HARD ROAD: Heaven Bound

  HARD ROAD

  BY TERRY MCDONALD

  Copyright, 2012. All rights reserved

  HARD ROAD

  By

  TERRY MCDONALD

  CHAPTER ONE

  NOWHERE TO HIDE

  Honolulu Hawaii, November 12, 2017

  The dying started today. Susan keys the remote to catch the news while we prepare breakfast. The first words we hear are from CNN’s Sharren Bahshria reporting from the street in Sydney.

  “…has estimated over a half million are dead, and thousands more infected. The dead and dying surround me. The main highways are blocked with stalls and wrecks and alternate routes out of the city are all but impassable.”

  With the rest of the world, Susan and I witness the death of a continent. This is Sunday, and neither of us has to work. I doubt many people in Honolulu left their homes today. The news, and Miss Bahshria’s narration of what we see through her cameraman’s lens, is surrealistically hypnotic. The live feed is so intense; we watch the disaster unfold in our bedroom while our children, Gail and Sammy, play together in the game room. Only nine and ten, they are too young to see such frightful images.

  Six hours pass. Sharren Bahshria dies a victim of the plague. Her cameraman’s effort to keep her on her feet, begging her to keep her eyes open, has us crying. He carries on in her stead, documenting with his camera the unrelenting horror. The death toll, from what the network has named ‘The Sleeping Disease’, is over a million and a half. The services humans have come to depend on are non-existent. The ranks of the police and other emergency responders are faring no better than the populace. Sydney is in flames, the streets filled with terrified people milling about in panic, stepping over the dead littering the sidewalks and roadways. Many of them are afflicted, staggering, trying to stay on their feet, begging others to help them stay awake. Some fall to the pavement as we watch. A few cars are still attempting to navigate their way out of the city. The drivers are running over the bodies and bashing through anyone desperate enough to try to block them. Leaving the city to escape the death is an exercise in futility. Every corner of Australia is affected, even the remote outback.

  We leave our bedroom only to feed the kids and check on them intermittently. At five this afternoon, the broadcast from Sydney ends. The cameraman is dead, shot by an elderly man who took affront to him recording the tragedy. The view switches to the CNN Broadcast desk in Atlanta, then to Melbourne, but we have seen enough. The shock of that first day remained imprinted in our minds.

  *

  In less than two weeks, Australia was no longer a viable nation. The World Health Organization said it was a plague like nothing encountered before. They could find no pathogen or toxin to account for the symptoms, nor any logical vector for the spread, but the short of it was the afflicted were dead within six hours, and there was not a single recovery. It was not an ugly death, but it was death for sure. First, the victim would get tired, and then beyond tired to listless, and after about six hours simply fall asleep and never wake. No pain or suffering, if you exclude the terror of getting tired and knowing you were going to die.

  The world rushed to Australia’s aid. America sent its emergency relief ships. They, along with other top tier nations, moved medical teams and researchers into the major cities, but to no avail. The dying continued unabated. It took over a week for the UN to vote an embargo. By then the dying had stopped. Of the twenty five million inhabitants, only fifty thousand survived.

  Fearing the spread of the plague, Australia was isolated from the rest of the world. A vast armada of war ships from a coalition of countries encircled the continent. They stood back a hundred miles off the coast, prepared to destroy any plane or boat attempting to leave. Flyovers were prohibited and the only observations were from satellite images.

  Unlike Sydney and Perth, Melbourne was spared the burning by the panicked populace. Even so, with no one staffing the generating plants, the cities were without electrical power and water. After the dying stopped, a news station in Melbourne cobbled together a crew and managed to resume broadcasting, using a generator. The satellite link from there became the most watched station in the world. For three days, their sole reporter wandered the streets with his camera, documenting the death. Some of the most horrific images came from homes he entered. The bodies, entire families, sometimes grouped together in one area, sometimes dying randomly in separate rooms. The worst broadcast was from Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Over two thousand dead lay in the pews and aisles.

  A group of six armed survivors invaded the station and rousted the News Host from her seat in front of the camera. A woman with garish makeup and spiked hair spent the next two hours describing the nasty ways they were going to harm the news crew unless a plane was sent to take them to England.

  Something happened to the feed, perhaps the camera operator cut it or the generator failed, and the broadcast stopped. No one knows the fate of the news crew.

  There were isolated contacts received by ham radio, many of them detailing the anarchy resulting from the lack of a governing body, and the complete failure of the national infrastructure. Mostly they pleaded for rescue.

  The world was on edge, praying the plague had been contained. The US declared martial law, as did other nations. People were discouraged from gathering in large crowds, and laws were passed against the hoarding of food, medicines and fuel.

  Fear ran rampant. Someone simply stating they were sleepy, or nodding off in public, was often enough to create a panicked reaction. After two months, and a few scares of possible outbreaks, the world began to breathe again.

  Of course, the psychological and social impact, along with the economic and political upheaval of losing an entire continent, caused turmoil throughout the world, but the feeling life would continue seemed to unite most of the globe to work together.

  In the aftermath, the US and Russia sent a volunteer group of medical researchers, along with a small contingent of soldiers into Melbourne. This brave group knew they would not be allowed to leave. None of them became ill, but their research only deepened the mystery surrounding the plague.

  By the time they arrived, there were no bodies to examine. They found skeletons with no flesh remaining, the clothing intact with no staining from rot or putrification. Even the bone marrow was gone. In the homes and buildings with no wind to disturb the scene, they found flesh turned to dust. The dust itself was a mystery. If it was indeed what was left of the body, it was rendered to its base elements, leaving no organic components and was useless as a material for study.

  They examined hundreds of survivors, but could find no traces of a contaminating agent, nor did their blood show abnormalities in their antibody mechanisms.

  *

  For Susan and me, life returns to normal and actually improves. We run our insurance business from home. Sales spike to such a volume we bring in extra personnel to handle the load. Three months after the Australian event, I am at the gym and my phone sounds off. It is Susan telling me the plague is in the UK, and that she wants me to come home to her. The gym I use is near the Honolulu International Airport. I guess everyone is getting the news. The H1 is bumper to bumper and it takes over an hour to get home.

  We watch the Sleeping Disease of Australia repeat itself in the English Isles. Millions die and London burns. Thousands are attempting to use the Chunnel under the channel to escape. Hundreds make it through before the French block their end of the passage. Thousands more make it across the Channel in boats, most of which are met with a hail of gunfire from the French military, and from terrified citizens near the shore.

  *

  The scientific community was bewildered by the fact the plague was entirely confined to
the UK. Despite all the people who managed to escape to the mainland, not even one case was reported across the Channel. Bewilderingly, the plague knew the boundaries of the area of infection and did not cross an invisible line.

  Another blockade was established. International tensions ran high. Accusations of terrorism flew. Elements in the democracies were blaming the Islamic nations and China for spreading the plague. The US and Russia, while deploying their strategic forces, worked together, along with the UN, to calm things. They managed to get the world to stand down while an even stronger investigation of the disaster was developed.

  The investigation was still ongoing. A breakthrough by a French research team concerning abnormalities found in the MRI’s done on UK survivors indicated the cause might not be from a pathogen or toxin. Their report that the causative agent for the plague was tiny machines called nanobots met with skepticism, but confirmations of their finding removed that skepticism. This discovery initiated another barrage of countries blaming their foes.

  *

  This morning, six months after the initial Australian event, the plague starts in China. The Emergency Alert Warning System interrupts the program we are watching, and after hearing the report, we turn the television off.

  Now we are at the dining room table with Gail and Sammy, playing their favorite board game. Susan and I have our laptops in our laps, surreptitiously sending emails to our loved ones and dearest friends, but the major portion of our attention is for our children.

  Susan buys Boardwalk for two thousand, and sells it immediately to Gail for a hundred dollars, giving her a set with Park Place. I one-up her by selling prime real estate to Sammy at rock bottom prices. Our children are smiling. We are smiling with them, even though we are rapidly losing our play money.

  We express our love.

  We block our tears, our fears.

  China has not wasted time with words or diplomacy. Knowing the plague will decimate their nation, they launch their missiles while they still have the infrastructure to accomplish it. They give no reason or warning.

  The islands are within range and multiple missiles are coming. Through closed windows we can hear the muted wailing of the warning sirens. The nukes will arrive in a few minutes.

  Ending my email, ‘With Love from Bobby’, I click send for my final communication to my brother, Jake, and lower the cover on the laptop. I hope the web isn’t so clogged it will not make it out. I ask him to remember my family in his prayers.

  I have closed the past and am living in these final moments. We have no place to hide and we will die. I hope it is quick and the children feel no pain.

  CHAPTER 2

  Georgia, USA

  March 2026

  The ugly day had begun beautiful with bright sunshine to mute the crisp morning chill. His break from walking over, Jake Markett stood from his seat on the trunk of a dead pine which had fallen across the roadway. He refolded the worn sheet of printer paper and put it into a small metal box that contained other items he valued and placed it in his pack. He shrugged into the straps of the backpack and resumed his journey, thinking about his brother as he moved. Bobby’s death, along with Susan and their two children, represented a loss that hurt even after nine years. Something about this morning made him feel the need to connect with the past. As always, after reading the printed copy of his brother’s last email, he said the requested prayer for them.

  He walked with a smooth mile-eating stride, keeping to the center of the deteriorating roadway to avoid the worst of the weeds that took advantage of every crack in the pavement. The tall pines, and underbrush crowding the road, were living walls of green and brown. In the past, this would be a whistling day. He remained silent. Since the plague, and the downfall of America into anarchy, his ingrained caution prevented actions that could bring unwanted attention.

  A couple hours later, he began looking for a suitable place to break for lunch. He preferred his meals warm. Yesterday, while searching through an abandoned grocery store he had found two undamaged cans of irradiated beef stew. The thought of eating one, set his stomach to growling. He saw the entrance to an overgrown graveled drive ahead on the right and was going to use it to go a distance from the road before setting a fire in his camp-stove.

  Before he reached the drive, the sound of a distant gunshot froze him in place.

  A girl screamed. Mingled with her piercing shrieks were the sounds of men shouting and the terrified voices of young children too far away for him to distinguish their words.

  His familiarity with weapons told him the shot came from a small-caliber pistol.

  “Damn,” he said aloud to a decision already made. Ignoring the graveled drive, he leapt the ditch at the shoulder of the road and raced through the vine-tangled forest, using the girl’s incessant screams to guide him.

  Torn by the thorny underbrush, he knelt in concealment and again cursed his inability to ignore people, especially children in danger. He was too late to prevent the rape of the two young blacks in the overgrown pasture behind a small farmhouse.

  A young man, tall and lanky with straggly blond hair was standing, pinning a boy to the ground with his foot. His deed done, he buckled his belt as he watched another man humping a girl, ignoring the boy squirming under his boot. The boy’s pants were bunched around his ankles. His bare buttocks rose and fell in his attempt to escape.

  The head in his sights would be an easy shot. Jake vengefully lowered his aim and shot the man in the lower back, severing his spine.

  The man on the girl was fat with gray hair. His bulk trapped her arms. Her legs flailed and kicked as she struggled against him. Reacting to the sound of the rifle and his partner's cry of agony, he pushed up with his arms, lifting his body from the girl. Jake put a bullet through the back of his head. His victim screamed even louder, wiggling from under his body.

  The wounded man, his legs dead, used his arms in an effort to move, clutching clumps of weeds to drag him forward, a bizarre, slow motion attempt to escape.

  The body of a black man was lying close to the house. The handle of a knife protruded from his chest. A small, terrified girl was on her knees beside him.

  The victims got to their feet amidst the bodies. The girl was silent now. As they struggled with their clothing, they looked wildly in every direction for the source of the shots.

  Jake watched the wounded man drag himself a few more feet. “You kids. MOVE!” he shouted through cupped hands.

  The taller of the two rape victims, the girl, gazed searchingly towards where he hid and shouted back. “Are you going to kill us too?”

  “No. Just move from that man.”

  The kids scurried as he aimed. Jake noticed the girl kept her eyes glued to where she thought he was hidden. The wounded man clawed desperately at the ground, grunting with the effort to move faster. Jake felt no pity, only anger at himself for wanting the man to suffer, knowing he should have taken a killing shot to begin with. His rifle spoke and the man’s head jerked. Blood splattered the weeds in front of him.

  “You got any guns or knives?” Jake shouted again.

  “No sir,” the girl answered.

  “Finish dressing. I’ll come over.”

  Jake continued to kneel. The pulling of the trigger had woken memories of another time when he dealt a hand of death. He fought against a vision of frog legs, joined at the hips, sizzling on a spit. His body jerked fitfully as he battled to slip the claws of the past. The immediacy of the young ones strengthened his resolve to say “No!” The power of the word prodded his clenched muscles to release, allowed him to stand, to move.

  His deep blue eyes flitted and jumped from place to place. Mostly, he watched the weed-covered drive the rapists probably used coming there. He took in the condition of the victims as he approached. The boy whimpered as he cinched a length of rope used as a belt. Tears ran down his cheeks.

  The tall girl stared at Jake with silent apprehension, the streaks of her tears almost dry. One hand clutch
ed her ripped blouse closed over her small breasts, the other held up her loose fitting trousers.

  The boy went to the body of the dead black man and knelt by the little girl. He put his arm protectively around her. They watched his approach with wide-eyed fear.

  Jake stopped close to the tall girl, seeing, but trying not to see, the blood and small pieces of flesh on her face and clothing. She was older than he had assumed from a distance. Her eyes looked huge on her thin brown face. She was a little shorter than his six-feet.

  “I’m not going to ask if you’re okay,” he said gently. “I know you’re not.” He nodded in the direction of the dead black man where the other two huddled. “Is that your father?”

  “No. That’s our uncle,” she answered sharply.

  “Where are your mom and dad?”

  “You go to hell, mister,” she spat at him, “that’s none of your business.”

  Jake thought before responding. He could not fault her for being leery.

  “I know you’re angry and hurt. I probably scare you, but I don’t mean any harm, young woman. It was only a question.”

  “You don’t scare me. They’re out getting food, and you’d best not be here when they get back.”

  Jake studied her for a moment. He could tell by the change in her voice she was lying about her parents returning. He admired her attempt to be strong, but knew her bravado was born of fear and distrust.

  “No… they won’t be coming back. You’re here by yourselves now your uncle’s dead.” He paused, looking at her face, giving her time to respond. She glared at him for a long moment before letting her eyes fall.

  “Leave us alone mister. Just go. We been hurt enough.”

  Jake considered his answer before he spoke. “I’ll stay until your parents return. I’ll leave once I know you three are safe.”

  She raised her eyes to glare at him again. “They’re not coming. They’re dead, all right. White men came through and killed’em four years back.”