would starve to death by the end of winter. The meteors caused an abnormally cold summer season, and it killed all natural crops. Only greenhouse and artificially lit food would grow on Earth for a while. There couldn’t be enough of those to sustain even a diminished population.
Kell read where to go and when to be there. It wasn’t far, but he didn’t have much time.
Funny twist of fate, he thought as he began running. If the looters hadn’t taken the last of his food and destroyed his lab, he wouldn’t have left and he wouldn’t have found the flyer in time. He wouldn’t have read about someone’s hope for the future and his possible contribution. He wouldn’t be running now to reach some rendezvous point
He wouldn’t be going to some alien world to raise plants and save Humanity.
Together, like the flyer said.
He chuckled grimly to himself and kept running toward his newfound destiny.
97