The door of the helicopter swung open and a man emerged. He had a pistol in his hand, but it was held at his side. The pilot powered down the craft and offered a hesitant wave in their direction. Jimmy returned it. He lowered his shotgun slightly, but still kept it trained in the general direction of the new arrivals.
Lewis stalked forward. Oh great, here we go, Wendy thought. She glanced at Jimmy to ensure they were on the same page if something happened.
"You there," Lewis called out. "Sgt. Lewis, United States Army, I'm commandeering your helicopter," he shouted.
"Boy, are we glad to see some friendly faces," Gibson called out. "We have kids in here, so everyone be nice," he finished with a grin. It faltered slightly as Lewis got in his face. He gestured at the gun and said, "I need to take that from you, friend."
"I don't think so," Robert intervened.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Robert, this here is Gibson and in the back there, Jody and Tucker. Look, we've got some problems with the chopper. I need to make a few repairs and then we'll be on our way. We don't want any trouble."
"I don't think you heard me," Lewis breathed. He strolled closer to Robert and said, "I'm ordering you to relinquish your helicopter to my men...I'm ordering you under the current articles of Martial Law to assist the U.S. Army in maintaining order..."
Robert leaned in closer until their noses almost touched. "I don't think so," he pushed past gritted teeth.
It happened fast. When Lewis' hand went for his service pistol, Jimmy was already on the move. He shouted for Robert to hit the deck as he brought the shotgun to bear on the Sergeant's back. As all of this was happening, the mob in the park started their Gibsonh towards the hospital with Honey leading the way. Across the nation, similar groups amassed on other remaining survivors.
On the rooftop a shot rang out. The gun in Gibson's hand bucked but his aim was true. Lewis dropped his pistol before he managed to extend his arm. A hole smoked from his forehead. His eyes seemed to jiggle as the bullet bounced around inside his skull before finally exiting from his left ear. Before he fell, Jimmy fired the shotgun hitting him in the back. Robert caught shrapnel spray from the blast as he threw himself to the side.
It was over as quickly as it began. Lewis' men turned their weapons on Gibson and Jimmy. The move was purely training. Once they realized their corrupt leader was down, they lowered the guns and silently dispersed into the building.
Robert grimaced as Gibson checked the minor wounds across his leg and thigh. "You'll make it," he said after a few seconds.
Wendy walked over. "Wendy Van Allen," she said. "Sorry for the crappy welcome."
"Gibson. This is Robert," Gibson said as he shook her hand. She looked familiar. He'd seen her somewhere before. On TV? A movie star? No. A reporter. "Thanks for the assist," he nodded at Jimmy. The man looked like he was about to hurl. He clutched the shotgun in his hands and looked off into space. He mumbled something and walked off.
"You see the problem in the park down there on your way in?" Wendy asked, all business.
"Yeah, we did," Robert said as Gibson helped him to his feet. "We saw a bunch more like them back in Virginia. Something's not right about them."
"I think that's the understatement of the year," Wendy responded. "There's a girl down there, Honey Michaela, she's controlling them somehow."
"Something's controlling her," Tucker spoke up. He and Jody got out of the helicopter during the commotion and were standing by the parapet looking down at the park. "They're coming," Jody whispered.
New Earth, Year 0000 The animals stopped attacking when the prophets appeared one by one. It was as if a global cease-fire was declared, only no one heard it but the animals. In the first twelve hours a third of the earth's population was decimated by the animal attacks.
We held off the "Splinters" for nine days, but somehow they made it in. Nobody is really sure how it happened, but I think it was one of us that just finally gave up and let them in. We were overrun. I managed to get Tucker squirreled away in a vent; talk about deja vu. Honey turned everyone except the youngest. She may not have changed us, but she's still in our heads, Gaea, I mean, not Honey. Honey is merely an instrument.
The "Takeover" took four months. Everyone over the age of 21 was changed into those hive-zombie things. Life slowly fell into a pattern. The young were divided up and directed to "settle" in certain areas around the globe.
The worst was yet to come. Jesus, help us, the worst hadn't even started yet. Next, came the earthquakes and storms. A kind of clean up operation. It definitely got rid of all the bodies littering the world. Make no mistake; mankind was at war with Nature herself. We didn't realize it until it was too late to wage any kind of organized resistance, but fight we did. We made a run of it, but how do you fight an enemy that is all around you? Under your very feet? In the air around you?
Our home and everything we knew turned against us. An earth which once sustained and nurtured mankind rose with a savage fury with centuries of hate and malice. Civilization crumbled like a child's sand castle against the tide.
Where was God in all of this? To be honest with you, I don't think a God exists. Ever existed. The Flood, all that Sunday school bull? Yeah, it happened all right, but God had nothing to do with it.
This whole existence, this whole facade? A mere holding cell for mankind and all his screw-ups. We never had dominion over Earth. We were caretakers and stewards who did a piss poor job of it. We paid the price. We grew fat off of her goodness and took for granted that she'd always be there. A simple job, take care of her and she'd take care of us. We were to cherish and love her, not rip out her insides and bury our waste in her belly. Rot her from the inside out, causing her so much pain and anguish.
Politicians used to talk about what we would leave our children, our children's children. All of that means absolutely nothing now. There are no more politicians. There are barely any of us left. A handful in the scope of things.
Now that we know we can become a cancer, maybe we won't reach that potential again. Maybe this time we will make the partnership work.
We're divided into six tribes. Each led by one of her original six prophets. There has been a lot of talk amongst us as to why she's allowed us to live. Why she had used the animals to attack? Why didn't she simply cause a bunch of volcanoes to erupt and finish us that way? Nobody knows for sure. Maybe she needs us, like bacteria or something?
It is best if we don't question her intentions and motives. I wish there was some way to let our children know what happened, but she forbade it. She wants us to choose to cherish her without fear of reprisal, without fear of malice. Of our own free will, because we want to honor her.
We have to be careful. Rebellion is not tolerated and is dealt with harshly. She can see into our heads and she knows all. I'm taking a great risk just writing all of this down, but it needs to be committed to paper.
When I'm done with this it will be hidden for future generations to read and know what happened. Maybe someday we'll figure out a way to fight back.
Something's going on though. We hear things. Something in the ocean is coming to the surface. Something big.
Life goes on.
One more thing: She wants us to call her God, the Father.
With A Face Of Golden Pleasure.
Ryan C. Thomas.
"The water understands.
Civilization well; It wets my foot, but prettily It chills my life, but wittily, It is not disconcerted It is not broken-hearted Well used, it decketh joy, Adorneth, doubleth joy: Ill used, it will destroy, In perfect time and measure With a face of golden pleasure Elegantly destroy."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Water.
DAY 1.
CHAPTER 1.
Sweet Child O' Mine was playing low over the pub's speakers as Cameron came out of the bathroom, his head a little foggier than before he'd gone in. He felt like he'd just pissed all of his body's water into the gum-filled urinal. The sun was directly over the ocean, coming through the pub's beachfront window with the intensity of a fiery lance cutting through infant flesh. An air conditioner whirred in the transom over the front door, but it may as well have been a politician up there for all the useless hot air it was breathing out. The heat wave ravaging southern California was only getting worse, and the ocean waves seemed to take this as a cue to disappear. There hadn't been a swell worth talking about in over two weeks.
Cam scanned the bar. Joe was across the empty room flipping through the selections on the jukebox. Behind the counter, the tattooed bartender was talking on the pub's phone. He gave Cam an annoyed glare and plugged his free ear with his finger as Axl Rose wailed on about a girl with eyes of the bluest skies.
Cam sat at the stool in front of his beer. His musical selections queued up, Joe returned and slumped down next to him.
"They don't have Social D."
"What?" Cam asked, finishing off the remainder of his Budweiser. It tasted flatter than it had five minutes ago.
"Social D. They ain't got it. I want to hear Ring of Fire."
"That's Johnny Cash."
"Yeah, but the cover song is better."
"So you played Guns N' Roses instead?"
Joe wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and finished his own beer. "I like Guns and Roses. Did like 'em anyway, before Axl went all rock star. Jesus, it's hot. You hear they're saying we might not be able to wash our cars and water our lawns and stuff. Water shortage laws."
"You don't have a lawn." Cam craned his neck to get the bartender's attention. The man was clearly in the midst of a heated argument, judging by the way he was grimacing. "And your car is a '78 Chevelle with a hole in the bottom you can see the road through. It doesn't need washing, it needs a 21-gun salute."
"Got us here, didn't it?"
"Leaving a cloud of grime behind us. What's with this bartender? He sees I'm empty. Another second I'm gonna hop over the bar and just pour one myself."
"You do that. Me, I gotta sober up and get ready for work."
"We leaving?"
"In a few."
"Cool. Can you take me back to the apartment?"
"Yeah, about that...um..."
"What?"
Joe ran his hands through his slick hair, his face suddenly aged and jaded for a man of only twenty-six. With a sigh, he looked up at Cam and said, "You know what, I will have one more beer."
Something is going on here, thought Cam. He'd seen that look in Joe's eyes before. It was the same one he got whenever he went off about quitting his job or rising gas prices or his monthly decision to be vegetarian (which only ever lasted as far as the nearest In N Out was located). It was a precursor to something Joe considered important, but was often more trivial than Cam cared to discuss.
While Joe searched for the right words to whatever it was he wanted to talk about, Cam seized the opportunity to wave at the bartender. "Hey, dude, can we get a drink down here?"
The bartender placed the phone against his chest, looked around the bar to see if anyone else had come in. When he saw that Cam and Joe were the only ones present, he said, "Hop over and get it yourself, I'm on a call." He put the phone back to his ear, spoke for a second, seemed to consider something and turned back to Cam. "Don't think you're not paying for it. I'm watching you."
"Whatever, dude." Cam hopped over, grabbed two new glasses from the small refrigerator and poured himself an Amstel Light from the tap. He snapped his fingers at Joe. "What do you want?"
"Same. On second thought, that looks foamy. Get me the Heineken."
The beer was coming out of both taps rather slowly and sudsy, which Cameron knew could be any number of problems. Normally, he would complain, but since he had carte blanche of the bar right now, he was willing to let it slide. To make matters worse, the glasses were warm, so he placed them on the bartop and went over to the ice machine near the kegs. As a bartender himself, he knew warm glasses simply meant poor management. In heat this bad there was no excuse for foamy beer and a broken glass refrigerator. Inside the ice machine all he found was a lonely baseball-sized chunk of ice. Strike three, he thought. Should he tell the bartender he needed to run the joint better? Fuck it, he thought, he wouldn't want some patron telling him the same. He'd just deal with warm, shitty beer.
As he came back around the bar to the stools Joe said, "I need you out of the apartment, Cam."
Blindsided, Cam sat down and shook his head. "What?" Was that what Joe wanted to talk about? He was kicking him out? How could he do that? It had only been two weeks. How did Joe expect him to get a place of his own in only two weeks?
"Look. I told you you could stay with me for a bit-"
"It's only been two weeks." Cam held up two fingers to illustrate how small that number was. "I'm looking."
"You said you were looking last week."
"I was."
"Bullshit. You went surfing everyday."
"And I looked too."
"Where?"
"Around."
Joe shook his head. He wasn't buying it. "Around where? Give me a complex name."
"The Pines," Cam said, his voice low..
"The Pines is down the street from my apartment. I pass it every day on the way to work. It's a condo complex, so unless you suddenly got yourself a mortgage, you need to lie better."
"Then it wasn't the Pines. I forget the name."
"Seriously, Cameron-"
"Okay. Okay. I went surfing. They kept saying a swell was coming."
"Ain't no swell coming. Not today, not tomorrow. The weather is fucked up. Something about the humidity and the pressure systems and..."
On the jukebox, Axl Rose stopped singing and passed the microphone to Halen. Cameron laughed. "Now look who's trying to bullshit. You don't know dick about meteorology."
"But I know about living like a slob," Joe said, his attitude suddenly assertive, "and that's you. I got socks all over the damn living room, your underwear is practically in the sink, you cut your own damn hair in the bathroom two days ago and it's still all over the place. Christ, there was hair in my bed. It's like a wookie exploded in there."
"I'll clean it up."
"You take long showers, using up all the hot water. The goddamn ceiling drips on my head like it's raining when I go in there. The landlord is gonna make me pay to get rid of all the mold and-"
"So I'll stop showering."
"Look, no offense, dude, but I can't live with you anymore. You're...you're...this ain't college anymore. You gotta be responsible, which you're clearly not."
"What am I supposed to do? I can't sign a lease-is this the Sammy Hagar Van Halen?"
"Are you hearing what I'm saying?"
"Yeah. But please, Joe, I got nowhere else to go."