in the end 1.2

In those days death stalked the earth unabated. After the bombs came the plague. It roamed from the skeletal cities to the scorched countryside, casting death like dice among the living. Randomly taking them. They were burnt in great pits in an attempt to stop the spread of the infection. They burnt day and night. Their light reflected from the low cloud sheath that blanketed the earth. The night was orange translucence.


The infection spread through populations multiplying exponentially, then recede for a time, then strike again. By the end of the war most of the cities were totally empty. Those that remained in them formed loose fraternities and tribes. They marked themselves by various means. After the plague started those that the bombs didn’t burn prayed to be passed over by the sickness, but the gods closed their ears. The ones that the plague didn’t take held on like refugees in a dying world.

It became clear that a few were immune to the sickness. It was not clear how infection spread, weather through blood, or water, or air, or touch. Some people got sick, showed all the signs of death, but recovered, they never feel ill again. This was a small fraction of the people.

In the beginning the what was left of the National Guard tried to prevent looting and stop the spread of disorder and infection. The government tried to hang on to a bankrupt system long after it became apparent that it was all falling apart. And yet all the federal ministries of the globe finally succumbed to the plague. The bombs stopped falling because no one was left to launch them. Armies melted into the country side, weather that of “their” home nations or of the “enemies’”. Some of the elite tried to hold up in underground shelters. They were prepared for just such a disaster. But the plague got in. Some are still sealed perhaps, now tombs. Sometimes you would come upon tunnels leading to the opened shelters, passage ways under government buildings or in the subways. As they were opened to the outside world they were looted and abandoned or occupied by tribes.


After the bombs stopped Adam’s mother Rebecca set up a small shop in the third floor of an old apartment store in what had been Beaumont, Texas. Adam and his brother, along with some hired guns, would travel to Houston to scavenge and trade, bring the goods back, and barter with them.

Long before the fact Adam’s uncle suspected a long war. He was very wealthy and bought 10 archers. He built a large compound, complete with a bunker 40 feet down. He had co-owned a construction company, and contracted out to an international firm that specialized in apocalypse proof domiciles. They stayed in the bunker during the war and for some years afterwards. They were forced to open the doors when they ran out of food. Adam’s uncle and father took sick and died, but he, Rebecca and his brother Elwood had what people called the gift. They got sick in various ways, but pulled through.

The family heard from other survivors that some of the big cities on the East coast were hit by nuclear missiles, but he had no way of knowing. In Beaumont at least it had been conventional bombs and some ground fighting in the city. Conventional bombs can do almost as much damage as nuclear weapons, if they fall in sufficient numbers. But the war was over fairly quickly as the solders and commanders and big wigs started dying. The Bolivarian forces tried to occupy some cities but they died too quickly to get a foot hold, those that survived joined tribes or wandered home. Death had brought peace.

Sine people started dying in such great numbers, and suddenly, there was no shortage of food and supplies. All the electricity stopped, but people had gas generators, and there was gas to freeze food and run other electrical gadgets. There was plenty of canned and otherwise preserved goods. When tribes fought they did so over fuel and weapons, or good land on which to settle, or machine parts, or the like. Some areas were safer than others, and one had to travel with armed. But overall it didn’t pay to fight. There was enough food for the few left, to tide them over till the first harvests. It was easier to dig in and start crops.

Chad, another among the gifted, lived in the remains of the Lamar University Library. It was relatively well preserved because it was built like a fortress, and did not suffer any direct hits. The library was a 10 story red brick, concrete, and cinder block building. It was basically one big monolith with a 13 inch strips of glass running up the side windows. These “windows” were set about 5 inches into the brick, looking like something Norman nights might shoot arrows from. The university was bombed lightly for whatever reason, but the nearby petrol plants were blown sky high. They burnt for days, and the nearby houses caught. The neighborhood surrounding the university, very old and very dirty, was burnt almost completely to the ground.

Chad had been a professor for all of 2 months when the city was bombed for the first time. At that point all classes stopped. But Chad still went to the library almost daily. The university maintained a skeleton crew, and he would chat with the bored administrators. He and some other well liked staff had key-cards to the place so they could come and go as they liked. No one could turn on the lights, and only a few were allowed on during the day, so often he read by candle light sitting deep in the stacks. This suited him fine. He mused that the life of a 10th century Irish monk could not have been much different.

One day the air raid siren went off while he was there and he held up in the library archives, which was in the basement. After the air raid siren stopped and the sky was clear of planes he walked the ten flights of stairs to the roof and saw everything around him for miles belching smoke and flame. The refineries about a mile off popped and exploded and sizzled. The neighborhood surrounding the refineries was catching fast. He doubted he had a home to go to, and he liked books, so he stayed win the library. He had a key to the big solid steel freezers in the cafeteria that the administration had kept locked since the beginning of the war, and he knew that there was more food where that came from.

The neighborhood surrounding the University was almost totally abandoned before long. It was too dangerous to be near the refineries, and much of it was burning. Also, Beaumont was early hit by the plague. When it first started, the government tried to stem the infection by rounding “at risk” populations into “medical internment camps”. Soldiers swept through the neighborhood in bio-hazard suits, herding the reaming population who squatted in the ruins into flatbed trucks where there was food waiting. It was a quick operation overall. When the solders came through Lamar they had a very hard time getting into the library, and the large steal door to archives was locked from inside. A sign beside said “This door is to remain locked, for access to the East Texas Native American Photograph Archive see the reference librarian on the 3rd floor” The solders figured nothing was inside but photographs. Chad was inside reading books on agriculture and hunting.
Adam met Chad as he was wandering through the campus looking for whatever he could find. Chad was crouching in a garden of broccoli. Adam walked up slowly with his hand on his gun holster, and stood and watched. Chad had his back turned, he didn’t stop digging as he spoke.

“It’ll do you no good to kill me. You can have what you want. Are you hungry”
Adam walked up closer.

“I’m not into killing farmers, they are the smart ones. The smart ones should live. Its only the brutes needs killing”

“I guess that depends on your definition of brute”

Adam squatted beside Chad and looked at a broccoli sprout, he smiled inspecting his ugly stringy beard, “or of farmer”.

Chad made eye contact, “well you know, a person can be a farmer and other things too”

“That might be so, but brutes can’t be farmers because brutes can only be brutes"

Maybe they are the lucky ones because they have to be what they are, totally”

Chad quoted “count no man lucky in times such as these”

Adam looked up at the castle like building. “you must have some McCarthy in that shit box of yours”

Chad reached out his muddy hands. “Chad Daily”

Adam shook it and said, “Adam of the River, pleased to know you.”